Unfortunately, I suspect my progress this month is due largely to being sick for a week, heh. I have, however, started doing push-ups again, using a set of Perfect Pushup handles I got from a peer reward at work. I like them - they appear to relieve the stress on my wrists, although it also seems harder to do them, but that’s fine.
A game design teacher named Ian Schreiber has launched a free online class called Game Design Concepts. He comes primarily from a video-game background, but the class is supposed to aim at fundamentals of game design irrespective of the medium, and all assignments are non-digital. He’s got a class blog, forums and wiki set up and I’m very excited about participating.
There’s also homework, some of which I need to complete before tomorrow’s “lesson” is posted, heh.
I’m kidding about the versus part, of course. I caught this (somewhere) and wanted to share. John Hodgman, most well-known as the PC in those smug, irritating Apple television ads, is also a writer and humorist, apparently. Here he is speaking at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, calling out Obama on his nerd credentials.
Actually, for that matter, Obama himself gave a pretty humorous speech at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner a while back, in which he roasted quite a few people. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.
More amazing photography here. Apparently the astronauts on the International Space Station caught this fantastic pic of Sarychev Peak erupting on June 12th. Awesome.
Someone linked me to the Alice and Kev blog the other day. A British game design student named Robin Burkinshaw is running an “experiment” in the game Sims 3. He created a man and his daughter, gave him the traits of inappropriate and insane, and made them homeless — they live in a park, they don’t have any income and must scrounge for food, or in Alice’s case, eat at school when possible.
Anyway, the writer does some literary interpretation of the events in the game, and of course is able to influence certain things if he wants, but all in all, it’s a very fascinating look into simulating something probably not intended in the game originally. And, it very likely will make you think a bit.
Highly recommended.
Stride Gum held the drawing for the winners of $25,000 each and I was not one of the lucky five. Bummer.
I’m still curious to see which name they end up choosing for their gum. I believe InfiMint was in the lead and Permamint was in third place at the time they closed the voting. I still like Permamint the best of the top ten.
So, what started out a little too much fun in the sun at the zoo last Sunday turned out to be a dose of coxsackie virus for Ryan, aka hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). Coxsackie is one of several enteroviruses that can cause HFMD, and enteroviruses as a whole are second only to rhinoviruses as the most common infectious agents in humans; the group includes the viruses responsible for more well-known diseases like polio and hepatitis A.
I think we’ve got a mild strain, though. Ryan had blisters in his throat and a fever, but the fever quit in less than three days and he never got anything on his hands or feet. Caroline got the blisters in her throat and fever, but nothing on her hands and feet. I think I got mine from Caroline (who is a veritable fountain of coxsackie due to her diarrhea and massive drooling). I got the blisters in the throat and fever; nothing on my extremities. My fever broke in under two days, but my throat persists in feeling bad. I think it’s being complicated by an allergy-drainage-induced sore throat; I might have to go buy some throat-soothing stuff.
Unfortunately, coxsackie is apparently pretty tough and can survive outside the host for several days; in addition, the virus can remain present in saliva and the digestive tract (thus feces) for several weeks. I think we’ll let the kids venture out next week, but remain vigilant that they don’t share drinks with anyone, etc. I think we’ll wait at least a week or two before disinfecting everything in the house and letting anyone come over to visit/play.