Choose your own adventure – easier with a map

I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books as a young’un. Though, being a Campbell, I was a pretty bad cheat and used to do them backwards after a couple of frustrating deaths.

Perhaps I would have made better choices had I studied the structure of the books in depth. Like this person has.

In scanning over the distribution of colors in this plot, one clear pattern is a the gradual decline in the number of endings. The earliest books (in the top row) are awash in reds and oranges, with a healthy number of ‘winning’ endings mixed in. Later cyoa books tended to favor a single ‘best’ ending (see CYOA 44 & 53).

And here’s something I did not know, and indeed it contains a life lesson for those of us who like to cheat…

The one outlier is the catastrophic ending seen in the third row from the bottom. This was a punishment page that could only be reached by cheating. Unlike most other endings in the book it does not offer to let you continue the story from a few pages back but instead calls you a cheater and leaves you with no choice but to start over from the beginning.

Apparently the books evolved to become more difficult over time. As indicated by this graph…

Read the rest of the research. It’s interesting.

November 16, 2009

Strawman

November 15, 2009

Heaven-o

You wouldn’t read about it in the papers. A guy is trying to get “hello” removed from the lexicon.

November 15, 2009

The perfect mug for instant coffee drinkers

If you’re going to drink crap you might as well drink it from a toilet…

November 15, 2009

Reporting for duty

I’ve put together a few tips for helping husbands/wives to survive the report writing process.

For the report writer.

1. Balance your time. We all know that report writing isn’t fun for you, but don’t forget that it’s no fun for your spouse either. Make sure you spend some quality time with them as well.

2. Encourage your spouse to use some of his/her free time to do the things he/she enjoys but you don’t. For Nathan it’s playing playstation.

3. Don’t slack off on your commitments. Again, this has to do with the balance thing. Fair enough, don’t take on any extra commitments, but don’t slack off on the ones you’ve already committed to.

4. 80% is good enough. I haven’t mastered this one yet but I’m trying. Apparently the theory is that near enough is good enough. We don’t have to be perfect all of the time.

5. Sleep and eat properly. This goes without saying.

For the spouse…

1.  Be patient and understand that the work needs to be done at home and outside of regular work hours.

2. By flowers and chocolate. Frequently.

3. Try to provide a healthy dose of perspective.

4. Be prepared to get your hands dirty and do some marking.

5. Find something to occupy yourself for 72 hours. Nathan recommends a PS3.

November 15, 2009

Paddle pop

Table Tennis hasn’t been a bastion of innovation. Much. The basic gameplay is essentially the same as it was when invented. Although, I was in a sports shop yesterday and I noticed the handles had a little slide out adjustable thing that is meant to change the amount of control a player can exert on the ball. Interesting. And yet the really innovative players are doing away with handles altogether…

Here it is in action…

November 15, 2009

Mail order riots

Are you sick of direct mail? I am. Not quite as sick as these guys who have produced a 16 page pamphlet to stuff into the reply paid envelopes they get sent in the mail.

Here are some samples from the brochure.

Things get a little crazy from there… but it all ends well…

November 15, 2009

Brain power

While we’re on the subject of robots… here’s a cool little piece of trivia.

A robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That’s the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain’s low energy requirements of just 20 watts–barely enough to run a dim light bulb.

November 15, 2009

Robots in disguise

If ever the Decepticons do attack you can rest assured we have friendly robots everywhere that will no doubt leap to our defence. They’ll be hiding though. They’re very sneaky, and all over the place. Where you’d least expect them.

Like playing pool…

Or making pancakes…

…Playing volleyball…

They might be packing stuff in a warehouse.

Or taking out the trash…


With all these powers combined and built into a body like this one they’ll be all set to protect us from the nasty aliens.

November 15, 2009

Optimus Time

This is perhaps the coolest fancy dress costume since the last Transformers costume I posted…

November 15, 2009

Paintball Art

You have quite possibly seen this video of the Mythbusters guys painting the Mona Lisa in a blink with a paintball turret gun…

But I’m hoping you haven’t seen this rendering of Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portrait already…

And I posted this a while ago, but it’s equally impressive – though not strictly a piece of “paintball art”… in fact it’s got nothing to do with paintball. But it is the Mona Lisa.

November 15, 2009

Shirt of the Day: Pacman meets Casper

Mmm. Tasty Tasty Ghost.

And on a shirt too…

November 15, 2009

Shirt of the Day: Rubiks Cubicle

Life in a cubicle can be a really colourful existence.

Celebrate that with this shirt.

November 15, 2009

Weekend Project: Ping Pong Cannon

One more for the arsenal of dangerous projects to try at home… And it’s a pretty guaranteed ace in the hole for my next game of table tennis against dad… if it doesn’t wreck the table.

This thing shoots table tennis balls through solid chipboard (oxymoron alert).

From CrunchGear.

November 15, 2009

Don’t forget your toothbrush

These are some nice ads from Colgate. Nice and sinister.

Colgate normally gives out small product samples at annual events like “Oral Health Month” to remind target consumers, especially kids, to take better care of their teeth after eating sweets. This method does not drive strong results as most consumers tend to forget the message, even if they have collected the samples. Instead of giving away product samples, ice cream and cotton candy were given out. The stick carrying the ice cream and cotton candy carries a hidden message. Once consumers are done the message printed on the tip of the stick shaped like a toothbrush reveals “Don’t Forget” with the Colgate logo. This simple message effectively reminded consumers to brush their teeth.

November 15, 2009