Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Aftermath of the project & a new game
The kids had to do two-minute presentations on their projects. As I predicted, some of the kids had scrapbookers in the family. There were some interesting developments, though; one student constructed all of his pages on paper plates, and another took the Maximal Ingratiation approach, tailoring all of his answers to please the teacher. For, “If I could do something to make the world a better place . . .” he wrote, “I would make our Theology teacher President of the United States.” Or words to that effect.
Kinda undermines the introspective point of the assignment, but I give him props for good humor intuition: he had his class in stitches during his presentation.
Jake thinks his project had the only pop-up (and certainly the only pop-up Colbert). Go pop-ups!
In other news: got a great premise for an SF novel, or at least a short story. I’m pretty sure this hasn’t been done yet. But it’s just a premise (and a few features of the main character) but no story. It’s one of those “thaw out a frozen 21st Century guy in an unusual future” premises, and the unusual future is the kicker, of course. I have a good idea what the first two or three chapters would look like, but after that, I have no idea. Should I trust in the muse? It worked for my romance, but that’s romance. Everyone knows how that’s supposed to end.
New game: Osmos. You control this entity which looks a bit like a moon jellyfish; you propel yourself by farting out bits of your mass opposite to your direction of movement. Encounter something smaller than yourself and you absorb it, gaining mass; run into something bigger than yourself, and you lose mass (or die altogether if you don’t move real fast). Starts simple, rapidly becomes wicked hard.
Osmos is an indie game, downloadable for the low low price of ten dollars. In recent years, some of our best gaming experiences have been with indie games. I’ve previously blogged World of Goo, but I should have mentioned Braid, too. Neat stuff. And sooo addictive.
D.
