More sites jumping on the CSS + structural markup:

Firtst, Happy Cog Studios has redesigned the Amnesty International USA site. Jeffrey Zeldman discusses the challenges of working with a large site on a tight budget and his experience with the dreaded 3rd party problem. He also has a more complete discussion of the issues here.

Next up, telecomms giant AT&T has pulled off a valid XHTML strict home page, complete with a Flash movie (yeah, SVG might be nice, but realistically browser and plugin support just hasn't reached practical levels). Go Ma Bell, go!

Finally, a the open source Mono Project has come within three validation errors. The gotchas are small: a non-standard attibute value, a missing alt attribute and a missing <li> tag. While not technically valid, they are using clean, semantic markup and that's the most important thing. Besides, I'm inclined to cut 'em a bit of slack on the site — replicating Microsoft's .Net framework as a cross-platform API is a momentous undertaking, and little details like three piddling validation errors on the site are bound to get overlooked here or there while they persue the greater goal.

Hat-tip to Eric Meyer and the 'Redesign Watch' item he's got tucked away in the right-hand column of his site.

Fellow WaSP Dave Shea is compiling list of web design resources for beginners.

This project promises to be as useful in standards evangelism as Dave's Zen Garden. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he unearths.

The Poynter Institute has posted their EyeTrack III study, a fascinating look at how people view web pages facilitated by a technology that allowed researchers to track participants' eye movements as they surfed.

Hat-tips: Dan Gillmor and Steve Reubel via Robert Scoble

As part of his piece on best practices for online captioning, Joe Clark has also published a compendium of techniques for using <embed> and <object> with valid markup. This one's going in the bookmarks for sure.

Joe Clark, accessibility guru and author of the excellent Building Accessible Websites, has pointed me to 'Best practices in online captioning.' It's 21 chapters based on a government-funded university project, but don't let that fool you ;-): it's by far the most comprehensive work I've seen on online captioning.

I find myself doing more and more projects that call for advanced multimedia: audio, Flash, video and the like, as opposed to the more ordinary text + graphics. At the same time, many of my employer's clients are either in the financial industry or serve various government institutions — the sorts of clients for whom meeting accessiblity guidelines are a matter of law. Joe's work in this area will be a tremendous resource for me in the months to come.

Keep 'em coming, Joe!

Following up on the variable-width, even-height CSS columns technique he worked out with WaSP Douglas Bowman, Eric Meyer has added a couple of posts explaining the CSS table-layout properties.

Last week, an article on evolt called Ten CSS tricks you may not know made the rounds through the CSS blogosphere. CSS luminary and erstwhile IE 5/Mac developer Tantek Çelik is doing some peer review. A must-read, if only for information on IE/Win's support for multiple class selectors and why IE/Win sometimes appears to ignore !important declarations.

Andrei Herasimchuk has posted an excellent logo design tutorial based on his efforts to redesign the W3C logo. Andrei undertook the exercise after Dean Jackson asked him to lend a hand with an upcoming W3C ten year anniversary event.

Eric Meyer and WaSP Douglas Bowman have teamed up to develop a technique for creating multiple columns of equal height and variable width using CSS.

Eric's discussion also includes his thoughts on the expediency of the odd layout table, while Doug frames his explanation in a discussion of the advantages and drawbacks of liquid design.

Both are must-reads.

Update: WaSP Molly Holzschlag has posted her thoughts on the technique and the use of <table>s in such circumstances. Her verdict: sometimes you just can't beat a lightweight <table>.

She's got a point. Sometimes <table>s do just behave better. Lately I've mostly been marking-up designs done by others, and thoes others are firmly in the fixed-width camp, so I haven't had to worry so much about liquid columns. My problems tend to be vertical alignment: getting the tops — or worse yet, the bottoms — of variable-height elements to line up evenly. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I've not found any good way to do it. One can set a height for the elements that one hopes is enough to accommodate all the content, but one extra line of text and the whole thing goes bork.

Personally, I'm with Eric: the lack of a grid-based layout system in CSS is a head-slapper, what-were-they-thinking omission. It's the elephant in the corner when discussing the relative merits of <table>s vs. CSS for layout. The CSS2 table-layout properties would more or less mitigate the problem, I suppose. But with IE 5 Mac & Win still about in appreciable numbers, table-layout just isn't practical for most sites (yet).

Until it is, or until something better comes along, I fear the odd layout <table> will continue creeping into web designs. And semantics and separation of style and structure will continue to suffer.

WestCiv is holding a competition on developing CSS + XHTML templates for their StyleMaster web development applicaion.

StyleMaster is the brain child of John Alsopp, a former WaSP CSS Samurai.

Hat-tip: Jeffrey Zeldman.

A List Apart has a nifty piece on web design for handhelds. The article was written by Opera's Jorunn D. Newth and W3C Working Group invited expert Elika Etemad.

Tip o' the chapeau to Jeffrey Zeldman.

Somehow I missed this for nearly a month, but Dave Hyatt has added XSLT support to Apple's KHTML-based Safari browser.

Dave says he's working on an ECMAScript API for document transformations, and he's also asking for test cases using xml-stylesheet, as well as general feedback on XSLT support in general.

While I wasn't looking, Tantek Çelik, formerly a prime mover behind erstwhile CSS standard-bearer IE 5.x for Mac, has redesigned Technorati and Election Watch 2004 using structural markup and CSS.

Though Tantek too has been bitten by the dreaded 3rd party problem, his markup is still a treat.

Tantek gives a peek into his thought process during the projects on his blog, and promises a more thorough discussion of both the Technorati redesign and the in-progress redesign of his own site in days to come.

WaSP D. L. Byron recently observed that Macworld has hopped on the CSS layout bandwagon.

It's a nice design, and largely well-crafted, but is let down in the end by advertisement markup littered with FRAMEBORDER and MARGINWIDTH attributes and a mess of unencoded ampersands in various links. Looks like the "3rd party problem" I mentioned when discussing the RE/MAX redesign has claimed another victim.

Dodgy ad markup aside, Macworld appears to have done everything in their power to do it right, and their web team deserves kudos on a job well done.

After a sluggish spell — occasioned, no doubt, by the last-mile sprint to finish XP SP2 and recovery therefrom — IEBlog has started posting some gems.

Of particular interest to web developers is a post explaingin IE for Windows XP SP2's updated user agent string.

Also, be sure to catch Jeff Davis' recent post on the details of pop-up blocking in IE for Windows XP SP2.

Was watching a movie called Anaconda: Hunt for the Black Orchid starring Johnny Messner (the Marine from Spartan). It looked like it was shot in Thailand. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it. But it's supposed to be set in East Malaysia. Its was really odd to see the attempts at details in the Malaysian language and Malaysian geography. The first thing that threw me off was the neon sign for the "Minuman Bir" (beer bar) in the third scene because you can't have beer bars in a Muslim country. It also kept throwing me off that the characters were trying to reach a town called "Kota Bahru" on the river because the real Kota Bahru is about 500 miles and an ocean away from where they were.

CliffNotes is offering free viewing of its books online. I wish they had more poets.

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/

A very interesting email penpal service. It's the first non-charity, adult email penpal service when you search for "email penpal" in Google. The others I found were mainly for kids or were done by charities for special children or under-privileged children. It's also free. I used it for two days and a penpal from the US and a penpal from Finland contacted me after reading my profile. Nice.

Also interesting to note: the number of women users out-numbers the number of men users by 2-to-1.

http://e-palworld.co.uk/

An interesting online news aggregator that gathers headlines from all the usual suspect media websites -- with a twist.

Incoming news is automatically scanned for "names" allowing for charting, achieving and email alerts by name, showing you who's hot and who's last weeks news.

http://www.newsbyname.co.uk/

Very nice tool! Great for debugging a website.

Loading a javascript console in sidebar

A comprehensive personals software in PHP.

http://phppersonals1.sourceforge.net/PHP-Personals/

What we need really is a "Best of Ask Metafilter" blog with an RSS feed. Instead, what we get is a wiki WITHOUT an RSS feed. And despite being a wiki, the main author is supposed to be Adrian Hon. What gives? Someone really needs to start a blog for that. *HINT* *HINT*

http://www.mssv.net/wiki.cgi?BestofAskMetaFilter

When you upload an image to this script (png, gif, jpg), it will study the image and generate a colour palette of the dominant colours in the image. Nice.

Color Palette Generator

Measures to help reduce email abuse is being taken up by the abusers in order to bypass the measures and abuse us further.

Spammers embrace email authentication

I am the new Meetup.com Web Standards Group organiser for Malaysia.

http://webstandards.meetup.com/2/

An open source PHP script that allows you to set up a penpal service.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpenpals/

After a two week absence, I went back to the gym. It was good to be back.

In the changing room, I noticed a dumbass CHRISTIAN had a STAR OF DAVID tattooed on his left shoulder. I don't know what his dumbass minister has been telling him, but that is one ignorant son of a bitch.

So naturally I go up to him and say,"Shalom!" and he goes "Huh?". It took so much of my self control not to go ballistic on him and beat some sense into this dumbass' skull.

I must be in a really lousy mood to try and pick fights with dumbasses.

I really wanted to talk to Marie all weekend but I never worked up the courage. She must think I am either really dumb or that I don't like her. The problem is that it isn't her fault. I think she wants me to open up, but I'm scared when I really shouldn't be.

Very interesting article in evolt.org. I wasn't aware of the !important trick until now.

10 CSS tricks

UPDATE: Tantek Celik reports that the !important trick is WRONG, along with all the other tips. Whew. I thought I was completely out of touch. That !important trick caught me off-guard.

My favourite periodicals search engine has become XHTML compliant. Findarticles.com has archives of articles dating several years from various newspapers and magazines.

http://www.findarticles.com/

The poweful Skype VOIP software now has a Mac version. It's not really VOIP, but rather P2P real-time digital transmision of voice/sound over internet. So now, everyone with Skype software on both Windows and Mac can converse with each other for free anywhere around the world as long as they have an internet connection.

http://skype.com/

This site gathers all the popular free translation engines on one page. All the engines from freetranslation.com to babelfish.com -- over a dozen engines!

http://translation.langenberg.com/

We got back to KL on Monday night, in time for the Malaysian National Day. There was a party, of course. But it wasn't the usual party of foreigners. Alex knew of one in Brickfields, but as well-meaning as Alex is, we really shouldn't trust his judgement of these things.

We ended up at an apartment with a great view of the city, but the old Post Office building obscured the National Day fireworks. And the party was boring -- the guests were mostly local Malaysians and they are crap at parties. We entered a living room filled with these idiots sitting around and none of them wanted to mix with the foreigners whereas we were all working the room. We left the Malaysians alone.

I was too tired -- and I ended up sitting around after midnight. The barbecue on the last night we had at Cherating was filled with silence. We were all really tired out because we had been having vodka dreams every night that only started after 2am.

On the way to Cherating, I saw a really nice beach when the bus took the coast road. It was about 2 kilometres north of a town called Kuala Dungun, just north of the Tanjong Jara Resort. It's my dream to be able to afford to build a nice little restaurant and chalets by a beach and just make people happy. I'll come back to see the beach again some day. The only thing there was just a little fishing village.

On last Monday I ended up on Cherating at the Mata Hari chalets where I normally stay. The rain from Cherating started to follow me south on Tuesday but the beach was mostly sunny, especially in the mornings. It's nice here.

Next to my chalet is Rick whom I thought was American because he greeted me with a "howdy" in his north american accent (strangely a west coast american accent and not a texan accent) when I arrived and he didn't say "yah" all the time. But Michelle, the London lawyer staying across the yard corrected me. She said Rick had once said "aboot" to her. He's Canadian. But Rick always avoids me since I started speaking with my north american accent. I think he figures I must be Canadian too and that I would "out" him as a Canadian, not an American.

I wanted to come back on Friday or Thursday, but I got an SMS from Marie. She said she was coming to Cherating for the weekend. She asked if I would be there too and I said I would stay longer.

She came with the whole gang -- the Germans, the French couple, Simon the Swiss, Henie the Dominican and the Danish couple. We had a great time! We found a secluded beach underneath the Sultan of Pahang's Cherating beach house. The sultan wasn't around so we made use of it every day. The sea was rough and too salty, but we had a lot of fun getting half drowned by the surf. I can't swim, but I loved the way you could jump up as the wave hits you and get floated to the shore.

I hate cynics. But there's one group of people I hate more. And that's stupid people.

They're living proof that the cynics are sometimes right.

Joe, who runs the Shake Shack a nice little restaurant set slightly away from the beach, is an idealist. When all the cynics who run all the other establishments on the island said,"Hey, let's double the prices during the peak tourist season! Where else are these dumbasses going to go! Hahaha!", he disobeyed and kept his prices the same throughout the year. Not that much higher than what I'd get in Kuala Lumpur for food that's usually not as good as Joe's.

But as nice as Joe is, he is a dumbass.

He rented out the half of his Shake Shack that he doesn't use to a Chinese man who runs a resort on another island for the Chinese man's bar.

The result is predictable:

• The Chinese man starts having parties for the British drunks until 6am in the morning and makes more money in one night than Joe makes in two months
• Guess who is the dumbass who has to open his restaurant for breakfast and has to clean the mess up?
• Guess who is the one with the wife and kid who live in the back room behind the restaurant while said party is going on?
• The Chinese man is scaring away customers. Who wants a dirty old fart like that salivating and leering at you while you are trying to have lunch?
• The Chinese man has also been telling customers to move to his resort on the other island. Guess who's customers start to leave?
• This is a Chinese businessman we're talking about. That's the worst kind of cynic in the world! He doesn't understand the travellers, he doesn't understand island life and maintaining the leisure-filled lifestyle. He just wants to sell beer to the dumbass British drunks at the expense of others.

Joe is one dumbass mother. I tried to talk him into opening up chalets and an internet cafe and a snorkel centre to drive more business to his restaurant. He just nods. Then goes back to the kitchen. I doubt he'll last more than the next season. The Chinese guy just wants to drive Joe out of business and take over the whole premise. Jesus, even Joe's wife can see that.

It's been a long time that we don't have a breakthrough release in the processor world. I mean, Intel's Hyper-Threading and AMD's 64bit processors are both more 2 years old. Well, it looks like the next and inevitable step is to release dual core processors and both companies are working hard on it.

A dual core processor is exactly what it sounds like. It is two processor cores on one die essentially like having a dual processor system in one processor.

Sounds interesting, huh?

The Betamax ruling is the only thing that protects your right to own a VCR, tape recorder, CD-burner, DVD-burner, iPod, or TiVo. It's that important. But new legislation that's being pushed through the Senate by lobbyists for the music and movie industries would override the Betamax decision and create a huge liability for any business that makes products which can copy sound or video. This legislation (formerly known as the INDUCE Act) would essentially give Hollywood veto power over a huge range of new technologies. And if they get this power, they'll definitely use it: just as they tried to stomp out the VCR in the 70's and 80's, the music and movie industries want to force all content to go through their own restricted channels.

It's important to register and drop a phone call on Congress. Stupid idiots (congress, not you people ;-).

via Geek News Central

Something different I will give them that.

There are a ton of things in this world that I have seen Geeks do and thought that it was either cool or interesting. Rarely though do I sit there thinking that the poor souls are just wasting their f*cking time with something. This is one of those cases.

Nintendo's Gameboy should only have one sole purpose and that is to play highquality games. In no way should one attempt to load the UNIX operating system on it and use it. No matter how cool you think it is. I mean, I mean, I mean...ah hell, I guess this is kind of cool.

But does this mean that they just beat every game out there and couldn't find any other uses for the GBA?

In this document, we discuss "gbaunix", a rather contrived experiment in which we run an ancient version of the UNIX operating system on a popular hand-held video game system using a simulator.

via Kottke

I have said it multiple times in the past. If you are still using CVS, you owe it to yourself to go check out Subversion. It's CVS++.

This article will help get you up to speed by offering tips that many CVS users would find really helpful in getting them started with Subversion.

Although the interfaces are similar, there are some important differences. Subversion has some features that CVS either lacks or offers differently; plus, there's the need to unlearn some of the bad habits that CVS has instilled in you.

Ever been to a site where you had to register and the registration form required that you type in the same phrase that is found in a hard-to-read image? Well I seem to run across these damn sites all the time, but I understand the security reasons behind why they must do it. Mainly it's to keep the bots out and the real people in.

This articles goes into detail showing you how to implement this “feature” on your site with PHP.

This could also be useful for blog commenting if you find other techniques aren't as successful.

It is almost new video card buying time (I am too embarrassed to admit what my PC is currently running) and it seems NVIDIA has taken back the speed crown from ATI.

However, NVIDIA 6800 series video cards are not necessarily in great supply and to supplement their demand NVIDIA announced in August the launch of the 6600 series. Although this was a paper launch many people were hoping that this chip would feel the gap for people who didn't feel like spending 6800 prices, but were still looking for 6800 type speed.

The 6600 is powered by the NV43 core, while the 6800 is powered by the NV40 so they are essentially different. The pipeline behind the 6600 is only half that of the 6800 and its memory bus is only 128-bit compared to 256-bit for the 6800 line (wow). You can get the 6600 with either DDR3 memory or plan ol' 1999 DDR for $150. Even though it seems greatly crippled the card performs amazingly well in comparison to the 6800.

It's easily the best card you can find for $200. ATI's midrange cards can't even compare.

Reviews

Here are some sites offering reviews:

• Beyond3D
• [H]ard|OCP
• Hexus
• Hot Hardware
• The Tech Report

Now as long as I can find one that has dual-dvi then I might be all over this card.

A great collection of tutorials and tips on how to create tile-based games with Macromedia Flash. The articles are well written considering English isn't the guy's primary language, and are packed with all kinds of info. The site covers everything from what a tile-based game is, to how to handle path-finding, hit detection, and more. You can even download the .fla files for the examples, so you can see exactly how he did it in Flash. The articles expect you to have a basic understanding of Flash, so it's not really a newbie tutorial, but if you already have a grasp on Flash, this is a great place to learn more about creating games with it.

Be sure to check out the Links section, which has a ton of links to other good Flash game sites, and game development sites.

While you're at it, take a look at An Overview of Isometric Game Engine Development and all of the other interesting game development articles at Book of Hook

A general question to the FG crowd out there. What would you like to see more of? We have a diverse staff that caters to a lot of different interest so almost anything is possible within the geek realm. Would you like to see more video game stuff? Anime? Programming? Geek news? What?

Let us know because even though we are geniuses in our own minds, at times we miss things here and there.

I can tell you from my standpoint you will see a LOT more Anime coming from me. So much anime you might be sick of anime, but I am going to forcefeed you with my anime.

DomainSite.com is offering 25 free .info domains to anyone that wants one. After the 25th domain they are only $3.99 each. From what I can tell it is legit, as a few of my friends have registered some domains with them that are up and working. I'm not sure when or if the offer expires, so you may want to go ahead and do it if you are interested.

If nothing else they could be secondary domains that you park on top of your existing domain, so that if the company does mysteriously disappear in the future you won't have any mission-critical sites with them. Or you could register the domain with them then transfer it to another registrar and have the domain for 2 years for the price of one.

For around $20 you can take your old NES gamepad and turn it into a USB powered gamepad for use on your PC or Mac with your favorite emulator with the help of this handy guide from Joystiq.

It requires taking apart the controller and soldering wires though, so if you aren't a do-it-yourselfer, buy the finished product for only a few bucks more.

If you use Mac OS X as you're primary computer, and as a web designer, you'd like to test drive your websites without having to upload files via FTP repeatedly, then you might benefit from setting up your machine as a staging server to host multiple websites.

A nice post from Nate at Web-Graphics with a few links and tips on how to setup a staging server with your OSX system. It's a great way to quickly preview sites you are working on without having to upload them to a live server somewhere.

Beijing, China - Fengtek released their first motherboard based on the ancient Chinese philosophy of Feng Shui. Many interior designers use the principles of Feng Shui to arrange furniture in rooms, so the areas have positive energy. Fengtek is the first company to move these principles to motherboard design.

...

Reviewers at several websites were unable to get the motherboard to power up in any configuration. Fengtek technical support said this would allow more time for meditation.

I'm sure this will be a huge seller in China! It'll probably start a Feng Shui revolution in the computer industry. Feng Shui approved sound cards and graphics cards can't be too far away!

What do you get when you mix 1984 with Lord of the Flies and plunk it into an alternate universe of contemporary Japan?

You get Battle Royale -- a controversial pulp hit that made the book a runaway best-seller in Japan, and spawned not one, but two films, plus a manga series.

Quentin Tarantino's latest movie offering, Kill Bill, was littered with Battle Royale references--most notably, the casting (Gogo Yubari, played by Chiaki Kuriyama was in Battle Royale I, while Sonny Chiba who played Hattori Hanzo [the name also a reference to Battle Royale] was in Battle Royale II).

In short, the story is about a randomly selected class of Jr. high kids that gets put into a government "Program" where they are taken and put into an isolated island or location and are forced to kill each other, until one survivor is left.

The books, movies, mangas, as well as the translations for all three each have differing viewpoints to every aspect of the Battle Royale storyline.

It's a sensational and violent story, but one that has deeper emotional and psychological touches. I urge you to check it out!

The history of Atari from 1972 through 1984 is littered with rumors and outlandish tales of Atari crushing, burying and outright destroying massive amounts of perfectly good technology. Why??? Well, apparently Atari was faced on many occasions with problems such as over-production, overstocking, space restraints, massive returns and other odd reasons.

The article mentions tales and rumors of ROM chips being poured into cement foundations, overstock being smashed by tractor trailers before being taken to dumpsters, and thousands upon thousands of unwanted trackballs being sold for a couple hundred dollars.

Check out the rest of the Atari Museum for all kinds of interesting Atari related info. The site is very lovingly put together, and has enough information to keep you occupied for quite a while.

Thanks for the tip, Andrew.

1. Always ask first, never take.
2. Don't ever think you will go unnoticed, even on the Web.
3. Read the site's copyright statement and/or policy first.
4. See rule one above.
5. Re-read rule one above.

If you feel none of these rules apply to you and you are going to take someone's web design, hire a good lawyer.

1. Breadth vs. depth is the wrong question to ask, it's irrelevant to the user experience
2. The number of links and density of links is what people experience
3. Different audiences and applications will want different a different number and density of links
4. Once you find the number and density (guess + usability testing) you just prioritize information:
   1. some things will fall naturally into taxonomies
   2. some will fall naturally into task-based navigation
   3. the rest is probably all about priority, so as you reach your number and density limit, push lower priority stuff to the next level down

Keith also has some pretty good information on this subject in his article The One Magic Rule of Web Design.

At a Glance: Get out your copybooks, because you can now cross "ballet" off of the "Big List of Things the Japanese Won't Make Porno Out Of". If you are an avid fan of ballet - but, you aren't such an avid fan that you actually have some modicum of respect for the art of ballet dancing - then you are probably the target market for this DVD. It features exciting behind the scenes interviews, some regular and wholesome non-erotic ballet dancing, and then multiple nude and even sex-filled dance sequences. You have not lived until you have seen a Japanese pirate rip a boner out of his leotard and plunge it into the waiting food-hole of a sassy ballerina.

Sexual Content: Heavily mosaic censored dancin' and a prancin'.

My sweet song-writing collaborators and shirt-tail family, The String Cheese Incident, are playing a free concert for peace tomorrow in Golden Gate Park along with Michael Franti (whom I'm convinced is some kind of avatar) and various others. Looks like this:

6th Annual 911 Power to the Peaceful Festival
Saturday September 11, 2023 (11am-5pm)
Speedway Meadow - Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA, USA
Featuring Michael Franti and Spearhead, String Cheese Incident Acoustic, Gift of Gab of Blackalicious, John Butler Trio, Xavier Rudd, and Amy Goodman.

The initial line up is supposedly a portable DVD player, two LCD televisions, and a home theater in a box system. Like most of these kinds of releases (assuming this is for real), they're really just slapping their logo on products built by somebody else (in this case, it's supposedly Diamond Electronics). This is either a really big deal or someone just went to a lot of trouble to try and dupe us -- regardless, everything looked like it checked out, and it was too good to not pass along. Make sure you click to see pics and product descriptions.

" Rowboat Vets for Truth is here to share the real story, to correct the misleading use of our images, against our will, in paintings, woodcuts and pamphlets across the colonies.

The Rowboat Vets for Truth will counter the outrageous claims made by Mr. Washington and the liberal printing presses in Boston and Philadelphia.

We speak from personal experience - our group includes men who served beside Washington in combat against unarmed Germans on Christmas night, 1776. Though we come from different backgrounds, shoe menders, haberdashers, stable boys, candle holders to the wealthy. etc., and hold varying political opinions, we agree on one thing: George Washington lacks the potential to lead."

"Faith" first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1989. Time:59:25, File Size 27.86 MB.

"The Best Christmas Ever" first published in SciFiction, May, 2004. Time:39:38, File Size 19.03 MB.

"Serpent" first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 2004. Time:22:53, File Size 10.74 MB.

In the context of games criticism, this tendency might lead to a narratologist placing enormous interpretative weight on the fact that most first-person shooters are structured by conflicts between the player’s avatar and small groups of three to six enemies, seeing this as a narrative choice that has authorial intent behind it, that can be related to various similar kinds of narratives in other media (e.g., the ur-narrative of Die Hard or Rambo or James Bond films, the narrative pacing of action films where the uber-masculine hero crushes small packs of slightly-less-manly bad guys). The problem is that the narratological kinship between Die Hard and first-person-shooters is a much more complicated matter in its actual historical evolution. If anything, when first-person-shooters first appeared with narratological structure that resembled the narrative of action films, to some extent that content was a superficial add-on rather than a deep structure of gameplay, a kind of narratological “skin”. The original Doom is a very good example of this pattern. The deep structure of the game (single player avatar versus distributed clusters of enemies) was, before anything else, a technical requirement dictated by the number of enemies it was then possible to have on the screen. This continues to be the case even though computers have much more processing power because the enemies have become much more graphically demanding.

Now the New Scientist reports that functional MRI scans of the brains of regular practitioners of hypnosis reveals physiological differences from those who are not susceptible to hypnosis.

But under hypnosis, Gruzelier found that the highly susceptible subjects showed significantly more brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus than the weakly susceptible subjects. This area of the brain has been shown to respond to errors and evaluate emotional outcomes.

The highly susceptible group also showed much greater brain activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex than the weakly susceptible group. This is an area involved with higher level cognitive processing and behaviour.

I once watched a highly energetic chief ripped asunder by a senior member of his board. “Richard,” the determined board member almost shouted, “you are smart, energetic, creative to a fault, perhaps even a genius. But much of your 'genius' is dissipated because you apply it to ten different things at a time, albeit with great skill.

“Let me tell you what you need,” he concluded. “A 'to don't' list.”

I don't know about “Richard,” but for me that was a profound moment. Fact No. 1: We all have 50 genuine priorities. Fact No. 2: If we get even two Big Things Done in a six-year tenure on the current job, we will have had a...Great Ride. Axiom No. 1: Therefore, what we choose not to do (the sole subject of that “To Don't” list) is at least as important, or more important, as what we choose to do.

And, finally, effective “To Don't-ing” is far, far more difficult than effective “To Do-ing.”

Despite the fact that combatants may look like costumed humans, event organizers maintain they're real, and warn of the danger posed to mankind by the growing threat of city-crushing beasts.

"There is an abundance of empirical evidence that the threat posed by monsters is serious and far-reaching," Kaiju Big Battel referee Jinji told Wired News. "A number of great documentaries like Godzilla have reported these historic facts in great detail. Our world leaders would be wise to pay closer attention to this under-recognized menace." (...)

Featured villains and heroes included Dr. Cube, a sinister plastic surgeon who boasts of an "unstoppable malpractice technique"; an inebriated Hell Monkey wielding a large bottle of primordial booze; a pair of freedom-fighting plantains from Central America who toted color-coordinated AK-47s; and garbage-can-dwelling Gomi-man, who spewed a rain of fetid sludge on human observers.

See also: Link to Jason DeFillippo's superb photos of the event. This one's my favorite. And BoingBoing reader Teresa Ortega says, "I went to Kaiju Big Battel in Los Angeles based on Xeni's post and did a write-up at my site." Link