Windosill

Last night, I played one of the best games I've played in several years. No, not the new Ghostbusters, although that does look awesome. The game I played was the product of indie Flash developer Vectorpark, who first piqued my interest with their release of Feed The Head. Go ahead, play it. It's one of the most surreal uses for the Flash engine I've ever seen. Besides, it's got barrel-of-monkeys levels of fun. But when I heard that Vectorpark was demanding MONEY for their new game Windosill, I was adamantly opposed. They were, however, allowing the first half of the game to be played for free. Thinking nothing of it, I decided to play the five free levels and leave it at that. About half an hour later, I was eagerly shelling out the three dollars necessary for the remainder of the game (yeah, I'm a cheapskate). It's that good.

Windosill is a masterpiece of design. The cool blues and whites that define the first levels are a common theme through the entirety of the game, and the seamless animations serve to keep the player engaged right up until the end (breathtaking). You know I don't advocate the purchase of anything, so when I say that this game is worth far more than the three bucks it costs, trust me. In the unlikely case that you don't, just try out the free levels here.

P.S.: The first few levels are pretty easy, but that doesn't mean you should just run through them. Take the time to play around with everything you can see. (For instance, try knocking over some of those letters in level two. If nothing seems immediately awesome, wait around.)

I Wanna Be The Guy

In the style of those 8-bit beauties you were perpetually unable to beat, an independent developer brings you "I Wanna Be The Guy", a somewhat sarcastic take on the video games of yesteryear. Implementing recycled sprites, obvious palette-change characters, and a gratuitous amount of spikes, the game reminds you of everything you loved/hated about those old NES classics. What is so noteworthy about this game, however, is not its old-school appeal. No, what truly stands out about this game is how incredibly hard it is. Not only are there the gratuitous amounts of spikes mentioned above, The Kid (your player-character) explodes into red gibs at the first brush with any arbitrary enemy. Some of the nerdier among you may have seen this video floating about in the depths of the interwebs (Warning: Totally NSFW; language), depicting an impossible Mario level and one gamer's beleaguered attempts to complete it. Well, "I Wanna Be The Guy" (IWBTG) is at least that complex and a good deal more well-made. You can read more about its history here at its homepage, as well as a download link if you're insane enough to think you can get past the first screen (It's hella hard, and I don't use the term "hella" unless I mean it). Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows machines, so Mac users have to either wait for an unlikely port or find an unused Windows box sitting around. And for those of you who are either unwilling or unable to play the game, I found a helpful YouTube vid detailing how to get past the first few dozen screens (Here there be spoilers).

Mirror Blocks

I'm a big fan of nostalgia, which is why every couple weeks I tend to remember something I haven't even heard about in years, wonder if it was as good as I remember it being, find it, reminisce for a bit, blog about it and put it away to remember again in five years. Because of this, I burn through the better pieces of my childhood faster than I can create new ones. By the time I hit fifty, I'll just be reflecting on the good old days non-stop, with no chance for social interaction or food. I plan to die watching The Last Crusade on repeat. Anyway, one thing I really miss? Toys. You hit a certain age and all of a sudden you just can't justify spending ten dollars on a piece of plastic anymore. You start buying stuff like music and movies, or, God forbid, you start saving money for your toyless future and before you know it, you've left all your Transformers behind to get all dusty and whatnot. But all that changed when I saw Rubik's new puzzle.

It makes me want to go spend some money on a piece of plastic that I'll get frustrated with in twenty minutes and end up giving away as a birthday present. Unfortunately, it's currently only available in Japan (of course), so you'll have to buy it from here unless you want to wait until it ships internationally, causing US minds to implode.

Deep-Dish Scavenger Hunt

Hey, guess what I just watched. That's right (or wrong), The Incredibles. That's a pretty good film, and I just realized why. Brad Bird, the writer and director of the film, was the mastermind behind The Iron Giant. That was awesome when I first saw it.

"Goddamn, I'm evil."

In addition, I was fooling around with the concept of an enormous scavenger hunt that would take years to finish and require massive amounts of participants that could group up into teams, when I found out that it's already on. OMG YOU GUYS! The University of Chicago has been doing exactly this since 1987 (That's why I called it deep-dish. 'Cuz it's from Chicago. Delicious deep-dish). Every year, a list of items is compiled; items that boggle the average mind. Number 17 on the list is

Have a beer with:

1. A former candidate for civic office
2. A current candidate for city-wide office
3. A current candidate for state-wide office
4. A current candidate for national office
5. A current candidate for POTUS

In case you're wondering, a beer with Obama or McCain will net you 100 points. Other, slightly more mundane items include a zeusaphone (300 points), a prehensile tail on one team member by the end of the competition (17 points), being able to perform one of the following spells at the judging: Wingardium Leviosa, Relashio, Engorgio, and a corporeal Patronus (five points per spell). Then again you'll get a random item every once in a while, like "A slinky that slinks upstairs. And if you play a video of a slinky going downstairs backwards, I will pee on you." That gets you 25 big ones. Or maybe "Have a Nobel Prize winner or “Weird Al” Yankovic witness your organ donor registration." That's fifteen points (sixteen for Weird Al). Check out the full 2008 list here (PDF). Also, number four on the list.

Cryptic Crosswords

A while back, a friend introduced me to Harper's magazine, a wholly average monthly digest in every respect, with the exception of the very last page, where you would find the jumbles and word-searches in a normal magazine. In this particular publication, however, a new kind of puzzle was to be found, and it ABSOLUTELY BLEW MY MIND. It was a crossword puzzle, but the clues didn't make any sense. I mean, look at this: "Pe(9)rish ground; a wild type of music"? How did that yield "dixieland"? Even after knowing the answer, it took me almost two hours to find the reasoning behind it. The puzzles were called "cryptic crosswords," and having a good vocabulary wasn't near enough to finish one. Every clue in the larger puzzle hides another, tinier puzzle.

For example, "Returned beer fit for a king (5)". Anyone? No? The answer is "Regal". The answer to the puzzle is right there at the end, "fit for a king". But how to know what word it is? There are a couple of five-letter words for that; royal, noble, grand; just off the top of my head. The trick is, the word "Returned" in this context means that the word is spelled backwards (also used are the words "backwards", "reversed", and once I caught "mirrored"). So the final piece of the puzzle is "beer". Another word for the word "beer" is "lager", which, when reversed, gives us "regal". Of course, just when you get the hang of it, I regret to inform you that that is far from the extent of the confusion. In addition to reversed words, there are anagrams, word searching, and a whole mess of other stuff.

For another example, try "Chaperone shredded corset (6)". The trick to this one is to know that "shredded" indicates that one of the words is an anagram. Which one? "Corset" (You can tell because the answer is only six letters). So what's a six-letter word for "chaperone" using the letters C, E, O, R, S and T? It's "escort". Case closed.

Another good one to look out for is anything involving initials. Often times, you'll see the words "Initially", "For starters" and "At first". These are all indicators. Try "Initially amiable person eats monkey (3)". The clue for this one is the word "monkey". The first letters of the remaining words "Amiable Person Eats" are A, P and E, for the answer "ape".

The fourth most commonly used technique is hiding words inside other words, a clue often called a container. "Make a change and put me in last (5)". The clue is probably "make a change", so when the clue states "put 'me' in 'last'", it means to place the word "me" somewhere into the word "last". As far as I can tell, there is no word spelled like that, so find a synonym for "last" and try to work it that way. The word "end" as a replacement for "last" yields the answer "emend". Every single clue is at least that tricky.

So I guess that's it. there are some other tricky clue types, but you can read about them here. You should be able to solve some of the easier ones simply with the four techniques above. If you want to try some of your own, pick up a copy of Harper's (tell 'em I sent you) or you can just go here. They're pretty tough, so you can also try the so-called beginner's puzzle here.

P.S.: If you can figure out the reasoning behind "Pe(9)rish ground; a wild type of music", post it in the comments.

EDIT: I just found this site, where it explains how to solve a cryptic clue. It also offer dozens of examples for practice, giving you two hints before telling you the answer. A+, good sir.

Magic Pen

Remember this? Well, someone went and decided to make it a reality. I can't get past level four, but then again, I have a horrible attention span. Also, check out the new Digg system. If you dig it; Digg it.

EDIT: Screw Digg! Keeps messin' up my formatting, dammit!

NetHack

Back in 1980, when all anyone could get computer-wise was a little system called Unix, computer games still played a fairly prominent role (Factoid: Unix, arguably the first OS, was originally developed for the sole purpose of playing a video game. Suck on that, Jack Thompson. Tastes like... history). They were understandably simple of course, often being simply text adventures. ASCII characters were not, however, only used for writing text. The greatest example of this was probably Rogue, an adventure game where you were a little "@" symbol running around, killing "Z" zombies and other baddies (one of my favorites is the "grid bug", represented by an "x" and notable for being killable in about one hit. To be killed by a grid bug is the lowest disgrace imaginable. I have been killed by grid bugs numerous times). So to answer your question, yes. Yes you can totally still play Rogue today, but why would you want to? There's an entire genre of games called rogue-likes, and the fan base they have developed is nothing short of astounding (the über-popular Diablo series are all rogue-likes). While Rogue was a somewhat boring and simple adventure game, one of its descendants, NetHack, is almost universally recognized as one of the greatest games ever made. Really. No sound, no cutscenes, you don't even need a color screen, but it's still that good.

NetHack was first created in 1987 and while it was a spin-off of Rogue at first, it quickly took the gaming world by storm and became a revolution all its own. First off, there are the numerous versions of the game to be had. You can get it with graphics that make a game look like some cheap Zelda knock-off, while purists will insist upon playing it in Terminal with the original ASCII characters and admittedly horrible controls (Left=H; Right=L; Up=K; Down=J. Yeah, go ahead and look at your keyboard. You get used to it, but just barely). The other drawing point is the gameplay. Game designers wish they had this much content in a game. Among the more interesting things of note, there are gods to be prayed to (and to be angered. They can mess your world up but good), curses, magic, djinn (genies who allow you to essentially commit genocide and choose one species to kill in its entirety), shopkeepers you can buy or steal from (don't bother, most are wicked accurate with a wand of lightning), and an animal sidekick to follow you around. I like the kitten even though it's freaking worthless.

You can find the homepage here, and I would totally advise putting in the effort to install the original ASCII version. Everything pertinent to the game (full item lists you'll need in the unlikely event that you ever make it off the first level, whether or not you can cook and eat the corpse of a goblin king [you can't]) can be found on its unofficial wiki, WikiHack.

P.S.: The game has been ported to some unassuming devices, including the Nintendo DS, the iPhone and numerous cell-phones. If I had that, I would totally use my phone for more than keeping technophobic ghosts at bay (It's getting to be kind of a problem).

It Is Pitch Dark

I swear to you all, if I had known of a music video that brough together Interactive Fiction and Nerdcore rap, I'd have mentioned it earlier. You have my word on that.

That was MC Frontalot with "It Is Pitch Dark". Look out for his next few hits "You Are In A Maze Of Twisty Passages, All Alike" and the minimalist "Xyzzy".

Googlewhack

I first heard of this little trend on some news show. It must have been a slow day, because they had a man in the studio who claimed to have invented a grand new pastime; that of the Googlewhack. Quite simply, it's a game where you type two words into the Google search bar with the hope of getting only one result. As surprisingly hard as that might sound at first, it gets a good deal worse. The rules stipulate that a) the words must both be actual words as defined by Google's dictionary, and b) it CANNOT BE A WORDLIST. This rule is shockingly hard to accommodate. You'll think "Yes! Finally! After hours and hours I got one!" only to see that the page is just an alphabetical listing of words. Who does that? Why would you ever just list hundreds upon hundreds of words? Anyway, In the hours and hours I put into this project, I only managed to get one. It's slightly slack because Google recognizes "pan-dimensional" but not "pandimensional". I ask you, is it so hard to just be happy for me, Google? Can you make an effort? Anyway, the beauty of me putting it up here ("Pyroclastic Pandimensional") is that it now has two hits on Google, rendering it unusable for anyone but me. Ha.

Anyway, should you happen to find one, you can submit it here. That list is effectively a graveyard for these little Internet wonders; for in a twist of Hemingwayesque tragedy, their discovery is their death.

Games Of Philosophy

I like to think that philosophy is best described as "the study of everything else." You can learn biology or physics; or go to med school and "make a difference," but in what other field can you just sit around thinking all day? That's my dream job (that or MythBusters). After trolling some pretty dry philosophy sites to gain some perspective, I stumbled upon Philosopher's Net, the blog of The Philosopher's Magazine. Even more interesting, they have a section for interactive quizzes and the like. Be warned, however, this stuff is pretty heavy. A good place to start is the "So You Think You're Logical?" quiz, which measures your ability to pick out logical fallacies. For the more advanced player, I'd recommend the "Taboo" quiz, which begins to delve into the heart of the matter: morality. It asks you to render moral decisions on certain scenarios, and you'd be surprised at the amount of thought you put into the questions. Among the other tests you'll find are the "Battleground God" and the "Do-It-Yourself Deity", the the first of which attempts to poke holes in as many belief systems as possible while the second tries to empirically disprove the idea of a Judeo-Christian God. Yikes. Rounding out the links is "Shakespeare vs. Britney Spears", an analysis of what defines art; "Morality Play", which is the most in-depth quiz of them all (culminating in an essay comparing you to other philosophers, complete with graphs and percentages); and "Staying Alive", a deeply intriguing study on personal identity (are you your body, brain, or something else altogether?). The rest are okay I guess, except for Strange New World. I didn't get to do that one, because I'm at work and it has sounds or something. Apparently it has something to do with The Matrix, so I'd check it out. Have fun!

P.S.: Apparently, I'm cold and amoral. I've always considered myself Nietzschean, so that fits. It just doesn't help when I find out that I'd be no more inclined to save a human being's life than a puppy's.

Chess

Yeah, you though I was joking yesterday, didn't you? Yeah you did.

After looking up the ridiculously fake-sounding names for opening chess moves, I delved a little further and started reading about the history of chess. Fascinating stuff. Were you aware that players new to the games of chess were called "rookies"? Yeah, because the rook is traditionally the last piece to be moved into play, just like the newest player. Eventually, the phrase migrated into other sports and games. Also, did you know that after the first move, there are 400 piece-position possibilities, but after the second, there are over 72 thousand? The math on that doesn't seem right, but it is. After three moves, there are over 9 million possibilities, and after four there are 288 billion. The number of electrons in the universe is theorized to be about 10^79, while the number of possible games on a chessboard is about 10^120, or in layman's terms, a whole lot.

Okay, these are pretty cool. Everybody knows about the six standard pieces, but there are in fact a good number of "fairy pieces" that didn't make it into the final cut. As gay as they sound, there are some pretty kick-ass moves you didn't even know existed. For instance, the zebra is a [3,2] jumper. That means it works like a knight (a [2,1] jumper) who can move two spaces then one space perpendicular. Except it can move three spaces, then two. Awesome. Equally excellent is the concept of knighted pieces, standard pieces with the additional power to move like a knight. A knighted queen can essentially win the game single-handedly (a knighted queen is also called a superqueen or an Amazon). Also wicked cool is the Grasshopper, a piece that can move like a queen but jumps over its victims to capture, à la checkers.

Chess variants are games played with standard pieces but different rules or board setups. A perennial favorite is Transcendental Chess, where the first rank of each player is randomized to ensure something-or-other. Also, Pawn's Game, where Black has standard setup, White has no queen, but eight extra pawns. Ummm, let's see... Lord Loss Chess, where there are five boards and a player can choose to remain on one board or move to another (You can probably attack from across boards, which would be awesome), Andernach Chess, where a capture results in a color change rather than a death (presumably a player could have two queens, four knights and four bishops while the other side has all the pawns), and Progressive Chess, where White makes one move, Black makes two, White makes three and so on. Another good one is Upside-Down Chess, where you're playing the other side of the board. As such, the pawns only have one space to move to, but once they do, you can promote them to queens. You'd have nine queens, if I understand the rules correctly. It would be a massacre of epic proportions. But it would be nothing compared to Kung-Fu Chess. This is a variant in which there are no turns; players can move their pieces whenever they want. Games must be over in mere minutes (as opposed to the longest game ever played, a whopping 269-move monster played in 1989. It lasted for 20 hours. For comparison, a fifty-move rule has been in effect for most major tournaments since the early Nineties and most games don't even get that far). To combine fairy pieces with one of these variants would probably mean the end of time and space as we know it; and besides, require the fortitude of a demigod.

To end with, I'll tell you of a sport my high-school art teacher first brought to my attention; a little sport called chess boxing. The game begins with a four-minute round of speed chess (the one with the timers) followed by two minutes of boxing. There are eleven rounds total and games can be won by checkmate or knockout. I get exhausted just thinking about it.

Nomic

I first heard of this game in Douglas Hofstadter's previously mentioned masterpiece Metamagical Themas (some people are all like, "Eternal Golden Braid is better," but I'm all like "As if"). Designed in the early 80s by Peter Suber, Nomic is a game in which "changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed." Yes, you can find that on Wikipedia, but I did do some more research; and besides, it's a very fitting description.

Because of this extremely interesting dynamic between rules and choice in game theory, games often take on the properties of the players involved. From attempting to forget everything you know about the rules to eventually getting into the fun of intentionally writing loopholes to exploit later, Nomic often blurs the already shakily defined line between game and simulation. While games can be played with pencil and paper with some friends, the most common medium the game takes on is that of the mailing list, with dozens of games and players submitting rules for voting simultaneously.

My first foray into online play ended in bitter tears, as I attempted to join AgoraNomic, the world's longest running Nomic (Est. 1993). The only reason it has been able to survive so long online is that many players are lawyers or some kind of savant maybe. They take the game very seriously, seeing it more as an exercise in philosophy and law than a game. Needless to say, I was too intimidated to even start. It would be hard anyway, as the game has inflated from the original 29 rules to the current ruleset of over two thousand, pertaining to everything from direction of play to special titles and awards for the players. Agora has seen a fair bit of history and is unlikely to shut down anytime soon. For example, it has survived multiple scams, loopholes, even a couple of wars. That's right. As the model for a successful Nomic is similar to a well-run, impossibly democratic country, many parallels, including conflict, begin to surface.

Perhaps the best example was the great Risho-Agoran war of '97. Rishonomic (since defunct) passed a rule stating its superiority over all other Nomics, additionally declaring AgoraNomic "generally boring". Militias quickly began to form on both sides, and the Agoran Commander-in-Chief hatched a plan that involved slowly introducing Agoran spies into Rishonomic under false identities. Once they had a majority, they could vote Rishonomic into an Agoran colony (via the "Overlord Rule" as it came to be known), with all Rishon votes going through an Agoran veto system. Unfortunately, there was dissent in the ranks, and a double agent of some kind ratted them out. The plan went through anyway and Rishonomic was completely under Agoran control. The plan fizzled out when Rishonomic passed a rule to redefine a word in the English language. Specifically, they passed a rule stating

"Repealed" means "painted white". "Aced" means "deleted from the ruleset". The Overlord Rule is hereby aced. This rule is hereby aced.

Soon afterward, Rishonomic crumbled when a rule was passed that replaced all numbers in the ruleset with the phrase "A Suffusion Of Yellow" (Heh. Douglas Adams). Since numbers are used to determine the priority and order in which rules were enforced, the entire game fell apart, handing victory to the Agorans.

This is the reason I love this game.

Audio Atrocities

Hot off the presses, a website about terrible video games! Again! With dozens of those lying around, you need a hook to distinguish yourself from the crowd. How about a site dedicated entirely to terrible voice acting in video games? Jackpot.

Now, I'll be the first person to admit that perhaps my acting abilities are somewhat less than I profess them to be, as are my abilities to criticize actors. However, I can say without fear of overstepping myself that I, or indeed almost anyone, could do better jobs than these people.

As a public service, I'll scan the top five worst games and pick out the cream of the crap. In fifth place, we see the game Megaman 8 for the Playstation. Perhaps a good place to start would be this clip, where we can hear an actor stumble not once, but twice while reading his lines. A lesser producer would insist he do it again, but I suppose if you hire a voice actor that bad in the first place, you're not exactly going for the gold.

In fourth place, a crazy little game called Tenchu, also for the Playstation. One clip will not suffice in this case, so try on both of these for size. I suppose this is a step up from Megaman because it has both terrible acting and terrible writing.

In third, and proving that the Playstation was the hands-down champion of poorly thought out games, is Resident Evil. I know, it was a great game when you were ten, but listen to it now. While you can blame the first clip on poor acting, the second seems almost intentionally funny. It's not so much the "crow," it's the "or something."

At number two, Sega takes the torch from the Playstation to bring you Deep Fear. Quite frankly, I think that none of the lines were especially good. The only chuckle-worthy moments are the clips with DuBois, a (supposedly German) gay naval engineer. The obviously Australian (or New Zealish* or something) actor hams it up to the max, giving his character a high-pitched la-di-da voice that borders on offensive if it wasn't so damn funny.

And the coveted first place goes to Turbografx-CD's Last Alert. And it deserves it. I can't tell if the voice actor here is actually Japanese, or just a racist; I can't tell if this was supposed to be funny; I can't tell if they even bothered with a second take on this one; and I can't tell what the hell is going on here at all. "HEY GUY!" Oh yeah.

Oh, and I totally saw the new Indiana Jones flick. Movie-wise, it was all right. Indiana-wise, I think they would have been smarter to leave well enough alone.

*I looked this up. The adjective pertaining to a New Zealander is "New Zealand." That's right. If you're from New Zealand, you are New Zealand.

Powder v4.0

I come bearing news of a grand new concept, that of the webtoy. It's not quite a game, it's not quite anything else, really, it's just a toy. A perfect example would be that of the now famous webtoy Line Rider. You goof around with it for a while until something better springs into your mind. I introduce Powder, a particle physics exploration game. As dull as that initially appears, it draws you in rather quickly. Starting with a blank canvas, the GUI gives you a choice of over twenty various elements for creating your world. The fun lies in figuring out what elements interact with the others. For example, the Magma element acts exactly like you'd expect it to. If Water is added to it, it turns to Stone. If Stone is added to it, it turns into more Magma. If Nitro, C-4, Gas or Gunpowder is added to it, it explodes in various degrees of violence. The trick also lies in discovering new elements not in the initial set. Mix Powder and Seed in just the right way, a tree will grow. Add Ants to the tree and watch it be torn down to make bizarre anthills. Burn down those anthills with Fire. Freeze Water with Ice, then drag the frozen Water around to make Snow. It's incredibly well-implemented for a Javascript window. Probably the most amazing (and annoying) aspect of this program is the wind factor. Every burst of wind or explosion (and there are plenty to be had) will result in a frenzied activity in which every light element will be buffeted about the room for an inexplicably long time. Even when the wind calms down, you still have random little particles drifting around. The neat thing is, there are multiple ways to view the wind itself. In its standard view, you will see two colors, green and blue, shifting about each other in lava lamp-style variations. These colors represent high and low pressures. It's remarkably realistic, but there are times when you wish you could turn it off altogether. Of course, you could just spend your time, blowing things up, then restarting, in which case you wouldn't need to worry about wind.

Here we see a chunk of Ice, filled with Gunpowder. Above it, you may notice some Magma dropping rapidly down.

And here we see the same scenario, mere seconds later. All that blue color you see is Water, as Ice tends to melt after being blown up.

It's a wonderful thingy.

P.S.: If you have a question about a particular button, just ask me in the comments. I've figured all this stuff out.

Crayon Physics

This was apparently shown at some game conference and is now one of the worst kept secrets of the video game industry. Enjoy.

Grow Cube

I normally won't link to Flash games, but this one really caught my eye. It's pretty self-explanatory, and will keep you hooked for a good hour or two. Check it out here.

P.S.: The first two are: Man, Water. Have fun.

Zombie Simulation

Do you like zombies? I sure do. I love them in their symbolism, but I mostly love them because they're dead, but they're still walkin' around. I stumbled upon this little gem a few months back and was lucky enough to find it again. Good for me! It's a zombie sim. Basically, the little gray dots are zombies and the little pink dots are humans. You get to watch as the humans panic and run around screaming as the the zombies (five times slower) gang up and devour them (for lack of a less gruesome phrase). Of course, the programming is pretty minimal, the humans have no choice but to become zombies, and they'll just run straight into a zombie if its random number generator tells it to. Like any good internet fad, it has inspired numerous spinoffs. Here's one that adds the element of military officers (they're the guys in blue), who can kill zombies (they're the living dead in green). Here's one that's really more like a game than a simulation: Players click on areas to kill everything nearby, zombies and civilians. If you can kill all the zombies, a winner is YOU! Also, apparently zombies can eat through the walls. Wacky. Here, however, is my favorite, a straight up simulation with tons of extras. You can read all the details through the link, but basically the humans (once bitten) have a 50-50 chance of either becoming a zombie or just dying. Also, when confronted with a zombie, they have a 50-50 shot of either killing the zombie or running away panicked. When the human numbers dwindle, the odds of them killing a zombie increase (up to 90%). In addition, humans are smarter, and will rarely run into zombies on purpose now. Click the links, sit back, and enjoy the sight of green pixels eating pink pixels.

Albums That Don't Exist

Whoohoo! That was fun! I just made six album covers. Well, let's say five, that first one sucked big time. Here's the site for reference, but you don't need to go there, I'm about to explain how it works (Actually you could go there, he has dozens of covers, and they're all better than mine).

OK, so first, you go to a random Wikipedia page. You could follow the link or just click "Random Article" in the Wikipedia sidebar. That's your band or artist. Next, you go to the quotationspage.com random quote generator. Go to the last quote on the page. The last four words of that bottom quote is the name of your album. Finally, go to FlickrStorm. FlickrStorm is great because it allows you to specify "non-commercial photos" under advanced setting. No copyright infringement! Yay! The third photo on the page is the album art (refresh the page to get random keywords). It's that simple. Observe:

I think my favorite is the Wallago Attu album. Also, wanna hear something weird? Both Taha and Billy Fraser are football players. I mean soccer.

EDIT:

Encyclopedia Obscura

Who wants some obscure Japanese documentaries? How about some obscure Mr. T merchandise that defies all logic? Or an obscure Star Wars holiday special, or the world's gayest game (I don't mean it's stupid, it really is homosexual)?

It really is a shame that he stopped posting in 2003, because the man had a real knack for digging up the obscure. That doesn't mean that there isn't a veritable treasure trove on his site.

There's not a whole lot more to say about the site, so on to the articles: First up we have Stupid Toy Tie-Ins, where he finds the most bizarre things to make a toy out of, then talks about how stupid it is. Don't miss out on the Boba Fett cake pan. What was Lucas thinking? Next up we have Robo Vampire: The Movie. If you're only going to follow one link today, make it this one. It's better than the Something Awful movie reviews (I'll cover those some other time). And now we have Einstein's Brain, a movie about a Japanese professor looking for Einstein's brain. It's a DOCUMENTARY. Looks absolutely (unintentionally) hysterical. I'm looking for a copy online.

OK, this next one needs some setup. It has become a part of the internet's subconscious. The page I'm about to link to is the number three Google match when you search for Cho Aniki (it used to be number one). You may have seen this gif before, and all I can say is "wow" (I can't make the gif move for some reason, so go to the site). I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said about this game.

Moving right along, we find Translators Say The Darnest Things, an exploration of the beauty of movie and television subtitling.

It's a great site. Did you know that the word "Ninja" is illegal if used in advertising in the Netherlands? That it is.

The Oracle of Bacon

As delicious as that may sound, the Oracle of Bacon is a computer program designed by some dude (I suspect) at the University of Virgina's Computer Science Department. No doubt you're familiar with the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Gameplay example: I name an actor and you try to find a movie with him in it. The catch is, the movie also has to have another actor who either acted in a movie with Kevin Bacon, or acted in a movie with someone who acted with Kevin Bacon in a third movie. OK, so Arnold Schwarzenegger was in "Twins" with Maury Chaykin, who was in "Where the Truth Lies" with Kevin Bacon. So, Arnie has a "Bacon Number" of 2. Obviously, you have to have extensive movie knowledge or just be some kind of genius to play the game well. Not Anymore! The Oracle of Bacon uses IMDb data to match any actor to Kevin Bacon in as few movies as possible. Elvis Presley? Bacon Number of 2.

Elvis Presley was in Harum Scarum (1965) with Suzanne Covington who was in Beauty Shop (2005) with Kevin Bacon

Charlie Chaplin? Bacon Number of 3.

Charlie Chaplin was in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Sophia Loren who was in Between Strangers (2002) with Kathryn Winslow who was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon

Chuck Norris? Bacon Number of 2.

Chuck Norris was in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) with Cayden Boyd who was in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon

Wicked cool. But the fun doesn't end there. You can find the degrees of separation for any actor from any other actor you want (under Advanced Search). Bruce Lee has an Elvis Presley Number of 2, by the way.

Bruce Lee (I) was in Marlowe (1969) with Nicole Jaffe who was in The Trouble with Girls (1969) with Elvis Presley

Ooh. Check it out here.