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Month: January 2003

Joke: No Crayons

[Crayons]The infant class had settled down to its colouring books. Katherine went up to the teacher’s desk and said, “Miss Richmond, I ain’t got no crayons.”

“Katherine,” Miss Richmond said, “you mean, “I don’t have any crayons.’ You don’t have any crayons. We don’t have any crayons. They don’t have any crayons. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“Not really,” Katherine said, “What happened to all them crayons?”

(Incidentally, were you aware that in the UK quite a large number of primary school teachers actually buy ‘extra supplies’ such as drawing paper, glue sticks and crayons for their pupils out of their own wages?)

Game: Pocketful of Stars

[Pocketful Of Stars]In this cute little Flash game, Pocketful of Stars, you use your mouse to control a little girl who likes collecting stars. Just click on her, hold the mouse button down to increase her jumping power and then release it (all whilst keeping the mouse pointer over her) and then help guide her reflection to collect the stars.

You get extra points for collecting several stars in a jump and more points for a moving shooting star. The noises the little girl makes as she jumps are quite sweet – but it is difficult sometimes to keep the mouse pointer on her to make her jump.

My highest score so far has been 1418 (82 stars) – it shouldn’t be that difficult to break…

Search: SEO as Editors

[ODP Search Engine Optimisation]One question, which I’m sure a few people will ask (and, in fact, I was asked at the interview), is how will me being employed as a SEO (search engine optimiser/optimizer) affect my editorship at the Open Directory?

Basically, it won’t. Many other editors work in the Search Engine Optimisation field and as long as we don’t give “our clients” preferential treatment then everything is ok.

Admittedly, our editing logs may be investigated closer than a “standard editor” (as history has taught us quite a few editor SEO just abuse their position as editors and that sort of thing needs to be monitored) but as long as we follow the guidelines then everything is alright.

Personal: New Job!

[Tigger and Zebedee]After several months of being unemployed, I’ve now been offered a job and I start on Monday! Yipee! (bouncy bouncy Richy).

I’m going to be working for a local web design and SEO (search engine optimisation) company doing a whole variety of work – and by looks of things I’m going to really enjoy working for them. I’m getting paid 3/4 of what I was previously on, but as this new place is less than 2 miles away I won’t be spending a quarter of my wages on transport – hence it all nicely works out. So, I’m doing what I love doing for a local (financial stable and growing) company for a decent wage – just perfect. And it came at “just the right time” as well, my bank balance is currently, erm, “running on fumes” and whilst I did receive a payment this morning from my “other web activities” which just pushed my bank balance back into the black – I couldn’t survive much longer. Now, at the end of last year, I was unemployed, Ciaran was unemployed, my GESF and her flatmate were unemployed – and now, 9 days into the New Year, and we’ve all got jobs. Things are looking up! 🙂

Game: Ant Wars

[Ant]Ok since finding this game via Quanta, I’ve been playings Ant Wars for several hours(around 3 hours last night and 3 hours so far tonight) and I quite enjoy it (no I don’t, I just play games I really hate for hours on end 🙂 ).

It’s a bit like Sim City – but with Ants. You start off with around a dozen ants, and then you’ve got to hunt for food, enlarge the nest or hatch more ants. Only thing is – you can only select one “action” to do at a time. Sometimes the ants will act on their own initiative and enlarge the nest slightly or discover some food – but you’ve got to guide them.
And, like Sim City, you have disasters. Instead of Earthquakes, you have Buster the Bully with his magnifying glass burning the ants, or he’s starting an ant-farm and needs some specimens – you’ve also got floods (lots of rain), “monster attacks” (birds) and other things to look out for. You also get the chance to fight with other ants – don’t be lulled into thinking you win the fights against enemy ants everytime, they do win occasionally so check the odds (I didn’t and one of my colony’s was wiped out).
It’s hard to get to a population of 3,000 ants, and it’s extremely difficult to maintain it at the 5,000 level – but it is achievable (at least in the short term). This game, unlike many of the others I have mentioned here, just needs a standard web browser – no plugins (Flash or Java) required. However, because of that fact – every move you make is sent back to the remote server so it is slow… Perhaps if the designers of the game had made it into a Java applet, it would be even more addictive!