Delve Into Lunacy

Run across web sites all the time that I think are pretty cool and always think to myself that I should create a post for some of them. Never get around to it however, but decided today that I’d finally start. So here we go!

Kongregate

This is a site I’ve been visiting for a while now that was brought online in early 2007 if I recall correctly. The short description is that it is a free Flash gaming site. Some of the reasons I recommend it and keep going back (unlike with other free gaming sites) are as follows:

• Unlike most free game sites, it helps support the developers through monthly/weekly contests for the highest rated new games and ad revenue sharing.
• The look and feel of the site is magnitudes better than any others I’ve seen. It’s even more user friendly than the big ones like Yahoo! Games and MSN Games in my opinion.
• It has achievements with collectible badges similar to what has been done on Xbox 360 and MSN Games. Not all games have them but the list is constantly expanding and many require actual skill compared to just sinking lots of time and repeated plays into a game.
• Each week there is a card challenge for a particular game (they usually start around 10PM CST on Thursdays). If you complete the challenge you get a collectible card that will eventually be used in an online collectible card game (think Magic: the Gathering). The CCG hasn’t launched yet but they do have details about the game along with a beta on the site. 
• You can earn “points” through multiple methods (rating games, earning achievements, referrals, etc). Currently the points just earn you a “level” across the site, but according to their FAQ it could potentially be used for things such as prizes.
• Each game has a chat room attached so you can talk to others that are playing games across the site. There are multiple chat rooms, you can see what game each person is currently playing and you can jump to their profiles, add them as friends or mute/unmute them easily.

Iconbuffet

Iconbuffet is hands down my favorite free icon site. All of the icon sets are created by a group of graphic designers that run the site so you don’t have to worry about quality or lack of formats in the downloads (which are common issues with many other free sites). You can use the icons for shortcuts and what not on your computer, but what I find them most valuable for is for graphics on buttons and what not within applications, web sites, etc that I’m working on.

The really unique aspect of the site is how much of a community feel there is to it. You have to register to use the site. Each time a new pack comes out (multiple packs per month) they will get seeded to some, but not all, users and it rotates with each pack. You then trade the packs back and forth between users using “stamps” to send packs and “tokens” to receive packs.

Different sets cost different numbers of tokens based on how popular or unique they are. The tokens you get are replenished each month so if you run out you aren’t done forever. The stamps are replenished by accepting deliveries from other people. This keeps those of us that have been out there for a long time and that have all the sets from just spamming every single person on the site with deliveries. Pretty good setup overall.

You have a profile with a message board on it that can be used for people asking you to send them sets. On top of that there is a very active forum area where people do everything from trading sets to giving advice on design projects or just chit-chatting. There are also little badges you can collect based on various criteria like sending out so many deliveries of a certain type or having so many packs from a particular style.

If you happen to join up and want some packs just let me know. My user name on the site is “Keeblerelf”.

Instructables

This is just an all around cool site that I stumbled across a few months back and can’t believe I had never heard of before. It is basically just a massive collection of instructions on how to do things submitted by users. Most of them that I’ve looked at include step by step photos (and video in many cases where it would help) along with very clear text instructions.

The articles range from “for Dummies” types of things like explaining a sport to more advanced DIY electronics projects and cover a huge variety of hobbies and interests. Some are silly, some are creative, some are super useful. Check it out and be surprised with what you find.

How Many 5 Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight?

This site is one that a co-worker found earlier today. It appears that the idea originated with a blog post a few years back (here) and then someone eventually turned it into an online quiz. You basically answer questions about your physical size, fighting experience, morality levels, etc and it tells you how many five year olds you could take on.

I highly recommend that you browse the forum post that inspired the site if you have time and want a good laugh. I just scanned it but I loved this comment:

I’m snapping necks. Let word get out to the other 5 yr olds. Also I seriously think snapping necks is less abuse to yourself then hitting the kids. Which will help you hurt more kids in the long run. Grab and twist man, grab and twist.

I like the way this guy thinks. Oh…and I can apparently take on 28 if you wondered.

The Blog Readability Test

This is a pretty interesting little site that works on pretty much any website that has text on it…not just blogs. It’s simple enough in that you just type in a URL and it tells you what education level is required to understand the site.

I’m not entirely sure how it determines this, but the speculation is that it is using a formula similar to what they use to determine the reading level of books for schools. Those usually go off things like the number of words per sentence, sentences per paragraph, average number of syllables per word, etc.

According to the site, DIL requires a junior high school reading ability to understand. Not real sure if that means I write in an easy to understand way or that I suck at writing. Oh well.

With it being close to the holidays, being extra busy at work, etc I just haven’t had much time lately. So that’s why there have been very few updates to the Live Search Club Helper in the past few weeks.

Once Christmas has passed, I should be able to start focusing more time back on it. Until then however, updates will probably continue to be few and far between.

Happy holidays to anyone that stops by!

I seriously need to upgrade the copy of WordPress that I’m running, so over the next few days this will occurring at some point.

I’m quite a few versions behind and I’ve done extensive amounts of changes to themes, config files, plugins, etc so it could mean the site will go offline for periods of time or be rather goofy looking and unusable. I’ll post an update once I’ve got the site fully upgraded and think I have all the plugins and what not working again.

** Update 12/7/07 6:00 PM **  I’ve finished the actual upgrade of WordPress at this point so the site is back online. I’m still working on adding plugins and all that so items like the polls, ratings, etc will still be down for a while. I’ll post another update once the site is completely back to normal.

** Update 12/7/07 11:00 PM **  I’ve finished adding back in all the plugins along with a few extras. Some items look a little different (post ratings for example) but I figure they look good enough and won’t require me completely reworking much. Leave a comment on this post if you see any problems.

Well, I’ve completed documenting all but one puzzle for Red Carpet Reveal. The one I’m having issues with I just can’t figure out what specific combination of words it’s wanting for Question #2. The celebrity I’m assuming is a female from the silouhette but I’m not sure who. The answer to the first question is "Telly Savalas" and the second question is "What New York City high school did Ellen Barkin and Wesley Snipes attend?"

According to the hint, Wikipedia and every other search I’ve done the answer should be "Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts". The official name of the school is "H.S. 845" as well and it was previously two separate schools that got merged together. I’ve tried every combination of words that I can think of and it doesn’t like any of them as the answer. So if you happen to know this one, please leave a comment below with what the accepted answer is.

Beyond that, Red Carpet Reveal is now fully documented at least until they add more puzzles (if they ever even do). Also, Search Queries and the Missing Links is fully documented. So for those voting on that one in the poll you can vote for something else since it’s been fully documented ever since I added that option to the poll. I should also have all currently available Chicktionary puzzles documented within the next day or so and will then begin working on Clink since it’s in third place in the polls.

You can find the link to the spreadsheet in the original posting here.

** Update  11/2/07 ** Just an update. They are opening up 6 Chicktionary puzzles per day now so I’m keeping up on those. However, I’ve reached technical problems in both Seekadoo and Dingbats that won’t let me do any more puzzles. I’ve actually received a response back from Live Search Club customer support in regards to the Seekadoo problem and it says they are looking into what is causing the error. No response from them yet on the Dingbats issue. So until those are fixed I’ll just move back to doing Clink updates.

** Update  10/24/07 ** Well, it looks like they’ve changed it so that puzzles open up in chunks every so often. For instance, mine is maxing out at 4,700 tickets worth of Chicktionary, but someone else I work with just maxed out at like 3,100. Seekadoo lets me play up to 111 puzzles now so I’ve finished documenting those that are available. Going forward I’ll just make it a weekly habit to check each game that was previously fully documented and if there are more puzzles available I’ll go ahead and do the new ones in those games first. I probably won’t post updates each time a new little block of puzzles has been documented..

Also, I’ve noticed that Crosswire finally got some votes in the poll. Despite following the poll in terms of documenting other games I’m most likely not going to document Crosswire until the very end. The reason is because it takes forever to document and unlike with every other game, it’s the only one where you don’t need to know specific words or anything. You can finish every puzzle with simple trial and error.

** Update  10/23/07 ** For some reason they only made another measly 21 puzzles available for Chicktionary. I’ve updated the spreadsheet to cover the new games.

** Update  10/12/07 ** I’ve figured out the answer to the question that I was having issues with on Red Carpet Reveal. That game is now 100% documented.

I’ve now updated the spreadsheet to support doing answers for Red Carpet Reveal.

So at this point all current games that are out there on Club Live are supported by the spreadsheet and I just need to work on adding solutions. I had to spend a lot of time last month working on some of my other sites and that has pretty much died down so I should be able to focus more heavily on this now.

You can find the link to the spreadsheet in the original posting here.