Everything that doesn’t fit into any other category.
I found these while browsing gizmag (an Australian site BTW), and they are infinately cooler than The Wave.
You have one skate under each foot and use a snaking motion to move sideways. These look perfect as something that you can just throw in your bag when you’re not using them (much better than inline skates or a skate board in this regard).
Check out the promo video on the manufacturer website. There’s also an instructional video on YouTube.
I posted this to the PIGMI mailing list and thought to mirror it here. Nation States is a great game and Max Barry is an intellectual and amusing author. Check it out!
Have many people seen (or played) Nation States?
http://www.nationstates.net/
It’s a non-traditional online game that is technically very simple, but can become fairly involving. It’s also the work of an Australian author.
The gameplay involves making political decision for a small nation state (up to 2 a day). These decisions are summarised by exaggerated status reports and reflected in the nation’s economy, and civil and political freedoms.
Aside from slowly watching your nation grow, players can also get involved in the virtual United Nations and the discussion forums. There are currently 150 UN resolutions reflecting the composition of the gaming community with topics ranging from slavery to DVD region encoding.
I think that Nation States is an excellent example of a game that challenges common conceptions of games and gamers, and I found it fairly inspirational in this regard.
– Nick
“The Wave” is a bit like a skateboard, but it only has two wheels and is meant to feel more like surfing or snowboarding. There’s a brief review on about.com and a bunch of action videos on the manufacturer homepage.
It’s a stupid name, obviously coined so that they could use the phrase “Learn to ride The Wave” (groan). It was previously called the “X-board”. Regardless, I think that I want one.
I recall seeing them for sale locally for around $100 (although I could be wrong about the price).
Update: I found an image on the Amazon product page
Update: I found another review here. It looks like it is called the essboard in Korea and the ex-board in the UK
Update: It’s called the vigorboard here and they sell for $199 (although it’s billed as $50 off the RRP of $249). They are apparantly conducting market testing in Bunbury.
The movie based on Alan Moore‘s comic book of the same name is coming out next Thursday (30 March). It stars Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman.
I’m keen to see it on the following Monday (2 April). It should be less crowded than “tight-arse” Tuesday and around the same price when using student tickets or cinema cash. Anyone else interested?
Image from the Alan Moore Fansite
A couple of days ago Heidi and I got on a ferry:
and headed to Rottnest Island:
It was my first time there (apparantly unheard of for someone who has lived in Perth for more than a few years) and very enjoyable.
We spent our time bike-riding (10km on the first day, 20km on the second), swimming, eating (overpriced food), and playing mini-golf (it was a pretty good course).
Conclusion: Yeah, I’d go again 😀
http://webchats.tv/webchat.php?ID=260
A Miyamoto web chat in which he answers questions submitted from web users is now online. Interesting and insightful stuff.
They received tens of thousands of questions and had to cut that list down quite a bit.
Tone informed me that Pure Pwnage episode 10 is out. Checking the purepwnage site confirms this. Yay!
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, Pure Pwnage is a mockumentary following the life of a professional gamer called “teh_pwnerer”. It’s great for many reasons, two of which are: “it’s from Canada”, and “there is an episode called LANAGEDDON”.
My only gripe with this episode (which I haven’t even downloaded and watched yet) is that there appears to be a typo in the title. It’s called “TEH BEST DAY EVER” when it should clearly be “TEH BEST DAY EVAR!” LOL!
The server was getting hammered with comment spam, so I disabled comments from non-members. This should be a temporary measure.
I don’t know if many of you have been following the whole “Web 2.0” thing, but it’s really starting to irritate me.
Web 2.0 is a catch-phrase that represents the general (predicted and planned) move towards social, user-driven, and services-oriented websites. It includes a general approach to software (AJAX) and information (collaboration).
It means people working together to provide better, more personalised services… or at least that’s how they want to market it. At a more fundamental level, Web 2.0 is this realisation from media companies:
It promotes website scraping and RSS abuse for meta-reviews with long referral chains. How many people will bother to visit the original source of an article? It promotes users contributing to resources that they neither own nor (ultimately) control. What recourse do myspace adolescents have if Murdoch decides to delete their brooding poems?
Rather than turn this post into a long rant, I’ll end with an excerpt from Paul Graham’s write-up on Web 2.0.
And yet, oddly enough, Ryan Singel’s article about the conference in Wired News spoke of “throngs of geeks.” When a friend of mine asked Ryan about this, it was news to him. He said he’d originally written something like “throngs of VCs and biz dev guys” but had later shortened it just to “throngs,” and that this must have in turn been expanded by the editors into “throngs of geeks.” After all, a Web 2.0 conference would presumably be full of geeks, right?
Update: I’d be much happier about Web 2.0 if the “Don’t maltreat users” mantra also included a “Don’t reserve the right to maltreat users” clause. Otherwise it reads like a warning of the “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” variety.
I caught a bit of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony and was pleased to see that there are fully integrated events for Elite Athletes with a Disability (EAD).
I’d really like to see this mirrored at larger events like the Olympics. Aside from the obvious “it’s the right thing to do”, I think that it would dramatically increase funding for EAD sports in many countries. Especially if there are EAD events that could potentially win these countries medals.
Is this all wishful thinking?