May, 2008

Grouped under the ARG, Alternate Reality Gaming, label for lack of a better term. I think all 3 exemplify something new, unsettling, and fascinating that I don’t yet have a word for.

1. Little Brother^ELZR, now available as atoms and bits, has a glorious climax of hundreds of vampires invading San Francisco’s civic center, messing with general paranoia.
   
   
   > RULES FOR VAMPMOB
   
   

   > You are part of a clan of daylight vampires. You’ve discovered the secret of surviving the terrible light of the sun. The secret was cannibalism: the blood of another vampire can give you the strength to walk among the living.

   > You need to bite as many other vampires as you can in order to stay in the game. If one minute goes by without a bite, you’re out. Once you’re out, turn your shirt around backwards and go referee—watch two or three vamps to see if they’re getting their bites in.
   
   

   > To bite another vamp, you have to say “Bite!” five times before they do. So you run up to a vamp, make eye-contact, and shout “bite bite bite bite bite!” and if you get it out before she does, you live and she crumbles to dust.

   > You and the other vamps you meet at your rendezvous are a team. They are your clan. You derive no nourishment from their blood.
   
   

   > You can “go invisible” by standing still and folding your arms over your chest. You can’t bite invisible vamps, and they can’t bite you.

   > This game is played on the honor system. The point is to have fun and get your vamp on, not to win.
   
   

   > There is an end-game that will be passed by word of mouth as winners begin to emerge. The game-masters will start a whisper campaign among the players when the time comes. Spread the whisper as quickly as you can and watch for the sign.

   > M1k3y
   
   > bite bite bite bite bite!
   


2. Freezing Grand Central, a most elegant improv piece (via Alan).
   
   


3. That great Free Hugs campaign a while ago:
   
   


4. Got more samples along these lines? I wanted to quote something from SFZero but I’m still too new to it…
   

oSkope many views are a nice, rich way to browse Amazon (for other engines it isn’t nearly as successful) but this simple diagram in particular —plotting book covers against price and sales rank— is genuinely useful. Shame there’s no option to choose your axes. How about price vs stars? Stars vs. length?

Amazing how compelling a dollop of interactivity an underwear catalog makes. (via reddit)

I figured someone had to have done something like this for hardcore porn. Apparently, the Virtual sex with.. series is just that. (Via NYT) Anyone tried it?

Where, but the web, would you find someone like Oliver Steele? This ain’t no metaphor. That name was a link. I’m not talking about Oliver Steele the person, I haven’t met him (though I apparently am 1-degree of separation from him; weird, that). I’m not talking about the sweating, walking, pinchable, space-and-time-and-flesh-bound avatar, I’m talking about his online persona. And either I’ve gotten crazy enough or technology has advanced enough that I’m ready to treat Oliver Steele —the link, his blog, words, diagrams, code, and further media— as a person by its own merits.

• My no TV. It is, too, one of my most valuable possessions.
  
• Functional JS is a sweet, sweet library, with one of the best documentations I’ve ever seen. Stuff like this is what makes the interwebs the best place on earth. And no, I don’t mean that as a metaphor either.
  
• Addition fractions. Y’know how fractions deal with multiplication? They need not be!
  
  
• Interactive regular expressions. Live regex! Nothing like interaction to make easy and fun once chores.
  
• Why are far things small? and other really hard questions from Steele’s kids.
  
• Visualizing basic algebra.
  
  
• Fluently: a construction kit for chainable methods. Finally, a word for the programming style I’ve been hinting at: Fluent interfaces!
  
• Learning about constraint diagrams
  
  
• A metaphor of computer’s history.
  
• The true advantages of Macs. I agree.
  
• The metaphor of the rock.
  
  
• Aargh!. How to spell it? It’s genius’s mark to have this much fun with such a trivial question.
  
  

Rented a bike the other day and rode around San Francisco for the first time. I was as happy as can be. Very physical, dog-like, movement-for-the-sake-of-movement fun. Fell in love with this beautiful city all over again, the place makes much more sense on a bike, distances feel right: pretty much everything is just a couple of minutes away.

So, here a proposal to address these concerns. A bike for the city, for sidewalks, for standing:

What d’you think?

Hadn’t been so taken by painting since Klimt or Schiele. I love these self-portraits. The solid colors, the roughness, the sloppy daubs, the rawness, the sexuality, the odd angles, the sharp, geometrical lines, the intimacy, the posing, the light.

Whoodathunkit? Yahoo!’s omg! gossip rag is one of the most enticing and innovative web interfaces I’ve seen in a while.