Unfortunately, the title works a lot better than the actual game, which is a shame.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Stark Tower Defense Game

Related posts:

1. The Secret Saturdays Cryptid Lab

There is no way to save screens, so you can’t export what you’ve written as an image to your computer — as with dry erase boards, you’re probably stuck with taking a shot with a digital camera to preserve anything worth preserving. The company that makes these is working on a version that will save the screens, however.

Still, even without that feature, this looks like pure awesome.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

The Boogie Board LCD Writing Tablet

No related posts.

Castronova sites a study finding that people who want to role-play within MMOs are a decidedly small minority, and then concludes from this that RMTs are inevitable since, apparently, the only argument against RMTs was that they break the immersion that role-players want from a game.

As Fairfield notes, it is becoming weird now to insist on an RMT-free gaming experience. I freely trade money for time all day, every day. The community here in Bloomington finds this utterly normal and so does the most of the community in Azeroth. As devs will argue, they don’t make all this stuff for free; they have to get paid somehow, and given the general disinterest of their players in pure refuge, there is quite a lot of give along the immersion / cash spectrum. How can I oppose RMT?

…

But these events are worth noting from a social theory perspective: Even such strongly framed alternative environments have had little effect on the way people act. The fact that people do NOT role-play, that they do NOT treat dragons as monsters, the fact that they do NOT treat evil as Evil and good as Good, nor kings as Kings nor quests as Quests, the fact that if they change at all it is only to revert to strategies of mooning the whole world just for the adolescent joy of it (which, I respectfully and lovingly submit, turned out to be a special devotion of my gameplaying colleagues in academia), seems to reject social construction theories. Drop a society of 20th century people into World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online, and you get a masked ball, only: A thoroughly unremarkable 20th-century society playing around with high-fantasy costumes. You cannot remake a people by changing the world in which they live.

What I don’t get about this is why Castronova and others would prefer to establish multiple identities (at a minimum, a real world identity and a virtual identity) but then restrict that virtual identity to just a single mode of interaction. Since MMOs involve dealing with multiple identities at the outset, it seems inevitable that rather than be constricted by some artificial restriction on identity (which is already an omnipresent feature of the “real world” for many of us), players would want to take both varying approaches over time to their virtual identity.

I see no conflict at all between logging on to World of Warcraft and roleplaying one moment, making a crude joke in the Trade Channel the next, and discussing some real world event that my guildies and I happen to have in common. In fact it seems kind of strange that Castronova and others would see as desirable a strict adherence to just the first identity given that MMOs tend to give players tools to easily manage multiple in-game identities.

So I don’t see how RMT transactions in-game detract from the immersiveness, anymore than does the fact that each month a $14.99 charge appears on my credit card, or that I have to boot up into Windows first before launching a game.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Edward Castronova on the Rise of RMTs in MMOs

Related posts:

1. Did Insiders at Eve Online Game the System?
2. On the Ethics of Ganking
3. MMOs and Social Interactions

Fast forward to 2009 and Automattic — the folks behind WordPress — acquired AfterTheDeadline.com and integrated it with WordPress.com. In addition, After The Deadline released a much-improved Firefox plugin.

The beautiful thing about After The Deadline is it uses a solid underline system to flag misspellings and possible grammatical errors. Finally, I can actually find the damned errors in long blocks of text.

Thank you, Automattic and After The Deadline!

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Automattic Answers My Prayers with After The Deadline

No related posts.

Unfortunately, the project’s website has been down for awhile and it is a bit unclear what the status of this project is.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

VideoLAN Movie Creator

Related posts:

1. The Open Video Alliance

According to New Scientist,

[Tyler] Moore and [Benjamin] Edelman started by using common spelling mistakes to create a list of possible typo domains for the 3264 most popular .com websites, as determined by Alexa.com rankings. They estimate that each of the 3264 top sites is targeted by around 280 typo domains.

They then used software to crawl 285,000 of these 900,000-odd sites to determine what revenue the typo domains might be generating.

If the top 100,000 websites suffer the same typosquatting rate as the sites Moore and Edelman studied, up to 68 million people a day could visit a typo site, they say. They estimate that almost 60 per cent of typo sites could have adverts supplied by Google.

If the company earns as much per visitor from ads on typo sites as it reportedly does from ads alongside search results, it could potentially earn $497 million a year in revenue from typo domains, they conclude.

Edelman is co-counsel on a lawsuit against Google by a firm seeking damages from Google for serving ads on a typosquatting domain, so he’s not a disinterested party here.

Google will stop serving ads on typosquatting domain names if the owner of the “legitimate” domain name complains, but it doesn’t pro-actively seek out such domains.

Edelman apparently wants Google to do so and notes that typosquatters tend to own hundreds or thousands of such domain names, so presumably Google could block Domain X and then also perhaps use WHOIS to find other typosquatted domain names owned by the same person. That seems like an extremely problematic solution that would be relatively easy for squatters to route around fairly easily.

If, as Edelman says, it is fairly easy to identify typosquatters, why not sue them directly, perhaps in a class action representing the presumably thousands of businesses who are allegedly harmed by this practice?

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

How Much Does Google Earn from Typosquatting?

Related posts:

1. Google and “Duplicate” Content
2. Google Webmaster Feature Improvements
3. Google Co-op Search

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Yet Another Green Lantern Ring I Must Own

Related posts:

1. Blackest Night Power Ring Spectrum Set
2. JLA Trophy Room Green Lantern Rings Prop
3. Green Lantern Ring

As the Google code page for the project notes,

As computers evolve, we risk losing some classic games. Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital, published in 1997, is a classic simulation game, but getting it to run natively on modern operating systems is getting progressively harder.

This project aims to reimplement the game engine of Theme Hospital, and be able to load the original game data files. This means that you will need a purchased copy of Theme Hospital, or a copy of the demo, in order to use CorsixTH. After most of the original engine has been reimplemented in open source code, the project will serve as a base from which extensions to the original game can be made.

Good show. The Bullfrog game I would really like to see get this treatment, however, is Syndicate Wars. Not sure if that game is playable on modern hardware.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Open Source Theme Hospital Clone

Related posts:

1. Web Messenger
2. Autonomo.us
3. OpenGoo

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Museum Replicas’ World of Warcraft Alliance War Flag

Related posts:

1. World of Warcraft Collectible Coin Set
2. Alliance Key Chain
3. Maybe I’ll Quite Playing WoW After All

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

DC Direct’s Kingdom Come Superman in 1/6 Scale

Related posts:

1. DC Direct Zatana 1:6 Scale Action Figure
2. DC Direct’s 1/6th Scale Catwoman
3. Blackest Night Earth-2 Superman

“Lo-fi” describes a preferred set of production technologies that digital producers should strive to command, but as an acronym, LOFI outlines four principles of digital production that are essential for the advancement, extension, and long-term preservation of digital discourse:

• Lossless: Discourse presented through lo-fi production technologies neither degrades nor becomes trapped in the production itself. Text migrates and transforms from a single source (e.g., XML, or an application of XML) to any number of other devices and artifacts; images, video, and other media elements maintain their integrity as individual files that are orchestrated with one another at a reader’s moment of access, not at the producer’s moment of File > Import or File > Save.
• Open: Lo-fi artifacts’ source code and media elements are available for inspection, revision, and extension outside the scope of any one piece of production software and any one producer. Openness includes and encourages end-user/reader customization and repurposing.
• Flexible: Discourse artfully and rhetorically created with lo-fi production technologies can be experienced unobtrusively in multiple ways by different users equipped with a wide variety of conventional, mobile, and adaptive devices—all from a single artifact. No plugins, special downloads, or device-/reader-specific artifacts are required.
• In(ter)dependent: Lo-fi production technologies direct orchestration (like a recipe), not composition (like a TV dinner), allowing users and their devices full control to render (or not) and perhaps repurpose the media elements that constitute a digital artifact.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

The Lo-Fi Manifesto

No related posts.

The main reason was price. The backup set of my personal documents is > 500gb, so using Amazon S3 was costing about $75/month. I can buy a 750 gb hard drive on Amazon for $70 and a 1 TB one for $85 if my data starts growing even faster.

So my new backup procedure is each month I buy a new hard drive and do a complete backup of my data drive. Then I do daily incremental backups for the month. At the end of the month I take that drive and store it offsite, buy a new drive and repeat.

On a quarterly basis I also take the latest backup and make a copy on BD-R so I’m not completely dependent on magnetic media for backup.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

I Canceled My Jungle Disk Account

Related posts:

1. Jungle Disk to Support Cloud Files
2. The Long Now’s Rosetta Disc Finally Comes to Fruition
3. Jungle Disk 2.0

Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher’s Weekly that “publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy” comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were “loaned” last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

From what we’ve been able to piece together, the book “lending” takes place in “libraries”. On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a “card”. But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there’s no admission charge and it doesn’t cost anything to borrow a book, there’s always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material.

The whole thing is hilarious and well worth reading. Keep it in mind the next time you read one of those idiotic “piracy cost X industry $Y hundred million.”

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Libraries Are Killing the Publishing Industry

Related posts:

1. Brian Martin’s ‘Information Liberation’
2. Go, Roger, Go
3. James Boyle’s New Book ‘The Public Domain’

From: WoWAccountAdmin@blizzard.com

To: brian@carnell.com

Subject: World of Warcraft — Account Closure Notification — Exploitative Activity Found

English speaking customers: Please refer to the start of this mail
Para los clientes españoles: Por favor vayan hasta el fin de este correo electrónico

***Notice of Account Closure***

Account Name: BRIANCARNELL

Reason for Closure: Terms of Use Violation — Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy

This account was closed because one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for “real-world” currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy.

Even if this behavior is the result of a third party accessing the account instead of the registered user (for example, a friend, family member, or leveling service) then the account can still be held responsible for the penalty because of the impact it had on the game environment.

We’ve found the above behavior is many times directly related to groups responsible for compromising World of Warcraft accounts; we take these issues very seriously. To better understand our position against exploitative activity and the risks involved, please review this article: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

The exploitative activity that took place on this account violates the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask you take a moment to review these terms at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html. Any recurring subscriptions on this account have been suspended to prevent further monetary charges.

For any disputes of this action, please visit the Exploitative Activity FAQ and Contact page here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/exploitfaq

Regards,

Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com

My first thought was that this email was itself some sort of phishing attack, so I logged into my Battle.net account. Well, I tried to log into my Battle.net account, but was told that it had been shut down for exploitative activity.

Now I’m a very casual World of Warcraft player who pretty much sticks to soloing (I’ve been in one instance in 5 years of playing). Especially since the last two expansions, obtaining gold is trivial so I’m not even sure who the market is anymore for gold selling.

Anyway, since I hadn’t actually bought or sold any gold, the obvious conclusion was that someone had hacked my account. I always run anti-virus software, firewalls, etc., but someone probably managed to keylog me on a machine where I checked in to show someone the Armory.

My next reaction was a bunch of expletives. I’ve got more than 3,000 hours invested in the characters on that account and to some extent playing World of Warcraft is almost part of my lifestyle, not just another game. I simply can’t imagine not playing WoW or some successor to it at this point.

So I hit the link to appeal and explain that I’ve been playing for 5 years, never bought or sold gold, and as they can tell if they look at my account am a fairly casual player who just wants his account back. To Blizzard’s credit it took less than 24 hours for me to get the following reply:

From: wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com

To: brian@carnell.com

Subject: World of Warcraft – Account Recovery Instructions

Greetings,

We have determined that the World of Warcraft account BRIANCARNELL has been accessed by someone not authorized to do so by the World of Warcraft Terms of Use (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html).

To protect your privacy and security, we have temporarily disabled this account. Any recurring subscriptions have been suspended to prevent further monetary charges. In order to regain access to the account, you must complete the steps below to secure the account and your computer.

Please keep this email for your reference until the account recovery process has been completed.

STEP 1: SECURE THE ACCOUNT, YOUR COMPUTER AND YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
Account compromises most often occur when a player shares login information with an unauthorized third party or plays on a computer that has a virus, Trojan, or key-logger. We recommend you read and apply the following tips to protect yourself and the account.

- Unauthorized Account Access Policy: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20460
- World of Warcraft Account Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20572
- Computer Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/21118
- Email Address Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/28585

STEP 2: RECOVER THE ACCOUNT
We now provide a secure website for you to verify that you have taken the appropriate steps to secure the account, your computer, and your email address. Please go to this site and follow the instructions:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/securitywebform

STEP 3: VERIFY YOUR SUBMISSION WAS RECEIVED
We will contact you with further instructions once we have received and processed your submission. If you do not receive a reply within 5 business days of submitting this form, please resend it from the address listed above.

Please be aware that if unauthorized access to this account continues after the recovery process is complete, it may lead to further action against the account.

Sincerely,

Vaenixia
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com

Whew. I took a couple weeks to get my account back, however. Even though I was fairly sure my personal laptop (the only machine I actually play World of Warcraft from) wasn’t compromised, I wasn’t about to take any chances. I wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Windows. Then along with the anti-virus/firewall package, I also added Secunia to help with keeping track of problems like unpatched versions of Adobe crapware.

Once I was certain my machine was exploit-free, I recovered my Battle.net account and then added a Mobile Authenticator to the account. Fortunately for me, a few weeks ago Blizzard added a Mobile Authenticator app for Android, so I could have that on my Nexus One (I’ve actually got several of the standalone authenticators, but worried before that I would lose them).

Now I was finally ready to log into my WoW account…where I found myself suspended in mid-air and watch while I fell to my death.

Whoever hacked the account must have been seriously disappointed. They took about 800 gold and cashed in about 20,000 honor points for some gems (which were still in my  inventory). The only thing I was really annoyed at was  they sold off all my Gigantique Bags and Portable Holes. I thought about petitioning to have that gear restored, but decided not to since, again, gold is so easy to come by in the game these days.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Briefly Banned By Blizzard

Related posts:

1. WoW Add-On Developers Go All John Galt
2. Blizzard to Offer Authenticator App on Mobile Devices
3. Just How Large Is the Gold Farming Industry?

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

WP-Table Reloaded Plugin for WordPress

Related posts:

1. Drafts Dropdown Plugin for WordPress
2. Live Blogging Plugin for WordPress
3. Shockingly Simple Favicon WordPress Plugin

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Sinestro Power Battery

Related posts:

1. Yet Another Green Lantern Ring I Must Own
2. JLA Trophy Room Green Lantern Rings Prop
3. Green Lantern Mini-Neon Sign

$60 for the set, and the batteries are user replaceable.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Blackest Night Power Ring Spectrum Set

Related posts:

1. Yet Another Green Lantern Ring I Must Own
2. Blackest Night Earth-2 Superman
3. JLA Trophy Room Green Lantern Rings Prop

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Strange Little Band

Related posts:

1. Hey, You’ve Got NASCAR In My Romance Novel

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

DIY Mythos Buddies

Related posts:

1. Corporate Cthulhu Polo
2. Bag of Cthulhu Figures
3. Munchkin Cthulhu Bookmark of Udder Ridiculousness

In one of the cases Human Rights Watch mentions, Lebanese television psychic Ali Sabat was arrested in Saudi Arabia while making a pilgrimage to Mecca for the Hajj.

Religious police arrested Ali Sabat in his hotel room in Medina on May 7, 2008, where he was on pilgrimage before returning to his native Lebanon. Before his arrest, Sabat frequently gave advice on general life questions and predictions about the future on the Lebanese satellite television station Sheherazade, according to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar and the French newspaper Le Monde. These appearances are said to be the only evidence against Sabat.

Sabat was sentenced to death in November 2009, and is not the only person awaiting execution for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia. In 2006, a Saudi judge sentenced Fawza Falih to death for practicing witchcraft and she is still being held awaiting the carrying out of the death sentence.

Obviously bringing international attention to these cases may force the Saudi Arabian government to think twice about actually going forward with the executions, but it has no compunction against carrying out such sentences. According to Human Rights Watch, in 2007 it executed Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim for the crime of sorcery.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Saudia Arabia’s Witch Hunts

Related posts:

1. Stop Using Children In Suicide Attacks
2. One-Fifth of the Prisoners Are Witches
3. Saudi Arabia Defends Torture

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Simple Pull Quote Plugin for WordPress

Related posts:

1. Advanced Export for WordPress and WordPress Multi-User
2. Live Blogging Plugin for WordPress
3. Shockingly Simple Favicon WordPress Plugin

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Batman Beyond 1:6 Scale DC Direct Action Figure

Related posts:

1. DC Direct Zatana 1:6 Scale Action Figure
2. DC Direct’s 1/6th Scale Catwoman
3. DC Direct 1/6 Scale Wonder Woman Action Figure

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

DC Direct Zatana 1:6 Scale Action Figure

Related posts:

1. DC Direct’s 1/6th Scale Catwoman
2. Superhero Times Review of DC Direct 1:6th Scale Supergirl
3. Dexter Action Figure

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Tapping Into the World of Comics

Related posts:

1. Comic Book Series Wiki
2. Comic Book Reading Software
3. Where Am Bizarro?

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

G-Fan

Related posts:

1. Hollywood Collector’s Gallery’s Giant Godzilla Statue
2. Organic Hobby’s Godzilla Real Artwork Poster
3. Science of Godzilla

There doesn’t exist a telescope that is really of any value, other than for the imagination, designed for a child under 12 years.

When we get them, they may spark an interest, and certainly a night, maybe two or more of observing the moon, maybe even Jupiter or Venus, but mostly they collect dust.

Why?

a. Because department & camera store telescopes are ALL toys that are of very little use for viewing anything except the moon (“real” telescopes cost more than US$200),

b. Until you have gained some experience, there is really very little to “see” in the sky that a child can’t see with his or her own eyes, or with the assistance of a pair of binoculars,

c. It’s much more satisfying for a child to “learn” astronomy in stages than to be disappointed and discouraged by a cheap optical instrument.

The author instead recommends a good pair of binoculars and a good skywatching book geared toward children. Very good advice indeed.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Don’t Buy a Child a Telescope!

No related posts.

The really cool thing is every time a TOS changes, TOSBack.org displays the old and new TOS side-by-side with all changes highlighted so it is easy to tell exactly what has changed (although figuring out what all that legalese actually means may not be quite so easy).

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

TOSBack.org

No related posts.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Simpsons Comics #68 Cover

No related posts.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Chlamydia Plushie

Related posts:

1. Giant Lego Minifig Washes Onshore in Brighton

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Holy Bible: Stock Car Racing Edition

Related posts:

1. The Brick Testament
2. Secular Coalition for America on That Pew Religion Poll
3. Video Game Violence vs. the Bible

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Battle Chronicler

No related posts.

I wish I never played football. I wish that more than anything. Every single day, I want to take back those years of my life . . .

Pear was a Pro Bowl defensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and then won a Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders in 1981. After 5 years of playing, however, he was out of the league and starting on a lifetime of surgeries and pain. He tells Pearlman he spent his final two seasons at Oakland in constant pain which the team encouraged him to simply play through,

Those last two years in Oakland were very, very difficult times. I was in pain 24 hours per day, and my employers failed to acknowledge my injury. Sure, I won a Super Bowl ring. But was it worth giving up my health for a piece of jewelry? No way. Those diamonds have lost their luster.

Pear has a fascinating blog where he discusses the league’s idiocy and various attempts by retired players to try to get the NFL to own up to its responsibilities.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Dave Pear on the NFL’s Indifference to Former Players

Related posts:

1. Why I Stopped Watching the NFL

This looks awesome in the photo, but apparently is a piece of crap. Rather than work like traditional money clips, there are magnets in the ends of the clip which are supposed to keep the clip closed. That works well unless you actually want to carry more than a few bills in which case the magnets aren’t strong enough to keep the clip from opening.

Too bad…I would totally buy this if it was functional as well as simply looking awesome.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Batarang Money Clip

No related posts.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Kiss Mr. Potato Head

Related posts:

1. Taters of the Lost Ark

The big idea behind the Open Video Alliance is that heading into this future, the tools for creating, manipulating, and sharing video must be available to everyone. And while having community-developed, open source versions of these tools is critical, it’s not the whole story. Open video requires that legal and business structures support the ability of huge numbers of individuals to use video in ways that go beyond just watching.

As someone who spends most of his work day wrangling this or that proprietary format video into usable form, this vision cannot be realized soon enough.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

The Open Video Alliance

No related posts.

Enter the Upgrade Notification by Email plugin. As the name suggests, the plugin checks periodically to see if there is a new version of WordPress available and, if there is, it sends me an e-mail.

The nice thing is that with this installed on each of my sites, I receive an email from each install which acts as a mini-checklist to ensure I don’t forget to upgrade one of my less active sites.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Upgrade Notification by Email

Related posts:

1. Meebo Me Plugin for WordPress
2. Broken Link Checker Plugin for WordPress
3. WordPress’s Schizophrenic ‘Please Update’

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Ghostbusters Ectoplasm Energy Drink

Related posts:

1. Who You Gonna Call? Master Replicas

Much of what Stross talks about is already starting to happen — the smartphone is starting to become ubiquitous as it becomes more powerful and has access to faster and faster bandwidth. Stross envisions a future where this leads to augmented reality so we no longer play games so much as we are constantly surrounded by the Internet and games everywhere we go.

For example: if you point your phone at a shop front tagged with an equivalent location in the information space, you can squint at it through the phone’s screen and see … whatever the cyberspace equivalent of the shop is. If the person you’re pointing it at is another player in a live-action game you’re in (that is: if their phone is logged in at the same time, so the game server knows you’re both in proximity), you’ll see their avatar. And so on.

Using these gizmos, we won’t need to spend all our time pounding keys and clicking mice inside our web browsers. Instead, we’re going to end up with the internet smearing itself all over the world around us, visible at first in glimpses through enchanted windows, and then possibly through glasses, or contact lenses, with embedded projection displays.

God, I want to live in that world. Except once we get there, as Edward Castronova has argued, how do we make the “real world” compelling enough to get people to stick around and do the not-so-fun things that keep civilization going?

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Charlie Stross on the Future of Video Games

Related posts:

1. What Are Game Achievements For?
2. Charles Stross on ‘Strangecraft-ian’ Horror
3. Video Games Sales > DVD/Blu-Ray Sales for 2008

Whew. The link is worth visiting to see all that went into making this randomizing monstrosity.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

The Dice-O-Matic

Related posts:

1. Koplow Games Blank Dice and Counting Cubes
2. Dicenomicon for the iPhone/iPod Touch
3. Loaded Dice for RPGs

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

wikiHow Guide to Linking to Specific Point in YouTube Video

Related posts:

1. Stop Embedding My YouTube Videos!
2. Amusing “First Person Shooter Disease” YouTube Video
3. Growing Up Skipper Doll

That is some awesome nerdcraft right there.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

World of Warcraft Papercraft

Related posts:

1. Adding Achievements to WoW is Like Adding Nicotine to Crack
2. Hmmm…Guild Tabard Shirts
3. Downloadable Demo of World of Warcraft Collectible Miniatures Game

Millenniata claims its M-Arc DVDs are backwards-compatible with existing DVD technologies, but rather than using a laser to heat up a photosensitive dye, the M-Arc uses a mechanical process to make scratches in a physical layer that M-Arc claims will last potentially for centuries if stored properly. According to a brief summary on the manufacturer’s site, the M-Arc:

Preserves data for centuries with physical changes in data layer

Constructed with rock-hard materials known to last for centuries

Backwards-compatible on all standard DVD drives

Functions like a standard DVD with a capacity of 4.7 GB

Exclusively written by the M-Writer™ Drive

The Millenniata site doesn’t list any prices, but Long Now reports $1,700 for the writer and $16-$25 per 4.7gb disc depending on the quantity.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

The M-Arc DVD System

Related posts:

1. Toshiba Announces 200gb 2.5 inch Hard Drive
2. Infrant’s Ready NAS NV
3. Western Digital Enters the 2.5″ Hard Drive Market

As the GTD Timer website freely admits, these folks are hardly the first to create a countdown timer for Windows, but they have easily created the best countdown timer for Windows.

The software is free to use for personal use, and $19.95 to register (which eliminates a nag screen among other things).

From my experience with trying numerous countdown clocks, this does the best job of actually looking half-way decent in an overlay so I can focus on my work while also keeping the occasional eye on how much time of the allotted time remaining I have to finish a task.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

GTD Timer

No related posts.

Monsterpocalypse, of course, is a collectible miniatures game centered around giant monsters attacking the planet.

Overzealous idiots or a clever a dry run of the Cthulhu Contingency Plan? The world may never know.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Homeland Security Held Up Monsterpocalypse Strategy Guide?

Related posts:

1. Corporate Cthulhu Polo
2. The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia – Third Edition
3. Monsterpocalypse Rulebook

The entirety of the English version of Wikipedia is in there, minus the images. There are also parental controls built-in to shield children from adult-oriented content.

I was skeptical even after reading various positive reviews, but after playing around with mine for a couple weeks I’m very impressed. The main drawback to the device is that in order for it to last as long as possible on just the AAA batteries as well as (I assume) to hold down costs, there’s no backlight. This is not something you’re going to be using in a room that isn’t already well-lit.

But beyond that limitation, the touchscreen keyboard works great for searching and navigating through Wikipedia. In fact, I really had to make a conscious effort to put the thing away rather than spend hours lost in exploring different topics.

The only other limitation is the frequency of updates to the WikiReader database. The database itself is stored on a MicroSD card, and is updated quarterly. You can either download the database for free from Wikireader and then copy the update to the MicroSD card, or order a subscription for $29/2 updates and receive a new MicroSD card in the mail that just needs to be popped in to the device.

That does mean that the WikiReader is at times going to be up to 3 months out-of-date, but at least for me that’s also an acceptable tradeoff to have that much information always at your fingertips.

But the real test was handing this to my 7-year-old son and having him use it. It took him about 5 minutes before he was reading aloud entries on dinosaurs and sharks to me. Very cool.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

WikiReader

Related posts:

1. Is Wikipedia Editor Fronting for Cult Leader?

Gina Trapani’s Better Gmail 2 add-on for Firefox is indispensable in using Gmail. It bundles together some of the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail. Personally, I couldn’t live without the Folders4Gmail script that lets users build hierarchical label structures in Gmail.

Yes, you could go out and download all of these scripts and install them, but it is very nice that Trapani has rolled them all together in one easily updated add-on.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Better Gmail 2 Add-On for Firefox

Related posts:

1. TwitterBar – Update Twitter from the Firefox Address Bar
2. Folders4Gmail Greasemonkey Script
3. Firefox New Install – Extensions

But as one young woman profiled by Kotaku demonstrates, once you start adding achievements with assigned points to games, some people will start playing the achievements themselves as a sort of meta-game. The games themselves are simply something to grind through on the way to an achievement score. In the case of the Kotaku profile, Kristen has amassed an XBOX gamerscore of 165,000 and is grinding her way to 200,000, frequently playing games she could care less about except for the achievement points she can gain from them.

Quite a few people in the comments don’t see the point of playing the achievement system as a game, but that seems just as legitimate a way to approach video games as any other.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

What Are Game Achievements For?

Related posts:

1. ECA’s Letter to Obama
2. How I Finally Quit Playing WoW
3. Roll Your Own WoW Achievements

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

Verbatim’s Tuff-’n'-Tiny Flash Drive

Related posts:

1. Star Wars Flash Drives
2. USB Flash Drive Skull Rings

There’s an option to get a print of this chart, but Zazzle currently won’t sell it because of the use of the trademarked logos. Ugh. I want this framed in my office.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

What Cereal Should I Eat: The Flowchart

No related posts.

This is a post from Brian.Carnell.Com.

NetHackDS

Related posts:

1. Case Logic Nintendo DS Case
2. Populous for the Nintendo DS
3. Super Mario Nintendo DS Holder