disobey.com

A new issue of The Perl Journal is available. Only $12/year. Buy!

The site looks horrible in Mozilla/OS X, but:

Volume 1 Issue 4 of Countermoves has officaly been released. Countermoves is a multifaceted project that seeks to bring together game developers and game players to interact and share in both the creating and playing of games. One of the public manifestations of the Countermoves project are print and online GFDL publications. Print versions are offered at no cost via a Guerilla Distribution Method.

I don't have SHOWTIME, but:

On January 24 at 11:00 PM ET/PT SHOWTIME will present the controversial new series PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT! Master showmen Penn & Teller promise an aggressive, irreverent expos

While I haven't had a chance to read much past the abstract, this was something that came through my email late last month (only 109 more emails to go!), Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a

John Rhodes, who has previously conducted an interview with me concerning AmphetaDesk, sent an email last month about his newest project, Trodo.com:

Here's how it works: You register for a free account and list items you're willing to trade -- CDs, DVDs, books, video games, video tapes or vinyl records. When somebody requests an item from you, you pay for the shipping, send it, and get a credit in that category. Then you can use your credits to request items from other people -- for free.

John explains the system, and barter, in detail:

The first purpose of this article is to provide a brief summarization of how barter works. The second purpose is to explain how Trodo capitalizes on the strengths of barter while minimizing its problems. The final purpose is to give readers a clear idea about how Trodo works, including the philosophy behind it.

Here's my problem and why, as much as I like the idea, I probably won't be a contributor. You see, I'm a collector of everything. I still have every Jolt bottle cap I drank when I worked at McDonald's which, when totalled, equals about $300 spent on the bubbly. I have nearly 500 movies, some duplicates, none of which I want to get rid of. Over 3000 comic books, 1000 books, and about 1500 magazines. CDs, since I've moved entirely to mp3s, are only about a 100. And so on, and so forth. I've got a lot of shit, I accumulate more shit every day... it's my shit, and only my shit, so keep your grubby paws off of it.

eBay is a dream for me - I can do esoteric searches for stuff you've never heard of, and my eyes will glean with a desire unbridaled by a thousand tight wallets. I spend and spend, yet I never sell. I am a packrat, and I'm not anonymous about it - material possessions rock.

Trodo, as mentioned, works on a barter system. I put a CD online, someone wants it, I send it for free, and I get a magical credit, which I can use to request a CD from anyone else. And that's my biggest problem (besides the fact that me parting with anything is quite real sorrow): I've about 12 CDs I could put up on Trodo, but I know I'll never want a CD in return - 12 possible credits wasted. I've about 200 comic books I could get rid of... but, with no matching credit type, they're not doing me any good (where I would be willing to use credits to fill in holes in my collection).

I'm sure John has a good reason for limiting his bazaar (why is it when I think of 'bazaar', the only imagery that comes to mind is that scene from the old SNES game, Secret of Evermore?) to only a few booths as opposed to eBaysian chaos, but I'm just not seeing it as of yet.

With $120 in credit at Electronics Boutique positively burning a hole in ye old slacks, I simply had to buy something. In some cases, I'm a very patient fellow - in others, like purchases (or "products nearly already paid for", in the case of credit), I want something now, now, now. Mail order is the devil, and no price is too high for next day air shipping.

Either way, I bought Dragon Ball Z: Budokai today, along with a new PS2 controller (oh so green!). I've never watched DBZ before, but I'm a fan of fighting games (although, a specific kind - it can't be insanely hectic like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, nor can it be super technical like Virtua Fighter 4, both of which I own). Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance is borderline perfect (although it suffers for suck-ass fatalities, of which each character only has one [ONE?!], but almost makes up for it with its 600+ secrets in the Krypt). With that digression out of the way, DBZ looked fun enough, with a healthy dose of advancement (skills, which are almost as good as secrets).

As for the new controller, it's a replacement for an old, severely beaten upon PS1 controller. I remember the first time I spiked that into the floor out of pure rage (I think due to dying at a crucial point in Dark Cloud, of which the cel-shaded sequel soon arrives) - one of the analog sticks was popping out of its socket. As the pain of what I'd done set in, it was slowly overpowered by victory as I rudely snapped things back into place. I thought things were perfect, until I played a game with vibration feedback.

Ever played Steel Talons? It's an old helicopter arcade sim, one of the first I encountered that had what we now call "force feedback" (Atari, at the time, called it "Rump-Thump"). The "force feedback" was, in words I won't forget uttering, "like a baseball bat being shoved up your ass". It literally felt like some little garden gnome was underneath your seat and, with a big metal pipe, hitting the ceiling in an attempt to dissuade your ass from ever sitting there again. It was memorable. I played a few more times, for the glee, than Steel Talons never stole my change again. That's what this controller now feels like whenever vibration kicks in - it clucks like a chicken and feels like ass. I'm glad I don't have that many physical friends - they'd never want to two player.

Hey look, I posted on a Saturday. How quaint.

According to grep -c "HREF=" bookmarks.html, I've just reached 1500 bookmarks, all anally catalogued, and checked for life every few months. Besides the soundness of my organization, Mozilla also offers a chance to search through bookmarks, along with bookmarking groups of tabs (which I've used to anchor three or four faqs/guides of the same game - very handy).

122 more emails, and I've started burning 1 of 12 CDs.

I've been going through my email like mad tonight, and I've realized one thing: out of 300+ emails I've got to answer, grok, and process, it's nice to have one person send you 57 of 'em. Certainly makes clearing a decent portion of your Inbox easier. 241 emails to go, whoo!

GameSpy is running a "Top 10" on the most seriously flawed titles of all time - I heartily agree with some of their choices. Throughout the first two pages, I was all "Custer's Revenge! You must pick Custer's Revenge!", and then when I didn't see it on page three, I began to worry. Thankfully, it made #1 (page four). You'd think, however, that 20 years from now, BMX XXX should top this list, what with the unlockables being softcore strippers, and naked bicycle riders. Granted, at least those videos were "real", as opposed to Custer's "Barbie Breast proportioned" penis.

I was impressed by Joe's Stigmergy and the World-Wide Web, which purports that this grande ole internet is the "first stigmeric communication medium for humans". Stigmergy, as defined by the originator:

Self-Organization in social insects often requires interactions among insects: such interactions can be direct or indirect. Direct interactions are the "obvious" interactions: antennation, trophallaxis (food or liquid exchange), mandibular contact, visual contact, chemical contact (the odor of nearby nestmates), etc. Indirect interactions are more subtle: two individuals interact indirectly when one of then modifies the environment and the other responds to the new environment at a later time. Such an interaction is an example of stigmergy.