Misc

Stuff that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else.

AGH COMIC SANS!!!

 Posted by (Visited 8714 times)  Mailbag, Misc  Tagged with: ,
Aug 152011
 

Dear Ralph,

I am going to study Game Architecture and Design in a few weeks, and I received the books for this education yesterday. Your book “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” is also part of the obligatory literature. When I took a look at the book, it quickly made me deeply disappointed. The book contains text typeset in Comic Sans. Besides being ugly, the font is not intended to be used for serious messages. I won’t go into details here, but I would like to point out to you, the website http://comicsanscriminal.com/. I cannot take text printed in Comic Sans seriously, and I regret that my teachers require me to read this comic book as part of a scientific education. I hope that you (or whoever typeset the book) will choose an appropriate font next time.

Kind regards, Ruud v. A.

That would be because the book is half cartoons. The cartoons have text in Comic Sans because, well, they’re cartoons. Some of them are even actual comics with multiple panes arranged sequentially and everything.

You’ll be pleased to know that the book also has headers typeset in the comicsanscriminal-recommended (and undeniably ugly) font Basically Functional.

User Spam Remover for WordPress

 Posted by (Visited 10874 times)  Misc  Tagged with:
Mar 132011
 

Version 0.9.1 of User Spam Remover for WordPress is out, and I wanted to recommend it because it is the only tool to remove fake users that has ever worked on my WordPress database.

Earlier versions didn’t work, and the plugin author, Joel Hardi, was doggedly persistent in following up from a comment thread post all the way to emails as we sent SQL queries, logs and DB structures back and forth to one another. Now it works like a charm, and I am pretty sure the result has sped up my blog a fair amount.

If you were one of the 6000+ users who were deleted because of lack of comment posting activity, sorry. 🙂 And if you have a WordPress blog and were driven batty by hundreds of “new users” a day, this is the plugin for you.

 

Blog maintenance

 Posted by (Visited 51601 times)  Misc
Mar 082011
 

Two updates to keep people apprised of:

  1. My hosting service, Bluehost.com, is moving the blog to a new data center. This will happen “between 10 PM, March 7th and 5 AM March 8th (MST), during low traffic periods.” This means the blog will be down during those times. They expect it to take 1-3 hours.
  2. You may have noticed, if you ever go over there, that the Theory of Fun site is currently down. It is in the process of moving as well, only with a lot more hassle because it’s changing providers as well. So there’s probably a 1-3 day delay there while that happens. Once it comes back up, I am thinking of doing updates on it — it was an old-school hand-coded site back in 2004 when I made it, and now it looks hopelessly out of date.
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A few interesting links

 Posted by (Visited 9003 times)  Game talk, Mailbag  Tagged with: ,
Aug 162010
 

Just got back from vacation! I had a lovely time. I also had some interesting stuff sent to me, which has piled up in the mailbox. So here’s a couple of interesting links.

The editors hope to attract a wide range of writing to Metaverse Creativity, including ideas about artificial-intelligence systems, landscaping, zoological and biological creations, and even virtual-world fashion design. Second Life’s relations to psychology, law, and technology are another focus. Plans for MC‘s first issue include a piece on how technological prostheses—beginning with the telescope—have altered human perceptions. Another article explains what neuroscience reveals about the benefits of the kinds of brain plasticity that simulation in virtual worlds can enhance, while a third edges up demurely on love in Second Life with a take on virtual-world adaptations of Korean romantic puppetry.

Avatars as Editors – PageView – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

If I can meet my kickstarter goal of $5000, phase 1 of my trip will commence. Starting in Korea, where I currently reside, I will fly to Vietnam, and explore Southeast Asia via land travel (bus, train, walking) over a period of 4-5 months: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar.

I will then venture into China, and make my way towards the coast, where I will depart for Japan sometime in the Spring, in time for the planting season, where I will most likely spend some time volunteering on organic farms. I’m scheduling about 6 months for the whole trip…

If I can meet my $5000 kickstarter goal, that should cover most of my expenses through Southeast Asia, Japan and China. I would like to make at least two games for each country I visit, so we’re looking at probably 10-15 games. There’s no cookie-cutter mold for the games, though, so it will also depend on the size and scope of each individual game.

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