Aris Katsaris

This amused me: Hillary Clinton's path to victory

On other news, I'm getting back into interactive fiction -- past few weeks I've tried some of the best games that have come out (and I've therefore missed) the last few years, at least as judged by the results of the annual IF competition, the XYZZY awards and the Spring Thing.

Next few weeks I'll try to start again on a rather *big* idea for a work of interactive fiction that I've had for several years now.

Somewhere in between the two, I'll be writing a lengthy criticism/suggestion list for Inform 7, which despite its several flaws will almost certainly be used by me in aforesaid game, as it's pretty much the defacto replacement for Inform 6, which is the only IF language I'm familiar with.

This is one of the best optical illusions I've yet seen: http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html Focusing on the central cross, a moving green circle appears, and if one really focuses, all the purple ones gradually disappear.

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The beta of Inform 7 was released a day or two ago. And it is such a radical redesign over what Inform 6 used to provide that it may very well actually push me back to writing Interactive Fiction after some years' absence. Besides the unified GUI enviroment so that I won't need to struggle with compiler/interpreter/editor, the language itself has been redesigned to the point that its source reads like natural English..

Really it's so amazingly radical a redesign that it feels inappropriate that they didn't change the name "Inform" completely... Or atleast call it "Inform++" or something.

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I dunno what I was thinking but I signed myself up for the femgenficathon orchestrated by gehayi The prompt I was given has already sparked some ideas. The deadline is far enough ahead that I'll probably have the time to turn them into a story too. Probably.

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Iraq is #4 in the most failed states of the world listing. Same ranking as last year but the numerical score has actually worsened. Not much surprise there, just more bitter validation of the stupidity of invading it in the first place.

Greece is in the 26th *best* place -- while Scandinavia tops the list.