Tag Archives: Websites

Daily comics on the net

Posted on October 5, 2006 | 21 Comments

I had stumbled upon this interesting site (Daily comics by Raghu Angadi) quite a few months ago, which shows you a collection of the daily comic strips from various sources on the net. There are also archives maintained on the site, and so you can catch up on older issues of the strips too. The page is generated using a Perl script, and the author has also included a link to the script source on the page.

I am quite a regular visitor to the site. Yesterday though, when I visited the site, I noticed that all the comic strip images were replaced with links to the actual images. The following is the quote from the author on this: “Well friends, an era comes to end. Uclick.com has asked me not to show images here. I am just providing direct links to the strips. Thanks to all the visitors and to those who took time to write to me.“

However, it is still possible to view the site in its older form, thanks to user scripting which allows you to alter the way a page is displayed in your browser. There are extensions/plugins for various browsers which allow you to create or add small user scripts that alter the way you view a page. For Firefox & Flock, it is the greasemonkey extension, while for IE you have various alternatives like Trixie, Reify Turnabout, GreasemonkIE etc, and Opera has built in support for user scripts. You can find more information on user scripting in the wikipedia entry on greasemonkey.

I have created a greasemonkey script which replaces the links on the mentioned page with the respective images. You can download it from userscripts.org or from here (this one has to be renamed to use .user.js extension in place of .txt – outdated, use the userscripts file). The installation procedure in greasemonkey is quite simple – just drag & drop the script in Firefox (after installing Greasemonkey), & then select install. The script may work in Opera, and with similar plugins for IE, though I’ve not tried it out yet.

Update: Just found a nice post which explains how to use the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox.

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Want to rule over your own nation?

Posted on August 25, 2006 | Leave a comment

Think that you could do a eally good job of ruling over a nation, want to tackle different issues everyday for a nation and make decisions which will change the life of those you rule? Then try out NationStates, an online nation simulation game.

It’s an interesting game, in which you get to create a nation of your own with a flag, currnecy, national animal, type of government and what not. Once you have your nation, you’ll have to tackle or just ignore the issues that come up (the frequency can be set). The stats and description of your nation, like population, economy etc are influenced by your decisions.

Your nation also belongs to a particular region (you can switch regions too), and your nation also features in different rankings. In fact, the simulation even has a United Nations like body in which regional members get elected. So, there’s quite a lot of political simulation happening too (not all simulation actually since nations are controlled by real people). It can be fun to try and develop your nation along a line, but find that the decisions you make end up driving your nation along a different path altogether.

In case you try out the game, pay my nation, Somewhere in the world, a visit. It will also give you a basic idea of what the interface is like (basically text based), and what the game looks like.

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Tom Riddle’s diary on the net

Posted on August 25, 2006 | Leave a comment

Does the name Tom Riddle ring a bell? Then you must have read the Harry Potter series, in which Tom Marvolo Riddle is the original name of the greatest dark wizard and Harry‘s enemy, Lord Voldemort. And, if you have read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, you must be aware of Tom Riddle‘s diary which was able to converse (as in write back when you wrote something in it) with people.

I had come across a site (Tom Riddle’s Diary) quite some time back (through a mail forward), which uses a software robot to give the same effect as the diary in the book. When you type something into it, it erases the text and replies. It’s quite an innovative way to demonstrate the capabilities of a technology.

Coming to the underlying technology, it‘s based on Pandorabots, ”an experimental software robot hosting
service based on the work of Dr. Richard Wallace and the
A.L.I.C.E./AIML free software community“. It is possible to use this bot in many different ways, and there are quite a few implementations available (including a conversation with God spinoff). So, if you’re interested in the underlying technology check out pandorabots.com, where it possible to sign up for an account to create your own bots.

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Play 20 questions on the net

Posted on August 25, 2006 | 1 Comment

Many of us would have played 20 questions at some point of time or the other (a game in which a person thought of some object/famous person & another person had to guess by asking a maximum of 20 questions, with answers being monosyllabic in nature). I liked to play it quite a lot. However you require two players for the game.

Now though, it is possible to play it online against the computer at the following site: 20q.net (actually it has been around for a while). The computer is usually quite good at guessing the object you thought of, though it might at times ask irrelevant questions. It can also learn new objects not in its database. Also if you try to mislead the computer by giving wrong answers, it will point out contradictions when you give out the answer finally or when it guesses correctly.

There was also another flash based site (sithsense created for Burger King) which used the 20Q engine, but with a radically different UI. You had Darth Vader (from the Star Wars movies) asking you the questions. The original 20Q site seemed to be better at guessing though, but this ones probably more fun to play. The site seems to have been archived & asks for authentication now. The authentication information can be found here (cpbgroup site).

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