Category: Miscellaneous

Even though it’s kind of old news, I stumbled upon a selection of photos from the i am 8-bit video game art show opening. Too bad all the cool stuff happens in California.

The NPR has a short interview with David Mikkelson, the co-founder of Snopes.com. (Snopes is my favorite site for information about Urban Myths and other rumours).

While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, Blink, I learned that sometimes we have subconscious biases that are not exactly politically correct. A research team at Harvard University has come up with what they call the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.

Take the test and it may surprise you what your subconscious mind thinks about:

• Age (‘Young – Old’ IAT)
• Gender – Science
• Race (‘Black – White’ IAT)
• Presidents (‘Presidential Popularity’ IAT)
• Sexuality (‘Homosexual – Straight’ IAT)
• Gender – Career
• Arab-Muslim (‘Arab Muslim – Other People’ IAT)
• Weight (‘Fat – Thin’ IAT)
• Religion (‘Judaism – Other Religions’ IAT)
• Disability (‘Disabled – Abled’ IAT)
• Native American (‘Native – White American’ IAT)
• Asian American (‘Asian – European American’ IAT)
• Weapons (‘Weapons – Harmless Objects’ IAT)
• Skin-tone (‘Light Skin – Dark Skin’ IAT)

I took the tests both on Age and Gender and it was calculated that I do not appear to have either an age bias or a gender bias. Sometimes a person’s results can indicate a bias and in retaking the test it may still be hard to correct that bias even though you know you have it and are trying to avoid it from showing.

I’m back from my trip to Drayton Valley and Edmonton. I saw Jackie and Glen’s new house and played with my nephew Ryker. He’s so amazingly cute!

In Edmonton we went to the Fringe Festival to check out the street performers and had a great time. We wanted to see one of the plays but couldn’t get through dinner and get down there fast enough after we decided which play to see. The thing about the plays at The Fringe is, they are selected based on a lottery system, so just because a play is selected to be performed, doesn’t mean it will be good. But that’s part of the fun – finding a good play. Based on the reviews we thought we had a winner.

The only other Fringe Festival I’ve been to was in Adelaide, Australia, and I think the one in Edmonton is a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit better. We had a good time anyway.

I’m just finishing up my packing for a weekend trip to Drayton Valley and Edmonton. No new posts until I’m back on Sunday night.

I found a site with a tutorial on how to make your own spider out of five $1 bills. I never tried it, but it looks pretty cool all the same. Plus I don’t have five American dollars just lying around and don’t really feel like folding up five Fives.

I took advantage of the new flickr meme going around. It’s from the same folks that brought us the Flickr Badge Maker. It’s called the Flickr Magazine Cover Maker. It lets you convert photos from your flickr photostream into magazine covers. Granted this is one of the worst photos I have, but I decided to use it because it was one of my most recent shots. I also made a flickrbadge awhile ago:

I don’t really know why I bother, but it’s kind of a fun distraction. See all of Flagrant Disregard’s Flickr Toys.

I downloaded a new extension for Firefox today called Spellbound. It allows you to verify your spelling in forms and comment boxes using the language of your choice. I choose to download English (Canada).

I recommend trying it out if you are prone to typos and misspellings like me.

Previously I Heart Firefox.

I stumbled upon this site the other day about handheld devices that are able to play ported versions of the classic first person shooter, Doom.

It turns out the iPod Photo when loaded with a Linux OS can handle playing Doom (although from the video it seems pretty slow).

Still, it looks cool to see Doom on an iPod and maybe in the future they will fix it so that it’s not so choppy. Apparently it plays all wad files: Doom I Shareware (won’t play demos), Doom II Shareware, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom wads, and my personal favorite Doom II. Check out http://www.ipodlinux.org/Doom for more info, photos, and video.

Disclaimer: I never tried this on my own iPod. For now I’m happy just using the default iPod OS.

The average age of video game players is increasing daily as those of us that were raised on Nintendo in the 80’s are still playing games. These days, with the increasing popularity of online games like World of Warcraft, it was only a matter of time until something like this happened: Busted. Grounded.

In the thread linked below, little boy Brion makes a rather innocent-sounding forum post at 3:30 AM. Trouble is, his mother notices because she reads that same forum. She responds:

“Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here.. But, Brion – if you don’t want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning – DON’T post on a forum that she reads. Busted. Grounded.”

After writing that she was going to punish her son by making him stay home and watch Steel Magnolias or Moulin Rouge with her, she wrote this (#192).