While I'm away....

I'm off to a 3-day workshop that's going to get another gadget in my hands. bwa-ha-ha I am so excited. I will do (almost) anything to acquire a new toy. Currently in my drawer I have four Palm PDAs, three iPods, a GPS unit, a Mac iBook and G3 lappie, as well as a G3 and G5 desktop computer. I also have three graphing calculators, an old school mechanical calculator, an abacus, and four slide rules. Don't argue with me that a slide rule is not a gadget. Any item that comes with a manual that consists of bound pages rather that just stapled sheets has got to be a gadget.

Anyway, the goody I will acquire this week is a new TI-Nspire. How can you not drool when you see this thing? It can do so much that it comes with two keyboards! This bi-faceplate issue is the driving force behind the workshop. Me thinks this gadget has a big brain and if I tried to figure it out on my own I would only scrape the surface—and probably not very much of it. I can't wait to see what tricks this thing can do.


While I'm away, I thought I would leave you with an online game to help fill up your time. I will introduce it to you the same way it was introduced to me: with no directions on how to play. Please give it a whirl and see how many attempts you need to figure it out. The link I have is for a site that reviews games so the writer does give some clues about how to play as he explains what he likes about the game. If you want to try it with no foreknowledge, click the link and play Gimme Friction Baby before you read the whole review. The game designer said he thought adding directions would take away from the simplicity of the game and they are not really needed anyhow. It is a casual game, so no time limits or pressure to kill or be killed. I've lost hours of my life to this game and my high score is only 29 while my average is in the very low single digits. Have a good time.

In the background while I type this is a podcast of A Way With Words. Yes, we digit-heads love words too and this public radio show is a hoot. The focus is words and language and etymology and puns and grammar. I mention it now for two reasons. The first is that I do not think a lot of affiliates have picked it up yet and, besides the four podcasters that listen, everyone who calls in is from San Diego or Wisconsin. I'm trying to expand the listenership. The second reason I mention it is that as I'm trying to concentrate on typing, a few phrases made it through to my gray matter:
Books never crash. And you can use them in the tub.
I was wondering if they were metrosexual, but didn't know if I was allowed to say that on the radio.
The Macaroni Club—completely metrosexual. With lots of product in their hair.

OK, so it may sound like they drifted from the topic there but they were on task. The lyrics to Yankee Doodle were under analysis. I'll leave the rest for you to think about. I was actually a caller on this show once and if you want to know why "a whole nother" sounds more legitimate than it looks, post a question.

Good Clean Fun

In the spirit of keeping you amused, I offer the following selection of games.

The Wikipedia Game
Goal: Get from one Wikipedia page to another by only clicking on links in articles. Players start from the same page for one topic, say the female mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. Another topic, say Jell-O, is chosen as the target. Players can only click on links to reach the target. No typing is allowed.

This takes the Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon game to a whole new level. In the interest of research, I did a solo run connecting Hypatia to Jell-O in 17 clicks. I believe the breakthrough click was "screaming jelly babies" which led me to "gelatin" which I called success so I could go back and read more about jelly babies, screaming or otherwise. Here's my path:

Hypatia --> Mathematics --> Scientific method --> scientific community --> popular culture --> commercial --> advertisement --> brand --> jingles --> snacks --> list of snack foods --> geplak --> sugar --> calorie --> food energy --> screaming jelly babies --> jelly baby --> gelatin

Thanks to Writing as Joe for bringing this to my attention. Should I have called this entry I'm Joe's Game to keep in the spirit of previous posts?

White Jigsaw Yeah OK, so Flash based jigsaws aren't really all that hard because the pieces will snap into place at some point ... right? Well, this was amusing when the pieces got small and the playing board seemed to get bigger.

Sheep Dash! How fast are your reflexes? Five sheep are going to bolt and your job is to stun 'em. I was remarkably consistent:



Too many games to count. Well, I haven't finished counting them, anyway. What a great use for Flash. Very creative, simple, amusing. Give 'em a go.

I'm going to see how many Wiki clicks it takes to get from Apple, Inc. to tooth decay. See you next time.