Carrion My Wayward Son.

Hello, sorry I haven't updated lately. These are busy times.

Today's plink is a game about some animals seeking vengeance on cars and other vehicles for their squished brethren. Essentially, you have a jet-propelled mechanical raccoon which you can launch into traffic with the aim of doing as much damage as possible.

And why not.

It's got a neat line in optional 'bonus challenges' that will keep you clicking the replay button and is generally some harmless, explodey fun.

Roadkill Revenge!

Slow On The Uptake.

Evening.
I'm back from Prague. The half marathon went well and it's a delightful city. There may well be a blog post in it when I get some photos, but for now I'd like to share a video with you.

I'm pretty much a sucker for anything cool filmed in slow motion, there's some great footage out there taken on high speed cameras that blows my mind. I could show you the water balloon exploding in slo-mo, or the bullet going through things schtick, but you've seen that already.

Here's something a lot more restrained. It's footage of jugglers, unicyclists and other assorted ball manipulators *ahem*. Circus skills, essentially but sloooooooooow.

Check it:



Nice.

Plinx Quickie.

Hiya,
I'm off to foreign lands tomorrow to participate in another half marathon because apparently I didn't learn my lesson last time.

So to tide you over, let's have a quickie.

How To Explain The Internet To A 19th Century Street Urchin: A Flowchart.

See you soon!

Park In It, Man.

There's a chance that you're reading this at night. A smaller chance that it is night-time and you can see the sky from where you are and a smaller-still chance that it is night-time, you can see the sky and it is clear enough for there to be stars.

But if you DO meet all those criteria, have a gawp at the twinkly devils now. Nice isn't it? Wish we could see more of what's going on up there. My limited knowledge of the cosmic ballet is such that I know that celestial bodies are forever spinning around each other. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could watch. Or, at the very least, see a simplified representation in our browsers.

Well friends, your prayers are partially answered! Peep this:

The Solar System.

Hooray for space! While you're there click down in the bottom right to convert to a Tychonian representation. Now you can have it trace the orbit of any planet you choose. Essentially creating a galactic spirograph.

Twirly.

Sugar Daddy.

Hiya.
You're a sensible person, right? So that means you drink tea. Or, at a push, coffee. How many sugars do you take? Oh really? That's interesting. Those of you who gave an answer greater than zero, how many grains do you think that number of spoonfuls would consist of?

Essentially, what I want to know is, would you put 100 grains of sugar into a cup?

Sugar, Sugar is a game that will task you to do just that; put 100 grains of sugar into a cup. Simple. I mean, you'll face the same challenges you would if you were making a cuppa at home: transport the sugar from where it is kept to wherever the cup may be, make sure you're putting the right type of sugar in the right cup, etc. Obviously, just like at home, you'll also need to drop the sugar through a hole in the floor so that it will fall from the ceiling and sometimes you'll need to flip gravity on its head.

Basically, you've been training for this your whole life.

So go. Go and draw those lines necessary to ferry the sugar from the comma it lives in to the waiting cups. Go play Sugar, Sugar.

Plinx Quickie.

*pops head in*
I'll just leave this here:

Alphabeards!

OK Mr. Sunshine!

Hello, this post presents a bit of a quandary for me. On the one hand, I don't want to over-explain the concept because it would strip away some of the joy of discovery. On the other hand, as you'll see in a moment, the more words I can put on the page, the better. I suppose one solution would be to talk at length about this dilemma so as to solve it in such a way that retains the mystery while creating enough raw material for you to enjoy.

Also, I suppose I could squeeze a few sentences out of the fact that this miraculous thing you're about to see may not work depending on the browser you're using. I can vouch for it's effectiveness using Google Chrome and I'm assured that the newer versions of Firefox run it fine, but I haven't tested IE. Maybe if you feel like you're missing out, you could convert?

Ok, that's enough blurb. Just click below to Katamarify this very page!

NAAAAA NA NA NA NA NA NAAA NA.

Visit the Site for more info.

Sty Stallone.

Evening all.
It's game time. I hope you're ready, because it's the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded and I've run out of baseball clichés. Should probably have picked a sport I know more about. Or just not persevered quite as far with this tawdry introduction.

Either way, you're about to play a game where a pig in a bandana uses an arsenal of weaponry to take out other, presumably evil, pigs.

It's a 2D physics puzzle game, like so many that have gone before but the quality is elevated by the variety of weapons and intelligent level design. Also, if you run out of levels to play, there is a whole gallery of user-generated ones.

It's good, wholesome, cartoony, pig-murderin' fun for all the family.

It's Hambo!

Steeeeerike.

Hey guys.
Today I'm going to lift the veil a bit. Give you an insight on how to milk the very best stuff out of the internet.
This is primo information, so don't go spreading it around. I had to put in 10 years hard graft in the HTML mines for this.

Ok, here goes... There are videos of cats on the internet. That's right. Cats. Just drink that in.

Oh you knew? You've seen the videos of Maru in the box? The cat failing to jump a gate in slow motion? The one that plays the bongos on a baby's head?*

Well check THIS out:



Yeah, that's why I'm an internet maven and you aren't.

*These are all real videos by the way. Oh yes.

Seed Of Doubt.

Morning all.

Not really sure how to classify today's plink. It's a game in as much as it is technically interactive, but all you really do is click and watch events unfold.

In online gaming circles, things like this are called webtoys. Cute, right?

This one, named Mitoza, is a particularly polished example. It starts with a seed (well, technically it starts with an adorable loading screen) and offers you two choices. A flowerpot or a bird. Clicking one will cause something to happen to the seed, it will grow into a plant or get eaten by a robin respectively. Anyway, you keep making choice after choice and eventually you'll end up with a company of flies performing Hamlet or an ice cream stand inside an egg run by a devilish aubergine. Inevitably, you always revert to a single seed and the process begins anew.

There are so many permutations that I'm still discovering new ones. Give it a try and report back with your discoveries.

Mitoza.

Lurve.

This blog post goes out to all the ladies out there.



Aw yeah.

The Ascent Of Van.

I don't know quite how to explain today's offering. I've just found it and I am somewhat taken aback.

Put simply, it's a program someone has written which shows the realtime evolution of a car.

Now, I don't mean it shows the stages of a car being built, or how a certain model of car has changed over the years.

No. This is a genetic algorithm enabling the selective breeding of randomly generated vehicles. Each one is spawned and then its progress is recorded. The ones that get the furthest in the fastest times live on to 'reproduce' and pass on their strengths to a new generation.

This is one of the weirdest posts I've ever had to write. Thinking about it is making my head hurt. I think it is best if you just see for yourself. If you can handle it.

BoxCar 2D.

Let it run for a while. See how some are more successful than others? Through subsequent generations, you'll see tweaked versions of those cars as they literally evolve. It's strangely heart-warming. I found myself really rooting for certain scrappy little racers and being emotionally crushed (well, a bit) when one of them spawned upside down. Removing itself from the gene pool by dint of pure dumb luck.

I still don't fully understand the finer points of this program, but I am finding The FAQ pretty useful.

The theory of Evolution applied to cars. THAT is why I love the internet.

Doing Your Swede In.

You've probably already had your dinner by now. If you haven't though, and you're at a loss for what to eat, why not consider some delicious Swedish meatballs?

Cooked the traditional Swedish way, of course. For reference, please watch the following video.

Note, this is like that time I linked to the German Forklift Driving Instructional Video, the video is much better than it sounds. Enjoy!



Give this man a prime-time cooking show.

Goodnight!

What's Your Angle?

Hello friends.
I think it's about time we took a fishing trip.

Just, y'know... float out into the middle of nowhere, sling the hook over the side, grab a fish, flick it out of the water and into the air then blow it to bits with a gun.

What do you mean that's not how fishing works? That's how I learnt. Your way sounds boring! I prefer to go RADICAL FISHIN'!

YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

It's A Hoot Hoot.

Hello all. Hope your weekends were fruitful.
I spent a lot of mine playing LBP2, predictably. It's so great. I'll write more about it sometime in the week.

Today however, I have something that just doesn't feature enough in everyday life:

Hungover Owls.



Yeah. Somebody has dedicated a blog to finding pictures of owls that look like they're suffering after a big night. Once again, it's stuff like this that makes me love the internet.

The blog has an astonishing 14 pages of worse-for-wear owls already, each with a smirk-worthy caption. You should check it out, and you can do so Here!