February 2005

There were 57 posts published in February 2005 (this is page 2 of 6).

New Project

I’ve finally got something to give me a bit of regular content.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be counting down my top ten video games of all time.

Try to keep your excitement in check.

Traveling Picture Show

Quickly, I want to show my support for the Traveling Picture Show.

Simple concept: Take pictures of an action figure in everyday circumstances and share them. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean.

I might need to dig up an action figure and take part, I think I have a stubby little SWAT team type guy in my car somewhere.

Perplex City

Formerly known as Project Syzygy, the more recently dubbed Perplex City ARG is starting up soon.

What is an ARG you ask? Once wikipedia recovers from its power failure you can read all about it here.

Or just ask me about it. They’re tons of fun, trust me – and even better they’re free. Puzzles and thinking and plots… oh my! Gaming for the 21st century.

And Perplex City looks to be a major game with a major budget. The game runners (or PMs, for Puppet Masters, as we call them) are placing ads in major newspapers around the world to kick things off. Last week one was in USA Today, and tomorrow the New York Sun should be hit.

The plot will apparently revolve around “the cube” which the Perplex City Academy wants to recover. There’s even a possibility of a cash reward at the end of the game.

I haven’t managed to find a decent ARG to play since I Love Bees ended, so here’s hoping. If you’re interested in joining me on the journey, here’s a primer of what’s happened so far. Or of course I’d be willing to catch you up.

Oh and the main game site so far is www.PerplexCity.com. Click on the ‘Sente’ signature for our first video clue.

Stats

Roughly 25% of my Digital Libraries class (10 people or so) think that there is “too much computer stuff” in the class, according to the informal poll tonight. I’m honestly very curious as to what else they expected.

I’m also finally noticing just how large my classes are, particularly for grad level. Out of my eight classes since I arrived, just one has had less than 15 people. The largest was around 150. Average is probably closer to 35. It doesn’t bother me too much or I would have noticed before now. But in retrospect, aren’t grad classes generally supposed to be small?

Grandview Saloon

Grandview Saloon: Two thumbs up!

Mom and Dad came into town and we took the Duquesne incline up Mt. Washington. The restaurant is about as close to the top of the incline as you can get.

Unfortunately a youth hockey team took up the dining room with the best view, but it was still beautiful. And actually affordable to boot. Had a delicious burger and brownie type dessert thing.

Officially added to my ‘potential date destination’ list. And also the first addition.

I do wish the weather had cooperated to allow pictures of the skyline, but hey you can’t have everything.

Keepin the nose to the ‘ol grindstone

Just when I get comment spam licked (thanks to the neato ‘copy this code’ plugin), trackback spam starts up… 5 of them just today. And all from the same annoying site.

I’m not even sure how the spam is getting added, since it doesn’t specify a site that the trackback is coming from. Maybe I’ll remove the trackback php page entirely or something.

Back to the drawing board.

edit: I researched the problem briefly and it appears there are solutions. However, I’m too lazy to take the time to implement them, so I disabled trackback on all new posts. Then thanks to a handy dandy SQL query, I disabled it on the old ones. Yay for database class coming in handy!

Proof of existence

This morning there was a pile of new phone books by the mailboxes.

For the first time ever, I am listed. I feel so real!

There’s also someone else with my name in Pittsburgh, both first and last. It’s kind of freaky to think about.

Discovered via referrals…

I’m currently the #9 result on MSN when you search for the word ‘peanuts’. That puts me one ahead of even one version of the official Peanuts cartoon strip site (another version is of course #1).

Exactly how this has come about baffles me.

I also get an amazing amount of search hits for “Benny Hill Theme Song”. Posting this phrase again will undoubtedly lead to yet more hits from it, so if that applies to you then here’s my original post on the topic that you’re probably looking for.

Gmail going live redux

Gmail is definitely going live soon. I got an invitation today to an e-mail account I don’t use much anymore. It came directly from google, not another user. I signed up for this last April when Gmail debuted.

10 months, I’d forgotten I even asked to be notified.

I’d used up a few of my 50 invites, and Gmail was nice enough to refill me back up to 50. No excuse for not having an account anymore.