Skyrim or Switzerland?

Skyrim or Switzerland?

Ok, the child with glasses is a giveaway. Yes, that's right: Skyrim*! (*modded)

What you can't feel in this lens-flared photo ("this card is mostly blue") is this: the cold wind off the frigid lake, the warm sun pooling on your skin, the ferry schedule so well-implemented that we left with zero seconds of delay/advance, the multilingual chatter of tourists and locals filling the boat.


This post's theme word is incurvariid, "of or relating to a small family of minute moths." I need three incurvariid samples for my next potion; may I borrow your butteryfly net?

Portal cake

I made a birthday cake for R., based on this recipe. It had some adaptations, making it a darker and richer cake (and layered with fudge), and ended up being a lot of cake. A single serving is 2 or 3 degrees, even for the most ardent and hungry chocolate-lover.

It was delightful, and that's not a lie.

This post's theme word is hirquitalliency, "sexual cries of delight." (Maybe. See this for more on its etymology.) The cake induced hirquitalliency.

Meta-games

There is a community, connected and reinforced online, of video game players. Despite their division into factions (by gaming console, by game preference, by the quality of being distinguishable from an angry 12-year-old boy in forums), they share more similarities than they do differences. One notable similarity being: the obsession with video games. As a pastime. As entertainment. As a lifestyle choice.

Like any community, the community of video gamers occasionally discusses itself. (Witness Penny Arcade, a venue devoted exclusively to discussions of video games and of Penny Arcade.) Thus arises a genre: the video game which is, itself, a commentary on another video game. I just came across this list of meta-games and find them delightful; I had heard of Desert Bus, Tetris HD, the hilarious Cow Clicker, and others. I am delighted to find out about Progress Quest, a RPG which requires no participation to play -- your character stats simply increase the longer you run the game. Progress Wars is similar but even simpler. Achievement Unlocked is delightful.

And of course there are games which parody other meta-games. Huzzah.


This post's theme word is jocoserious, "half-jesting, half-serious." Jonathan Coulton's sorrowful nerd anthems are jocoserious. Just consider JoCo's jocoserious song "Still Alive," the theme of the popular video game Portal.
This post written like Cory Doctorow. (I wonder if that's because of the many links.)

Building Turing machines

Two recent items of internews (internet+news = stories that are popular for a few hours) regarding Turing machines, my second-favorite type of machine.*

Massive in-game Turing machine built inside a mechanical game (via BoingBoing).

Actual real-life Turing machine built inside this universe (via BoingBoing, HackADay, Slashdot, Gizmodo).


This post's theme word: sedulous, "involving great care, effort, and persistence." Any Turing machine construction, whether engineering or mathematical, is of necessity quite sedulous.

*Printing presses. Nothing can beat 'em.

Weekend

This weekend we celebrated R.'s birthday (despite its actual calendar placement of Tuesday). We went paintballing (photos forthcoming on facebook), and I got shot in the head (ow). Now I have a lovely pink bump, and every time I think of it, I fondly remember the 30-year-old army veteran who gave it to me. Those guys* are crazy about paintball. I also baked a cake, and cookies. And had brunch and dinner, as well as a ridiculous trek to Best Buy so that we could be disgusted with consumerism. (And we were.)

Everything was very nice. Fun. Tiring. I did not finish my grading, so that's what I'll be doing tomorrow morning. The final report from other participants has the paintball at "fun," and the cake/pub/brunch at "delicious." So it was good. R. reports a warm feeling of well-being in his chest arising from so much attention and care.


This post's theme word: limerance, "an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person" or "infatuation." But with more science behind it.

*You know who else is crazy about paintball? Disturbingly violent and enthusiastic males aged 9 -- 14.

Recursive blister

Awhile back I was on a Geometry Wars bender, and managed to get a blister on my thumb. Undeterred, I continued to play... and my blister got a blister, possibly visible in this blurry phone-camera picture:
My bender ended when I achieved "wax off."

This post's theme word: jactitation, "a false or boasting claim."