I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving. Now that the weekend is over, things are happening here. Movie-A-Minute opened this morning. A new Site Market Game starts tomorrow -- the twist on this game is that you have to try to lose money rather than gain it (uncomfortably appropriate for the holiday season). And answers to the most recent reader question will be posted tomorrow. So if you haven't already, tell me what your favorite and least favorite words are.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Because several readers will be away for the long weekend, yesterday's reader question will stand until after it's over. In the meantime, send me your answers (and eat a lot).

Answers to the reader question, "What's your favorite word?" follow:

• From "Faux Pas": "'Fishmonger.' 'Spleen' comes in a close second. My wife's favorite word: 'Babylonathon,' meaning to watch several episodes of 'Babylon 5' in a row. Plus 'Babylonathon' is just so much fun to say. Babylonathon, Babylonathon, Babylonathon."

• From Everett K.: "'Fug.' I've been frequently accused of causing rooms to be fuggy, of fugging the place up. You'll only find this word in the 'better' dictionaries."

• From "scArA": "'Drat.' 'Fershlugginer.' 'Ganef.' 'Sna.' 'Snook.' 'Bam.' 'Whack.' 'Fork.' 'Yipe.' 'Rink.' 'Eek.' 'Bort.' 'Ding.' 'Hokey.' To sum it up, yes, I like potatoes very much. Now what was your question again?"

• From Patrick R.: "'Chaos.' From the sound and power of the word to its continued longevity and varied uses through the ages in mythology, science, and fiction."

• From Matt J.: "'Rigamarole.'"

• From John K.: "'Xenophobe.' Because it's a good substitute for 'Xylophone' when one gets to the 'X' in any alphabet teaching book."

• From Shelley T.: "'Scintillating.' I just like the way it feels on my tongue and in my mind."

I was pleasantly surprised with the results of this question. There were a lot of excellent answers given. Every last one impressed me. And I have to single out Patrick for an answer that struck me as unusually insightful. Anyway, good job, everyone. And if you didn't answer this question and would like to, feel free to send in more answers. (Just be sure to distinguish them from the answers to the next reader question below.)

The new reader question for today: "What is your least favorite word?"

Today's reader question: "What's your favorite word?"

There has been a large number of new RinkWorks readers in the past two months or so, and I would like to use today's journal entry to welcome the new readers and explain a little bit about the philosophy I follow when developing and maintaining content for the site.

Simply put, I try my best to entertain you, the reader, by exploiting my own personal interests. I try to appeal to as many people as possible, but I don't -- and this is the important part -- do it by developing content for the lowest common denominator. If I did, what would it mean? It would mean that I would be dumbing down the content in order to relate not only with intelligent people but with stupid people as well. Clearly, I would not want RinkWorks to have the reputation of being a stupid person's site. Instead, I strive to cater to the greatest common factor. What that means is that I try to develop the best possible entertainment that still makes sense to everybody. Having explained this in precise, definitive terms, I realize that I don't cater to the greatest common factor at all, because sometimes I don't even get my jokes. A better mathematical approximation for my web site philosophy might be this: I strive to develop content in the area under the curve of eccentricity. In layman's terms, the weirder you are, the more content I have for you. Yes, RinkWorks is proud to offer original, offbeat, eccentric, experimental content that is nevertheless mainstream and universal.

I hope that clears things up. Welcome to RinkWorks.

Third and (probably) final in my series on the new RinkWorks feature, Adventure Games Live, this journal entry will answer a question you may have had (but probably haven't) on your mind, namely, "Why 'Adventure Games Live'?" I decided upon the title because I like its ambiguity. The way I tend to pronounce it, "Live" has a long 'i,' so it's like, "Live, In Concert." These adventure games are "live," because they happen on the web as you visit and play. I'm not sure why this is more "live" than if you played an adventure game at home, but I like the sound of it.

The other pronunciation makes more sense. With a short 'i,' it means that adventure games live on in spite of the advent of flashier technologies. So take your pick.

Continuing with yesterday's dissertation on Adventure Games Live, I want to talk today about the menu-driven interface to the game. Almost all of the adventure games I used to write in my early programming days were menu-driven, rather than utilizing the more conventional command line. Originally this was because it was easier to program a menu interface -- the few command line projects I tried turned out to be difficult to write and debug. Since then, I'd be able to write a command line interface, but I've grown accustomed to the menu driven interface and find that it works out fairly well. Originally, Fantasy Quest was a hybrid. It was menu driven, but often some of the options would be "give something" or "say something" that you had to type in what you wanted to give or say (or whatever). In addition, one location in the game (the spot at the top of the chasm where the ogre is) was completely command line driven.

For Adventure Games Live, I didn't implement any method of players entering text as part of the game. The engine for AGL is 100% menu-driven, and so, when porting Fantasy Quest to it, I had to workaround the parts of the game where a command line or other text prompt was required. Usually I did this by providing all the reasonable options and then some. I'm not entirely satisfied with the results, but it works.

The AGL engine is actually something unlike what I've ever programmed before. I wrote the engine independently of the games and invented a language for the games to be written in. The engine parses the game files written in this language and acts accordingly based on user input. It's not a "programmer-friendly" language to write in, because there is next to no error checking in the parser (it being designed for speed of execution as the top priority), but as long as there are no bugs in the language code, the engine runs fine. I was concerned about whether or not the engine (and the web in general) would be fast enough for players to want to wait for the new page to load between every turn, but thankfully it looked all right to me turning the testing stages, and, from the number of people who played yesterday, it seems you agree.

So now that the engine has been written, making new games for it is a comparatively simple matter of writing the game logic itself in the AGL language. For The Game of the Ages, I've mapped out the bulk of the game and started on its implementation, but I'm going to take a little break and do a couple different things for RinkWorks before I really plunge into it. Oddly, though based on a parody, this game will have a more serious tone than Fantasy Quest. You'll recognize plenty from the parody, but the incarnations of the elements from Dave's and my worlds will be more faithful to our serious novels rather than the corrupted comic interpretation. But, as it need be, it is being written with an audience unfamiliar with our writing in mind. I'm excited about it. It will be fun to see worlds and characters Dave and I created brought to life in a new medium.

Today marks the debut of Adventure Games Live, a feature I've been secretly working on pretty much throughout the month of October. It was done by the month's end, but I held it back to allow time for testing. (Dave Parker didn't even know about it until it was essentially done.) I took a special amount of pride in it, as it not only allowed me to get heavy into the programming side of things, but because adventure games and I go back a long way. I used to churn out adventure games fast and furious when I was young, soon after I learned how to program in BASIC on my family's Apple ][e. Most of the earlier ones weren't very good, as both my programming skills and sense of gameplay were just developing. (My first game ever wasn't actually all that bad, but I remember with a certain fondness my second, which let you do some ineffectual things at a few places but ultimately only required you to walk to a certain place to win.) Shortly after I switched over to PC's, I stopped making adventure games in favor of other types of projects, but I made my best ones during that time. Fantasy Quest, a game on Adventure Games Live, is a port of my last and biggest adventure game, which I completed in 1991. It has a more obvious sense of humor about it than I have now, but I kept the AGL version faithful to its original incarnation and only changed and added a few minor things. The Game of the Ages, which is what I'm working on now, will be the first adventure game I've written since. I'll talk more about Adventure Games Live later.

I reorganized the main page yesterday. The line between features and featurettes was becoming increasingly blurred, so I thought it fitting to remove it and instead sort the sites by category, which is what surfers would probably want anyway. The sole remaining size division is only within the humor category, and a few of the humor "featurettes" were promoted. I hope you like the new front page. It's a little weird for me to get used to, having worked so long with the old one, but I think I like it better already.

Business first: the latest Site Market Game is over, and the official results have been posted. Thanks to all who played, and I hope you'll return for the next game, in which we'll try something a little different.

Last summer, I had upwards of ten or so features under production at any given time, the latest of which had an estimated release date of January 1999. I found it interesting to compare what I was doing with RinkWorks then and what I'm doing with it now. It's nice for me to see where I've come and how far I've gone. In case that's interesting to you too, here's a brief rundown of what's happened.

Of the sites I had in production, six were brought to completion more or less how they were originally envisioned. Some were ahead of schedule, some were behind schedule, but they made it. These were Book-A-Minute Classics, The Everett Kaser Software FAQ, EquiWorks, Brain Food, I Think, and Slapdash City.

One of the ten or so was completed but not in the same way that it was originally envisioned. This was Things People Said. Originally this was to be called The Language Barrier and only feature the types of quotes in that particular section of the site. I soon realized that I wouldn't get enough of that type of material to sustain a full feature, so I broadened the scope.

Two of these sites aren't done yet but will soon see the light of day as they were originally envisioned. These are Movie-A-Minute and another feature I haven't announced yet.

Two of these sites were deferred until a later unspecified date. I haven't announced anything about either of these yet.

Four sites came (or will come) into being rather quickly after almost no advance planning at all. These are not counted in the "ten or so" -- they were ideas that occurred to me (or Dave) rather abruptly and were pursued in a gung-ho fashion, preempting development on the ones I'd been planning for longer. These were Crazy Tales, The Duel of the Ages, and two sites I haven't announced yet. One is finished already, and the other, Dave's next solo project, is getting there.

So if you add it all up, right now I'm "only" working on five new features, two of which are deferred until a later date anyway. I like it better with fewer projects on my plate at a time.

EquiWorks has been released, at long last. Like a few of the other recently released sites, the update rate on it will be irregular and very likely seasonal. (Model horse shows are typically in the spring and early summer, although there are a couple in the fall as well.)

I have a few answers to the latest reader question. I think this is an interesting question, so I'm keeping the doors open on it. If you can think of any more, mail them to me. The question is, "What's the job you'd least like to have?"

• From Everett K.: "I'd have to go with cleaning out the suction bottle in the dental office, where all of the spit, blood, and other gooey slime gets sucked away to. My wife used to be a dental assistant years ago, and I still get nauseous just thinking back to her descriptions of that slimy job. (shiver)"

• From Matt J.: "I'd least like to have the job of a webmaster maintaining a popular humor-based web site."

• From John W.: "The least favorite job I could ever think of having is a seafood restaurant dishwasher, under the following conditions:
  • The restaurant is small, and entering hard times. Thus, to conserve money, the use of hot water is forbidden.
  • Being a seafood restaurant, they often serve food smothered with butter that ain't liquid by the time you have to wash it.
  • Your boss doesn't speak English well enough to understand what you have to say (you know, small words like 'minimum wage' and 'FDA') and probably wouldn't care if he could.
  • When there are no customers, which is often (see the first point), you often have the grotesque job of cutting lobsters down their backs with pruning clippers and cleaning them out...while they're still alive (they are still considered 'fresh' since they were put into the freezer while they were still alive--if you clean 'em fast enough).
  • After the 'fresh' lobsters turn out to be not-so-fresh and the place is inspected, the multi-volume inspection violation report makes the Kenneth Starr report seem like a Book-A-Minute condensation.
  I speak from experience on this issue, although the restaurant in question is no longer in existence (go figure). At the time, though, I tried to look on the bright side: I got free food.

• From "Faux Pas": "I commute into Manhattan from Jersey every day, to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Port Authority buses always take the same route: the Lincoln Tunnel. The approach to the Lincoln Tunnel stretches about two miles from the New Jersey Turnpike and in the morning the in-bound buses get to drive on what is normally the left-most out-bound lane. Aside from seeing several hundred buses driving the wrong way down a highway in the passing lane, another deterrent from keeping out-bound motorists from swerving into that lane is this: Every fifteen feet there is a hole in the road. In each hole there is a three-foot long PVC pipe, placed on end. And every day before the morning rush hour, a truck drives slowly down the highway while someone sitting in a chair in the back of the truck places a pipe in each hole. Around 10 o'clock they get back in that truck, drive back, and pick up every single one of those pipes.

  The job I'd hate? That guy. There. Picking up plastic tubes. Inserting them into holes drilled in the highway. Day in. Day out. I'd probably throw myself into oncoming traffic.

  The other job I'd hate to have? You know those billboards that display the current amount the big lottery jackpot is worth? The ones that are updated the day after every lottery drawing? The guy that has to change those signs every Thursday and Sunday morning.

I can think of two jobs I'd really hate to have. One, I'd hate to be a toll booth attendant, especially at night. (I don't envy Snook Draddots.) Two, the guy that stands at the top of water slides and says when the next person can go.

Another profession I can't see anyone being fulfilled in is that of Charlie's father (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). He worked at a factory, and his job was to screw on toothpaste caps as the tubes came down the assembly line.

Last call on the reader question, "Of all the jobs in the world, what's the one that you'd least like to have?" I know there are more good answers out there than what I've received so far. Now's your chance. Send email.

Due to technical difficulties, the Site Market Game is not going to get the promised price change today. Instead, the prices will change tomorrow, but the change will only reflect the traffic from Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Wednesday, the price change will reflect only Tuesday's traffic, and the game will be extended by one day, to Thursday.

Third call on the reader question, "Of all the jobs in the world, what's the one that you'd least like to have?" Mail me answers.

Now that the business is out of the way, I thought you'd be interested in the following Haiku error messages, author unknown:

A few days ago, Book-A-Minute co-author Dave Parker posted a message in the RinkWorks Message Forum saying that he'd let readers vote on the book he'd read and condense next. (The voting ends today, so now is your last chance to cast your vote.) I liked this idea. I discussed it with Dave, and we'll both be doing this again from time to time. In fact, I'm starting an election for myself today, since I just finished a book and will need something to read when I come back from the weekend.

I have instituted an automated voting system on the Book-A-Minute site which will be used for all future elections. Visit it, if you like, and vote on my next book.

Second call on the reader question, "Of all the jobs in the world, what's the one that you'd least like to have?" Mail me answers.

Last night I got a lot of work done on EquiWorks, bringing it almost all the way to completion. However, Darleen is going to a weekend-long horse show (a real horse show) in Springfield, Mass., today, which means I won't be able to finish it off until next week. This is the last time I advertise a feature that isn't almost done. (When the "coming soon" announcement was posted last April or May, it wasn't even started. Oops. Bad me.)

In the RinkWorks Message Forum, there is a thread called "Call For Discussion on Registration Issues." The first message is here. It discusses how the RinkWorks site will handle registration for various features (like the Site Market Game and some upcoming sites). There are a few alternatives, and the decision will impact you, so please stop by and offer your feedback.

Today's reader question: "Of all the jobs in the world, what's the one that you'd least like to have?" Send me your answers.

In the October 24 journal entry, I condensed common song themes and claimed that most song lyrics could be expressed with one of the lines I presented. Then I asked for readers to submit their own Song-A-Second condensations. Most of what I receive were condensations of specific songs rather than common song themes, but that's ok. Here are some:

Song themes:

• "Damn that government!" -- Matt J.
• "(utter and total gibberish)" -- Daniel S.

Artists:

• Bob Dylan songs: "We can't understand any of this. Bob Dylan is a genius!" -- Paul A.'s mother
• "Weird Al" Yankovic songs: "Change a few words around, and you too can be famous." -- Faux Pas

Songs:

• Underground, by Ben Folds Five: "We're social rejects. Let's become punks." -- scArA
• Rapture by Blondie: "Maybe white girls from upper middle class backgrounds shouldn't rap." -- Faux Pas
• The Cat's In the Cradle, by Harry Chapin: "My son and I never have time for each other." -- scArA
• Take Me Home, by Phil Collins: "Current British Mental Care Policy needs to be overhauled." -- Faux Pas
• Rock Me Amadeus by Falco: "Mozart did a lot of stuff." -- Faux Pas
• Big, by Peter Gabriel: "When I grow up, I'm going to crush you all like the puny ants you are." -- Faux Pas
• Big Time, by Peter Gabriel: "I'm so great because I'm in show biz." -- scArA
• 19 by Paul Hardcastle: "The Vietnam War sure makes a good dance song." -- Faux Pas
• Who Put the Bomp, by Barry Mann: "Whoever wrote this gibberish is a genius because now my girlfriend loves me." -- scArA
• Kind and Generous by Natalie Merchant: "Thank you." -- scArA
• Cars by Gary Numan: "I've got a synthesizer." -- Faux Pas
• Jingle Bells, by James Pierpont, 1857: "Sleigh riding is fun." -- scArA
• Road To Nowhere, by Talking Heads: "The world is ending, and we're all going nowhere." -- scArA
• Shout by Tears For Fears: "We advocate Primal Scream Therapy." -- Faux Pas
• Da Da Da I Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Aha Aha Aha, by Trio: "You made a good decision by leaving, because we don't love each other. Da da da." -- scArA

And a condensation of opera:

• "Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. One of them dies." -- Brian W., who goes on to say: "There. You have now been enlightened by being exposed to every opera ever written. The greatest composers of all time have now touched your soul and enriched your inner being. Read this ultra condensation as often as necessary to prolong the effect of enriched enlightenment."

So there you have it. Further Song-A-Second condensations are welcome.

Dave Parker, co-author of Book-A-Minute is letting readers vote for the book he reads next (and, consequently, the next Book-A-Minute condensation he writes). If you'd like to cast a vote, read the details here.