Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

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The Latest from Boing Boing

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Nintendo as a gothic manuscript page

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 05:23 AM PST

Space Invaders tights

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 03:31 AM PST

Wacky Packages: the 7'-tall vinyl wall-sticker edition

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 02:45 AM PST


LTL, a company that produces vinyl wall and laptop stickers, has launched a line of Wacky Packages wall-art, printed and cut on demand, in sizes up to seven feet tall. This is some of my favorite vintage parody art, like the very best of MAD Magazine's product parodies, and the idea of having it in seven-foot slices makes me want to buy a warehouse to decorate.

Wacky Packages catalog

TOPPS WACKY PACKAGES NOW AVAILABLE AS 'LARGER THAN LIFE' WALL GRAPHICSM (Thanks, John!)

Previously:


Home-made Super Mario sweater-vest

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 01:59 AM PST

Drake Equation explains lack of aliens, girlfriends

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 02:32 AM PST

Warwick University's Peter Backus applies the Drake equation to discover why, exactly, he can't find a girlfriend:

So,
 what
 this
 means
 is
 that
 there
 are
 10,510
 people
 in
 the
 UK
 that
 satisfy
 these
 most
 basic
 criteria
 for
 being
 my
 girlfriend.
 That
 is
 0.00017%
 of
 the
 UK
 and
 0.0014%
 of
 Londoners,
 which
 doesn't
 seem
 so
 bad.
 On
 a
 given
 night
 in
 London,
 there
 is
 greater
 than
 a
 1
 in
 1000
 chance
 that
 I
 will
 meet
 an
 attractive
 woman
 between
 the
 ages
 of
 24
 and
 34
 with
 a
 university
 degree.
 Of
 course
 this
 does
 not
 take
 into
 account
 the
 fraction
 of
 these
 women
 that
 will
 find
 me
 attractive
 (depressingly
 low),
 the
 fraction
 of
 these
 women
 who
 will
 be
 single
 (falling
 with
 age)
 and,
 perhaps
 most
 importantly,
 the
 fraction
 of
 these
 women
 who
 I
 will
 get
 along
 with.
 Including
 such
 factors
 would
 greatly
 reduce
 the
 above
 figure
 of
 10,510.
 A
 rough
 estimate
 puts
 the
 number
 of
 potential
 girlfriends
 accounting
 for
 these
 three
 additional
 criteria
 (1
 in
 20
 of
 the
 women
 find
 me
 attractive,
 half
 are
 single
 and
 I
 get
 along
 with
 1
 in
 10)
 at

 26.

 That's
 correct.
 There
 are
 26
 women
 in

 London
 with
 whom
 I
 might
 have
 a
 wonderful
 relationship.

 So,
 on
 a
 given
 night
 out
 in
 London
 there
 is
 a
 0.0000034%
 chance
 of
 meeting
 one
 of
 these
 special
 people,
 about
 100
 times
 better
 than
 finding
 an
 alien
 civilization
 we
 can
 communicate
 with.
 That's
 a
 1
 in
 285,000
 chance.
 Not
 great.


Why I don't have a girlfriend (via JWZ)

(Image: Sagittarius Region a Creative Commons Attribution photo from makelessnoise's photostream)

Previously:


Bob Basset's latest steampunk mask

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 02:08 AM PST


Ukrainian steampunk leatherworker Bob Basset's latest creation, the RP2, is a very fine variant on the Raptor pilot mask he put up a few days ago. I own a couple of his masks, but this one gives me mask-envy.

RP2

Previously:


Has your laptop been searched at the US border?

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 09:55 PM PST

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jennifer Granick is looking for people who've had their laptop hard-drives searched at the US border:
In U.S. v. Arnold we fought for a requirement that customs agents have some reason before searching your computer and in our FOIA work on border searches, we have pushed the government to reveal its policies and practices in this area.

Now, another civil rights group, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is seeking potential plaintiffs for a lawsuit challenging suspicionless laptop searches. As a first step in this effort, NACDL is seeking to identify defense lawyers who have had their laptops searched at the border and are willing to serve as individual plaintiffs. In order to demonstrate the effect of this policy on members of the criminal defense bar and to support the constitutional challenge, NACDL plans to assemble a group of individual plaintiffs who will develop affidavits describing the harm they suffer by having their electronic information exposed to government officials.

This lawsuit will not seek monetary damages for individuals who have been searched; instead, it will focus exclusively on fixing the unconstitutional policy. Participating members will be represented at no charge by NACDL and ACLU attorneys.

Have You Been Subjected to Suspicionless Laptop Search or Seizure at the Border?

(Image: Laptop freecycling a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from arvindgrover's photostream)

Previously:


EFF's trends for 2010

Posted: 14 Jan 2010 02:36 AM PST

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Tim Jones has posted EFF's "12 Trends to Watch in 2010." The whole list is worth reading (if for no other reason than it contains the plots for about 50 new sf novels):
5. Location Privacy: Tracking Beacons in Your Pocket

It's easier and cheaper than ever for computers to keep track of where you are: there are so many more potential sources of information about your whereabouts, and so many reasons it might be useful or interesting to you, your friends, your boss, or the government.

EFF has fought for location privacy rights, including checks on the government's ability to use your cell phone to find you and to access the information that social networks, mobile operators, and transportation systems collect about where you are and where you travel.

In 2010, awareness of location privacy as an issue will enter the mainstream in the U.S. as a critical mass of end users voluntarily adopt technologies that use or share their physical location -- and start to wonder who has access to this information. Many more courts will grapple with these questions this year, building upon the important 2009 decisions in the Connolly case in Massachusetts and the Weaver case in New York. EFF is awaiting the decision in U.S. v. Jones in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where we asked a court to limit law enforcement use of these devices.

12 Trends to Watch in 2010
Previously:


Haiti Earthquake: link roundup, day two

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 09:52 PM PST

A day has passed since a 7.0 earthquake—the strongest in 200 years—struck the island nation of Haiti. Aftershocks continue, the numbers of dead and injured people continue to climb. Following, some links to stories, sources for information, and ways to assist.

• Video above: on the Rachel Maddow Show, the Haitian ambassador to the United States responds to Pat Robertson's revolting, racist comments about the disaster (blogged here on BB by Maggie earlier today, and covered also by Ms. Maddow here).

• Follow Richard Morse for live tweets from the ground in Haiti. One read, "If your home is destroyed and your workplace is destroyed and your neighborhood is destroyed... then what?"

• "In a country where traditional landline service is almost non-existent, more than a million Haitians rely on the mobile service Voilà for communications." That service is run by a Bellevue, Washington-based technology company. Mobile communications are a vital link in aid coordination as the disaster continues to unfold.

• This happens every time there is a disaster of this scale: scam artists prey on people struck by the impulse to help with money donations. ABC News, BBB, FBI.

After the jump, video from CBS News which is said to show buildings collapsing during the 7.0 quake, which lasted about 30 seconds and was followed by many aftershocks, some as strong as 5.9.


• Boing Boing reader Ryan points to haitianquake.com and says,


I'm writing on behalf of the small coalition of web developers here in New York and beyond that are working diligently (and swiftly) to create a working and dynamic database to record all information about missing persons in Haiti. Considering the tools to do this right now are scattered across multiple platforms, without a unifying structure, we thought this was the best way to be helpful. We want people to be able to submit information, as well as to search for information on those they are concerned about.


• This article by Ferentz Lafargue, a writer of Haitian origin, includes suggestions on aid groups doing good work there, in response to the immediate crisis and beyond. Brian Spears at The Rumpus has another roundup of aid groups. And The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund is another the smaller, independent, grassroots group that comes highly recommended by folks I know who are familiar with development work in Haiti. More on the text-message Red Cross fundraising efforts here.

• A number of American companies have pledged millions in aid money.


• Simon Romero, reporting from Port-au-Prince in the NYT:

"Please save my baby!" Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St.-Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital's chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. "There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die."

• Photographer Daniel Morel is in Haiti. If you can stomach it, you can view his images on Corbisimages.com.

• News coverage: Guardian, NOLA.com, Democracy Now, Miami Herald.

Previously:


And he spake as a dragon

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 06:19 PM PST

Pravda reports that a sheep in Turkey gave birth to a stillborn lamb with a human-like face. Warning: it's not a pleasant sight.

Another Delightfully Demented Gift: The Feejee Mermaid

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 04:14 PM PST


swfeejee01rhj.jpg
swfeejee02rlk.jpgIn 1842, P. T. Barnum exhibited the infamous Feejee Mermaid at his museum in New York City. Newspapers were given a woodcut of lovely bare breasted female mermaids to publicize the attraction, but when the crowds arrived to see the mysterious creature, it turned out to be a gruesome taxidermy gaffe consisting of the top half of a small monkey and the bottom half of a large fish.

When I was about 12 years old, I viewed Barnum's very own Feejee Mermaid at the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. It invaded my consciousness and my dreams and became an object of great importance to me. I developed a theory on entertainment from thinking about it... Never be afraid to promise more than you can deliver as long as you deliver something truly remarkable and surprising. I'm sure this is the credo that stage magicians and circuses used to operate on. But today we seem to have lost the capacity for imagination that's required for this sort of pitch to work. I hate the literalism of the modern world!

But anyway, I digress... The Feejee Mermaid became a strong object of desire for me. In my daydreams as a child, I would secretly scheme to break in and steal the mermaid from the Ripley Museum (with no intention of ever actually doing it.) I discovered that the Ripley's Museum in Hollywood had the one true Barnum Feejee Mermaid too... and it appears that every Ripley's Museum in the country has it. They were popping up everywhere, but I still had no way to get one of my own!

The internet however, has now made my dreams come true... In this fabulous 21st century, everyone can own one of these fabulous creatures, not just kings, potentates and rajahs! Thank heavens for eBay!

swfeejee03df.jpg

An artist by the name of Brian Davis is "capturing and preserving" these strange beasts and offering them for sale online. Each one of his mermaids is totally unique. They come in a variety of sizes, but they're all just as hideous as Barnum's specimen. But that's not all! Davis also traffics in elusive sasquatch fetuses, faeries, gargoyles, chupacabras, jersey devils and scorpion people. Joy!

Brian Davis's Fabulous Beastiary at eBay
(He also sometimes lists under this username too.)

My Totally Self Indulgent Puppy Video

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 04:22 PM PST




I apologize for this self indulgent moment. I just got these two and couldn't resist posting.

Haiti's real deal with the devil

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:49 PM PST

Pat Robertson thinks that Haiti is poverty stricken (and earthquake-stricken) because the country made a deal with Satan to help them overthrow the French.

Back in May, the Times Online provided some slightly better insight into Haiti's past. Beyond a vague assumption that Imperialism had probably screwed Haiti somehow, I didn't know much about the country's history. Reading this story has been nothing short of nauseating.

Summary: Haiti was forced to pay France for its freedom. When they couldn't afford the ransom, France (and other countries, including the United States) helpfully offered high-interest loans. By 1900, 80% of Haiti's annual budget went to paying off its "reparation" debt. They didn't make the last payment until 1947. Just 10 years later, dictator François Duvalier took over the country and promptly bankrupted it, taking out more high-interest loans to pay for his corrupt lifestyle. The Duvalier family, with the blind-eye financial assistance of Western countries, killed 10s of thousands of Haitians, until the Haitian people overthrew them in 1986. Today, Haiti is still paying off the debt of an oppressive dictator no one would help them get rid of for 30 years.

The rest of the world refuses to forgive this debt.

So, in a way, maybe Robertson is right. Haiti is caught in a deal with the devil, and the devil is us.

Update: mgfarrelly points out another thing I didn't know—the U.S. Congress is currently considering a bill called The Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation. Part of what this bill would do is help countries like Haiti get their debt canceled, without making that cancellation conditional on things like closing down free schools or raising the cost of fresh water. Maybe a good time to contact your representatives about about this bi-partisan measure.

Hooray For Pizza Doodles!

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 05:13 PM PST


swbakshiphonedoodle68.jpg
When I was working with Ralph Bakshi, I would regularly prowl the hallways after hours digging through the trash for discarded doodles. One night I was in Ralph's office rummaging through his can when he furiously burst through the door. "Hey! What the @&$% are you doin'?!" Ralph hollered. "I'm looking for doodles." I replied. Ralph's whole demeanor changed. "OOooo! Have ya found any good ones?" "Yeah! Lookit this..." In a flash Ralph had upended his wastebasket on his desk and we were digging through his discarded sketches like schoolboys trading bubble gum cards. The next night, I found a particularly nice doodle perched on the edge of Ralph's trash can. It was inscribed, "To Steve, my best friend".

The best drawings in an animation studio don't always end up on the screen. Animators' pencils never stop, and since the beginning of time, cartoon studios have been wallpapered with hilarious caricatures and gag drawings making fun of co-workers. My pal John K is the King of doodlers. I can't think of a time when we've gone out for a pizza or a hot dog when he didn't have his yellow pad with him, scribbling out cartoons to illustrate what he was talking about. To heck with Bill Gates and his DaVinci sketchbook. I like this stuff better!

swmickwaltastroboy56.jpg

John K doodle: Mick and Mr Big warn Astroboy not to encroach on their turf


John is now shoveling his doodles out to the internet by way of his story blog, John K Cartoon Stories. His price is way too cheap if you ask me, but he never asked me- so it's your lucky day. Here's a link to his store page where you can pick up an authentic autographed John K pizza doodle of your very own!

John K Doodle Store

Infographic: frequency of body parts mentioned in various music genres

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 01:07 PM PST

Screen Shot 2010-01-13 At 1.02.45 Pm

Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg collected thousands of song lyrics and created a chart that shows how often certain body parts are mentioned. The chart is organized by music genre.

The size of a circle corresponds to how often that part is mentioned in each genre. Click on a genre name to see a close-up that shows exactly what words were used.
Eyes, hands, and heads dominate most genres. The exception is Hip Hop, where asses are the favorite body part.

Most of the genres contain images that are NSFW.

Frequency of body parts mentioned in various music genres

Time traveler's cheat sheet

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 01:58 PM PST

201001131242

Have you ever fantasized about traveling back in time a few hundred or thousand years and giving civilization a boost? Here's a poster for you in case your fantasy comes true. You can even get it on a T-shirt.

UPDATE: Some commenters have kindly pointed out that this poster was created by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics. Thank you, kind commenters!

Time traveler's cheat sheet (Via Bits & Pieces)

Video of Perplexus 3D maze toy

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 12:38 PM PST


Kevin Kelly shares my enthusiasm for the Perplexus, a 3-D maze toy.

We've found the puzzle to be extremely addictive to anyone who gets started. Because it's like a 3D video game without the electronics, the very physical nature of playing -- turning it this way and that -- is very satisfying. In addition, the maze is like a sculpture, the design of the route is geekily brilliant, and the elegance of the eternal return of the steel ball within the sphere is a stroke of genius. Perplexus has the glow of a work of art. It makes me happy just to pick it up.

A couple of years ago I asked Michael McGinnis, the creator of the Perplexus, to write a Make story about how he designed and produced the toy. It turns out that the Perplexus has been a lifelong obsession. He now makes giant size Perplexii for museums. You can read the story and see photos of early prototypes here.

After being out of production for a number of years, the Perplexus is back and available on Amazon. I love this toy.

Brilliant 3D Maze: Perplexus

The postman always rings ice

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 12:06 PM PST

doorbell1.jpg Perplexed of late by people knocking loudly on the front door instead of ringing the doorbell, I finally asked the delivery man what was up. New New Years resolution: leave the house more often.

IMG_0395.JPG

IMG_0396.JPG

Wheelchair gunman surrenders to police robot

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 12:40 PM PST

Screen Shot 2010-01-13 At 11.07.27 Am This is a detail from a larger photograph showing an alleged hostage-taker in rural Virginia who surrendered to a police robot. The Standard has the full photo and the rest of the story.

Best bit: "Police had negotiated with [Warren] Taylor by phone, but he made no demands other than a request for a pizza. He is reported to have told police he had a military background." The article doesn't say whether or not he got the pizza.

Wheelchair gunman surrenders to police robot

Derelict psych hospital buildings in photos

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 09:42 AM PST


Chris sez, "I recently visited Spring Grove hospital center in Catonsville, MD. Established is 1797, it is one of the country's oldest psychiatric facilities and it is still (at least partially) in use today. It is a fairly large campus with a variety of buildings (including its own museum). These photos are from one of the buildings that is no longer in use and has become a time capsule of sorts... storing odd relics from the site's long history. Hair dryers, exercise bikes and a variety of furniture."

Spring Grove Hospital (Flickr) (Thanks, Chris!)

Spring Grove

Previously:


Haiti Quake: Ned Sublette update, open thread

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 09:01 AM PST

haiti.jpg

(Photo: from the NOH photostream on flickr, thanks Bill)

Former Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette has been posting updates on the Haiti earthquake to his mailing list. I'm taking the liberty of reposting a large portion of the latest here, and after the jump, for those who do not subscribe. Boing Boing readers, consider this an open thread to share links to other information resources or ways to help in the comments. Ned writes:

There is no way yet to know the extent of the devastation in the wake of the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the Caribbean basin region. Phrases like "very significant" are being used. It is probably safe to say that thousands are dead and presumably continuing to die in the absence of fast response, and tens of thousands are homeless.

The ground-shake in Port-au-Prince was intense. It's a city of some two million people who mostly live in flimsy housing without functional building codes. The Red Cross estimates that three million have been directly affected by the disaster. President René Preval and First Lady Elisabeth Debrosse Delatour are reported unharmed, though the National Palace collapsed. The UN mission has for the last four years been housed in the Hotel Christopher, which collapsed, with people trapped in the rubble. The head of the UN force was killed, as was the archbishop.

Everyone with friends and family in Haiti has had a sleepless night. Getting information is hard. Richard Morse's last tweet last night read, "when my batteries die I will no longer be able to communicate..it's going to be a long night..our prayers go out to everyone"

A worse problem than raising money is going to be the lack of organizational infrastructure with which to coordinate and distribute aid. How do you get drinking water to two million people? A number of people seem to be ready to go down as volunteers, as per the comments on redcrosschat.

No word yet of the situation of the Cuban doctors who are in Haiti on an ongoing basis.

The best composite source I've seen is the "The Lede" blog at the New York
Times -- too long and too many widgets to copy into an e-mail -- with
updated information about resources for information and contributions, as
well as tweetlinks, pictures, video, etc.

There is a State Department number to call for information about family members in Haiti: 1-888-407-4747. I don't know how useful that will be.

To make an emergency donation to Oxfam, go here.

There is a site set up to collect information. It doesn't have a lot of material yet, but
it reports that the P-au-P airport is functioning. On the other hand, CNN's
Anderson Cooper reported that a helicopter he was in almost collided with a
small plane -- that is, there is no functional air-traffic control.


There have been numerous aftershocks. An explanation of the tectonics
underlying the quake is at scienceblogs.com.

Photographer daniel morel's twitpic blog, if you can bear to look at it, is here.


There's also a flickr feed.


For vodouisants, yesterday was Dantor's day, today is Papa Ogou.


Here are some articles, many of which have pictures at the original sites.


NYT, Miami Herald, AP, NPR, WaPo, Reliefweb, Prensa Latina

"Noise-postponing headphones"

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 08:20 AM PST

The Onion's highlights from CES. The TI-101 Graphing Bassoon, at last!

Avatar for Atari 2600

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 08:16 AM PST

tumblr_kw17rsfST71qa9g6uo1_500.jpg Illustration: Penney Design.

Hiaasen's BASKET CASE: hilarious mystery novel about the *last* newspaperpocalypse

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 07:30 AM PST

Carl Hiassen's 2003 comic mystery novel Basket Case is vintage Hiaasen: madcap, romantic, silly, and deft. The dialog is funny, the setting -- a Florida newsroom at the moment just before the web changed newspapers forever -- utterly contemporary.

Jack Tagger, the book's hero, was busted from ace investigative reporter down to obit writer for daring to dress down his paper's new owner, the odious media baron's scion Race Maggad II. Now he labors in obscurity as the newspaper is taken apart by its new, profit-hungry corporate overlords, and he morbidly obsesses about the deaths he chronicles in the (shrinking) obit section.

But Tagger finds himself back on the trail of a hot story when Jimmy Stoma, the lead singer of a legendary rock band called Slut Puppies, dies while diving in the Bahamas. A routine interview with the widow -- a hot pop singer whose single scored big on MTV because it was directed by Oliver Stone and because she showed her pubes in it -- doesn't jibe with the facts as they emerge, and before long, Tagger is investigating the widow for the murder of her husband.

Hiaasen's a versatile and extremely comic writer, who has turned his hand to essays and (lately), wonderful kids' books. But my favorite Hiaasen novels are his mysteries, most of which feature a fictional ex-governor of Florida who has turned wild-man, living in the Everglades and eating roadkill and punishing wrongdoers, calling himself "Skink."

Basket Case is a rare, non-Skink Hiaasen novel, but it is nevertheless the perfect Hiaasen. I picked it up at the Miami airport on the way home from Christmas break (I'd read everything in my holiday stack) and found myself devouring it in huge drafts, as Hiaasen novels often inspire me to do.

One fascinating thing about this book is how the two main McGuffins -- the newspaper industry and the record business -- have faded into obscurity over a few short years. Was there really a time when we wrung our hands about newspapers dying because of profit-maddened congloms instead of the Internet?

I wish Hiaasen would get back to writing mysteries (though not at the expense of kids' books like Hoot!). Until he does, I think I'll just keep on re-reading the old ones. Like John D McDonald, Hiaasen is a brilliant chronicler of his time, a merciless lampooner of corruption and idiocy, and his palpable, bittersweet love for Florida is truly touching.

Basket Case

Previously:


Could it be ... El Dorado?

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 06:12 AM PST

Researchers used Google Earth satellite images to find the remains of an ancient city in the Amazon basin—including 200+ earthworks laid out in geometric shapes in the middle of the jungle near the border of Brazil and Bolivia. This is a fantastic find, sure to be a game-changer in our understanding of the history of Amazonian peoples. But, despite Times Online speculation, it will probably not turn out to be a City of Gold.

2010: Living in the future

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 06:14 AM PST

vision of the future.jpg

In the far-off year 2010, we'll all do our work and schooling and library-book-reading on ingenious video screens that can connect to each other from anywhere around the globe.

Of course, in author Geoffrey Hoyle's 1972 vision, those screens are telephone-based, the size of a large dishwasher—and we use them while wearing practical and futuristic jumpsuits.

Daniel Sinker loved 2010: Living in the Future as a child, and now shares the book—in all its not-quite-on-the-money glory—with the Internets. Wait until you get to the part about "a series of tubes".

(Thanks, Robin Sloan!)

Get this: Flipping out with Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:24 AM PST

VVVVVV • PC/Mac (Linux forthcoming) • distractionware • www According to early Internet opinionating, VVVVVV -- the essentially unpronounceable commercial debut of Don't Look Back creator Terry Cavanagh is either a groundbreaking platformer that has already instantly redefined indie gaming in a way that we haven't seen since Jon Blow's Braid, or "a bland exercise in confusion and frustration". The truth, as usual, is somewhere quite comfortably and happily in between. Designed around giving the player only one switch (beyond left and right movement) to interact with its world -- a switch which flips the gravity of its interstellar station -- VVVVVV isn't hiding any particular mechanical tricks up its sleeve. It doesn't boldly dare to upend time itself or bend inter-dimensional space or throw plot twists asking you rethink everything you thought you knew about free will. What it does instead is simply craft an enormously cohesive experience around -- and allow a fantastic sense of exploration through -- that one simple interaction.

vvvvvv_lies.jpg

VVVVVV doesn't draw its charm or its power from its indefinably retro visuals (neither really C64-ish or Spectrum-esque, though clearly inspired by the latter's foundational UK single-screen platformers like Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy), or its even harder to pin down chiptune score (though Magnus 'Souleye' Pålsson's work there is easily worth calling out on its own).

Instead it's remarkable for the way it can consistently provide a compelling experience from screen to screen relying only on that gravity flip, and particularly for how intricately Cavanagh has constructed its twisted caverns and adjoining rooms. It's not until you see your goal sectioned off by what originally appears to be an insurmountable wall only to wind yourself seemingly aimlessly through its rat-maze network and find yourself precisely where you wanted to be that you appreciate just how finely designed the game is.

But even if that might seem to imply a cakewalk tour through its world, VVVVVV is surely anything but: the final death toll for an average run can easily stretch into the thousands, particular rooms in the multiple hundreds, but Cavanagh has made death a learning experience rather than a punishment with liberal checkpoints and zero-time restart.

vvvvvv_edge.jpg

Certain challenges in the game are so difficult that they become more tests of rote reaction time muscle memory against its one-hit spiky deaths (so omnipresent that they loom even in the game's very title), and it's to Cavanagh's credit that he's made burning through 177 subsequent deaths in a matter of minutes feel like a rewarding puzzle over a maddening flaw.

And so in the end that's "all" VVVVVV is -- not a redefinition but rather a confident and novel refinement of simple platform play, a game delightfully self-referencing and -aware, and a fantastic start to the new year of indie gaming.

Play a demo of the game online at Kongregate, and purchase the full version direct from Cavanagh's distractionware site.

Bruce Sterling's wonderful novella Kiosk in podcast form

Posted: 13 Jan 2010 05:56 AM PST

Tony sez, "StarShipSofa's latest podcast installment is 'Kiosk', the novella written by the SF great, Bruce Sterling. Narrated by the brilliant Peter Cavell, 'Kiosk' is a tale easily relatable to the 21st century. Sterling's novella focuses on a Borislav who runs a little kiosk in an anonymous European city. Thanks to a device he calls a 'fabrikator', he is able to court promising patrons by replicating items borne out of necessity or desire. Running time for this story is two hours."

This was one of the most moving and provocative stories I read in '08. Can't wait to listen to it now.

Aural Delights No 116 Bruce Sterling

MP3 link

StarShipSofa Podcast Feed (RSS)

(Thanks, Tony!)

(Image: Kiosk, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike picture from yashima's photostream)

Previously:


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