More on the Classic Games games:

I started writing these very soon after Enchanted Forest was done. Not having to worry about the bookkeeping involved with registering people for the game and keeping saved game files -- and the game rules being much simpler in every case -- programming these games was much faster than the development of Adventure Games Live and Enchanted Forest required. Spoint was written first, and it was brought up to a usable, almost working status within a day. Memory was second, and it also took only a day to "almost work." Dave Parker must be credited for encouraging me to do this site when I did, although I had had the idea before. But his specific comment to me was that if I made some sort of solitaire Memory game, he'd like to play it. That got me thinking more immediately about a "classic games" site, and the solitaire modes for Memory were his idea. (Well, he thought up the "strict scoring" method, which in turn inspired me to offer the "lenient scoring" method as well.) The fun part about developing Memory was designing all the cards for it, which all come from some aspect of the RinkWorks site. Two of the cards are from an as yet unrelease feature; one of those cards has a picture on it that hasn't been seen anywhere else yet.

Sequence, which is similar to the game Mastermind, was developed third. Matchsticks and Hangman followed. Then came Pen the Pig, which required some tricky bookkeeping since not just the squares in the grid but the lines in the grid needed to be remembered. Exterminator was next. Cheerio followed, and Rock, Paper, Scissors was completed during a break I was taking from tweaking the complicated AI in Cheerio. It took longer to come up with the images for Rock, Paper, Scissors than it did to program the game.

So, everybody, what's your highest Exterminator score? You're on your honor not to report scores for games you cheated on (like backtracking or reloading a fatal teleport), and be sure to specify what mode you were playing.

Classic Games has been out for a day now. So far, twice as many games of Hangman have been played than the second most popular game (Memory) which is only a game or two ahead of the third most popular (Exterminator). I tend to agree with those choices; they are three of my favorites. I also like Cheerio and Spoint.

Cheerio, which in extended mode, no wilds, is like Yachtzee, was the hardest to write due to the complicated AI required for when the computer plays. It was one of the last started, the last to be finished, and took the longest amount of time. But the computer seems to play all right most of the time, at least on "Difficult." I played three games this morning; I beat it by three points once, and the computer creamed me twice. I used to play the traditional version of Cheerio with my Grandfather, and I have fond memories of that game. It remains one of the most fun games of its type.

The dictionary for Hangman, in case anyone is interested, consists of 18,583 words. It is basically the contents of an online dictionary, minus all the proper nouns and words less than five letters long. There are easy words and hard words, and you're not likely to get the same word twice.

More on the games at the Classic Games site later.

Surprise! Check out the new Classic Games site, released today. This is what I've been working on for the last two months, and I'm excited about its release. I'll talk more about it later. Now I have to see about getting The Dialectizer back up in some form.

I don't have anything in particular to say today.

Over the weekend, Darleen had another model horse show, so there will be more pictures to post on EquiWorks (starting with a couple posted this morning) in the near future.

Also over the weekend, Everett Kaser, of Everett Kaser Software, has opened a mailing list for the discussion of his games. Read more about it at the Everett Kaser Software home page.

With regard to The Dialectizer it looks like I will be bringing it back with a limitation on how many people can use it at the same time. This will be done soon but will only be a temporary measure until I can rewrite the thing in Java. I'll probably leave the limited use CGI version up, however, for those few readers who are not able to run Java applications. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do this just yet, but this is the tentative plan.

Lastly, the fifth Book-A-Minute book election has begun. Cast your vote!

Everybody's got a diet. Drink this shake. Eat this tuna noodle casserole. Cut fat. Cut sugar. Cut carbohydrates. A lot of them aren't healthy. Some of them are healthy but hard to stay on. This journal entry is going to sound more commercial than I like to keep things, so I would like to state up front that I am not being paid by anyone to write this.

I've seen people close to me go through all kinds of different types of diets. There is one, Herbalife, that I've seen many people go on with more successful results than any other. In addition, it is accompanied by more hard health data than any other I have seen. If you're interested, read on.

The Herbalife diet uses vitamins and minerals (no drugs) to give you the appropriate nourishment. I'll let this page fill in the details, but there are a few things I found quite interesting. One, it's a personalized diet -- Herbalife has a whole array of products with information, and you can customize your diet to your needs. Two, there's some really interesting things some of these tablets do: one expands in your stomach to calm hunger; another has something that wraps around fat, preventing it from being absorbed by the body, and carries it out. (Remember, these are all natural ingredients.) I've seen people on this diet, and they've all lost weight and gained energy.

For more information, visit Herbs By Deb.

Well, the web page portion of The Dialectizer is down again. The traffic that thing is generating is insane. (Over a hundred were running concurrently during peak hours, and the total daily hits was well into the tens of thousands.) The only way my web hosting service can physically handle the load is to give me a dedicated server, and that would cost several hundred dollars a month that I don't have. If anybody has any ideas, let me know. I would like to get it up and running again, but to be perfectly honest I'm developing a personal grudge against the site for all the trouble it's caused me. It was supposed to be one of those non-maintenance sites that I just put up and let it go, but it turned out to require more maintenance than a lot of the ones I have to update manually with new creative material every month or so. Alas.

Yet another favorite desk supply:

• From Cherie M.: "I'd have to say that my favorite desk supply is (are) BIC pens. If you get all the colors and stack the caps you can make a really long chain of them which you can arc from one cube to another making a colorful rainbow. It's love...."

The I Think feature has my take on desk supplies.

The Message Forum currently has a discussion going on about a new RinkWorks game. It's a big project and not really started yet, so it will be a while until it sees completion, but I've asked readers for their suggestions. Check it out.

Speaking of games, RinkWorks seems to be shifting from its "primarily humor" direction to a "primarily games" direction. I have no doubt the pendulum will swing back again in time, and I'll always be doing humor features -- it's just a question of how often. But what do you think -- do you prefer the humor in RinkWorks or the games? Or the movie coverage? The reader survey asks this question, but most of you answered it before the various games came out.

Continuing the discussion of desk supplies:

• From Tyler: "I'd have to disagree with Joseph about the white-out. I discovered early on that white-out can be scratched away to painfully reveal errors I'd rather never be seen (hence using an 'obliteration' tool in the first place). I found early on that the only for sure way of hiding an error (next to burning) is to first squiggle over all of your writing until it's just one big pen mark, and then, for neatness' sake, white it out. But that is extremely time-consuming and may be avoided by just typing the whole whatever-it-is out in the first place and printing a clean, corrected version.

  "I like those big clip things myself. It took me ages to figure out what they're for -- finger-exercisers during long meetings, of course!"

Today is a "loose end" day, where recent threads are brought to a (probable) close. First, we have another favorite desk supply:

• From Joseph S.: "White-out, AKA correction fluid. The ultimate power of text destruction and idea obliteration in a small, inexpensive bottle, complete with brush. Ya gotta love it."

To wrap up the "numbers" thread, Howard M. responds concerning his alleged error about Jeff Gordon's number. Readers are invited to continue this discussion in the RinkWorks Message Forum.

• Howard writes: "Sure, it's 24. I wanted to see if there were any NASCAR fans out there. I went looking for motor scooter collectors [on the Message Forum, -Ed] and came up empty. So I figure, maybe they just weren't paying attention. But everybody likes to point out an error. Only a NASCAR fan would catch that wrong number. Now I know there are NASCAR fans out there. Who remembers what Jeff Gordon's number was when he drove the Babe Ruth car on the Grand National circuit? Sometimes I like to combine my interests. At the Cushman Club of America national meet in 1997, I drove my 50-year-old Cushman around the big oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Just for fun: Who knows Bill Elliott's number when he first drove a cup car? And what was Kyle Petty's number when he drove for Felix? And who won a championship with number 7 on the door? What was Fireball Roberts' real first name? Who was Tiny Lund? What kind of car did Marshall Teague drive?"

I received a lot of answers for the latest reader question, "What is your favorite desk supply, and why?" Here are some:

• From Marcus: "Clearly pencils. The aspiring beauty of the pen and the effortless simplicity of the eraser can't hold a candle to the marvelous thing known as the pencil. [I] grip, and the magical Force flows through me. The Power of the Great No. 2 pulls me toward Katsu Maranda. Ahh...."

• From "Faux Pas": "Probably those binder clips, 'cause you can spread out the handles and pretend it's a hang-glider, plane, shuttlecraft, whatever. Props come in handy when you're bored."

• From Stephen K.: "Paperclips. They can be used for holding papers together and so much more. Bend them, shape them, chain them, or straighten them out and hide them as a weapon, paperclips are the most fun and versatile desk supplies out there."

• From "Support": "I would have to say those mechanical pencils. It is amazingly easy to waste time with one of those suckers. 'Time to reload...' 'I wonder how much lead I can fit in it?' 'How many times can I click this before the lead falls out? 1, 2...' 'I wonder if the eraser comes out?' You get the picture."

• From "Ginkgo": "Cheez-It crackers, my water bottle, and my Blistex, to keep me going as I work at the computer. Also post-its. Also PaperMate brand FLEXGrip Ultra pens. Those are neat."

• From Adrien A.: "The elusive binder clip. I love the range of sizes, from wee-cutesy, to the great big I'm-too-lazy-to-use-the-binding-machine size that looks like a vermin trap. I refer to them as elusive because people (myself included) tend to hoard them in case a major shortage should on day occur."

• From "ChaosPuppy": "OOoo, I like so many of them for different reasons. Since I had to pick one, I'll pick transparent tape because I thoroughly enjoy playing with the (usually white) plastic ring once all the tape is used and gone."

"ChaosPuppy" goes on to respond to Dan A.'s comment, "Funny how the same number can seem to follow a thread."

He writes: "No, it's not. There are only 100 numbers available in most popular American sports. If you select ten athletes at random, there is better than 37% chance that two or more will have the same number. With 30 athletes, the odds are over 99%. Once you take into account the number of athletes you have available and throw in non-identical but related numbers (like reversed numbers; e.g., 24 and 42), it's not surprising or funny at all. The situation is even more common in sports like American football which assigns ranges of numbers for specific positions.

"Statistically, this is related to the coincidences of people having the same birthday. 'This means that on the average, out of ten random groups of forty one persons, in nine of them at least two persons will celebrate identical birthdates.' (http://www.csicop.org/si/9809/coincidence.html)"

I read the article above and found it fascinating. I highly recommend it.

Second call for the reader question, "What's your favorite desk supply and why?" Email me here.

I received a couple corrections to last Saturday's journal entry, which included a dissertation by reader Howard M. on the inadvertent use of numbers as an identity. It seems Jeff Gordon's number is 24, not 34, and that pretty much shoots down Howard's theory -- which is too bad, really, because it's a good theory, at least according to the skewed rules of logic of my I Think feature.

Reader Dan A. writes the following: "Funny how the same number can seem to follow a thread. Where I went to high school (Boones Creek in Johnson City, TN), the greatest all-round athlete was Charles 'Toonie' Cash. When he was on our basketball team, they were the regional powerhouse. Even beating Science Hill (Steve Spurrier's alma mater). Toonie's number: 23. When Natrone Means played football at Central Cabarrus High, his number was 23 for a while. Quick, what is (or was) Michael Jordan's number?"

Today's reader question: "What's your favorite desk supply and why?" Send me your answers.

How To Be Funny opened last Friday; check it out. Also, yesterday afternoon I posted a Timeline of important dates in RinkWorks history. I was going to do this anyway, for my own personal reference, and then figured, why not post it? Most of the dates during and after May 1998 were determined from this journal; the rest were mostly figured out from browsing through my enormous sent-mail folder. And The Apogee FAQ has a "revision history" section with its own dates.

The Dialectizer is back, at least for now, and so are Crazy Tales and the search engine for the At-A-Glance Film Reviews page that both went down while I was on vacation last week.

Howard M. writes, in response to the "Guess My Number" game on Slapdash City:

Your guess-my-number game started me thinking. Seriously. Many people are known by a number. For example, OJ Simpson was number 32. James Bond was 007, Maxwell Smart was 86, and his girlfriend was 99. But do these numbers mean anything? Maybe they do. Please allow me to use examples from my favorite sport, Stock Car Racing. Richard Petty, traditionally the king of stock car racing has always carried the number 43. The current champion is Jeff Gordon, number 34. Note that this is the same number, reading in the opposite direction. And the two men? Opposites!

• Richard is old. He is 63, but looks older. Jeff is young. He is 27, but looks yonger.
• Richard is tall. Jeff is short.
• Richard is a Southerner and speaks in a soft Carolina drawl. Jeff is a nasal Yankee.
• Richard is calm and unflappable. Jeff gets excited and has been know to burst into tears when happy.
• Richard is scroungy looking. Jeff is a handsome devil.

About the only way they are alike is that they have both been (in their time) the best in their field. You might say they are both number 1.

Anymore musings about personal identity in numbers?

Hello again, everyone. I'm back from a restful vacation and now need a good rest to recover from it. When I came back, a couple things on the site were broken, most visibly Crazy Tales and the search engine for At-A-Glance Film Reviews. This was a side effect of being moved to a new server (same web host, new server) in an effort to try to handle the vast amounts of traffic The Dialectizer has been getting of late. The other things that broke were my ability to update the At-A-Glance Film Reviews and Brain Food pages, so updates to those two sites will be delayed a few days until the problem can be sorted out.

Other than that, everything appears to be in order.