I’d buy it, given the chance.  I’m in to the eclectic.

Technorati Tags: Flickr, Coolest table ever, Furniture, Cool

But then, I decided to start paying attention to what the game was offering.  The concept is simple – spin a set of four jewels, try to get three in a row.  It lacks the immediacy of the original, but it gives some new twists that add depth and strategy.  Here’s a video someone else made showing a bit of gameplay.

Read more of what I saw in the game below the hump.

Unlike the first 2 versions, you don’t have to make a match-3 on every move.  This lets you twist things in such a way as to set up a 4-in-a-row twist.  If you do this, you can an exploding jewel.  Much like the original, these blow up when matching in a 3- or 4-in-a-row.

On top of the regular play, you build up your multiplier by making consecutive matches.  That is, each move has to make a match, or you reset your multiplier.  Get 3-in-a-row 3 times, and all subsequent are worth double points.  Get 5 more matches in a row, and your points are tripled.  I didn’t get further than a 3X multiplier, but I imagine it will keep going higher.

You can also get bonus points by clearing sets of jewels in a particular order of colors.  For example, clear a set of white, then red, then purple, then another set of white.  This gets you a big points, and clears any penalty jewels (covered below) – at least, it cleared the penalty jewels I’d seen.

Now, on top of the bonuses, you get penalty jewels, too.  These drop in occasionally, and come with a number on their face.  Every move you make decrements the number.  If it reaches zero, bad things happen.  I confess to not knowing what bad things, as I never let one run out.

I haven’t purchased the game yet, but I intend to.  Once I get a little further, I’ll pop up some more images and throw in some more play details, if there is any interest.  Honestly, this is clearly a deal for $20.  Admittedly, it’s no Peggle, but it’s a fantastic, quick-play casual game to have around.

Technorati Tags: Bejeweled, Bejeweled Twist, PopCap, Casual Game, Casual Gaming, Peggle

Now I just need to find time to fix the site so I can start sharing cool stuff again.

Technorati Tags: How It’s Made, Vinyl, YouTube, Video, Cool, Analog

A film for a wide audience!

Nine chapters, two hours of maths, that take you gradually up to the fourth dimension.
Mathematical vertigo guaranteed! Background information on every
chapter: see “Details“.

Here is the sample video for the visual walk-through:

Watching this, seeing that it was made with POV-Ray, and thinking of the power of legally freely available tools like this makes me feel that I owe my readers a write-up of some of the many free tools and toys I use on my computer at home and for work.

Technorati Tags: Dimensions, Mathematics, POV-Ray, Video

Oh, the gaming variations this would add.  (via TechCrunch)

I’m especially impressed with his accurately shooting 2 balloons, tied 8 feet apart, with two shots fired so quickly that it appears to be only a single shot. This looks like a prime candidate for the Time Warp treatment from the folks at the Discovery Channel:

I think it would be awesome to see this quick-shooter filmed at 1800 frames per second or higher. Too bad it looks like Discovery Channel hasn’t taken that show past the first episode. (via Bill at DQ)

Technorati Tags: Quick draw, Quick-Shooter, Handgun, Fast, Video, YouTube

Just some of the highlights/features of this keyboard:

• Revolutionary Keyboard Features a tiny OLED screen on each key. 113 screens total.
• Play a GIF animation or Quicktime movie on a Key
• Key sets can be linked to an application, so whenever you open that app the appropriate keys come up
• Built in USB hub

More features listed on the product page at ThinkGeek. One suggestion I’ve heard is encoding your favorite pr0n and setting it to play across all keys, but honestly that sounds rather infeasible. I *would* like to have one and set it up with animations and key images for the kids when they are playing their games. But I’m going to have to wait until one of these comes out for under $100 before trying anything like that. Probably in 2-3 years, we’ll have that reality, though, right?

Technorati Tags: Optimus, Keyboard, OLED, ThinkGeek, YouTube, video, Stuff I want, 00 keyboard

Fun times for all (via Danger Room)

Sure, it’s meaningless, but I thought it was interesting in a slow sort of way.

Technorati Tags: Sloth, Cross the road, I know there’s a joke in there somewhere

However, on the other side of the photochopping craze we find the chops that just didn’t quite go as intended. The site Photoshop Disasters highlights these erroneous photochop jobs. For example, clips from a very funny pair of pics put up there where the DVD case claims to reveal the real star in question:

So real, except for values of not-real where we felt it appropriate to change things a teeny tiny bit.   Or something.

And apologies to Photoship Disasters for cutting out the watermark – I didn’t want to give away the full story just from the pics, so I clipped them down to the part that hopefully will push my visitors to click away via the site link.

Technorati Tags: Photoshop, Photochop, Photoshop disasters

They sure can dance and handle large-scale choreography, can’t they?  But they need baggier pants to reallllly fully pull off that song.

Technorati Tags: Filipino prisoners, Dance, Hammer, Can’t touch this, Hammer don’t hurt ‘em

I’ll take a simple PB and Jelly, please.

Technorati Tags: Ninja, Real Ultimate Power, Sandwich, Sammich, Girl

Not as good as looking out real-world locations, but extremely impressive for a game engine.  Most of the engine driven stuff is flatter or duller than the real-world video, but I’m still looking forward to being able to run something with CryENGINE2 when I make my next system upgrade.  (via Joystiq)

The whole action section gets started by the young attendee who guessed closest to the actual number of dominoes used in the display.  (via boingboing)

Technorati Tags: dominoes, museum, kinetic artist