my.bicycle

An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world's top RPG gamers after one criminal's girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google's social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim's head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better. ( full story at Gizmodo ; thanks, Kev!)

If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a Mac, check out maclive @ Google Code , which allows you to see who’s online among your XBL Friends and what they’ve been playing. ( znf via google alerts)

According to the only fan-site I can find for the show, there will be a Blade: The Series marathon this weekend on Spike TV: (...) Spike TV this upcoming weekend (Sep. 9th and 10th). It looks like they’ll be playing all 12 previously aired episodes (counting the pilot as two episodes). The marathon will include this Wednesday’s episode as well. The marathon goes from 2 PM - 7 PM Saturday and Sunday. This is a great chance to catch up and if you’ve got some friends or family that you’re trying to get hooked on the show, this marathon provides the perfect opportunity to show them why it’s such a great show. I’ve only seen four unconnected episodes so far, but it shows a lot of promise. I’m just about to purchase the “season pass” through iTunes Music Store. iTMS was what introduced me to the show; the pilot episode and one other were given away for free through it, and after finding a few more on P2P, I am hooked. The show is structured along the line...

I’ve deleted my Friendster profile (actually a couple months ago), and have replaced it with a link to my del.icio.us bookmark directory. It has its own RSS feed, and is generally a dump for research, along with other notes. If anyone else who reads this blog has a del.icio.us account, please leave a Comment.

Prior to Tribe.net , I was enjoying Tokyopia a lot. Many expats working in games in Japan shooting the keerap, and such. Unfortunately, the main page's articles were rarely changed, and the forums seemed stagnant from lack of participatory traffic. Tokyopia's just gone through a full redesign. Now any member can start a front-page article on their own, through functionality as simple as sending a phonecam pic to the blog, which then links the Comments field automatically to a robust message board system. Bliss! Update: From their picture selection, check out these Famicom cusions in a cramped game shop , and the lineup of GBA's that serves as my current desktop.

k.d. bryan, who is as sharp as a just-sharpened pencil, hypothesized an imaginary band out of one tiny suggestion: December 17, 2003 - 09:15 PM Re: the fungal issues I can just imagine the Rolling Stone interview: "Well, there's no one way to describe our sound. The Fungal Issues sort of came out of all of us getting our groove on together, y'know, unified in the funk. I don't think it's fair to say that one person is responsible for all of The Fungal Issues. It is true that K.D. (Bryan, lead triangle) scratched the surface and really infected us with his enthusiasm - I mean, without him there would be no Fungal Issues. But the Fungal Issues is really everywhere now and I think that's because everybody can identify with the Fungal Issues." Tempting . . . buuuut no. December 19, 2003 - 02:17 AM Re: Making the Band Spin's review of our self-indulgent fourteenth album, "We Are The Fungal Issues": "Breaking onto the scene in...

[This is from a Japan Tribe thread called Weird Japanese Moments] When I arrived in 1993, the vibe was a little different than it is now, ten years later. One weekend shortly after entering the country, I went to downtown Osaka with no plan except to wander around. I followed one of the major venues leading away from Namba station, and after about 20 minutes of leisurely strolling through the most crowded pedestrian streets I'd ever seen, found myself at the famous Dotonboribashi, a slightly arched pedestrian-only bridge that crosses one of the many water channels that crisscross through downtown. Something had been not-quite-dawning on me since I'd arrived in Japan. When I reached the highest point on the bridge, I had a chance to look even further down the road ahead. I'm an average height guy in the US, but I'm at least half-a-head taller than most local Japanese, usually taller. So watching the crowd flow around me, it was with suprising visual clarity tha...

I'm spending a lot of time writing about stuff that interests me on Tribe.net. Rather than limiting its existence to participation on those groups, it seems wise to put it here when appropriate. So, starting now:

Found this interesting story about one guy's addiction to Friendster . I can kind of relate, but after finding Tribe.net , fascination with F'ster seems really pointless. The author of the story realized this too, and took it upon himself to make something new and interesting out of it by turning his profile into a constantly changing, online art installation. Of course, once The Friendster Balrog got wind of shenanigans, it tweaked his account so he was no longer able to freely upload pictures without a time-consuming official review process. The same thing happened to me, and for both of us, it was the same reaction: there went the fun . There is SO much going on in the way of building virtual communities right now, and F'ster is missing the boat big time by trying to be what it was intended to be, instead of what the street has made from it.

A lot of stuff about Friendster is still impressive, but a number of things about it continue to alienate me. The bulletin board delivers a message to the poster's 1-degree friends, and any responses only go to the original writer, condemning any chance for thread-discussion. The personal-picture guidelines are overly strict, and unevenly enforced: a self-portrait I sketched for use on the site (prior to the inclusion of the current, draconian guidelines on the Add Picture page) was deleted from my profile. Without knowing the roolz, it seemed arbitrary. After reading the rules, and proceeding to see pictures of Bruce Lee, Brad Pitt , and the Rubik's Cube in use as other's image, it seemed a particularly lame move on the site's part. It's clear that there is some reasoning behind the people controlling it who want it to remain a form of valid reputation-through-association, which in turn may lead to some form of trust-based-system for like minded friends, or mem...