The premise: Use the arrow keys to move your rather boneless avatar to avoid the unexplained falling spikes.

The problem: Inertia

The result: A great way to kill a half hour or so.

There are three undeniable facts of being a code monkey, design geek, or member of any other profession that involves being chained to a keyboard and mouse:

1 – sometimes you just have to have some junk food
2 – junk food = crumbs
3 – crumbs in your keyboard are really the pits

What do do? Forgo the snacks? Of course not. You can snack all you want as long as you have this spiffy new USB-powered miniature vacuum. Plug it in to any open USB port (1.1 or 2.0, thank you very much) and start sucking. It even has a “turbo mode” for those extra tough jobs like cat hair and toffee.

Vroom vroom.

Another round of “Get A Mac” commercials is hitting the airwaves this week, and I am sad to say that I think they have lost their way. The charm of the original ads was partly due to the fact that it was just two guys talking – props and the like were kept to a minimum – and mostly due to the fact that “Steve” wore the trademark Levis and St. Croix t-shirt and “Bill” wore a decidedly bad off-the-rack cheap-ass 139-dollar suit. That caved-in chest peice and those rat-ass hems were priceless. But now we have disguises and red suits and white suits and it just isn’t the same. If you want to take a peek, the new crop is right here.

All things must pass, I guess.

Although I will admit that Accident is pretty funny.

There are – conservatively – a million or so OSX widgets that try to be a better notepad. This is pretty much a giant waste of time and effort, since the built-in widgets package includes “Stickies” which does almost everything a notepad is ever asked to do.

Almost.

Take a peek at NotePad 2.1, which does one crucial function that (as far as I know) no other jotting app does – it syncs seamlessly with your iPod, so any notes you jot down on your widget appear on your ‘pod for easy on-the-go reference. Note that this app – unlike most of what I pimp in these pages – does cost a few bucks, so you have to decide if you think this extra functionality is worth paying for.

Time for the big one. Once in a while a free game comes along that makes hash out of 90% of the stuff that you’re expected to pay for. Cave Story is one of these games. The thing is beautifully executed, has a great storyline (as far as these things go), is a dream to look at and has a startling depth. If you ever played any of the original Metroid games, then you will see where the influence comes from here … this is technically a platformer, but has more “exploration” elements than just “jumping around and stomping”. The sorta-kinda old school graphics help push that feeling along, and the whole thing adds up to a seriously immersive experience.

Sadly, this is not a web-based game – there is just no way to get all of the elements here into a flash package. So you are going to have to download the thing, and there is some setting up to do. Windoze users should grab their copy here. and Mac users should click here to get theirs (the link under the top screen shot, labeled: ダウンロード – 1.6MB). Once you have your download, you will want to do a couple of things:

Windoze users will have to download the games’ music player separately. You do not want to deprive yourself of the background music here – it is of startling quality and fit.

There is an english translation patch for both Mac and PC – users of both versions will want this unless they happen to be multi-lingual. No doubt the less-than-inspiring name is a translation issue as well, but the patch doesn’t fix that.

Added instructions for Mac users can be found with the main game here.

Yes, you have to jerk around a bit. Big deal. This is the real thing. Go.

As mentioned in These Very Pages, Sony is jumping on the “pink portable electronics” bandwagon by releasing a pink PSP in Europe this fall (we will not mention the abomination that is the pink PS2 at this time). There are two possible reasons for this move – either they have a brilliant new marketing strategy that they came up with all on their own, or they are shamelessly copying Nintendo after seeing that the pink DS Lite is the top selling game console in Japan.

The reader can draw their own conclusions – this is not a judgmental sort of blog. Ahem.

However, regardless of the reasons behind it, the release of the pink PSP will not help those of you on this side of the pond who may be lusting for some pink portability – this will be a Europe only release, at least for now.

But – if you did really want a pink game platform … well, you just happen to be in luck. The gang at NOA announced this morning that two new colours of the DS Lite – Coral Pink and Onyx – will hit stores in North America on September 13th.

It doesn’t look “coral” to me, more of a baby pink, but it’s still pretty freaking cool. There is a caveat or two here, though: By going with the DS instead of the PSP you will have to give up some of the things that make the PSP what it is. You wont get the higher price, and you won’t have the pleasure of waiting for ludicrously long load times for games that were never originally engineered for a portable. Great sacrifices to be sure, but perhaps you can find a way to make do.

And you will get to play Elite Beat Agents, which will pretty much make your whole life complete. September 13th. Mark your calendars.

“Basic” colour blindness was referring to protanopia and deuteranopia. Blue and red cone monochromacy is so rare that it doesn’t show up statistically in a global population.

Speaking of Tetris, check out these cool items from The Videogame That Would Not Die:

Tetris Magnets: You can’t really play Tetris with them, but you can stick them on your fridge and be way cooler than anyone you know. All seven tetrominoes, with the original colours and textures (nice touch there), for your sticking and stacking pleasure. Sweet.

Tetris Shelving: Take those seven tetrominoes and make them into modular shelves. The colours aren’t quite right, but who cares? It’s Tetris shelves, for fuck’s sake. These babies are kind of expensive, but pretty much too awesome for words. You can’t put a price on that.

It wasn’t all that long ago that we cast a jaundiced eye on iLane in These Very Pages and declared it a bit of a dud. However, if you really think that you need your email read out loud to you, then why not give the E-Puppy a look. Not only does it supposedly read your mail, word processing files, whatever … it also looks like an adorable stuffed dog. Complete with a blinking “power gem” that alerts you to new mail.

Does it work? Who knows? But for 10 bucks I wouldn’t be holding my breath. Then again, it is damn cute.

Planarity is an incredibly original little game that proves – like Tetris – that simple is often better and that you can suck someone in to a gratifying game experience with just a few dots and lines.

The premise here is ridiculously simple – use your mouse to grab the vertices (that’s the coloured dots for your windoze types) of a two-dimensional shape and drag them around to rearrange the thing so that no lines cross. It starts simple but gets crazy complex in a hurry. It sits somewhere between a maze game and goofing around with cat’s cradle – it’s wicked fun and your eyes will cross before you finish it. Big thumbs up.

The shoddy Sony battery fiasco has reached out and grabbed Apple with the same cold had that it slapped Dell with last week. Apple announced today that there is a recall of 1.8 million batteries – virtually every unit sold in the last three years that uses the “battery cell” technology. Full details are here, but the link that you can use to check your battery as given in the CNet story is bogus – apparently they are either feebs or windoze users or both over there.

Click here to see if your battery is part of the recall.

Things look to be back to normal with a worthwhile rant. All I can say is “about fucking time”.

0.5: The percentage of human females who suffer from basic colour blindness.

Cyrano de Bergerac is one of those books that everyone “knows” but that a lot of people have never actually read. There is a simple and (mostly) forgivable reason for this – the vast majority of english translations suck. If you saw this book in high school, it was probably a translation that tried to preserve Rostad’s original rhyming structure – a strategy that renders the work into a clunky and almost unreadable kludge. Instead of quick banter and biting byplay between the characters you get … well, vomit.

Luckily there is a translation out there by one Lowell Bair that is worth seeking out. Bair was ballsy enough to say “fuck this rhyming shit” and just go with words that preserved the feel and the passion of the original thing. Instead of fighting through unworkable shit, you can sit back and revel in a new discovery of Cyrano and his ability to do the right thing, no matter what, no matter how painful. Plus he pretty much rocks.

If you have never taken the time to read this, go find this translation and discover it for yourself. If you have worked through this in the past and regretted the effort, this version will make it up to you. Either way, you should give it a go.

Here is a quickie for your Wednesday gaming fun. Tama is a little flash excursion where you grab a coin with your mouse and fling it into a little maze, hoping to land it in the scoring areas and avoiding the “game over” pits. It is easy and fun, but clearing that last level is a bitch.

The english instructions are down below the devil writing. Enjoy.

If you waited up for some Really Big News from Leipzig, well, it sucks to be you. There was nothing really of note at all, but the announcement of the pink DS for the European market was pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. One, because it is surprising that it took this long – the pink DS sells like hot pizza in Japan. And two, because Sony is once again showing themselves to be the Microsoft of the gaming world – picking off ideas from more innovative companies and pimping them as their own. Hot on the heels of last night’s announcement is word from Sony that they too will offer their portable gaming system in pink. Cool beans – now all we need is some proper content.

UPDATE: Stuff magazine in the U.K. is reporting that Sony will also launch a Pink PS2 in Europe for fall. While the pink portable makes sense, I think that this is a bit of a bonehead idea. The problem here is that the main audience for the PS2 is 15-year old boys. And they don’t want a freaking pink game console. Period. The only use at all I can see for this is that you might buy a second system for a girl sibling, with the mostly secure knowledge that her brother won’t be hogging her system anytime soon. Kudos for trying, though …

8: The percentage of human males who suffer from basic colour blindness.

Dude:

Not much real news here at all, with the exception of the pretty cool demo of REAL sword swinging in the new Zelda. That looks to be a complete hoot. The only other news of note is that Europe is getting the Pink DS (whatever) and that almost 20 percent of DS owners in Germany had never played a videogame before buying their DS. So maybe Nintendo actually knows what they are doing with this Wii thing.

Sorry, mate. I know you hoped for a big kabong.

The “next-gen” videogame wars will heat up a little bit more tonight (or tomorrow, depending how logical you are about these things). At 1:30 EDT at the 2006 Games Convention in Leipzig our pals from Nintendo will bust out some new info and pony up some more goodies regarding the Wii Revolution. You would have to be a complete and utter fanboy to stay up that late just for some news that you can easily read tomorrow morning. If you are one of these sad and piteous creatures, then check back here at the appointed hour – our pal Matt is in Leipzig right now and will post the summary via email (we hope – we haven’t really tried this yet).

So Homestar Runner has been around for ten years. Ten freaking years. Which is why there is no Strong Bad email this week – instead we have a “re-mix” of the first ever Homestar creation. When you are done, you can see the original the way it first appeared to us old-timers back in ‘96.

Oh – in case you missed it in the excitement surrounding the galvanized nails, last week’s Strong Bad email was totally awesome because it dared to ask the question “Why do I have to watch a 2 minute commercial for the show I am already watching?”

Why, indeed.

If you don’t have the time to dedicate to Hot Air!, then try wasting a few seconds with Tilt. The premise is simple … move your mouse to keep the stick balanced upright on your finger. But as the game levels up the combination of inertia and a fulcrum that is awfully close to the load makes things pretty dicey.

You could use this to settle workplace arguments over who is going for coffee and stuff.

Hot Air! is a delightfully addictive little game that combines classic NES-type graphics with a totally fascinating gameplay mechanic. It is the kind of thing that will suck you in and have you trying “just one more time” for pretty much the rest of your day. As an added bonus, the retro colours and sprites will put a grin on your face no matter what sort of a complete ogre you are.

The play is super simple, you just use your mouse to buzz the balloon with a little fan to get it moving from the launch platform, past the obstacles, and onto the landing space. Easy as pie … except that pretty much everything on the screen that is not part of the background will burst your little balloon. As you progress you unlock new levels, and there are some bonus levels that can only be accessed by collecting stars – a task that can be tougher than it looks.

One caveat: Use the “Options” selection at the main menu to turn the music off. There is apparently something wrong with the music loop and when it starts again it plays over top of itself, making for a hell of a racket. Other than that, this one is a keeper.

When we last mentioned Weird Al, it was to point out that he was offering up an “unreleased” track (translation: one that wouldn’t be on the new album because the original artist was being a fuckhead about the whole thing) for your downloading pleasure.

Today our man Al is back with yet another downloadable track, ironically titled Don’t Download This Song. And yes, that is ironic, unlike all of the examples in the Alanis song of the same name which are mostly mere coincidences instead of examples of actual irony (we’ll give her the “rain on the wedding day” thing) and just prove that she is a useless turd when it comes to concepts like being literate.

There is also an interesting link to Al’s MySpace page which appears to exist for no other reason that to one-up all of the lamers who are already there with nothing better to do than engage in sad and transparent attempts at pretending to be Al. Which says something for the state of our society … but I am really not sure what.

We have mocked the mopes a Microsoft many a time for their embarrassingly bogus software. The fact that these guys send shitty product out the door is no longer news. But the fact that their latest attempt to fix said bogus software makes things even worse is news. Or at least pretty funny.

USB drives continue to get physically smaller and logically bigger. So now we get 4GB on a thing about the size of your baby toe. The price is right, but one has to wonder if they couldn’t have saved a few bucks by eschewing the deal with Google to pre-load the thing with vaguely useless software that you can download for free anyway.

I have oft complained about offices that are too hot. Everywhere I go, I seem get stuck in some sweltering office. Worse, when I look around I usually find that I am surrounded by dipshits who have sweaters on and complain about how the place is too cold, so my chances of getting the AC pumped up are vanishingly small.

Pricks.

Up until now, the only recourse has been to sit there with a sweaty bag and be generally miserable. Thankfully, those days are done now with this sweet little USB-powered portable ass-cooler. You may not be able to ready the devil characters on this page, but you can trust me when I tell you the little fan sucks in air and uses it to ventilate your poor overheated sweaty ass. The handy power switch lets you manage your ass temperature without having to constantly plug and unplug the thing – an all-too-common problem with small USB powered devices.

Too awesome for words.

It’s that time of the year. The summer doldrums. People waiting to go on vacation, people just getting back from vacation … people everywhere who are bored and restless and not really interested in “buckling down”, “rolling up their sleeves”, or any other of a number of hackneyed clichés.

People who need some fun. A whole week’s worth of fun. Starting today.

Let’s ease into the week with something simple yet intriguing. Znax is a colour matching game that is easy to play and runs against the clock, so it is easy to squeeze into your day via breaks here and there. The goal is to make rectangles (no rhombuses, no trapezoids,) by selecting the four corners with coloured tiles that match. The instructions say “square”, but this is a translation error and any rectangle will do. The bigger the rectangle and the more squares that touch the edge of the playfield, the higher the score. It only takes a second to see how it works, but you will be picking at this all day looking for a few thousand more points.

Go.

I must apologize. I was under the impression that I had mentioned this particular series of items a long time ago, and when I went to reference the original post today I found that I had indeed never managed to get around to it.

My bad.

So – despite this being number 13 in the series, and despite you having now missed the first 12 installments, let me cast your attention to the Mercedes-Benz “Mixed Tape” site, where every fortnight (that is every two weeks for you Windoze users) you can listen to, download, copy, and burn a another CD or iPod full of new music that you probably won’t hear anywhere else. The song selections are uniformly excellent, and the mix is always interesting and quite outside the normal sort of thing you find compiled onto a slab of mylar. If you don’t have a pop-up blocker and don’t mind this sort of thing, then the main link is here and you will get a nicely laid out floating window to use as your launchpad for listening or downloading. If you do block the evil that is pop-ups, then you can hit the guts of the thing directly here – it just won’t be fitted into its own little pane. They also include PDFs of the cover art / track list in both colour and black and white for your burning and storing pleasure. Take your pick. But don’t miss out.

Back in the glory days of the 80s (and hard on the heels of a sudden “chic” status of robots thanks to Short Circuit) There was a super fun board game called Robo Rally. The idea was to “program” your battle bots with a series of instruction cards and then pit them against each other in an arena, each bot making the pre-determined moves and attacks as “programmed” by your selection and arrangement of cards.

Now Robo Rally is back, having fallen into the hands of the crew out at Wizards of the Coast (they of Magic: The Gathering fame), revamped with new cards and a better look but (hopefully) still packing all of the fun. This is good. But this is not why this entry is here. This entry is here because there is a cool variant of this concept on-line called Robo Runner, and it has all of the same sorts of elements, packaged in a web-based format that you can while away the day with and play against other mopes on-line. It does require a registration to allow for multi-player web action, but it is definitely worth a look. Enjoy.

845: The Indian government’s estimate of the number of languages actually in use in that country.