mssv

  • Civ 3 democracy

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    No comments on Civ 3 democracy

    The Apolyton Civilization 3 Democracy Game. This combines two of my gaming loves – Civ3, and mmoe. The premise is that over one hundred people are democratically playing a game of Civilization 3, electing a cabinet, detailing a constitution, forming numerous political parties and even newspapers. It sounds a little far-fetched but at only 14…

  • Into the Woods

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    Saw a truly wonderful musical at Oxford called Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. The first half is a medley of various fairy tale characters including Jack and Beanstalk, Little Red Ridinghood, Cinderella, brought all together by a quest by the baker and his wife. It’s a traditional musical first half with fun songs and…

  • Google

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    labs.google.com – various neat alpha-stage applications including Google Glossary (works fairly well for the technical terms I tested it with), voice searching and keyboard searching.

  • Space Exploration Act

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    A new bill entitled the Space Exploration Act of 2002 has been introduced to set forth a strict timetable for NASA to accelerate reuseable space vehicle development and see a Man on Mars by 2022 (and no, it hasn’t been enacted yet).

  • Sid Meier

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    Sid Meier (creator of the Civilization games) had this to say about massively multiplayer games: “It’s a new, exciting, but at the same time repelling world. I don’t know. Really.” Absolutely.

  • Scrabble

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    Played Scrabble at the pub last night – got 309 points, most of which came from oxygen, squadron (used all seven letter – extra 50 points) and fazed (triple word score).

  • Earth and Beyond

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    A good example of mini-story events in mmoe – in its review of Earth and Beyond Online, Gamespot talks about a scripted event controlled by a game employee in the guise of an NPC. Clever stuff.

  • Writing

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    Something popped into my head today as I was scribbling down some notes during a supervision: does the fact that I write with a pencil (as opposed to a pen or biro) affect my writing style, and on a higher level, my method of thinking? Pencils provide a much less constrained and linear way of…

  • MGS

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    Getting a stereo view of Mars – the boys at NASA are pretty damn clever; they’re planning to obtain 3D images of areas the Mars Global Surveyor has already covered by pointing the spacecraft off-nadir (so it doesn’t point directly down).

  • I Wish I knew

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    Correction to an earlier post: It seems I made a common mistake when I said that the Barry Norman film night tune (I Wish I Knew) was first written by Nina Simone. It was in fact first written and performed by the Bill Taylor Trio. Thanks to Tom for pointing this out.