Yekrats.com: Scotto’s Seafud Shanty

Someone created the “IFDB” Interactive Fiction Database.

I guess people submit thematic artwork to go with some of the games, and someone made a snazzy poster for my 2001 game The Beetmonger’s Journal.

Cool, huh?

Hi there, folks…

I have been thinking about an Esperanto micro-lesson of the month, to give me a chance for me to talk about one of my favorite hobbies: Esperanto. So, here is the first lesson! I promise to keep them simple.

Today, I’d like to start with just a simple, but truly versatile word in E-o which doesn’t really have much of an equivalent in English. Behold the power of Jen!

Jen!

“Jen” is pronounced like the English word “yen”. It means something similar to “Behold!” or the French “Voila!” but it is not quite as strong or as biblical as that. Perhaps it is closer to the English “Check this out.” It’s used when you want to indicate something you’re talking about. So “Jen unikornulo!” might translate to “Lookee! A unicorn!” or “Here’s a unicorn!”

However, with the magic of Esperanto suffixes, you can add the noun -O ending to make jeno, to mean, “the following thing that I’m just about to talk about.” You could adjective ending -A on the end of jen to create the word jena. In that sense, it is often used to describe the object that you’re just about to talk about. It will also accept the adverb -E ending, making jene, which would mean, “In the following manner.”

I’ve also seen it repeated in aphorisms or expressions “Jen…A, jen…B.” In this sense, it can mean “Sometimes…A, sometimes…B.”

The Esperanto rock-music group La Porkoj (”The Pigs”, pronounced “la PORKoy”. J sounds like Y.) wrote an accoustic guitar ballad called Jen, with relatively simple lyrics. Someone put those lyrics into images, and made a YouTube video for Jen, which should be simple enough for total noobs. (Just know that “Vi kaj mi” means “You and me”.)

Enjoy your new word, and I’ll be back next month!

I found this Gamasutra article about a group of students who each set out to create a computer game per week for a semester, and cranked out 50. Although the article is talking about video game design, the principles can be applied to most games, and how to rapidly develop them.

Though it’s mildly not safe for work, I’m getting more than a chuckle or two out of the snarky Dickipedia, a parody wiki for highlighting people that are essentially d*cks.

Just FYI, my GAMES 100 card game, “The Mother Lode of Sticky Gulch” is going on sale at Tanga.com tomorrow (Thursday May 1) only. They have very good one-day deals on a variety of stuff, with a lot of games.

If you liked the first part, you’ll probably get suckered into reading this part too! This part is just about Mr. Obama’s speech itself, and my further thoughts about the guy.

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Well, last night I got the honor of seeing Mr. Barack Obama speak at Lafayette Jeff High School. Here’s an account of the whole experience. (Kinda long, and only part 1… everything leading up to the speech.)

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¡uʍop-ǝpısdn ƃolq ʎɯ pǝuɹnʇ ǝuoǝɯos ¡ou ɥO

˙ʇxǝʇ uʍop-ǝpısdn ʎoɾuǝ oʇ ǝɹǝɥ ʞɔılɔ

I heard that my college roomie, Jeff Hanna, was going to be in town. He is currently working as the Technical Art Director at Volition (a computer game company). So it’s his job to oversee and direct other artists to make cool art for their games. Yes, he’s significantly boosted his geek cred during the past 20 years!

He was giving a lecture for the Computer Game Design club at Purdue, and I did dinner with the man before the lecture. It was nice catching up on old times.

I tagged along for the lecture, too. He gave a really great presentation on the computer games industry from the 90s until the modern day. He finished his lecture by telling the kids (and me) about all of the fabulous tools they have now that are FREE, which can be used for complex game design, tools like Blender, Paint.NET, Microsoft XNA and others can give someone a free game studio for just the cost of a computer. Really cool stuff.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time to do that sort of thing, realistically speaking, but it’s fun to think about and maybe tinker with.

Can you balance an egg on the equinox?

The answer may or may not surprise you…

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