Author: Rory

You may ave noticed a redesign. I wasn’t going to comment on it, but it occurs to me that you may want to comment on it. So here is your opportunity. Knock yourselves out.

Yes, Fully Turnable Pages are just one of the features of the Onion’s Platinum Prestige Encore Gold Premium Collector’s Collection. Which I’m trying to win. And you can too. Go see the Blogstakes competition.

…until the Eye loses. It’s my blog, I’ll decide what pun is too bad. It’s pretty much open season for Lord of the Rings talk. Slashdot can’t shut up about it, and I’m sure as hell not going to try. Nor am I going to try a comprehensive review. No-one is going to decide whether or not to see Return of the King on my recommendation. Hell, no-one’s going to decide whether or not to watch it at all. Anyone who’s going to see it has already decided (and seen it, in some cases).

In the spirit of giving you something you won’t see anywhere else, I give you "Monty Python’s Lord of the Rings":

[Boromir is hit with an orc arrow]

Boromir

Message for you sir.

Gandalf

Minas Tirith!

Pippin

It’s only a model.

Gandalf

Shh!

Minas Tirith Soldier I [pointing at Aragorn]

Who’s he?

Minas Tirith Soldier II

Must be the heir to the throne of Gondor

Minas Tirith Soldier I

How can you tell?

Minas Tirith Soldier II

‘E ain’t got shit all over ‘im.

Saruman

Go and boil your roots, so called Treebeard. You and all your silly entish twiggits. Your mother smelled of hamster and your father was an elderberry!

The context for this post is less than ideal, but I’ll press on. You see I’ve discovered – by means soon to be explained – what is perhaps the greatest game ever played. The less than ideal context I mentioned is one in which I have not yet had the opportunity to play the game, but have been enjoying it for close to 24 hours despite this uncomfortable fact. An ‘Ask Slashdot’ about the choice of party-games for a Christmas party led me to the blog of J Random Slashdotter (who it was is unimportant, so I haven’t bothered to go back and check). In particular, an entry regarding a game by the name of 1000 Blank White Cards.

Descriptions of the game are vague, as there’s no real right way to describe it. It seems necessary to include several "I’ll get to that"s. No doubt there exist better descriptions than the one I’m about to write. Whatever. You’re here because you like me.

The start is easy. It’s a card game, in which the cards are made during the game. The cards are made from blank index cards or something similar. Each card has a title (usually humorous), a picture (definitely humorous) and a set of instructions for its use (hilarity ensues). What instructions? I’ll get to that. A few minutes are spent making cards before the game begins, but most of them are made during the game.

The game starts with a deck – consisting of some drawn cards and some blanks – in the centre of the table and a hand of five cards – again, some blank some not – dealt to each player. Play goes clockwise from the dealer’s left. Each turn, the player takes (I want to say ‘draws’, but that’s confusing) a card from the deck and then plays one from his hand. Cards are played to the table or to a person of the player’s choice, depending on the card. Players can make new cards out of blanks in their hands at any time. The aim is to score points. Except it’s not really. The aim is to have fun and create hillarious cards. So the cards sort of matter. So…

Title, picture, instructions. Great. Instructions can be simple game instructions – lose a turn, earn 500 points – or more comedic instructions – burp the alphabet for 600 points – or even simply bizarre instructions. The key is interaction of the cards. I could create a ‘Megawealth’ card with a big picture of a pot of gold and the instruction ‘Earn +1,000,000 points’ and play it on myself. But anyone else is free to make, for example, a ‘Stockmarket Crash’ card with the instruction ‘Players with Megawealth lose all their points.’

As you can imagine, it’s impossible to win by trying. You really win by creating the most fun cards, the cards that everyone agrees should be kept for the next time you play.

I said I’d been enjoying this game without having played it. I have spent the entire day – and you should take that as literally meaning all of my waking time from this time yesterday to this time today – coming up with possibilities. I’ll put some of these online at some stage. Until then you could check out the samples shown on the site where I first read the rules and this dedicated site.

It’s probably considered by some to be bad form to simply write ‘Damn Right’ and provide a link, so I’ll introduce. Slashdot has a poll entitled ‘Sci-Fi Leader You’d Follow to the End’, and I agree not only with the majority choice, but with the incredible lead our man has over the next most popular. Interestingly the poll lists the actors, rather than their characters, as the choices.

To misappropriate a Simpsons quote, "They’re sending us reasons why Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk."

J

Lousy Xtra Vision.

R

What’s up?

J

The card is sticking out from the plastic. They can’t even use a simple laminator.

R

I always wanted to use their laminator to laminate my list.

J

What list?

R

Five celebrities I’m allowed to sleep with. Though I guess I’m allowed sleep with any of them if I’m single. It’s one of the benefits of being single.

J

Not benefit in the sense of actually being of any use.

R

No, just a sort of moral thing, like a company car when you can’t drive.

J

…

R

I guess I just implied more than I meant to.

Why yes, I am going to mention every little advance from Google that I hear about; thank you for asking. I seems that Google now searches for synonyms – though it ironically knows no synonyms for synonym, nor for thesaurus. Just prepend any word with a tilde (~) and Big G (the other big G – the one that exists) will search for the word or its synonyms. To see only the synonyms, search for ‘~%s -%s’, where %s is any word.

Strangely, it seems to think that the only alternative for ‘frog’ is ‘froggy’, but a search for ‘toad’ yields ‘frog’. Don’t ask how I came upon that example.

Coolness aside, this could be useful for help/tutorials/guides/faqs which are all considered synonyms. And yes Google considers Sofa and Couch to be synonyms.

I’m just taking a break out of not doing that assignment I’m meant to be doing to point you in the direction of this brain-melting optical illusion. Pregnant women and people with pace-makers should probably avoid it. Argh!

Anyone whose time is so precious that they don’t want to waste a single second, though presumably not precious enough that they won’t waste it reading this, will want to take note. You can reasonably expect nothing new to appear here until Friday or Sunday. Remember that whole assignment thing? Turns out they don’t stop at just one. So for the forseeable future (read: this week) most of the content on the main page of my personal website will have been written by someone who is not me. Go crazy. Not too crazy.

I have successfully created the fabled Dog With Hornets in its Mouth And When it Barks it Shoots Hornets at You. Specifically, F18 Hornets and Allied Attack Dogs. Less confusingly, a frivolous mod of Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge. The necessary file is on my netsoc account. Just unzip it to the game directory and it’ll automagically be used. To remove the mod just move, remove or rename the file.