blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

I had a phase were I played many flash games and also blogged about several of them. I haven’t been playing for a while. Recently I tried out some new flash games and was amazed by some of the ideas. If you like flash games I recommend to try the following three:

Neon rider is a 2D racing game where you have to drive from point A to B. But the interesting aspect of this game is that there are different colors of lines to ride on. The player can change the color of the bike and according to this color the player will use a different path. These means that besides the driving skills there is a second thing you have to watch out for…

This is the only level
This is the only level too
These are two small flash games, which have only one level. But they include several stages for each level. The level is really simple and has a simple path to solve it. The interesting aspect is that each stage there is something different. You can’t jump, keys are inverted, invisible walls… etc.
This means in each stage you have to figure out what the trick is to beat it. Sometimes, you can guess it from the name of the stage. I like this game because it is so simple but still really interesting.

Closure has one simple underlying rule: “What you don’t see doesn’t exist”. Each level is dark and there are lights which allow you to walk through around. If you walk outside the light up area you will fall even there is supposed to be a path. The goal is to find the door in each level. To solve the level it is necessary to use the “darkness” as a mean to make your way to walls and other obstacles.
Thanks to Michael for telling me about this game.

Have fun playing… and let me know what you think of them!

People were glad to have me back in Switzerland… Which I conclude from the welcome gifts I received I especially liked the balloon with the 20min! But I shall not name him here in the blog

Two interesting things from my flight back to Switzerland:
In the Washington Dulles airport I saw a man in a wheelchair with a Challenged Athletes t-shirt on. I was curious about it, and asked him few question about the sport and how the training is going. As it turns out it was Oz Sanchez which is one of the top handcycle and also triathlon athletes. He won a gold and bronze medal at the Paralympics in Beijin (Peking) 2008.

The other interesting thing is the book I read on my journey: “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time” by Mark Haddon. It is an easy read from an unusual perspective. The book is written as if the main character Christopher Boone, who has the Asperger’s Syndrome, had written this book. He looks at the world with different eyes than we do which makes it a very interesting read. In fact it is so interesting that I finished the whole book in the flight home, ignoring G.I. Joe which was shown as part of the in flight entertainment program.

What an awesome coincidence. Today, at my Birthday, they opened a Dunkin’ Donuts in my neighborhood. They must have known how much I love sweet stuff. The logical consequence was that I went there this morning and got a dozen donuts.

Sugar high! Jihaa

It’s over a week ago when my summer semester ended. To celebrate this, two friends (Jonathan, Michael) and I went to Cedar Point.

This time I have to agree with the American motto: bigger = better. Some of the rides at Cedar Point are mind blowing! The Europa-Park in Rust seems like a children play ground compared with Cedar Point. (The last statement is just to annoy all the Swiss people who haven’t been on any real roller coaster )

Here are my personal top 3 rides:

1. Millennium Force: fast, long and smooth.
2. Top Thrill Dragster: 0-120 mph in 4 sec says everything
3. Maverick: fast, long and nervous

Interesting about these rides is that they were all manufactured in Switzerland by Intamin AG. I’m wondering why we don’t have such rides in Switzerland…

A hint for all people who go to cedar point: Riding the Mean Streak in front hurts as much as in the back. We proved that in an empirical experiment.

This two day trip was almost perfect except of 3 small things:

• - I didn’t win a stuffed animal
• - We couldn’t go for a swim in the hotel pool, because a kid abused the pool as a restroom.
• - I/We couldn’t eat at White Castle since Google lied to us…

But a really bad thing by Cedar Point can be seen in the following picture… Guess what it is!

btw: More pictures will follow… sooner or later

Sneeze is a funny game. The game is really simple you sneeze once and have to infect the target percentage for each level.
The interesting part about this game is that the first version was released before the swine flu, but apparently not many played it then. Together with the swine flu this game became much more popular.

Unfortunatley, none of us were able to finish the last level…

Most of us have heard of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA and many also know what it is. But how many know the developer/inventor of it: Luis von Ahn. He is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at CMU and has already won several awards and fellowships even though he is only 30 years old. A few days ago a received a message that Luis von Ahn was on the show on NOVA scienceNOW. This short clip gives some insight who he is and what he does or better said what he did so far.

About four months ago I was attending a lecture of Luise von Ahn which was called Teaching Shenanigans. He gave this lecture because he won the “Herbert A. Simon Award for Excellence in Teaching” in 2008. In this lecture he gives some insights on his tricks he uses to teach the class “Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science”.

Download - Teaching Shenanigans

Do you think you would like this class as a student?

I like energy drinks!
Red Bull is still one of my all time favorite. But when I arrived in USA, I discovered that the energy drink offer in America is much more diverse then in Switzerland. So I was trying many different energy drinks over the course of the last year (well 10 months to be exact).
Besides that I like energy drinks, it also helps to keep up with the demanding workload of the Carnegie Mellon University.

Here is my newest acquisition. I ordered it from ThinkGeek.

Doesn’t it look cool… I’m looking forward to try them

Tip for all the energy drinks junkies! Check out this page http://www.edjunkie.com/

Another cool flash game:

Ice Breaker

The “only” thing you need to do is free some Viking friends from the ice. To do so you have to cut them out.
Unfortunately, you can only make straight cuts. To successfully end a level all Vikings should end up in the boat.

Have fun…

btw: I finished it

My first thanksgiving celebration
Which meant for me a four day long weekend to relax and have some fun…

At Thanksgiving itself we spent the afternoon at the home of one of our faculties, he lives about 40 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. In his opinion no one should have to celebrate thanksgiving alone, therefore he invites all the foreign students to his home to celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving. Very nice of him! But we had our own turkey and left his house after a visit to celebrate ourselves.

On Friday, we saw Spamalot a Monthy Python Musical. For a more thorough feedback read David’s post, he went one day before we did.

On Sunday we visited two building which were built by Frank Lloyd Wright.
- Falling water (official page http://www.fallingwater.org/)
- Kentuck Knob
Frank Lloyd Wright is a very famous American architect who built many interesting buildings. I do not have a good understanding for architecture but I have to say that these buildings where really nice and designed very thoughtfully.

Finally, we took some nice pictures of my second favorite element.
- Cucumber falls
- Ohiopyle falls

Pictures for the whole weekend can be found here.

btw: this is the last relict from 2008

It’s time to party!

This came to my attention, and I like to share this information

http://www.1234567890day.com/

Cheers,
Guido