Here’s my favorite Tale from the Pub so far. Submitted for the approval of, well, everyone, I give you: “Puppet for your thoughts”

Basically a LARP con after-party event without a LARP and good live music. Now I expect someone like to go host one. Hop to!

It’s not actually a shell, but a script and an aliases file. The aliases file defines actions, like ‘look’ and ‘eat’. If for some reason you come across a conflict on your system, just rename the alias. These aliases all call the perl script, passing whatever arguments (usually keywords and env variables) are appropriate for that action. The script then does its bit, which could be any thing from printing a simple message in response to saving your state to a database file. When you want to play you just source the aliases file (I’d put the commands to open a subshell, source the file, and display a small banner into a script).

The neat thing about this is that you can continue to get work done- it doesn’t change the fact that you are sitting directly in a shell, and it doesn’t even take up extra screen/desktop realestate! When you get bored and need to blow off some steam, just start playing, hopping back when appropriate.

So you’ve got the tools: now what? Well, if we’re using the filesystem and environment for the setting… create a map of the filesystem and start writing descriptions and interactions. If using a perl script, these should go into a module, so that a single script can be used to play, or even combine, modules. If each new directory is given as a package then additions become very easy to plug together using a startup script that pulls together the desired packages via ‘use’ statements. To randomize room contents and encounters, use the directory listing, the environment variables, and the process running at the time.

I’m considering a persistant command filter as well, such that the way you perform your work itself affects the game. What if using sudo spuriously cost MP, cd progressed game time, and ls might cause a random encounter? You might heal according to the value of the commands issued while the filter was in affect, or take damage according to the return value of commands…

$ cd ..

“The door is locked”

$ cd /root

“It’s awfully dark in here…”

Animal Man : “Deus Ex Machine” The run of revived Animal Man written by Grant Morrison. I’ve enjoyed a lot of art whose artists decided to cast it as a “comic”; this is a comic in the most obvious, underwear pervert sense of the word, and it excels as a piece of art worthy of critical acclaim. Thankfully, sitting in bed and reading the first several pages out loud as my daughter fell asleep, I was not asked what a peyote ritual was.

Elf Quest: “The Grand Quest”

Somehow I haven’t gotten my hands on this until just now. It’s… Elf Quest.?! I grabbed a manga sized copy because it said “#1″ and I was in the same physical location, something that hadn’t yet occured. Now I’ll probably end up trolling through the Online Archive they’re releasing, trying to catch up with 32 years of comics. At least I won’t need to wait for the next one

Oh, and I also just started reading “Dresden Codak”, and it is wonderful. Very well illustrated and exactly on the mark to tickle my fancy… philosophy, psychology, physics, undead, robots, adventure, humor… it reminds me of good conversations I’ve had that turned into shared mini-stories. I think I may now recover from my sense of loss at the end of the “Perry Bible Fellowship”.

Can you guess who did the score?

Hope you all had some irrational fun :)

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hat’s off to the creators, k7lim, Lora Oehlberg, Seung Wan Hong, and Shawna Hein for their awesome Tangible User Interfaces Final Project. Ok, so it’s just a prototype project… but surely they’ve got a deal in the works?

More pics on flikr, tagged as  Jug Hero

Researchers said on Friday the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spares parts for humans a step closer to reality.”

Which reminds me that there’s a new Michael Marshall Smith book on my reading list…

Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells