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Month: December 2002

Fun: Speed Stacking

December 12, 2002
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[Emily Fox]Wow is all I could say when I saw this video. Basically Emily Fox is a 15/16 year old student who can “speed stack” and unstack cups in the format 3-6-3 (3 cups on either side a 6 cup pyramid) in 2.72 seconds and can do a “cycle stack” (of 3-6-3 followed by a 1-10-1 pyramid followed by a 3-6-3 “down stack”) in 7.43 seconds (that’s a world record).

Just look at her hands go! I’ve watched the video and worked out that she touched each of the 12 cups 6 times – that means she was placing a cup every tenth of a second. Ok, she used both hands – but that still means changing cups every one fifth of a second.

Games: The Kill Everyone Project

December 11, 2002
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[The Kill Everyone Project]Continuing the ‘button’ theme from yesterday and Monday let me present the Flash The Kill Everyone Project. Basically, you’ve just got to use your mouse to click a moving red button and each time you do, it kills a ‘virtual person’. The “total population” count, however, is linked to the world population – therefore you (and other participants) have only got to “kill” 6,248,918,996 people (only 1,801,950,011 people have been killed so far).

It’s quite ‘ironic’ timing that I post this, as TKEP is currently ‘killing’ the UK population (14.29% done, only 52,735,058 people left to go). Yep – it goes in population order (smallest country first). Did you know the UK was the 20th most populated country?

I’ve managed to kill 818,886 people so far (giving me a ‘rank’ of 313 out of 27,783)… Here’s a thought for you – if this game was “real” and every-time you clicked the ‘Click here!’ button you really did kill someone (in real life) – would you press it? How about if someone paid you a million pounds and guaranteed that you could not be traced? On the one hand you could be killing a serial murderer/paedophile/spammer or you could be making several children orphans… How much is a human life worth?

Game: Hold The Button

December 10, 2002
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[Push Button]Continuing the button theme from yesterday, here a little basic Flash game you can play. It’s called simply “Hold The Button“, and you aren’t going to be able to guess what you have to do.

Ok – I’ll tell you: You’ve just got to Hold The Button (don’t faint – it wasn’t that difficult to guess)!. Yep, how long can you keep your finger on the mouse pressing a poor defenceless little button? I managed 2hr 45mins before I needed the computer for something else – and even than I only “held the button longer than 50.2% of visitors”. No, I didn’t rest anything of the mouse to cheat like that: I can certainly say that the only thing to touch the mouse or my keyboard during that time was myself. But, then again, I did have better things to do with my time then just sit there pressing a button… I’ll leave you to guess how I managed it 🙂

Fun: Harry Potter And The Naked Quidditch Game

December 10, 2002
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Originally published at 03.19am
Updated at 05:47am
Updated at 10:14am
Ok, ok, I still haven’t got round to doing my review of the film of Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets yet (I think I’ll have to watch it yet again to refresh my memory), but in the mean time – he’s a few things about HP that I’ve found on this ‘er internet type thing:

Thanks to Christine’s blog entry, I was laughing for nearly half-an-hour at the Naked Quidditch Match (written by Anya). Basically, it’s a series of emails (or, rather MMails: Magical Mails) sent between residents and non-residents of Hogwarts about an upcoming Quidditch game where the Gryffindor team have to play “in the buff”. Of course, a certain enterprising individual thinks it’ll be a good time to start the Unofficial Harry Potter Fan Club and the “Harry Potter Nude 2002 Calendar”…

If you can’t understand some of the terminology (or you are wondering what, exactly, Quidditch is), then you may find the Harry Potter Lexicon handy.

Oh, and before you start thinking “it’s all fiction” – it isn’t. The now grown up Harry Potter was kind enough to give an interview to E! Online last month.

[Update:05:47am]
It seems even Jakob Nielsen has got on the Harry Potter bandwagon – his latest Web usability column is entitled “In the Future, We’ll All Be Harry Potter” where he compares things like the Daily Prophet (the magical newspaper with movable pictures in HP) with the Microsoft TabletPC (or, I guess, any other PDA). He also includes the following memorable quote from Arthur C. Clarke‘s book “Report On Planet Three“: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (there’s also a corollary to this ‘law’ which goes “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced” – from Gregory Benford‘s “Foundation’s Fear“).

[Update:10:15am]
It seems the aforementioned Naked Quidditch Match has been made UserFriendly‘s Link Of The Day for today. Let’s just hope the folks over at Gryffindor Tower are ready for the onslaught of visitors!

Weird: Shutdown the Internet

December 9, 2002
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[Don't push the button]You all know to shut down your computer properly at night/when you finish don’t you? Well – did you remember to shut down the Internet correctly when you had finished using it?

No? Well, next time – remember to take your Javascript enabled web browser over to Turn Off The Internet and safely shutdown the Internet when you’ve finished with it.

Before you do that, remember that Windows allows you to use Alt+F4 to close the current window…

(I actually have fond memories of a big red button – some ODP editors will probably remember a big April Fools joke that was played on us in 2001. I think we all learnt that when a sign says “Do NOT [Push] the Big Red Button!”, it’s advisable to NOT push it: no matter how much you are tempted. Following instructions is a good idea sometimes 🙂 )