Saturday, April 21, 2007

Fictional Games

Index (by game) of descriptions of games or gameplay in the 1997 Harper Prism edition of Iain M. Banks' Culture novel "The Player of Games" (parentheses contain page numbers for the Orbit edition):

Azad: 69-75, 96-98, 134-140, 157-161, 167-171, 180, 182-187, 200-203, 225-228, 233-240, 251-262, 269-276 (74-80, 102-105, 142-149, 167-171, 177-180, 190-192, 193-198, 212-215, 237-241, 246-254, 265-277, 284-291)

Four Colors: 7-9 (8-10)

Possession: 35-37 (37-40)

Sentient Glacier game: 27 (27)

Snowflake game: 27 (27)

Stricken: 42-49 (46-54)

Saturday, April 07, 2007

The Archipelago of Culture

Cultural preferences are given a geography in this visualization of the data for the Netflix Prize. The distance between two movies on the map represents the degree of similarity between their ratings by Netflix users. Note that the green Sci-Fi Island to the southeast is quite far away from the "Crocodile"/"Arachnid"/"Leprechaun 4: In Space" cluster, but rather close to the large blue Critically Acclaimed Island.