Two cool links before I leave for lunch break:

First: Grassroots Music - a bunch of Christian indie songs and albums for sale, plus loads of free MP3s. My favorite MP3 so far is the acid jazzy "Ominous" by a guy named John Mark McMillan. Check it out!

Second: A very funny blog called "Old Grandma Hardcore" by a guy about his grandma's video gaming experiences. She's a gamer - has beaten Final Fantasy VII, and is playing Prince of Persia on XBox right now. It's hilarious, although (because?) she swears a lot at the games, so you've been warned. :) Here's a quote that kind of summarizes the page:

She's had two knee replacements and countless surgeries. If you were to see her in a grocery store you would see a old, Midwestern diabetic with thick glasses held up by a crutch or a shopping cart stumbling along smiling at everybody. She's polite, a safe driver, mother of five and grandmother of twelve. She's great. But if you get her in front of a game she likes, she becomes a monster; a demon who craves the blood, nay- the life-force of her enemies manifested as a swear happy old lady in a comfy chair. She has destroyed many controllers in frustration, already wore out two PS2's, and will gladly walk into a Gamestop or EB Games with the swagger of one with more knowledge about games and gaming than the teenager behind the counter can ever hope to amass.

I know I've already posted quite a few links to articles about computer games, but this one simply blows them all away:
Cultural Wargames
Here's one quote, but it doesn't do the article justice:

Despite the nay-sayers, games are still in the enviable position of being capable of expressing experiences other forms have had difficulties with, where its competitors' possibilities are at least partially quenched. While film, and its smaller-screened sister television, casting the last hundred years in soft, flickering light, still achieve magnificent things, its ideas and boundaries are increasingly well plotted. Games have barely even started.

I ran across this picture on a train ride, and had a very good laugh. It's so simple, kind of a Zen moment. Enjoy - and keep staring at it, it gets funnier that way. :)

Cool web page:
Play chess where you can watch the computer think as it plays you - it sketches a colored line for every possible move it's thinking about. After a while, you see this web of lines visualizing the possible moves, anyways, it looks VERY cool - plus, it's not impossible to beat it (but enough of a challenge to not be boring!). Have fun.

Thinking Machine 4: "The artwork is an artificial intelligence program, ready to play chess
with the viewer. If the viewer confronts the program, the computer's
thought process is sketched on screen as it plays. A map is created
from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the
program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the
invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the
spirit of a thinking machine."