It was the Global Game Jam over the weekend, with participants asked to create games on the theme of "bubble". It's not a great theme, because there are two or three obvious ideas that it sparks and then not a whole lot more. This is what comes of having themes decided by a committee.

We had more people doing the GGJ at Essex than we usually do, ( Read more... )

I saw a link on Massively Overpowered to a video about "why text-based MMOs 'refuse to die'". It's quite good, and I don't just say that because I'm interviewed in it.

Could it be that text games are now sufficiently in the distant past that today's 20-year-olds look on them as a new idea?


http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2025/QBlog280125A.html

This week's Essex County Standard has an article about the winner of a competition for a holiday in Las Vegas.


( Read more... )

After the timetable clash that prevented many of my third-year students from playing MUD2, I instructed them to play at 8pm yesterday. I warned the regular MUD2 players (yes, there are some) that students may appear. I gave out around 30 more login instructions.

No students showed up.

This is somewhat disappointing for me, but not as disappointing as ( Read more... )

The BBC has a "most read" feature, that tells the reader what other readers are reading the most.

I've never entirely trusted that it does this, as sometimes it seems to favour links to articles that the BBC would rather like to be read but that few people are likely to want to read. There's definitely something amiss with it, anyway, as this ( Read more... )

When I arrived at the university as a student in 1978, I was allocated flat 10/14 of Eddington tower. In my second year, I had to live off campus in digs, but in my third year I was back in Eddington 10 in flat 15.

The red circle shows Eddington 10/14. Eddington 10/15 is to the left of it.


( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Most of the cartoons I've reead from Victorian editions of Punch are too much of their era to be amusing to a modern audience, but several of them are interesting enough to keep or to put to some purpose.

I shall certainly be using this one in my lecture on game theory.


( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I was keen to check out my new laser pointer this week, so got to the lecture room yesterday nice and early. It's just as well that I did, because this is what it looked like:


( Read more... )