Coffee Klatch

Okay, this is simply amazing! I think these guys majored in Ping Pong in college!

Here’s a cool online clock. It’s called the Human Clock and it features pictures of people with numbers. You can set your own time zone and then any time you view the page, you see the time in the form of a picture that someone uploaded. Yes, you can upload your own pictures, too, and add them to the mix. So if you’ve got a favorite landmark, building, pet, person, or whatever, just take a picture of it with a time showing somewhere and submit it.

Current music: Days of Future Passed, by The Moody Blues

If you’re not familiar with Google Maps Street View, you really need to be. It fills in the gap left by maps and photos taken from satellites. Sure you can plan your route and even see what the areas look like when you zoom in, but that’s only from up above. What about the FRONT of a building? Enter the Street View, another map view setting that actually allows you to see what the buildings look like from the street. You can even zoom in and out and move up and down the streets. Now THAT’S helpful!

What Google did was had cameras mounted on vehicles which drove up and down each street taking pictures. Then they’re all assembled in Google Maps. This is quite cool and I’ve already found it very helpful in planning trips to places I’ve never been before. When you can see what the buildings actually will look like as you drive up to them, you’re more confident.

Here’s where it gets REALLY interesting. An entire subculture has grown up around these Street View pictures. It’s only logical that with so many millions of pictures you’re bound to get a few that are unusual, rather than simple pretty shots of nice buildings on sunny days. For the most part, it’s probably people with too much time on their hands, but what has developed is a community of “online sleuths” who look for and collect these bizarre pictures. Some of those mentioned the most are a car on fire, a man running down the street in a scuba outfit, and a boy falling off his bike in his driveway (one picture shows him on it, the next shows him on the ground).

The Google Street View Gallery has quite a few really interesting or entertaining shots taken by the Google cameras. News.com.au also has a gallery of some favorite images. And it’s not like you have to go someplace special to see them–THEY’RE RIGHT THERE IN GOOGLE MAPS!

If you find some of your own, go to http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/ and set up a free account. Then you can add your own finds and comment on others’.

Current music: Adventures in Early Music - Documented by DHM

Okay, this is just too good to keep to myself. One of my fellow bellringers shared this yesterday and I have to tell more people about it. You’ve probably heard of the popular Guitar Hero and its sequels. Maybe you’ve even played it. It all started with the whole “Dance Revolution” game that had (and has) people bopping around on a floor mat, getting their feet into different circles in time with the music and following the “steps” on the big screen.

Well, now there’s Handbell Hero! You do the same thing as with the other games, hitting the right key (in this case) as the number falls into its box. You get the hang of it after you try it for a minute or so. There are three different levels, requiring three, four, or EIGHT keys. That last one is HARD!

So they’ve got several songs, each with three levels, and the top scores get listed on the website. Pretty cool! Visit http://www.haanmc.com/sandbox/handbellhero/ to play.

And by the way, the game does actually give you a taste of what playing handbells is like. Especially the middle level, “Brass Bells” (as opposed to “Tinkerbell” or “Hell’s Bells”). Treble ringers often have four bells in their hands, so the game does make you think a little like a treble ringer (scary thought, that).

Enjoy!

Okay, here’s something totally frivolous (unless you can come up with a good use for it). It’s called the Ultimate Flash Face. You can select each element of the face from a selection of pictures. Then you can drag them around to position them the way you like. You can save your picture on their site, but I don’t think you can download it directly.

I suppose you could make a face with all the specifics of shape and contour and then Print-Screen and paste it into a Paint program. Then you’d have a black-and-white picture resembling yourself or someone else that you could use for a profile picture somewhere.

Here’s my first attempt at a picture of myself.

I‘ve been a fan of Sudoku for quite a while now. While searching my blog for references, I found THREE different posts about Sudoku: 20 March 2006, 27 December 2006, and 9 March 2007. Lately I decided to look for a site that I would track my progress–if not actual puzzles solved, then points earned by the number of puzzles I’ve solved at each difficulty level. I’d found one before, but found it too cumbersome to navigate to new puzzles that I hadn’t solved yet, so I started looking around for a better site.

My favorite: Sudoku Kingdom. It has an interface that’s easy to work with (although I’d like it if they allowed using the Arrow keys to switch between boxes) and if you enter a number that’s already in that row/column/box, the existing number’s box flashes red a few times, alerting you to the conflict. Every month they reset the standings, so you can see who’s in the Top Ten for points (1-easy, 2-medium, 4-hard, 8-very hard). At the end of each month, every player who has at least 100 points is entered into a drawing for one of five e-books with 48 sudoku puzzles (with answers).

They have the regular collection of sudoku puzzles, which you can solve to your heart’s content. They also have Daily Sudoku, which gives you one point for each one you solve. Each puzzle is only available for two days (in case you miss a day, you can still get your puzzle done the next day). The Daily Sudoku has its own Top Ten list and its own monthly drawing (for 3 people who got at least 20 points that month). As a perk to keep you coming back, you get TWO points if you’ve solved the daily puzzle the day before. If you miss a day, though, then it goes back to one point until you do two days in a row.

If you’re more into solving Sudoku puzzles on paper, they keep the last twenty daily puzzles (plus solutions) available for downloading and printing. And if you’re new, there’s a Tutorial and a Beginners section which has its own Top Ten list, too (no drawing, though).

And to add a little something to the puzzle-solving process, they’ve got a Web Browser Toolbar (for Firefox AND Internet Explorer) that you can install, which allows you to listen to the radio or podcasts while you’re solving. Or even while you’re just online, since you can use the toolbar to share favorite links and jump right to sudoku puzzles with the click of a button.

Current music: Paint the Sky with Stars–The Best of Enya

So it looks like Pirates of the Caribbean is getting into the MMORPG racket. It’s called Pirates of the Caribbean Online and after I read about how it was going to work, my first question was, “Will I have to pay for this or will there be a free version?” Turns out they’re expected to have an “Advanced Player” subscription of $9.95 a month but the basic version is supposed to be free. FREE! I read that the only difference between the two versions is going to be ads. And since I use Firefox, I can easily block the ads and just play the game! WOOHOO!!

(These pictures are screenshots from the game. Click them to view tons more screenshots.)

There’s already a nicely detailed article on Wikipedia about the game, which I’ve read is supposed to launch on June 1. I’ve been playing Tribal Wars for a couple of months now and have started to get bored with it. I’ve already dropped most of the accounts I had the various Tribal Wars worlds (there are 7 now) and am down to just one or two that I still maintain and check on daily. Still, a pirate MMORPG would be awesome! There are a couple out there now, but they’re not very impressive. THIS one sounds like it will be.

Here are some key elements of this game:

• You create your own customized pirate character and battle other pirates and go on piratey quests.
• When you’re on a ship, it’s not just you running the ship. It’s an actual crew, with someone in charge and giving orders and the rest carrying them out. It’s going to be a “friendly community” setting where people can interact with each other rather than everyone on their own individual ships.
• You can interact with many of the characters from the movies.
• There will be player guilds and a “virtual economy,” so you can acquire gold and buy and sell things. Buried treasures are, of course, part of the game, and you can trade the gems and artifacts in this open-market-style economy.



• There will a variety of ships to choose from, which you can buy or even take over from other pirates.
• The combat system is supposed to be quite “robust,” with levels of weaponry that you have to earn to “unlock” and make available.
• You can join crews (for quick battles) or guilds (for long term strategic play).
• Your character can build up notoriety by mastering skills, winning battles, hunting for treasure, and even by playing poker, blackjack, and darts with other pirates in the taverns.

All in all, this sounds like the best of Puzzle Pirates, 3-D interactive gaming, and MMORPGs, all immersed in the Pirates of the Caribbean setting. How fun is THAT??

I remember seeing this guy on TV back when I was a kid. Did you ever think it was possible to make a Bubble CUBE? Watch this!

Today I found out about a cool and challenging website thanks to Library Stuff’s blog post: Are You Smart Enough?. It features a 3,000-question puzzle and all the questions are riddles of some kind. So far, they don’t look like they’re technology related or anything, like SOME of these sites use. They’re mostly just riddles and word puzzles. But using Google may still help occasionally.
http://www.correct4.com/

One cool thing is that you can enter your latest correct answer on ANY screen and jump to your next one. So no remembering the path and all your answers–just your most recent one.

But with three THOUSAND questions, it will probably take a LONG time to work your way through it all. By the way, there are, in fact, prizes available along the way. Like 100 of them! So get going!

Okay, I got introduced to a game yesterday and I got hooked! The game’s called Tribal Wars and the short version is that you develop a village, acquiring resources, building buildings, and recruiting troops, all the while interacting with neighbors and people you meet in the game. Most people join (or create) a tribe, both for discussion and mutual protection & support. Sometimes villages get attacked and war can sometimes even be seen on tribal levels.

It’s a great deal of fun. And the best part, besides being FREE, is that things happen in real time. So if you’re building an upgrade to your Market or Warehouse, it may take a couple of hours and it really does. But at the same time, your workers are harvesting timber, clay, and iron at a rate of so much per hour (based on the levels of your facilities). The result of this setup is that you don’t spend hours sitting online playing the game. Instead, you just check in once in a while (daily, every other day, hourly if you’re obsessed ) and queue up building projects and maybe check your mail. Yes, it eventually will get more complicated than that, but for a while when you’re starting out, you’re just trying to get your village established.

Here’s a bit of their own description of the game:

Tribal Wars ist a free browser based MMOG. You can play the game from nearly any computer with internet access because there are no downloads necessary.

Your goal is to lead a medieval village to fame and power. With your help the small village will grow bigger and bigger. The population grows, production rises and trade prospers.

But not only your village grows. Neighbours are also looking to expand their influence. Troops are being recruited, villages are fortified and wild axemen plunder and kill.

You will meet other players, with whom you can fight together in a tribe.

Your village grows bigger and soon the formerly small village will conquer other villages….

I’ve already gotten a few friends hooked, um, I mean ENJOYING the game and we’ve formed our own tribe, called MSTies. If you recognize the reference to MST3K, you belong in our tribe.

If you want to check out the game and maybe give it a try, visit Tribal Wars and log onto World 3–that’s where we are. Also let me know what your username is and I’ll send you an invitation to join our tribe.

Since you occasionally interact with other players, especially those near to you geographically, I’ve already found another tribe that is from Milan and all speak Italian. Now I get to practice what little Italian I know, since some of them speak hardly any English. Che ficata! I mean, how cool!

[tags]games, online, tribal wars, medieval, MMOG, MST3K[/tags]