Another day, still locked out, still no answer, still no indication of what the problem is or why I was banned, still nothing about how to get an answer or who to talk in.  Thanks for those who tried to find someone who can help.  If you can help more, it’d be appreciated.  Really, I’m not asking much, just an explanation.  An answer about what it is that got me banned.  Info on how to get unbanned would be gravy.

A couple decades ago, I was driving to GenCon (a non-computer gaming convention, for the non-geeks in the audience).  Magic: The Gathering was fairly new and really hitting it big, with the predictable objections:  The kids are neglecting their schoolwork, the kids are memorizing these cards instead of their schoolbooks, and of course the kids are being seduced into magic.  I had an idea for a CCG (Collectable Card Game) about time travel that might get around some of those objections:  The cards would be historical figures and events, so it’s educational!  Then I got to GenCon and saw there were about as many CCGs coming on to the market as there were people attending the convention, and realized the market was saturated and due for a collapse.  So my brilliant idea went back into the idea bucket.

This morning, it popped back out, but this time as a computer game.  So curious, what do people think of this:

Game is multiplayer, but playable on a browser or other lightweight systems.  (Yes, there would be an iPhone version.)  The players are heads of organizations trying to control time so their group “wins”.  The resources are:

Your Time Computer.  This makes up the interface to the game.  It identifies the focal points in time that need tweaking for your victory to be achieved, and shows the status/issues control to all other resources.

The focal points – this is an event/time period that needs to turn out a certain way for your goals to be achieved.  For example, the Lincoln assassination:  Booth is stopped and unable to fire, he shoots and misses, he shoots but kills Ms. Lincoln instead, he shoots and hits President Lincoln but Lincoln survives, he shoots and kills Lincoln but is caught in the theater, he shoots and kills Lincoln and escapes for a while, he shoots and kills and gets away cleanly, no one ever knows who killed Lincoln.  Each of these options affects the timeline, and is better or less good for your organization.

The Time Agents – members of your organization that travel through time, both directly affecting results and also working with contacts.  In the CCG, these would have been famous fictional characters (Phileas Fogg was the first one I thought of), but given IP, they’d have to be original characters.  Time Agents have time periods of expertise (one may be really good at dealling with the 19th century, less good in the 21st century) as well as skills.

Contacts – people in history that your Agents can hand assignments to.

This would take place in “real time”, you’d periodically check your Time Computer to see the state of things and issue some orders.  It’s not the sort of game you spend all night playing.  It’s the sort of game you spend 15 minutes on, about two or three times a day.

Is this worth pursuing?  Haven’t done any game development since the 1980s, it would be fun to get back into it.

Last night, I wrote an article on the Microsoft Word patent story, and submitted it to Digg.  I got this error message:

Now, I’ve never gotten any notice from Digg that I’d broken any of their rules, no warning, nothing about what behavior I was doing that they found objectionable (and even going to the Digg pages for the previous articles, I saw no flags that anything was wrong).  But apparently this unknown wrongdoing was so bad and so persistent that my blog has been banned from Digg…again without telling me.

OK, I thought, we can resolve this like reasonable people.  Contact support, ask for an explanation, what’s the problem, how can we fix this.  That was yesterday.

It’s now a day later, and no reply.  No “Here’s what is wrong with your articles”.  No “Let me look into this and get back to you”.  Not even a “Hey, man, we’re Digg, we’re bigg, you’re not digg and not bigg and we can do what we want”.

So here I am, tried and convicted of charges I knew nothing about, and can’t even find out what the problem is.

I have gotten some advice from friends about ways around this.  Get people to write about my articles and submit them.  Change the domain (which would be easy, my gadgetdon.com domain is aliased with domesticatedarcades.com and eamontales.com, so a simple config.php edit and it’s a whole new blog).  But at best, that would be a short term solution, because my lack of any knowledge of what violations I’ve supposedly made would probably be repeated.

So instead, I’m going to work within the system, and get a response from Digg. Except from my web searches, it seems that a key part of the “system” is raising a fuss so Digg gets pressured into actually looking into the situation.  Well, I can do that.  If any of my loyal readers knows anyone at Digg, or knows anyone who knows anyone at Digg, or knows anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone at Digg, I’d appreciate the help.

And that’s the way it is, on the Digg Lockout, Day Two, Gadgetmania Under Attack.  Back to you, Chett.

I’m an Apple fanboy.  Love OS X, love my Mac, love my iPod, love my Apple TV.  Budgetary issues mean the Mac I love is a first gen Intel iMac and a 5.5 gen iPod instead of an iPod Touch, but when Publisher’s Clearing House shows up with a million dollar check, Apple shares will go up.  iMac update rumors are starting to swirl, and while interesting…what ever happened to Apple pushing form factors forward?

The iMac is a prime example.  Apple kept doing cool things with design, both in appearance and functionality.

I’m a big fan of good design.  Not the “ooh, this looks so good who cares if it’s useless” design, but design that increases the usefulness of a project (while looking cool).  One of the RSS feeds I subscribe to because they so often have good design is Make Magazine’s website.  Today, I saw a startling bit of good design in an entry on a Grocery getter bike project.

Dinosaurs and Robots had a contest to create “grocery” bikes, bicycles you could use to go get the week’s groceries.  This was the winner.

OK, looks cool, a stretch limo for bikes.  But it’s really good design as well.  First, the storage is low to the ground, so it ads to the stability of the bike instead of reducing it.  Well supported, so can hold reasonable amounts of weight, meaning can be used for other purposes like trips to the Home Depot (for supplies and tools, not wood) or taking AV equipment to a party or some such thing.

The normal solution to this is some sort of trailer…but the problem is that bikes already have a visibility issue on the road (being seen, that is).  Add a couple feet to the back of a bike well below the rider, and that would worry me.  (To say nothing of babies in those trailers).

The steering looks like a bit of a kludge.  Well, it is a kludge, but it’s an EFFECTIVE kludge.  That sort of connection is going to be rock solid.  Ideally, there would be two bars, so either way you’re both pushing and pulling, but that would interfere with removing the tub.  Could solve that with a hinge on the right side of the cage to slide the tub in and out…but at a cost of some frame rigidity.

One other piece of cool design you’ll find at the links is that the back of the bike can come off, turning the bike into a cart to bring into the store or into the house.  No plastic garbage bags needed, just put the groceries right into the tub for the trip.

Clearly, this isn’t something most people can make in their garages.  And if some manufacturer was inspired by this, I’m sure the steering system would look refined and elegant and hopefully almost as effective.  But still, it’s cool design, and does what good design should do, make you think about new ways to approach things.

Check out the links to see more about how it was made.  And if you’re a fan of design like me, the sites may well be worth following.

I found this on iTunes store a while back, and since I’m now blogging, wanted to share this.  If you’ve ever waited in line for a movie to open, this will spawn memories.  If you haven’t, it’s still funny.

It’s about people waiting in line for the final FutureSpace movie to open. Watch as two friends deal with an unfriendly theater manager, the five minute rule, the spoiler, and more. It’s been more than a few years since I waited more than an hour in line for a movie opening, but it rings true (well, if you take the true ring and amplify to absurdity).

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Check it out at Hulu or buy it at the iTunes Store for $1.99 ($2.99 for high-def).