Monthly Archive for February, 2006

Perplex City

Kirsty has just started getting into this amazing alternate reality puzzle adventure game Perplex City and I have to say I’m hooked too.
Puzzle Cards

The basic story is that the Receda Cube (an unusual artifact) has been stolen from Perplex City (an alternate reality) and hidden somewhere on Earth. All you have to do is find it and win £100,000! Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple.

To get started you need to buy some of the 256 puzzle cards from Firebox (my favourite toyshop) and solve the clues which you enter into the website at PerplexCity.com to gain points. Some cards give you info about the theft of the cube, some tell you about Perplex City, while others point you to phone numbers and websites that expand the story further! Combined with real-life radio interviews, newspaper ads and events in London & New York (so far) the game demands a great deal of time and skill in solving mazes, crosswords, illusions, etc.

People from all over the world are now invloved in this quest and have helped to further the story significantly. To find out the story so far and the incredible puzzles that have already been solved, Click Here.

To highlight quite how brilliant the game is, here is a quick example: one of the characters in the game developed a computer programme before he died which was posted on ‘his’ website (available to all at www.salkfamily.com). Players found that it was a series of invisible mazes and by running the programme on Apple powerbook computers, they could guide a ball around the maze just by using the inertia sensors and tilting the laptop! After fully mapping the mazes and stacking them ontop of each other they found various links to hidden urls on the website which unlocked scraps of email conversations, which in turn led to further clues. Incredible eh? and that’s just a small portion of what’s happened so far. Check it out, but make sure you have plenty of time on your hands!

3.5-inch Video iPod

The rumours have been going round for a week or so now and were first posted on the Think Secret website. Basically, Apple are expected to launch a full-screen video ipod within the next few months. If true, perhaps the most excitable feature on these new ipods will be the ‘virtual click-wheel’ that appears when you touch the screen. It’s expected to work in the same way as the current mechanical click wheel on ipods.

To add further weight to the rumour, tech site The Register uncovered designs for the virtual clickwheel in a recent Apple patent application to the US Patent Office.

Click the links to read the full story. I’m certainly excited!

Jesus: With You Always…

Golfer Thanks to the brilliant Ship Of Fools, I’ve found a renewed sense of peace that our Lord is always with me. I followed a link under the ‘fruitcake’ section and found this little gem. Read the story then view the pictures by clicking on ‘Home’. Who knows, your own occupation may be listed too!

History Repeating?

I just got an email from my South African friend Jason Carter. He got engaged this week, so congratulations mate! This is what he sent:
In 1981:

  1. Prince Charles got married
  2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe
  3. Australia lost the Ashes tournament
  4. The Pope Died

In 2005:

  1. Prince Charles got married
  2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe
  3. Australia lost the Ashes tournament
  4. The Pope Died

Lesson Learned? - the next time Charles gets married, someone warn the Pope!