Thursday afternoon, day off tomorrow and flexitime to finish early today. Boss is at a meeting, co-workers have all vanished for the day, leaving me, alone, with the internet. Bwahahahahaha ... ahem.

I discovered ficlets, via Wil Wheaton's blog, which are short (1000ish characters) stories used to inspire sequels and prequels. Pretty fun, and a nice idea especially when you see the network of stories inspired by yours grow. 

But by far the best bit is the "inspirations" page, which has a first line/last line generator. My favourite combination so far is:

FIRST LINE: the monkeys told me I'd find you here ...

LAST LINE: BOOM!

I'd like to see one of those full of scene openers for an rpg. That'd work quite nicely for Six Bullets I think, where it doesn't necessarily matter how you've started a scene as you have done, especially the epilogue, because it's meant to be explained as the game progresses.

Just thought I'd give a shout out to Planet Story Games for those of you reading my lj who weren't aware of it. It's a site that gathers together many indie games design blog feeds into one central page. Truth be told I've started to use it more and more to keep up to date with games design blogs, rather than my lj (although I still read that too, don't worry!).

Of course, in talking about it here I'm probably going to create some sort of feed paradox, as my blog is syndicated there too ...

Minus is awesome. The wondrous feel and the almost lonely character of Minus, entertaining herself with her imagination/magic, reminds me very much of Calvin and Hobbes. You should read it.

I stumbled upon this whilst browsing for music videos on YouTube. It made me chuckle!

This webcomic is very funny - what if Lord of the Rings was a D&D adventure?

Who would fall for the Trojan Horse trick today? Apparently, quite a few people! Priceless (and the last movie I'll post tonight, I promise). Swiped from prest0.


Via: VideoSift

Behold the legend that is the World of Warcraft South Park episode. Surprisingly, they don't take the piss out of it (much), but instead have a plot based in it! I guess Matt and Trey must play or something ...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This is an amazing little short animation based on the Icewind Dale Trilogy by RA Salvatore, a trilogy I'm still rather fond of. Especially good is when Guenhwyvar appears!

Ow. I think I strained my brain trying to imagine 10 dimensions ... I was fine up to about dimension 5, then the animation, cool as it was, lost me completely! I think I'll stick to 4 ...

Well they have to stop Cthulhu somehow ...

From Reuters:

"Organizers of an online conference with President Vladimir Putin have invited Internet users to quiz him on Russia's democracy, its newly assertive role in the world and his personal qualities.

With two days to go to the web cast, Russians are more interested in why he kissed a boy on the stomach, whether he will dispatch humanoid robots to defend Russia and what he thinks of the return of giant mythical octopus Cthulhu."

EDIT: I've just remembered a recent article in a serious news journal* - could this be the start of a mecha arms race?

*disclaimer: may not be either serious, news or a journal

Seriously, this is how Hollywood really works. I read it on the internet.

Says the Surrealist Dalek.

I first came to the Surrealist for the Livejournal Dungeon that chadu linked to (and which has infuriatingly keeps breaking, despite me killing ms_haze the rat and stealing the Shield of cartimandua), but have since discovered their other toys, of which the Surrealist Dalek is my favourite (SPA-TU-LATE!) but which the ebay feedback generator will be the most useful. Expect my ebay feedback to get rather more flowery from here on in ...

In other words ... 500 words left til the end of my WFRP assignment. Well, til the end of my word limit. I still have another 3k to go beyond that ... Time for some choppy choppy.

So I spent the whole morning laughing out loud at this site, all about the lame ass Weight Watchers diet cards from the 70s. It's not so much the recipes on them ... well okay it is the dreadful sounding recipes, as well as the hilarious accompanying ornaments in the picture (serving suggestion: on a bed of lettuce accompanied by a giant, plastic cheetah), and the very wry commentary with each card.

ms_haze, please please pleeeease don't take inspiration from these!

This little animation is excellent!

In other news, I've got 17,000 more words to write for <cough cough cough> by the end of the month, but it's dragging a lot.

Also, we've just bought a house. Oh my. It hasn't sunk in yet, mainly because between now (offer being accepted) and then (moving in), there is a stupendous amount of paperwork, legalities and other shit to deal with, during which the whole thing might all fall down (like it did 2 years ago). Still, it'll be fun.

Finally, note my new icon. You either get it, or you don't :-)

That is all.