Haibane.info

When my daughter was 3 years old, I bought her this amazing toy called Magnetix, which is basically nothing more than a few large metal marbles and some multicolored plastic rods with magnets at each end. It’s a great toy, letting you build all sorts of nifty geometric shapes, and she really loved it. It’s invaluable as a child-distractor, though she’s already starting to outgrow it.

This takes the idea to the next level - and is definitely not for kids, nor something you will ever outgrow:

That’s brilliant. Forget the rods, just use the balls, and make those magnetic. Is it just me or should this thing be part of every graduate physics curriculum?

Yes, Wiitis is now officially real - magnetic resonance imaging proves it so.

a classic for your Sunday afternoon pleasure.

This bit from The Onion is just too good to pass up.

Wii Video Games Blamed For Rise In Effeminate Violence

Wii’s critics claim that the sissified games use disturbing pastel imagery, graphic representations of adorable characters, and disorienting kaleidoscopes of color to prey on children’s basest flaming instincts. The game Dewy’s Adventure, in which children control a cute droplet of water who must return fruit to a magical tree, is often cited as one of the worst offenders.
[...]
“The Wii’s fluffy flowers and bright peach-colored sunlight glorify chasing precious talking rabbits with plungers,” Greer said. “What kind of message is that sending to our children? That it’s ‘cool’ to act like some kind of electrical elf or banana fairy?”

Of course, Super Smash Brothers Brawl just came out, so presumably the problem will only get worse.

This insane rant against Gary Gygax is either satire or simply the product of the kind of person who the Adults always feared playing D&D was turning all us good kids into. I don’t know what game this jerk was playing, but it certainly wasn’t Dungeons and Dragons.

I cant take someone seriously who laments about a “hobgoblin holocaust”, nor someone who is still - STILL - hung up about the fact that elves didn’t have player classes. In Basic D&D.

I was just in Lake Geneva this past weekend. It felt like sacred ground. Here, an industry was born. Poseurs like Erik Sofge can only snipe from the sidelines, but they never really grokked D&D. Pity them.

An intrepid band of adventurers strike out on an epic quest to reclaim a mystical item from antiquity. It ends well.

Shamus has a three part series on PC game piracy in which he makes some concrete recommendations to the game industry. Part of Shamus’ premise is simply that video game piracy is a problem partly driven by the industry itself, with ever-increasing paranoid reliance on clumsy copy protection and authentication schemes that treat ordinary users like criminals and which do nothing to deter the thieves. He argues that the industry should accept a baseline level of piracy and attempt to incentivize users to buy the product rather than attempt to forestall it completely. His specific recommendations are:

1. Make sure the pirates can’t offer a superior product
2. Get closer to the community
3. Offer a demo
4. Entice them with valuable updates
5. Clean House

How does this apply to anime? It occurs to me that the rationale for the fansub industry is quite similar to game piracy. Region-encoding, release schedules, and unequal pricing seem to be the methods by which the anime industry attempts to control their product and which has created the vacuum which fansubbers have rushed to fill.

Do Shamus’ recommendations apply? It makes for an interesting thought experiment.

Rest in peace, DM.

(original)

Massawyrm at AICN has an exclusive review of the new 4th Edition D&D. Reading the review really brings me back to my own memories of being a D&D gamer; I gave up D&D back during 2nd Edition (when there was still the Basic vs Advanced dichotomy). What lured me away was Magic: The Gathering, and then after college I just never had time again to play anything. I really would love to get back into D&D but the constraints on my time are even worse now than before. Plus, no matter how innovative the rules, to have fun you just need to play with friends, and most of mine are too far away, scattered around the nation. Maybe next year.

Actually wouldn’t it be amazing if we could run a D&D campaign via group chat?

UPDATE via Scott,

hmm. Anyone up for a campaign?

The deadline came and went and Scrabulous endures. Logging in this morning, scrabbers see the following message:

Hi folks

We are really grateful to the entire Scrabulous community for the exceptional support that has been provided. It is amazing to see that a small application has touched so many people across the world! There has been a lot of speculation about the future of Scrabulous and it is currently impossible for us to comment on this matter. However, like always, we shall update you as soon as we can.

In the meantime, please click here to enjoy a song created by an anonymous Scrabulous fan.

Best Regards,
Rajat & Jayant

Since they haven’t ceased and desisted as they were ordered to by Hasbro, one assumes that they probably have sold out, and that the game will either be rebranded as official Scrabble. The alternative, that they are planning a less-infringing skin for the app (along with some changes to game mechanics, the way the analogous boggle-clone bogglific has recently done), is also possible, but means that Rajat and Jayant have probably invested in a good (expensive) lawyer who is engaging in delaying tactics. The latter strategy is actually the better business one, since rebranding the site somewhat to evade the infringement attack preserves their hefty income stream. In that regard even an expensive lawyer is still an investment in securing the future of their business model.