Thanks CamWorld for mentioning this article on that show I 've mentioned an embarrassing number of times in this blog. I take no pride in knowing that before they went toll free, WWTBAM's phone number was a $1.50/call 1-900 number (1-900-933-9391, to be precise <blush>; toll-free in some states?). It does seem like most of the contestants are from a particular part of the country...

Amazon.com finally has Lego Mindstorms. They didn't a few weeks ago. Gimme! (Excuse me. Gimme please.)

I'm sorry, I should be saving my gimmes for something like this. Or maybe I should mention more affordable stuff. Or maybe I shouldn't mention anything at all, because I'm far too old to sit on Santa's lap.

If you're like me and couldn't get a stream for a Drew Carey webcast that complemented an episode last week, you can revisit the web site and watch clips (or the entire webcast, for that matter). Lots of silly stu ff happening in the webcast while other stuff was happening in the episode. Check out the web-only Ed McMahon cameo (Ed didn't appear in the TV episode). I believe the live webcast didn't have audio; these clips do, though they clearly don't depend on i t.

Well, it's about time I blogged about my interests in interactive fiction. I've been a lurking part of the IF community for about five years now, and haven't told a soul, until now.< /p>

You know interactive fiction if you've ever played a text adventure game. The quintessential text adventure, Collosal Cave, is so classic it is readily available in many forms, including this Java app let. (This puppy dates back to the PDP-10 days, and its Fortran source is still available.) I shall forgo the traditional quote of an adventure session and allow you to try the applet to remind yourself of the genre.

By far the greatest early contributions in the arena of text adventure games came from Infocom in the 1980's (a whatever-happened-to story if there ever was one). You may remember such classics as Zork, Ballyhoo, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Leather Goddess of Phobos. Activision owns the rights to 30 of the 32 Infocom text adventures, and con tinues to develop the Zork series in graphic adventure games. Activision has made Zork I, II, and III available free for download.

A history of interactive fiction by Graham Nelson.

I won't bother to droll on about the thriving community of authors and players (the 5th Annual IF Competition ended recently), and the sophisticated authoring systems available. Instead, I recommend the rec.arts.int-fiction FAQ. While it's hardly definitive, The Mining Co.'s IF site (now About.com) has been around for a while and is well-maintained.

If you have only a casual interest (or less) in IF, stay tuned. I may very well dump IF-related stuff into this blog on slow days. (If you're seriously interested, you'll find the above resources, and countless oth ers, far more valuable.)