Seeing a commentator speak in this way was novel, which was why it got the attention it did. Stewart was essentially forced into admitting this to defend his position on torture without resorting to double standards which Cliff May would have surely jumped on. Unfortunately, Stewart has now retracted what he said, saying it was stupid. I don’t believe that’s true; it’s a valid opinion that can be defended (as Stewart himself did to some extent in the original interview). From a (relative) outsider’s perspective, it seems like he’s being forced to say it simply because his original statement wasn’t popular. It’s unfortunate that Cliff May doesn’t have a chance to respond, because I think he would have relished the chance to be someone to score a (rare) point against Stewart.

Project deadline is looming, so as a bit of a shortcut for content, a selection of links that I’ve run across over the last couple of weeks and found worth enough of bookmarking. Not sure if I’ll do this consistently (it’s very easy to do), but it’s a relatively quick way to get a bulkier blog post with genuine content.

• Slagcoin Joystick Controller page – I’ve been fighting the urge to build an arcade stick for the Xbox 360 for a little while now; I can’t act on it while I’m at uni, but if the urge is still there when I get home over the summer, this certainly seems like a resource I’d want to tap.
• Textorizer – vectorize a picture using text strings – I don’t have a reason to use this yet, but it’s something that I could quite easily suddenly think of the perfect use for out of the blue.
• YouTube – 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes – Sent to me as required watching before exams. Very entertaining.
• Making the World a Better Place, One Evil Mad Scientist at a Time – I’ve only skimmed it so far, but I’m already completely sold on this blog. Seems to link to exactly the sort of stuff that I’d enjoy making. They’re the source of the electric motor above, but the whole blog is solid gold.
• Ninja Ropes Extreme – Simple in its gameplay, yet epic in its scope – Ninja Ropes! I ran across this courtesy of the Dr Horrible Commentary – The Musical!
• Tinyarro.ws – Shortest URLs on Earth – Uses Unicode domains and characters to provide absolutely miniscule URLs. Unfortunately, a lot of Twitter (where it’d see a lot of use) clients don’t yet support it. And then there’s the whole debate about URL shorteners in the first place…
• How to make the simplest electric motor – Definitely making one of these when I get home, if not before.

Saying that, of course, there do seem to be some suspicious characters hanging around the LHC – posted after the jump…

Gordon Freeman at the LHC?

G-Man, is that you?

Other than the LHC, I’ve finally sorted out the last outstanding piece of admin required so that I can live in the house I’ve meant to be occupating for the next year, which is a weight off of my mind. I’ve also been toying with Spore and been having a blast. I can see where people who are complaining about the lack of depth are coming from, but I really think that they’ve built up the game in their mind, extrapolating exponentially from the GDC 2005 video over the last three year. I’ve been victim to Peter Molyneux’s expansive claims before now, so I no longer go into games with stratospheric expectations. I’m only just into the tribal stage at the moment, so I’ve still got a while to go before I can properly judge the game, but if it continues in this vein I’ll be more than happy with it.

Lastly, I’ve finally knocked up the Raptor Attack Survival Quiz that I’ve been toying with in my head for about a year; I’m pretty satisfied with how it came out in the end. It should be noted that Christopher deserves credit for many of the questions used.