tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-118648042024-03-13T14:29:52.775-07:00xCulturexmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-89908538959329905202010-10-07T20:34:00.000-07:002010-10-07T20:49:30.314-07:00Halloween Spirit Ramps Up TonightAs this day-by-day graph of the Halloween spirit for 2010 demonstrates, tonight marks an inflection point after which the Halloween spirit will start rapidly accelerating.This graph accounts for the following factors:Time until HalloweenTime until the next full moonTime until the midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solsticeOther secret factorsxmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1491355618169314722009-11-27T20:52:00.000-08:002009-11-27T21:49:49.814-08:00Getting The Fool's Errand to Work on an OS 10.5 Intel MacCo-authored with Eric Ivancich.Cliff Johnson has made his old puzzle game The Fool's Errand available for free download, but to use it you have to get it to work on your modern computer. The following procedure worked for me on my Intel Mac Pro.Get all the stuff you need:From http://rolli.ch/MacPlus/ download:vmac.romSystem 6.0.8 - Finder 6.1.8You must own a Mac Plus and System 6 to do this xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-22749583880707864772007-09-04T21:37:00.000-07:002007-09-04T21:40:07.320-07:00Fictional Games on the WebLinks to fictional games on the web (games from works of fiction, fleshed out with rules):http://del.icio.us/xmbrst/fictionalgamesxmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-17609180784912367642007-04-21T20:52:00.000-07:002009-11-27T20:50:03.812-08:00Fictional GamesIndex (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,xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-30166579152382145312007-04-07T12:58:00.000-07:002007-04-07T13:17:53.648-07:00The Archipelago of CultureCultural 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 Criticallyxmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-76594394250153639502007-03-10T12:15:00.000-08:002007-03-10T13:00:27.817-08:00Superflat VinylIn the introduction to his designer toy art book I Am Plastic, Paul Budnitz tells the story of a customer in his Kidrobot store who found one of Pete Fowler's Monstrooper toys appealing:"That's really very nice...what's it from?" I explained to her that the toy wasn't "from" anything at all. The big, red camouflage-clad monster with a Cyclops-eyeball mace is a character that Pete invented as a xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-41965401217257391142007-03-04T13:05:00.000-08:002007-03-04T13:50:35.052-08:00Xculture TumblelogAfter seeing a link to tumblelog service Tumblr on 43 Folders, I tried it out for myself. A tumblelog is like a cross between a blog and a scrapbook: a place to quickly post random images, quotes, links, or whatever catches your fancy. My original intention was to use it as a place to quickly store (and publish) material that had some sort of resonance for me, partly in preparation for a specificxmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-64093919729388622412007-02-16T20:20:00.000-08:002009-11-29T20:42:29.003-08:00Little BookletsPrinting and assembling the mini-comic version of Cory Doctorow's story "Printcrime" (from his new collection Overclocked) was so much fun that I had to make my own origami booklet. So here it is: eight poems by W. B. Yeats, including my personal favorite "The Song of Wandering Aengus," in a pocket-sized booklet produced with PagePacker. Open the .pp document in PagePacker, print it, and follow xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-15194888954707463582007-02-16T19:54:00.000-08:002007-02-16T20:48:15.106-08:00YANAS: Mathematical FantasyYet another new Astore section: Mathematical Fantasy. Lewis Carroll was not the last word.xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1165633711156106962006-12-08T19:01:00.000-08:002007-02-24T10:49:57.134-08:00Dimension X-azon GrowsAmazon has made their Astore facility a little more flexible, and so I've added two new sections to our virtual bookstore: Pleasant Little Creature Worlds, and Extropia. Extropia has fiction and (technically) nonfiction books pertaining to the Singularity. The theme of Pleasant Little Creature Worlds is a little fuzzier, but if you visit I think you'll get the idea.xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1162661709492641052006-11-04T09:14:00.000-08:002006-12-06T12:20:57.293-08:00Dimension X-azonWe've added something new to our pages here at xCulture. For those of our readers who wish they could get the recommendations without all the talk, we've created Dimension X-azon, a subspace of Amazon devoted to things we like. To get there, follow the link at the bottom of the links list to the left. We made Dimension X-azon using Amazon's aStore product, which allows Amazon Associates to createxmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1162274017562844712006-10-30T21:51:00.000-08:002007-02-24T10:52:03.501-08:00Top 10 Vampire Musicians1. David Bowie2. Paul McCartney3. Frank Black4. Iggy Pop (sired by 1)5. Kim Deal (sired by 3)6. Ringo Starr (sired by 2)7. Lou Reed8. Brian Eno9. Jack White (sired by 4)10. Meg White (also sired by 4, which explains the whole "brother/sister" thing)xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1147051658761621442006-05-07T18:27:00.000-07:002007-02-24T10:51:00.401-08:00Books with Secrets A little while ago I started fantasizing about writing a novel with a secret subtext. I'm not talking about your standard layers of literary meaning, but actual hidden messages--sequences of characters that could be revealed through some sort puzzle-solving or decoding process. Ideally the surface of the novel would be convincing enough that most readers would not realize there was anythingxmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1144475524298950122006-04-07T22:47:00.000-07:002006-04-07T22:54:46.390-07:00How to Read the Xmbrst Way1) First, eschew any idea of using your pleasure reading for "self improvement" and discard all received notions of what constitutes a good book. One way to achieve this enlightenment is to spend seven years in an English Literature doctoral program, where, with proper attention to literary history, you will learn that works come to be considered great at least as much because of their authors' xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1142057582605619832006-03-10T22:13:00.000-08:002007-02-24T10:50:13.053-08:00The Eternal Life of Scrooge McDuck Sure, sometimes corporate ownership of a character ends up diluting it into an endless, lifeless stream of licensing tie-ins and reproductions by half-hearted hacks. But sometimes it's fun! Take Don Rosa 's Eisner award-winning series The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Through the magic of Disney's corporate immortality, a character made great by a great writer and xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1140841085788972042006-02-24T20:04:00.000-08:002007-03-04T13:54:14.746-08:00At the Sonic ZooMuch electronic music aims to create a sense of navigable sonic space, but that's not the only sort of world-creation available to laptop deities. I'm particularly fond of works that create musical ecosystems populated with alien creatures. Three come to mind in particular. Most recently, there's "Creatures" from Black Dice's "Creature Comforts." But then in the Mesozoic era of electronic music xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1139684774753240762006-02-11T10:56:00.000-08:002007-03-04T13:51:50.323-08:00Get Your Bleep OnIf you enjoy the work of Black Dice, autechre, Phoenecia, Eno, or others who build sound waves from scratch with electronic tools, here's a recommendation you aren't likely to get from Pandora or last.fm: pick up a copy of The Csound Book, just for the accompanying CD-ROM. Csound is a standard tool for digital synthesis--essentially a programming language for sound processing--and the book xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1138492431899465342006-01-28T15:53:00.000-08:002007-02-16T23:54:17.330-08:00Bob Dylan as American Liar In his essay "The Right to Lie" Thomas Disch asserts that a national admiration for liars (Tom Sawyer, Oliver North, etc.) has made it easy for Americans to "pretend to believe." This willed credulity has in turn paved the way for UFO abduction stories and Dianetics (and has, according to Disch, given science fiction "a special claim to be our national literature"). But what Disch xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1137476205649304342006-01-16T21:36:00.000-08:002007-02-16T23:55:09.020-08:00Full Metal Alchemist Follow-up: NY Times Mention Just a quick follow-up on my December 11 posting re nostalgia for empire in "Fullmetal Alchemist": FMA got a nod from the New York Times in this Sunday's Arts section (free registration required, article available for free for a week). The Times praises FMA, "Naruto," and "Samurai Champloo" as story-driven coming-of-age tales that put American cartoons to shame.xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1135064554649671462005-12-19T23:42:00.000-08:002007-02-16T23:55:44.266-08:00Planetary If the great achievement of Watchmen was to bring psychological realism to the improbable notion of costumed super-heroes, the achievement of Warren Ellis' Planetary is to dissolve the barrier between our reality and the sphere of the super-powered without compromising the weirdness of the uber. Drawing on the high paranoia of postmodern classics like xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1134361802484028562005-12-11T20:13:00.000-08:002007-02-16T23:56:15.901-08:00The Alchemy of EmpireIn the introduction to his recent novel The Dreamthief's Daughter, Michael Moorcock offers an explanation for the popularity of his work in Japan:As a very early anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist I wasn't sad to see the institutions crumbling, but at the same time it is your culture that's crumbling, so it doesn't necessarily feel that good to you as an ordinary individual. It's a bittersweet xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1133582607255905332005-12-02T20:02:00.000-08:002007-02-16T23:56:34.576-08:00Call It SleepThis week I urge you to read Call It Sleep, by Henry Roth. This is my first almost complete departure from the scifi/fantasy theme of my recommendations so far (although otherworldliness does figure as a theme in the book), but so be it. The next proselytization will pertain to anime, I promise.You could call this a book about a Jewish immigrant kid, but that would be like saying To the xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1132642416496255892005-11-21T22:39:00.000-08:002007-02-18T22:49:10.551-08:00Top 20 Geek Novels PollIn case you didn't see it on Slashdot, let me draw your attention to a list The Guardian has published of "the best geek novels written in English since 1932," based on an informal poll. It isn't all science fiction and fantasy, either (even if you count Cryptonomicon as science fiction).xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1132470827688311312005-11-19T23:09:00.000-08:002007-02-18T22:45:58.809-08:00That Thing about Strange & NorrellIf you were turned off of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by the initial hype (see the New York Times Magazine article) and subsequent lukewarm reviews (see Janet Maslin's review for the Times), take advantage of the new paperback edition to rectify that mistake. Contrary to Maslin's condescending assessment, I would assert that this fantastic history of the rediscovery of magic xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11864804.post-1131782701749530272005-11-11T23:46:00.000-08:002007-02-24T10:53:43.000-08:00The BearI had this thing about Strange and Norrell all worked up, but then I picked up Rafi Zabor's The Bear Comes Home and reread a few pages. So this week's recommendation is The Bear. I suspect that you don't have to be into jazz to like this novel about a bear who plays saxophone, although I can't verify that from personal experience. In any case, it's about the nature of improvisation and nature as xmbrsthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12127042706429420869noreply@blogger.com0