Random Stuff LXIX
Dear Concerned Citizen: Yes, I am aware that drinking this big-ass Mr. Pibb will increase my risk of type II diabetes by some infinitesimal fraction. I’m also aware that the two biggest risk factors for type II diabetes, by far, are obesity and family history, and I’m encumbered with neither. You have also failed to take into account a competing risk: the risk that I may actually enjoy my fucking life. And in my opinion-which is the only one that counts in matters of ingesting substances into my body-a major improvement in the latter more than mitigates a minuscule increment in the former.
I’d like to take a moment to sing the praises of the most kawaii Flash game ever: Sushi Cat! The titular character is a globular, cat-like being in love with a pink plush cat doll. Several barriers separating him from his prospective girlfriend, and to overcome each one he must consume massive quantities of sushi to make himself bigger. The game itself is ridiculously simple: position the cat somewhere across the top of a Pachinko board studded with smiling pieces of sushi so that as he falls and bounces around he collects as much sushi as possible. The animation is cute beyond belief, not to mention hilarious, and the programming is flawless. Unfortunately, the game isn’t very challenging: of the fifteen rounds, number 5 is the most difficult, and it took me at most three or four tries (maybe five on round 5) to win each level. It’s worth going through the whole game just to see the animations after every fifth round.
Edit: The joyous exclamation "Full Belly Achieved!" has entered our treasury of Things We Say in Certain Situations-namely, at the end of a sumptuous restaurant meal, just before the postprandial stupor descends upon us.
Thanks to rm for introducing me to this delightful game.
Another game I’ve been playing recently, thanks to burgundy, is Nonograms. It’s a puzzle game, as purely logical as Sushi Cat is amusingly kawaii. Use clues for the rows and columns of a square grid to fill in a pattern of cells inside the grid. My best times for a 15 × 15 and 20 × 20 grid are just under 3 minutes and about 7 min, respectively, but I have yet to finish a 25 × 25. Not because they’re beyond my ability-the difficulty seems to rise about proportionally to the area of the grid-but because my chance of making a stupid mistake rises exponentially with the area.
Once in a while I read something about how we who live in the Northern Hemisphere are all chauvinistic because we orient our maps with north pointing up. Since the Northern Hemisphere is home to the majority of the Earth’s land area and to about nine-tenths of its human population, I try not to get too worked up about it. But I got to thinking: if you averaged the latitude where every person on Earth lives, what would be the mean latitude of the people on Earth? This “mean parallel” would almost have to run through China, with India and Southeast Asia being the major population centers tugging it southward. Brazil, pop. circa 200 million, is not nearly as densely inhabited, but its greater southerly distance from China would give it a stronger southward pull per capita. On the other hand, practically all of Europe, and a good portion of the USA, are above 40 °N. I’d guess that the mean latitude of humanity was at about 30 °N.
I’d like to take a moment to sing the praises of the most kawaii Flash game ever: Sushi Cat! The titular character is a globular, cat-like being in love with a pink plush cat doll. Several barriers separating him from his prospective girlfriend, and to overcome each one he must consume massive quantities of sushi to make himself bigger. The game itself is ridiculously simple: position the cat somewhere across the top of a Pachinko board studded with smiling pieces of sushi so that as he falls and bounces around he collects as much sushi as possible. The animation is cute beyond belief, not to mention hilarious, and the programming is flawless. Unfortunately, the game isn’t very challenging: of the fifteen rounds, number 5 is the most difficult, and it took me at most three or four tries (maybe five on round 5) to win each level. It’s worth going through the whole game just to see the animations after every fifth round.
Edit: The joyous exclamation "Full Belly Achieved!" has entered our treasury of Things We Say in Certain Situations-namely, at the end of a sumptuous restaurant meal, just before the postprandial stupor descends upon us.
Thanks to rm for introducing me to this delightful game.
Another game I’ve been playing recently, thanks to burgundy, is Nonograms. It’s a puzzle game, as purely logical as Sushi Cat is amusingly kawaii. Use clues for the rows and columns of a square grid to fill in a pattern of cells inside the grid. My best times for a 15 × 15 and 20 × 20 grid are just under 3 minutes and about 7 min, respectively, but I have yet to finish a 25 × 25. Not because they’re beyond my ability-the difficulty seems to rise about proportionally to the area of the grid-but because my chance of making a stupid mistake rises exponentially with the area.
Once in a while I read something about how we who live in the Northern Hemisphere are all chauvinistic because we orient our maps with north pointing up. Since the Northern Hemisphere is home to the majority of the Earth’s land area and to about nine-tenths of its human population, I try not to get too worked up about it. But I got to thinking: if you averaged the latitude where every person on Earth lives, what would be the mean latitude of the people on Earth? This “mean parallel” would almost have to run through China, with India and Southeast Asia being the major population centers tugging it southward. Brazil, pop. circa 200 million, is not nearly as densely inhabited, but its greater southerly distance from China would give it a stronger southward pull per capita. On the other hand, practically all of Europe, and a good portion of the USA, are above 40 °N. I’d guess that the mean latitude of humanity was at about 30 °N.