Crimson Crux

Reminds me of my Notable Steampunk Games article at Gadzooki!

Sometimes, writing on a moleskine isn’t luxury enough — you’ve got to write on a customized moleskine, one that reflects your personality on the outside as much as in the writings inside.

Enter the laser engraved and etched moleskines. For a few dollars, you can have your own design/photo impressed upon your black book of daily impressions, giving you another means with which to impress your friends. You can also choose from a menagerie of pre-made artists’ designs, such as the ones offered by various custom moleskine companies. Some examples:

From Laser Moleskine comes a tsunami that engulfs mountains and can quite possibly make you believe that your art can surmount any obstacle. Okay, that was stretching it a bit, but it’s an awesome design nonetheless.

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Earlier today, I received my first two copies of the Scientific American magazine for the months of April and May 2008. I’ve gotten used to this kind of delivery delay (from way back in my CACM subscription days), being a resident of the Philippines and a lucky customer of the inefficient PhilPost.

SciAm was one of my favorite magazines in high school; I used to regularly visit the library archives and photocopy the best SciAm articles.

My new subscription to SciAm isn’t just a rekindling of that old interest — it will also help me in writing/researching my future, future science fiction works (I have to emphasize future, as I have plenty of cake on my plate, such as my creative nonfiction in English and poetry in Filipino).

Here’s to my read-to pile getting taller!

StarCraft was the very first game I popped into my very first computer (yes, I started quite late — I was in first year of high school). The years haven’t sullied the great gaming memories from ‘98-’99, and those memories are almost exclusively StarCraft memories — Zergling rushes, jaw-dropping Blizzard cinematics, mostly one-sided Battle.net matches (with me on the losing end), and so on.

Which is why I’m proudly displaying that banner above. It’s actually part of the new Blizzard “I <3 SC" Photo Mosaic contest that celebrates the franchise’s ten-year anniversary (as well as drum up publicity for the upcoming StarCraft 2).

I won’t be joining the contest. Rather, this post is just a little tribute to one heck of a game…the game that made me a gamer.

Longtime PC gamers will know what Simlish is — a fictional and unintelligible language used in the revered Sim franchise of Will Wright and Maxis.

Well, surprise, surprise — Simlish is partly a child of the Philippines! If you’e going to trust Wikipedia’s article on the language:

The Sims development team created the unique Simlish language by experimenting with fractured Ukrainian and Tagalog (one of the major languages of the Philippines).

Just one of those amusing tidbits of trivia. Now, this begs a question — did the Maxis devs include a Filipino in their ranks, or did they just pick Tagalog for its qualities?

Just in time for the holidays — try giving this diamond to your sweetie.

According to this Pravda.ru article, astronomers have discovered the largest diamond of ‘em all, with a weight of a whopping ten billion trillion trillion carats. (No, that’s not a typo.)

To tell you the truth, I wasn’t aware of this revelation until a few days ago (thanks to Ia). The article might have been published recently, but a quick research reveals that this news is quite old. An excerpt from a 2004 (yes, 2004!) press release:

The huge cosmic gem (technically known as BPM 37093) is actually a crystallized white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left overafter the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.

Well, aside from being remarkable on its own, this gigantic diamond caught my interest because I had been reading up on another diamond-related piece of trivia — diamonds make for a lousy investment!

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Me and Ia are better known on the blogosphere by our handles, Corsarius* and Stellify, respectively. I think a lot of people are used to seeing those names together or linked in one way or another…which makes the following ambigram all the more special:

The piece is courtesy of Jonas, our friend and thesis-mate from back in the UP DCS days. If you have the time, do check out his collection of ambigrams. Thanks, Naz!

*Corsarius is also one of my literary pen-names, though I have to admit that it’s not the coolest nom de plume in my ‘arsenal’, hehe.

I’ve just uploaded some vidcaps of my recent TV guesting on Nancy Castiglione’s show, where we talked about airplane “toys”. You can view all of them on my aircraft models blog.

Hopefully I can get a copy of the full video soon from Makisig Network. Till then, the poorly taken pics will have to do!

As longtime readers of this blog might know, I’m a sucker for all things Roman, specifically, Ancient Roman. (This interest manifests itself in Roman Empire video games, history books, historical fiction novels, and classic maps, among others.)

That said, I’m quite fascinated by the Rome Reborn 1.0 project under the aegis of the University of Virginia. The huge undertaking took a whole decade to complete and involves both a 3D digital model and a physical miniature model of the city. (Speaking of minis, you know I’m a sucker for them, too!)

To quote the Communications of the ACM article:

The $2 million project, called the largest and most complete simulation of an historic city ever created, allows visitors to view a side of the city unseen by ancient Romans.

For more info and tons of pictures and videos, visit the Rome Reborn website.

I have lots of blogs with separate groups of readers, so pardon me if I announce this here, too:

Update 11/17/07: Airing will be on November 18 at 7 P.M.

Update: The airing has been postponed to November 18. And even that date is tentative. Sorry for this belated notice; their own notice to me was also belated.

Yours truly will be guesting in today’s episode of At Your Pleasure, Nancy hosted by Nancy Castiglione, airing at either 2 or 3 pm on Makisig Network (channel 76/82 at SkyCable/HomeCable, ch. 84 if you have an analog box installed).

I will be sharing my experiences as a collector of airplane scale models; the show’s researchers were able to reach me through the power of Google, hehe. (Insert the customary praise for the blogosphere: Thank God for blogging!)

The episode won’t be live; it was taped last week. For some tidbits on how the taping went (and my brush with Nancy, Maureen Larrazabal, and Francine Prieto), you can read my post on Slip of the Pen.

A few days ago, I received my first cheque from Text Link Ads. Nothing big, but still a welcome addition to my residual income.

Just last month, I also received two cheques from ReviewMe, and because I haven’t really been doing many reviews (not enough time!), the income is pitiable. Fortunately, my Google Adsense earnings stepped up a bit after I got my first cheque way back in March 2007.

Now, if only I can inject more regular content into my blogs!