link-o-rama

It's funny, starting up blogging in a new place. I'm not sure what my voice is going to be like here, so I usually write about my thoughts about the medium for a little bit first. In fact, almost every time I've started writing in a new place, I've done this. I think this blog is going to be a little more of a public version of my earlier Penguin Parens blog, which had lived on hackmode.org, and on which I would semi-occasionally put up little howtos and technical discussions. I'll still try to do that here, but I'd also like to expand out to talking about philosophy and also just linking to techie things. My more personal stuff lives on LJ, and I'll try to keep the personal and techie/professional/pseudointellectual more segmented...

We'll see if anybody reads this, heh.

Today is about buttons and games!!

Links:
- On Saturday, I participated in Out Of Hand Theater's production of The Game. It was a large-scale scavenger hunt and puzzle-solving game, run through the few miles surrounding the Little Five Points area. It involved a lot of puzzle solving, clue-finding, and confusion as to what was a clue on the part of our team. (We came in a very respectable fifth-out-of-dozens.)

- History of the Button has been making its way around the Internets recently, but it's a super-interesting site. What could possibly be more integral to today's technology than buttons? And they're fairly new -- as you'll see if you look at their very nice presentation on the subject.

- AVANT GAME is Jane McGonigal's site about all of the interesting stuff that she does, which largely includes research on games, computer and otherwise! She travels to different universities and teaches classes about game design. Also, Jane's been known to work with Ian Bogost from the EGL, and recently, they produced Cruel 2 B Kind, "a game of benevolent assassination". It's sort of like water-gun assassination games that some of you may be familiar with, although probably much funnier for uninformed bystanders. Because you can kill people by complimenting them on their shoes, and you have no idea which ones. (or even who's playing).

- Come Out And Play -- the last day of the festival is today! But it's about all sorts of wild outdoor games, including large, real-life versions of classic video games, such as Space Invaders, and apparently a version of the well-blogged Pac Man played outside.