Twitteleh--Twitter for your Jewish Mother

By lisala on 9/30/09 2:53pm
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Twitter, for the one person who cares where you are, what you've eaten, and whether you're wearing a sweater:

Evony: Pseudo-Medieval MMO Game

By lisala on 9/29/09 3:09pm
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I tend to like Civilization style games; I've liked them since before there was a Civilization game, in fact. But there's a Web-browser MMO game that I find more than a little distressing. In its current version, it's called Evony; the Chinese company that owns the game and site originally titled the game Civony; in [cough] respectful homage, I'm sure, of Sid Meier's Civilization. It's a real-time strategy game. The underlying game conceit is medieval civilization; it's a typical online pseudo-medieval feudal warfare game, first created in the venerable Apple II game Santa Paravia by Reverend George Blank. Basically, you settle a city, plant crops, harvest them, and exploit natural resources while you fortify your city and raise tropps—until you can invade your neighbors, or settle new lands.

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Memes

By lisala on 9/24/09 9:23pm
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The word meme was coined by Richardlolcatlolcat Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to refer to cultural behaviors and beliefs that were transmitted from individual to individual, and eventually, from one culture to another. Etymologically, meme (like memory and mimeses and a number of other words in Modern English) is cognate with Greek mimema or "something imitated." Dawkins used his new word to discuss the way ideas and cultural innovations spread from person to person, and culture to culture. Dawkins used examples ranging from melodies, or religious beliefs and concepts, to clothing styles, and technological advances. Dawkins' basic concept, and the idea of memes spreading virally, was fairly quickly applied to the Internet, after the Web became popular.

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All Your Base Are Belong To US (AYBABTU)

By lisala on 9/19/09 5:47pm
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From roughly 2000 to 2002, one of the most pernicious (or amusing) of Internet memes began spreading. Google AYBABTUGoogle AYBABTUThe phrase "All your base are belong to us" is taken from the dialog of a1991 Japanese video for the Sega Mega Drive. The game was called Zero Wing. The phrase occurs in the opening scene (a cut-scene in gamer parlance) that was part of the splash presentation of the game. The original Japanese of version of the game from Toaplan was extraordinarily poorly translated by Sega of Europe. It was so appallingly awful a trans

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