Sunday, August 16, 2009

Kingdom of Loathing: I continue to play and enjoy this game.

I continue to play the free browser-based Kingdom of Loathing game, and I think if you click on this screenshot to see the full image, you'll see why:

Beyond the humor, there is a depth of gameplay and wealth of options that make it an engaging and enjoyable experience that has kept me amused for almost 3 years now.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Test post:: Is this viewable on Facebook?

Also are my ex-coworkers' cousins' friends' dogs' virtual Mafia okay? Facebook wants me to know and care about them.

Facebook is, as a webpage, the Opposite Of Google. It's soothing to look at Google's homepage, which is like a pebble that's a perfect sphere, shaped by a million years in a rock tumbler perfected by a hive mind of computer geniuses that only work on beautiful and useful . Seeing Facebook for the first time is like having a thousand ducks peck you to death and then killer bees come along and sting your corpse in and around the buttock region.

Facebook also reminds me of what some guy on the internet (okay, it was Giles Bowkett) once wrote about "the Cory Doctorow problem." See, Cory Doctorow's a brilliant guy who also has a Giant Nostalgic Boner For The Entire Disneyland Experience, so much so that he wrote a book about it, also another book I really didn't like (Little Brother) that almost won a Hugo this year. Bowkett wants Doctorow's brilliance but not the GNBftEDE. [I also think that Zoe's Tale, another nominee, will have a lot more significance in ten years than Little Brother, but that's beside the point.] I want the Facebook connections, yet I want the entire thing to be reskinned and remixed to not be garish, disjointed, and needy.

In short, I want to not feel about Facebook like the guys in Penny Arcade feel about the Microsoft Store.

PS Firefox crashed 8 times during the creation of this post.