Journal entries in 'Random Crap I Found On The Internet' for March, 2005

This is not really what I'd expect to find at a linguistics-oriented blog, but Language Log has an interesting series of posts analyzing the term 'tighty-whiteys', discussing first the phonology and then the semantics of the term, before moving on to consider the sociology behind the relative perceptions of boxers vs. briefs, first considering everyday society and eventually proceeding into gay porn. Mmm, edifying.

Oh, Zelda Classic, you will consume what little free time I had left. It started off as a simple PC clone of the original Legend Of Zelda NES game, but over time grew into way more. They made it possible to develop new quests, graphics, and sounds for the game, and there are now tons of cool levels available, developed by users. It's a good thing this doesn't run on Linux, or my worktime productivity would be in danger.

EDIT: As long as we're talking about The Legend Of Zelda, here's an amusing description of the items to be found throughout the game.

What is a namber? A namber is a word that acts as a mnemonic for a number. For example, 65 is drum, and 181 is push.

A namber address uses an arbitrarily-chosen list of nambers to represent each of the numbers from 0 to 255 in order to assemble four words to represent any IP address. BinRock.net's namber is ear.north.fork.stick, and mysteryrobot.com conveniently provides translation and forwarding to the real IP address.

It's not as if we don't have an existing system in place to translate easy-to-remember strings into IP addresses, but I suppose the point is that if this list of nambers were accepted as standard, the translation could be done locally without needing to query a remote DNS server. Still, pretty useless as a whole :)

Another cool example of the sheer genius concentrated at Google. Google Sets accepts a list of terms, and attempts to predict other items that fit in the same "category". It's eerily clever. Some examples I tried: supra/camry, images and words/awake. Did you forget the noble gases? Enter helium/argon/neon and you get the rest of the list (with some other non-noble elements at the end, though). What movies has Angelina Jolie been in? I know she was in Hackers and Tomb Raider... Awesome.

Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims, is working on an incredible new game that I'm really excited about. The concept is called Spore, and essentially, gameplay proceeds in stages, getting more and more complex. As your character evolves, the scale changes, much like the film, Powers Of 10. You start as a single-celled lifeform trying to avoid being eaten by other single-celled organisms (think Pac-Man), and over time the game progresses all the way to controlling an interplanetary culture that interacts with other races (created by other players elsewhere on the internet). GameSpy published a detailed review of the game that explains the concept much better than I can, and GamingSteve has some screenshots grabbed from the introduction Wright gave at Game Developer's Conference last week. It's encouraging how complete and polished the demo appears to be — otherwise I'd worry that the game was too ambitious to be practical. However, it seems like it's actually happening, so now all that's left to do is to wait eagerly for its release.

Illustrated Notes from Computer Science: Tom Murphy VII makes wonderful things when bored in class.

I think I need this, although it sort of scares me. The guys at MIT came up with Clocky, which is a little clock for people who have trouble waking up. When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, clocky will roll off the bedside table, run away, and hide. Minutes later when the alarm goes off again, the sleeper must get up and look for Clocky. Clocky is kind of like a troublesome pet that you love anyway. Everyday he finds a new hiding spot.

Yes, ingenious, but I don't think I could sleep comfortably with that creepy, furry creature lying in wait next to me, ready to scurry off into a dark corner. It would certainly help to break up the morning routine though.

It seems that Brian "Head" Welch, former guitarist for KoRn, has found Christ, quit the band, and is now proselytizing quite fervently. He's got a new website, Head To Christ, and is planning on recording a new solo record and selling it directly from his website, then "[giving the money] back to my people by building something positive, like a skatepark or something." This seems to be big news because everyone finds the transformation so unexpected, but I really don't find it very shocking. I'm not really familiar with any of their newer stuff, but KoRn's older songs were not particularly outspoken against religion. The most common subject matter was pain and unhappiness. If anything, people going through what KoRn's songs describe are prime candidates for discovering religion and the relief and hope that it can provide. Of course, Jonathan Davis is the one that wrote most of their lyrics, so in fact KoRn's music doesn't even provide us that little insight into Brian's life, but the fact remains that KoRn doesn't seem like a particularly un-christian band. Now, if Kerry King of Slayer were to suddenly convert...

I stumbled across such a great story today. Apparently about a year ago, some kids who take MMORPGs way too seriously started up a Storm Trooper guild in the Star Wars Galaxies online role-playing game. Just like my old roommate Bobby in Tribes, they'd meet for drills and patrols. Finally, the game developers noticed this little bubble of dedicated players and arranged for Darth Vader to take some time out of his busy day and stop by to inspect the troops and give a speech. Since I'm sure the screenshots on the linked thread will go down soon, here's my two favorites. Imagine the titillation those players felt when their year of hard work finally paid off. It's times like this that make it all worth it.

We cows are more complex than you thought.

When I saw this eBay auction, I immediately thought of Jeff and smiled.