IQ Adventure Test

http://www.okcupid.com/iq-adventure-test?score=1263504531

This is the first and probably only time I will ever have a highest score for spatial analysis, so I'm going to enjoy it. The link is to my scores for OK Cupid's IQ Adventure Test - a horrible amalgam of IQ test and Choose Your Own Adventure, where a decision made at the beginning of the game determines the puzzles you'll be asked to solve. If you think you're a dumb-ass, take it anyway as it offers a social analysis section where hopefully you will shit it in. (I did unbelievably badly in the social section, scoring almost as low as I did on math. I wouldn't want to take this too seriously, but given that I actually *gave up* on one of the hard maths puzzles, that means I have less social than math skills. It would explain why I've been single for #$%! years.)

Tomorrow, more sweary goodness.

The album, not the country

I haven't had a chance to pick up the belowmentioned Electric Six album I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master, as I'm saving up to move house and will need the first month's rent and bond. I did buy a copy of Switzerland a while ago, and on searching blogs for it, was a little surprised that it didn't do very well. It doesn't have any obvious iconically awesome hits like Gay Bar or Danger! High Voltage!, so alternative radio seems to have just gone "Meh" and bloggers just shat on it from a great height.

This is a shame, because, whilst it would obviously be blasphemous and stupid to compare Switzerland to Exile On Main St, like that favourite Stones album* it's a good solid album on which every track is pretty decent and you have to listen quite a few times to mine all the awesome out of it. The production and riffs smother the fairly clever lyrics (I said clever, not intelligent!), so you can listen to a song for ages before you realise "Hey, this is fucking funny!". These are some of the more overtly sexy tracks.

Slices Of You
Germans In Mexico
Mr Woman

Free file hosting from File Den

*My favourite Stones album is Some Girls, continuing the theme of my tragic addiction to both rock AND disco.

This Post Has No Title

I was looking for a recipe for a chickpea salad - not that anyone needs a recipe for chickpea salad, and in fact I ended up doing exactly what I was going to do in the first place, which was cut up a stack of crunchy things and pour vinegar over them - when I found the delightful blog Veggie Friendly. Veggie Friendly was originally a restaurant review site, and they do still do them, but the reviewers are currently holidaying in the Middle East and reviewing what they find there. The photos are likely to have you trying to reach into your computer screen. As you would hope from a vegetarian blog, they also have a recipe collection.

It's Nice That is now complementing Drawn! for my daily fix of pretty things to look at and play with.

4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition - entries unveiled!

Entry time is over and playtime has begun! Jay will be posting a new entry every few hours or so, so start playing and thinking about how you're going to distribute your votes. For anyone new to JayIsGames.com or the competition, basically, Jayisgames puts out a call for entries with a theme for game designers to integrate into their game - this time around, it's "ball physics". It's up to the designer how they do this, and following the theme slavishly won't guarantee them a prize. Aside from the main prizes, this year sponsored by Sierra Online, ArcadeTown, ArmorGames and FreeworldGroup, the real excitement for mine is the Audience Prize, which is composed of donations by JayIsGames readers. (That would be you.)

So far, I'm liking:

Roll

Starts off annoyingly easy - quickly becomes annoyingly hard. Nice, clean, Nitrome-style graphics.

Factory Balls

ZOMG! A Bart Bonte game I don't hate!

Day of the Bobteds

By the eeeeeeeeevil genius who brought you Hapland, an elegant little game with polished graphics that might disappoint Hapland fans (you may be comforted to know that they look a bit Ferry Halim, so all is not lost).

Kaichou

Bless you! No major strategy or effort here, just shoot black balls to turn them into pretty flowers.

Mr. Mothball

From the artistic vision that brought you Submachine and Daymare Town, the virtue of this game lies not so much in the motion physics as the sound. Jump on the blocks (what do you think they are made of?) and listen to the noise it makes.

Brownie Motion

Amateurish graphics and a gameplay so simple you can feel your brain getting smaller as you play, yet weirdly compelling. If lopsidation can just team up with an artist and/or musician to make the interface just a tiny bit less crap, we could be onto a winner.

For my money, the winner so far is:

Angular Momentum

It's easy to learn, quite polished in its presentation, addictive and fun. A few physics nerds over at Jayisgames have complained that the movement is inaccurate, but I don't think that interferes with the enjoyment of the game itself.

Play games, find your purpose in life

This is cute: play ten old-skool computer games such as Simon, Snake and Duck Hunt to identify your career path. You don't have to become a member of OKCupid to play, unless you want to keep your score.

The Fun Way to Pick a Career Test written by harpoleers2 on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Human Brain Cloud

Oh my god... I discovered Human Brain Cloud this morning via JayIsGames and I've been addicted all freakin' day. Basically, you load a word and type in whatever you associate with it. I got up to 1294 words on the leaderboard (look for Ms 45).

Math Mountain

Math Mountain is an addictive arithmetic game wherein you climb a mountain, competing against another person or the computer, by answering arithmetic questions correctly. It's only BODMAS (without any brackets - Happy Bodmas!), so you don't have to worry about remembering high school algebra, and the questions vary from very easy (1 / 1 = ...) to fairly hard (123 - 75 = ...). You as a geek may be able to answer the questions easily (see post below), but you are being timed and you also have to choose the correct answer from a multiple choice, which, believe it or not, makes it harder. (A few times I've worked out the correct answer quickly, but the mouse slipped and I selected the number next to the one I wanted.) In the meantime, you're racing the CPU to the top of the mountain and collecting powerups such as the ability to stop the opponent from moving or to remove all but two of the multiple choices. If you answer incorrectly or not at all, you'll slide backwards.

As you play through the levels, your side of the mountain will get longer and less steep, so that you have to answer more questions faster than the CPU. You'll have a larger number of multiple choices, making the chances of quickly clicking the wrong answer higher. However, if you do lose, you have a number of lives, so you can opt to "Continue" after the level has been lost. When you lose, you get to keep any powerups you haven't used, so I suggest you save powerups as much as you can.

This game is similar to a test administered by some recruitment companies where you have to quickly select the correct answer to a maths problem, so you may find it valuable to get a bit of practice on Math Mountain. If you're not very good at arithmetic, this is a fun way to practice.

(This review is intended for Jay Is Games, but I want it on my blog so I can get at it. I'm a math retard and need all the practice I can get!)

Could you have Asperger Syndrome?

Those of you who have wondered whether their geekery actually tips over into pathology can now whip yourselves into a frenzy of self-doubt with the Asperger Test, although if you're in a frenzy of self-doubt it's probably safe to assume you don't have it.

I was simultaneously relieved and confused to get a "Typical woman" score. Given that I've been accused of being autistic (thanks Dad) and a nerd, I wonder if that score is attributable to my recent run of regular happy-pill taking and sudden spike in income (it's surprising how much less shy and geeky you become when you can afford to stand a round).

JayIsGames Competition #3!

The third annual JayIsGames Flash Game Design competition - themed "Replay" - is parading the entrants as we speak. It's too late to enter, but you can play the games and vote for the winner of the Audience Prize. The first and second prizes are chosen by JiG reviewers, but the Audience Prize is chosen by PayPal donations of at least USD $1.00 and can add quite a jolt of cash to a talented designer's prize. Alternatively, it can do Great Justice for a designer who for some bizarre reason wasn't chosen by the staff judges.

Here's some of my picks from this year's entrants:


Karma fuses the concepts of reincarnation and the Western 7 Deadly Sins to create a game where the aim is to clear your sins and reach salvation with as few reincarnations as possible. It has a few bugs which can make it frustrating to play, but the music, sound effects and visuals are gorgeous and soothing enough to prevent you from hurling the keyboard through the monitor.


Tonypa's Yalpeyalper is a simple but cute game where you need to eliminate all of the squares in the grid by setting off a chain reaction. Be careful, though - if you're wrong, you'll end up having to replay all of the levels you've previously won.


In Paracaidas (parachute in Spanish), you guide a parachutist safely to the target. It doesn't sound like much, but it's beautifully designed and fun to play.


Wouter Visser's Gimme Friction Baby leaves it to you to work out how to play it. Once you do, you simply MUST go back and try to beat your high score... goddammit...


In Timebot, you stand on panels to open doors, etc. Then you kill yourself and reincarnate to actually go through the doors. It's a pretty cool game.

If these games don't do it for you, there's plenty more at JayIsGames!

Consult Me For All You Want To Know

Sam Turner is a prolific blogger whose latest blog (one of five he has going) posts highlights from a 1900 book of household management. It's only just started, so head over there and show some love. Especially for the one where it recommends drinking wine boiled with ginger... to treat diabetes.

Yet more procrastination....

Er... I'm doing my laundry...


What Famous Student Are You?

9000 words in 40 days (including 4000 words in 13 days)

I have stuff to write. Specifically, I have a 6000 word essay about the relationship between democracy and terrorism due in on the 4th of May, and a thesis about the Bush Administration's "freedom agenda" for the Middle East due in on the 1st of June. I don't know that I'm gonna make it, especially since I'm supposed to have a draft of the thesis in to my supervisor at about the same time I hand in my essay.

(By the way, the scare quotes around the words freedom agenda should not indicate to you that I'm doing a predictable liberal hatchet job on Bush, who, as we all know, is a chimp. A chimp with an IQ of 120* who speaks fluent French* and is an inspiring speaker provided you don't let him wander off topic. The point of the thesis is that, initially, the "freedom agenda" did in fact represent a genuine break with US foreign policy history, at least to some extent, until the Administration got spooked by the rise of Hamas and inhibited by the sheer shitfulness of the war in Iraq. If you call yourself a liberal, you should want to support democratic developments in the Middle East, including anyone in the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas or whoever, who shows signs of co-operation. The idea is excellent; the execution is appalling, Crack-man.)

*My sources are liberal - Ivo Daalder in America Unbound for the first, New York Times for the second. The NYT article was one of those "What would you ask the President?" things they do around election time, and the head of some US-France friendship society mentioned in her contribution that Bush speaks fluent French. It puts the whole "The French don't even have a word for entrepreneur" thing into perspective.

Anyhoo, it's fairly obvious from the posts below that I've been procrastinating my little (that is, not little) arse off via the pleasures of Blogger, despite the fact that this blog has about two genuine readers a day (out of about 30 hits per day, about two are not search spiders). So what I decided to do was to start writing directly into Blogger. That way, I can copy and paste what I write into my thesis template, and voila! The illusion of procrastination whilst doing real work! The two real readers are most welcome to comment.