Supergrunch

Happy birthday, albeit a slightly belated sentiment.

Right, last night I played Photopia, which is really amazing and everyone should play it. The z-code file (for interpreters) is here.

Spirited Away wins overall I think. Howl's is best for animation, and Totoro for cuteness, but Spirited Away just has so much atmosphere combined with a good (though confusing) story. As for Ponyo, I watched it for the first time the other day (was going to see it when it was showing in Tokyo, but my friends didn't want to see it without subs), and found it a little disappointing if anything, although it was still a cute little story. Just not quite up to the usual Ghibli standard.

Yes, mostly. Zork is to modern text-based games what Mario Brothers is to Mario Galaxy.

Well it wasn't exactly delicious food, but last week in Alton Towers my friend bought a hot dog that came free with chips, threw the chips away because he didn't want them, then got attacked by a wasp and dropped the hot dog on the ground. And here it is: I cited the five second rule, but he wasn't having any of it.

People may or may not have heard of this, but there's a genre of games that get called "text-based," where there are no graphics, only on-screen descriptions, and you play by entering instructions into a command line which effectively parses a very pared down English. The genre has its origins in relatively simple cave crawling type games, such as the famous Zork series, but more recently an indie community has sprung up which has been stretching the genre far more, and some pretty interesting stuff has been made. If you're a total beginner, there's a nice guide here, which gives you the basics. Some games will play online in embedded flash software, but for the best experience (including easier saving and nice typography), download an offline interpreter like Gargoyle. Anyway, here are a few of my favourites, most of which are quite short and so good for beginners: 9:05: Quite a good one to start off with. The game starts with you having overslept, and you have to work out what to do from there. Online link. Download link (you might have to scroll down to find the right game). Suveh Nux: You play a magician's apprentice trapped in a room and have to work out a linguistic magic system to escape. Just amazing. Maybe a little easy, but such a clever idea. Online link. Download link. Violet: You play a grad student trying to finish his thesis, with the interpreter being your girlfriend. Quite amusing, if a little cheesy, and some nice puzzles. Online link. Download link. Galatea: The entire game is a conversation with a living statue. A nice open-ended exercise in NPC interaction. Online link. Download link. Shade: You're in your apartment the night before a festival. Creepy, fun, and quite clever. Online link. Download link. Spider and Web: A longer game, that's more typical of traditional text-based games, but with a clever twist. Fun, although quite hard and I've yet to finish it. Download link. Lost Pig: A bit of a parody of cave crawling games, where you play an orc looking for a pig. Pretty amusing, and you get a great sense of the main character. Online link. Download link. That'll probably do for now. Let me know what you think!

Odwin, you can add me if you both love me sufficiently and are cunning enough to work out which friend request is mine.

"Not on" is a dialectal expression meaning "unacceptable" in British English. At least, I think that's the source of your confusion. As for the actual topic... it looked a little strange among the other NE threads. I've never actually seen anyone grind anyone in real life, but unsurprisingly I can't imagine I'd be best pleased if my girlfriend did so...

The only reason people are designed to make copies of themselves is because if we didn't, then we wouldn't actually be around.

I'm Supergrunch, and I disagree with bullet points. My biggests interests are in sciencey things, especially linguistics, although I'm partial to anything that can be analysed in some way or other. My interest in video games has declined somewhat as I've got older, but I still like playing the celebrated ones, and anything that's quirky or original (I quite like the indie scene, including text-based stuff/interactive fiction/whatever you call it). I prefer A Link to the Past to Ocarina of Time. Films can be awesome, especially when they're Fargo. Recently I've become very into food and eating. I'm 21, and hope to continue studying linguistics for the time being.

I win at early excuse-making.

Oh, I thought it as a week today for some reason. Either way, too many grandparenty things this weekend and too many New Yorky things the other, sadly...

Yay, I remember that sig! You've been one of those omnipresent people since I first joined in early CE days. Hope you've had fun, and may post-admin life be just as good.

I get this in my toes all the time. Really annoying, but then again the pain also vanishes as quickly as it appears. More like the birth of Kagutsuchi.

No, you polish after dusting.

I think we need an "OdWIN" image for moments like this.

Still a linguistics student. But soon to be a postgraduate one!

But you're not supposed to use polish. I'm pretty sure those things partially work by statically attracting the dust, and anything with water in will completely stop that effect.

I thought it was quite funny, although a bit too cheesy.

What the hell guys, clearly you dust with a duster: Or even:

Alrighty, all finished now.

Had a 3 day conference on diachronic syntax this week - fun times, but very tired now. Yuko?

No, like a smallish vibrator without the whole trying to be a penis thing.

I don't see how anyone can really assess this choice from a moral standpoint, as one of the outcomes is effectively meaningless (to us, anyway), as it's a lack of everything. How can this possibility be anything other than moot? As for the actual choice, I'd imagine many people, myself included, would choose to keep the world just because they want to carry on existing.