Archive for June, 2008
Obesessed With Mines
Lately, I’ve been obsessing over the game Mines. Very few people have never heard of the game. Those of us who enjoy Linux and the Gnome desktop environment know it as Mines (or Gnomine). Windows users know it as Minesweeper and KDE users know it as KMines. You get a grid of blocks with a number of mines hidden beneath them. You click on blocks to reveal numbers that give clues to how many mines surround that one numbered block. You then flag surrounding blocks you think may have mines beneath and you keep going until you have successfully flagged all of the mines or inadvertently click on and uncover mine. And no true player ever uses a small (beginner) or medium (intermediate) field. Go large (expert) or don’t play.
The minesweeper game itself has been re-coded and re-worked over the years to include grids of shapes other than square/rectangle. There’s also been a few incarnations of three dimensional cubes such as emMines (pictured next to this paragraph) from Eagle Mode.
My obsession is the result of not having completed a game for longer than I can remember. If I don’t lose because of miscounting proposed mines around a certain number, it’s from coming down to a group of blocks with a known number of mines left but no discernible pattern to the numbers that sufficiently describe where they might be. And I hate guessing wrong. The picture at the top of the page represents my last attempt where the last two mines needed to be guessed. They could have been in either of the two sets diagonal blocks. As usual, I lost.
Aside from trying to win, I’ve found a couple of other goals that makes this simple game a little more complicated. For instance, ones, twos, and threes are found in great quantities. Fours and fives are found sparingly. Sixes are rare and surprising to find. I have yet to see a seven or an eight. As if hoping to capture the sight of an endangered species in the wild, I look forward to the day I can print-screen the sight and share it with the world.
Another interesting aspect I found is at the beginning of each game when you’re forced to click blindly. Lots of times, you uncover just one block with an arbitrary number beneath. Having just the single number surrounded by unknowns doesn’t give you enough information to flag the surrounding mines with any confidence. Your best hope is to uncover the largest non-mined group of blocks as possible in which to start. However, I found that there are some times when you uncover a lot of single non-mined blocks before you get your large grouping or hit on a mine. A small competition of some kind to see who can uncover the most single non-mined blocks could certainly be entertaining.
Aside from my own personal goals, the international community has been watching completion times for some time now. There are such places as The Authoritative Minesweeper and Planet-Minesweeper that keep track of international rankings of the best in that field.
George Carlin (1937-2008)
Source … MSNBC
Source … Reuters
It was heart failure that finally silenced one of the most infamous comedians of all time. He has a resume that includes many guest host appearances of The Tonight Show, first host of Saturday Night Live, being ranked 2nd in Comedy Central’s list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups Of All Time ahead of Lenny Bruce and second only to Richard Pryor, being arrested in Milwaukee for the vulgarity of his routine, having a FCC fine in result of one of his radio appearances going all the way to the Supreme Court, numerous HBO specials, numerous film appearances, a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2001 American Comedy Awards, and just four days before his death it was announced that the Kennedy Center of Performing Arts would award him the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor later this November.
His routines always touched on the taboo. He was never afraid to talk about what was wrong in the world and in his own country, always pointing out how things are changing, and educating while he was entertaining. He now joins the ranks of past greats we will never forget.
Below is the routine he most known for: Seven Dirty Words.
Duck Season!!
Milo the Duck represents the Million Dollar Duck Race that takes place every year in New York City in order to support Special Olympics New York. Being a sponsor, you adopt one of up to 25,000 rubber duckies that get released into the East River that race from the Brooklyn Bridge to South Street Seaport.
This year it takes place on August 6 and Milo the Duck wanted everyone to know. So much so that I ended up with 23 emails from him this Saturday telling me so. Unfortunately for Milo, Yahoo’s Spam Filter jumped all over it after about the tenth message like a rabid wolverine and started filtering them to the Spam folder. I didn’t want the family of emails to be split up, so I sent what was left in the Inbox over to the Spam folder.
I responded to them in a “passive-aggressive note” kind of way in hopes of evoking a response. I was curious if this special event would be swept under the carpet to save face or if some kind of formal announcement and apology would come forth.
I received a response from an Elizabeth Forrest stating “there was a malfunction at the company which hosts our Web site.” After apologizing for the numerous emails, she reassured me that “these email deliveries were unintentional and that we take the privacy of your contact information very seriously.” As much as I appreciate the personal response, I would think that I wasn’t the only one that was affected and that some kind of formal announcement on the website would be beneficial for those not inclined to respond as I did.
In any effect, aside from the small glitch in their host’s software, the Million Dollar Duck Race is just one of the events that take place throughout the year to help raise awareness and funds for the athletes of Special Olympics New York. Each of the ducks cost just $5.00, with a “Quacker’s Dozen” of 13 going for just $50, and prizes are given out for leading teams, not to mention the chance for the winning duck to net $1,000,000 for the owner if it happens to be one of the “Golden Ducks”.
