So, I just got back from lunch, and since it's snowing and freezing I decided it would be a good idea to walk into town. But on the way back I decided to put down my latte and offer to help push out a car that had slid into a snow bank. After watching what they were trying to do (they couldn't push from the front since it was in the snow bank), I suggested something which they seemed to think was incredibly brilliant – opening the doors and pushing back against the door frames while someone tried to drive the car in reverse. And it worked. And I was a hero. And I walked away. The mysterious hero… sparx.

Anyway, my questions – and I really appreciate anyone that takes a minute to answer any or all of these –

• What was the last thing you bought online?
• Have you ever bought anything off of eBay or Amazon (and what was it)?
• Is there a reason you bought it online rather than from a "brick and mortar" store?
• If you didn't buy what you were initially looking for, what led you to your final purchase?
  

That's it. I'm especially curious about things bought from eBay, so those answers are double-plus Awesome! If you can answer in the comments… yay! I don't expect anyone to answer all of them, even a short answer like "I bought a hockey mask from eBay" is useful. Thanks. 🙂

There are numerous sources for "brain training games", some online, some for console/handheld game systems – but none are as convenient and as flexible as I would like. The online sources tend to either A) want to charge you money, B) just link to games on other sites with games and don't provide very cohesive experience, or C) just suck. Handheld/console versions aren't free, requiring a monetary commitment upfront.

I would like an online service that provides access to specially made free online brain training games designed to improve brain fitness, improve concentration, improve memory, and most importantly – be fun enough that people would want to come back and play them again. If you know of one.. that'd be great, otherwise I guess I'm actually thinking about starting such a site.

If I were to start my own site chocked full of brain training exercises and games, there would be quick access to all of the games without requiring any sort of signup or registration. Users could register and would be able to track their scores for games, their overall progress, see their scores compared against the average scores of all the registered users, and form teams with friends to "compete" with other members on the team and together against other teams.

The games would be created in Flash, since that's the most common plugin around and would allow the greatest amount of people access to the games.

Here's where I need your help though – I need ideas for creating the games. If you've played "brain training" games before, which ones did you like? Which type of game do you feel provided the most benefits? Which ones didn't you like? Reasons would be helpful too, but I feel like I'm already asking a lot. Also, are there any games that you haven't seen but would like to?

Any comments would be helpful. If you leave a comment and would like to be kept up to date on progress, make sure you check the box above the comment form that says "Notify me of followup comments via e-mail", that way I can respond to the comments on here and you'll be notified automatically.

So yesterday (and today too, ha!) I tried to make a grab at the google search traffic that I assumed the latest xkcd blag post would generate. Randall Munroe posted another list of google search phrases that (at the time of posting) resulted in 0 results.

Phrases like:

• Aww, a baby hooker!
• his penis shattered my world
• driver-side bidet
• Sarah, plain and tall and a cyborg

Yesterday's post "It Turned Out Her Bottom Half Was A Robot" was titled after one of those "zero result" phrases. And included one other phrase – "ate a violin". People searching for robot-butted girls where few, generating about 20 hits to my post. But "ate a violin" brought in almost 200 people.

I feel like I'm abusing my ability to have a post indexed in less than 10 minutes by google. My little horse must think it gay.

Damn you xkcd! …perfect idea for a post title, but no inspirado for the actual content of the post?

Perhaps a post about cyborgs? Except when I think cyborgs, I usually think of neural enhancements, laser eyes, and robot death arms with plasma rifles. I really can't think of a way to mechanically improve on the bottom half of a female – gears and metal and circuits just make those bits WAAAY too scary.

It could be interesting though… until she ate a violin.

No.

I have no interest whatsoever in robot-bottomed girls. So little interest that I'm going to have to end this post right… here.

Do you have any robot-bottomed cyborg, violin, or driver-side bidet stories? Tell them in the comments! 🙂

The idea of being camouflaged is to blend in with your surroundings and obscure yourself visually as much as possible.

I was watching news of the latest overseas terrorist attacks when I saw troops wearing blue camouflage military uniforms. I'm not sure what country was wearing them, since the sound was muted, but I have to wonder – do the military leaders in this area know how to camouflage? I can't think of any types of terrain where blue camouflage would be a benefit. Forest/woods? Fail. Desert? Fail. Snow? Fail. Floating face down in water? Almost not fail. As far as I can tell, blue is definitely not the best camouflage choice one could make.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that they're planning on fighting all of their battles in fields covered with blue violets.

How many times have you wandered repeatedly from the cupboard to the refrigerator trying to figure out what you could possibly make that at least resembled food? How many times have you gotten past that, only to realize that you're missing 2 key ingredients for whatever dish it is that you just got your hopes up about?

I just found (what appears to be) a great website – RecipeMatcher.com.

It's simple, just enter in all the miscellaneous food items that you find lying around your kitchen, and Recipe Matcher will return a list of foods that you can make. It even shows a "status bar"-like indicator next to the recipes that shows how many of the ingredients you have – so you don't get all excited only to find that you're missing half of the things the recipe calls for.

If you're drawing a blank and need some meal ideas, Recipe Matcher is definitely a useful website.

Someone just needs to remake this thing and include nutritional information, and approximate cost per serving. I would love to be able to sort by both of those and come up with a list of the cheapest and healthiest meals that I could make. Or.. maybe I should just make that. 😉 It also wouldn't hurt to list the time it takes to make a recipe. Combine all those and I think I've just described a killer web-app.

It's been a rough week for me.. but Thanksgiving generally cheers me up.

Also, the "Pilgrims" did NOT wear buckles on their hats. Some artisty people decided to portray them as wearing all black and white with funny hats and belt buckles all over themselves because it looked old fashioned. There's you history lesson for the day.

Peace!