Grammar Girl Offers Guide To Twitter Posts

Grammar Girl released "Strunk & Twite," her unofficial guide to proper Twitter grammar. Naturally, each point is less than 141 characters.

These discussions of Twitter done in 141-character chunks remind me of the reviews of George Perec's A Void, the English translation of La Disparation. Since Perec managed to write a book without the letter e, which was then translated into an English book without the letter e, reviewers felt it was only fair that they write about the book without using the letter e.

Breaking News!

Or...breaking bricks to get news. MS-NBC has released a new Flash game called News Breaker Game that incorporates the current headlines. It's too bad the game is a slow-paced Breakout clone, but catch 25 headlines (which get stored to the side for later reading) and you'll get an extra life.

Colbert and Sean Penn in a Meta-Free-Phor-All

Sean Penn and Stephen Colbert compete, with former poet laureate Robert Pinskey as the judge, to see who can come up with the best metaphors. Hilarious.

via kottke.org

Pisa Posers Off-Angle

My friend Phil posted about this photo on Slate, with tourists posing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but taken from someone else's perspective.

Chronicle Blog Goes APE

Melissa and I visited APE with our friend meriko, whose husband had a book on the floor. Melissa has been to APE in the past, but this was my first trip. Instead of giving you my take, I'll be a lazy blogger and link to the video coverage at the Chronicle's culture blog.

Choose Our Own Adventure

When I played the San Francisco Perplex City game, I quipped that since the story underlying the day relied on us solving a certain number of puzzles, we should all just give up and see what happened. I couldn't build enough momentum for my idea, but I imagine that somehow we would've met the goal anyway. But if the alternate reality game genre relies on real-world activity, shouldn't players be able to influence the story in unpredictable ways?

That thought occurred to me again as I skimmed the surface of the Heroes 360 Experience, an ARG/marketing device for the TV show Heroes. ARGs have been used to market movies and television before, but this one seems pretty extensive. And the producers have said that this is a dry run for an even larger game next season.

So here's what I wonder. Some of the Heroes ARG storyline recruits players to solve some problem faced by a key character, a behind-the-scenes thread that ties into the TV show's storyline. What if we weren't able to help? Or chose not to? Wouldn't it be cool if the producers had to modify the TV show's story to account for the fact that we either had or had not solved some series of puzzles? If the writers had to keep ahead of, but also deal with, the reality of the ARG?

It's Because The Stakes Are So Low

I've long been convinced that every community of a certain size that centers around a particular hobby maps exactly onto every community of the same size but with a different hobby. The group dynamics of International Puzzle Party are just like those who collect weighing scales, and so forth.

One of the aspects is a debate that's meaningless to everyone outside the community, but of vital importance to the people within it. How to classify certain mechanical puzzles for instance.

Which is why this debate about the fastest speed run of Super Mario Bros. makes sense to me. Speed runs, if you don't know, are videos of players finishing a game in the fastest possible time. If you look up Super Mario Bros. at Twin Galaxies, you'll find 5 minutes and 8 seconds. If, on the other hand, you look at Speed Demos Archive, you'll find a time of 5 minutes flat. Twin Galaxies doesn't allow you to exploit bugs in the original game, arguing that they go against the "programmer intent." Speed Demos, on the other hand, allows you to take advantage of esoteric glitches in your speed run.

So which is the legitimate Super Mario Bros. record?

Perplex City Winner Tells His Story

What would your blog post look like if you'd unearthed an object worth $200,000? Here's one example, from Andy Darley, who won the first season of Perplex City by finding the hidden Receda Cube.

A Game Worth Missing A BART Stop For

I almost missed my BART stop this morning because I was so engrossed with TaMiGoN, a new game from Shoecake Games. The game requires you to place pieces inspired by tangrams and remove large swatches of color. You can position any piece in the queue, rotating and flipping it as need be.

via Passion for Puzzles

Stardust Trailer

Looks like an all-star cast for the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Michelle Pfeiffer, Clare Danes, Rupert Everett, Peter O'Toole, the voice of Ian McKellen. The only question is: will Tori Amos do the voice of the talking red-leafed tree that's based on her?

Melissa and I read Stardust as one of our read-aloud books, though it was tough because of the illustrations. It's not a graphic novel in the sense most people imagine, but there are still plenty of pictures; since I normally read while Melissa drives, I'd have to hold the book up so she could look at the pics out of the corner of her eye.

We're pretty excited about the movie.

Are You Sure You're Not Gay?

This has been a question that I suspect more than a few of my friends have wanted to ask me at some point. I mean, I love to cook. I adore opera. And Broadway musicals. I cry at schmaltzy films. I quilt (well, in theory). And I was totally intrigued when I saw the song playing on a friend's computer: Dolly Parton Peace Train Dance Remix.

Melissa and I have a short list of celebrities we think would make for good dinner guests, our ultimate test for a person's worth. Dolly Parton has always struck me as an interesting, no-bullshit, and utterly charming woman, so she's on our list. I don't listen to a lot of her music, but maybe I should start. I love the Peace Train cover and the other songs my friend sent me. Besides, we'll want to be up on her opera when she comes to dinner someday.

Will Ferrell Confronts His Landlord

Melissa sent me this hilarious comedy sketch about Will Ferrell dealing with his landlord. Once you see him open the door, you'll start laughing.

Too Many Titles To Choose From

A co-worker of mine told me about what one sports writer calls "The Tyson Zone." The Tyson Zone is when a celebrity is so crazy that you will believe any news story about him/her, no matter how outlandish, because, you know, it's probably true.

Michael Jackson? Way in the Tyson Zone. So I didn't even blink when I read the news that he wants to construct a 50-foot-tall robotic statue of himself that will roam the Vegas desert and shoot lasers. The mechanical giant, which will be visible to incoming planes, will be part of a new show Jackson is creating in Vegas.

via Table of Malcontents, which says, "No further comment. What more could possibly be said?"

Ballad Of The Older Female Gamer

Susan Arendt, who writes for Wired's Game|Life blog, has an essay at The Escapist about the stigma of being an adult female gamer. She and other adult female gamers she spoke with have been on the wrong end of society's views of what women should be doing with their lives. Arendt points out that a woman spending $150 on a pair of shoes is normal, but on the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 it's inappropriate.

Few of our friends question my video game habit, which admittedly has a hard time squeezing in to the cracks around my writing, teaching, and programming. But even at work with other programmers, I'm in the minority as someone who devotes any time at all to videogames, especially console games. Arendt's essay reminds me of the slight stigma, maybe just ignorance, that people have towards board-game enthusiasts. In fact, any hobby that attracts geeks more than other segments of the population seems to generate a lot of suspicion among the non-geek public.

A Donkey Kong Level With Post-Its

You know, I wasted a fair amount of my college life. Some of that wasted time—wasted vis à vis my biology degree—resulted in my computer books, but a fair amount went to video games, Star Wars marathons, or the obligatory dorm-room stay-up-and-talk-all-night fests.

However, I don't think I ever would have agreed to construct a Donkey Kong level with Post-It notes on the inside of a campus building's windows. On the other hand, I have to admit that I'm impressed with the effort.

Thanks, Jack!

Vonnegut's Rules For Short Stories

Boing boing posted Kurt Vonnegut's rules for short stories, but these are good points for narrative nonfiction as well. I'm blogging it mostly so that I remember where the link is.

Just Imagine Your Competition In Their Underwear

Let's see. You're a bar/arcade, and you want an event that gets customers through your door and gives them something to remember.

So you say to your co-owner, "Let's have a game competition, and let's have everyone come in their underwear." You can't have them walking around town in their underwear, of course, so you just have them all, boys and girls alike, check their pants at the door. And you let people take pictures. There are a surprising number of women for a video arcade event, but that might have something to do with the photographer's taste.

via Table of Malcontents

Why Is This Book Worth $500?

An OWF reader noticed my mention of Cook's Illustrated's How to Make Ice Cream. A CI fanatic, she searched for it online (it's out of print). What did she find? That the book is worth about $500. Check bookfinder if you don't believe me. (The stains on mine probably diminish the value, but I'll bet it's still worth a fetching farthing.)

This book is small: 96 pages and about a quarter of the square area of a regular cookbook. It was part of the "How To..." series the magazine did when they first experimented with repackaging the recipes from the magazine. I prefer these little How To books to the new mainstream glossy books they publish, but these are not revolutionary texts. Why the hefty price tag on this one?

My only guess is that, if someone wants the whole set, this is one of the books they can no longer get from the publisher. The books were printed in small runs, mostly available to subscribers and in very select bookstores. Any other theories?

Wish Jar Journal's Anti-Advertising Crusade

My friends and family often ask me if I take ads on OWF. They're usually surprised that I don't leverage OWF's few-thousand-strong readership into some extra cash. The main reason that I don't is that I do not support the concept of advertising everywhere. "Everyone does it," they say. Or "People just ignore them anyway." But I don't like having ads constantly in my face, and I like to believe my readers don't either. I choose to make my tiny strike back at consumerism.

Keri Smith of Wish Jar Journal feels the same way. Melissa sent me this link, which includes one of the most astonishing McDonald's ads I've seen.

Johnny Hart has Died

Johnny Hart has passed away.

Their Everywhere!

Melissa notes Defective Yeti's modest proposal to keep a certain type of person off the Internet. He's based his idea on the image captchas that prevent spam bots from leaving comments. I for one think it could revolutionize blogs.

And yes, I'm being coy so that you'll click through and see for yourself.

Time Goes Bye

Melissa gave me a heads-up about a recent Fresh Air episode in which linguist Geoffrey Nunberg described Time's effect on language. I hadn't realized how pervasive Time's influence has been in journalism. The sentences that start with long participle phrases that back in to the subject. A host of coined words. The absence of the first-person singular pronoun, itself a corollary of the notion of a reporter who's anonymous and not in the piece. Many of the bad habits of modern journalists come from the magazine's early days, though the magazine itself has not maintained them.

Here's the iTunes store link. The piece starts at 37:35, after a somewhat interesting interview with Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and an Evangelical Christian.

Rock-Paper-Scissors 101

I've covered 25-symbol rock-paper-scissors in the past, but now the same author has constructed a 101-symbol version. Of course, it doesn't take long to realize that your odds of winning and losing are exactly the same as in the traditional form: Each symbol loses to half the remaining symbols and beats the other half. The creativity comes from the verbalization of the victory relationships—Priest Excommunicates Devil, for instance—and the hand symbols one has to memorize. But even the author admits that no one would want to play this version.

via kottke.org

Why Am I Giggling So Much?

Possibly the wine has something to do with it, but I loved loved loved Josh's description of today's educational Mark Trail. Comics Curmudgeon is always good for a laugh—I'll start chuckling and Melissa will ask if I'm reading the site—but today's post had me in a streaming giggle fest.