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You may or may not know about the new applications that Facebook are letting all over their site, with various degrees of usefulness. While I love the idea of them and how some of them work, I’m a little concerned as to how they are affecting me.

For a start, it’s immensely addictive looking at them and putting new stuff on my profile just to see what it looks like. Slightly more worrying, though, is the fact most of these things are turning me into some sort of competitive maniac – “So Matt thinks he can beat with his 567 points on iLike, well I’ll show him, I’ll show them all, yeah, take that Matt!”. That rock paper scissors thing is potentially dangerous too – “We’ve both been rock for the last two goes, so she’s gonna go for paper, so if I go…YES! WOO! I WON! I’M THE GREATEST! YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD TAKE ME, BUT MY SCISSORS HAVE TRIUMPHED OVER YOUR PAPER! I WON! I WON!”

I like Facebook, but maybe there should be some kind of warning on these things?

I wouldn’t ordinarily post about the spam I get, but I found this particularly amusing. This particular message was trying to plug FANTACHROME, which was apparently some sort of cheap alternative to chrome plating. Watch out for some bad Engrish:

I sort of get the feeling that when spam filters were first designed, chrome was not one of the words that was expected to crop up. Hmm…

I’ve been interested in this for a while, but I think now it’s “official”, so to speak. The Perplex City ARG/card game is about to start its second season, and I’m following it intently. I’ve known about the game since last year when a friend introduced it to me, but at the time I didn’t think I was smart enough to do the puzzles (still don’t, in fact) and so never really got involved with it. However, after getting hooked on the Frozen Indigo Angel game on Radio 1 a few weeks ago, I’m enthused.

I suspect most people will be totally lost as to what I’m talking about, so a quick explanation: Perplex City is a Alternative Reality Game, where game events blur with the real world. For example, a website might tell you to ring a phone number, which you do and then you have a conversation with someone at the other end who tells you to meet him somewhere where he will reveal a secret…or something like that. The best analogy I came up with when explaining to another friend was a “staged conspiracy” – the scenario is fictional, but the events are real.

The last season revolved around the search for a mysterious cube with a £100,000 reward for its discovery (yes, that was a real prize). This time there hasn’t been any specific prize set, besides an interesting adventure, but there’ll probably be some sort of reward. In the meantime, there are puzzle cards to collect, which are essentially trading cards, but with the added bonus of a puzzle and the chance to get points on the leader board, which is fun. The puzzles range from very easy to mind bogglingly difficult – one of the most difficult cards asked players to prove Reiman’s Theorem. I don’t reckon I’m clever enough for the harder cards (or some of the middling ones), but they’re fun to collect, and a great way to procrastinate from revision and other tasks.

So anyway, that’s what’s been taking up my time. That, and Twitter , which is monumentally pointless but ridiculously addictive. Like Twiglets.

I am useless at inane conversation. This is why I never write anything in here, because as soon as I do I look at it and think “What? What were you thinking? Nobody wants to hear about ARG’s and Nintendo and how you actually have to do some learning while at uni instead of trying to find yet more ways to tell us how interesting you aren’t.”

So, in a vain attempt at rebellion, I’m going to try and make this post about absolutely nothing at all. Admittedly, it’s an objective that’s bound for failure, but if I don’t write something soon I may go crazy with heat and exam induced delusions. And that is not something anyone wants to see.

I’m still annoyed at the university for having the nerve to put two exams on the Saturday of my 20th birthday. If I was responsible I’d see it as some sort of transition into adulthood, where I “put irresponsibility behind me” – but I’m not. Instead I’m planning on not turning up as a sign of protest…or something. I’ll work out the details later.

If anyone is interested, me and Jon made a film about breadsticks last weekend, which you’ll find here.

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wTy41aFeeFc]

Not much else to report, I’m sorry. At least I’ve manage to avert insanity for a few hours…

This particular rant is being written after a not entirely pleasant experience with The Culture Show on BBC Two. Perhaps I’m not looking at it in a particularly forgiving way given that I’m currently fuming at the BBC both for pushing Doctor Who back a week and airing reality-clone Any Dream Will Do? and the horror of Eurovision in its place, as well whoever’s responsible for my new Arrested Development DVDs not working, but along with a nimber of other things its made me throughly depressed over what people think “culture” is.

For a start, it had Mark Kermode in it. Mark Kermode is one of those people who manages to be able to infuriate me without even trying. The first experience I had of him was on Newsnight Review’s look at the at the time soon to be released Wii, and had him criticizing it – and by extension games in general – for being too enjoyable. Because of course, its a video game, which apparently are more addictive and damaging than heroin if you believe what the “critics” say. Personally I’m of the opinion that anyone who uses the words “brain” and “fry” in the same sentence while talking about games really shouldn’t be anywhere near a debate on gaming.

The fact that Kermode was on this show at all sort of set the tone for the whole thing. Nearly everything shown was about “good” culture coming from supposedly “bad” culture. The segment on the illustrated guide to the 9/11 commission report was littered with thousands of comments about superheros and talking dogs, as well as a question as to whether it was in poor taste. This is almost exactly like the games example – the reviewers already have a preconceptions to what something is (in this case, comics), and instead of accepting that it may be more than what they believe it to be, they declare it unacceptable. The thing is, this is exactly what allows misconceptions like this to continue, despite the fact that there have been plenty of serious graphic novels and games for a while now.

These are some of the more blatant examples. At other times it’s more subtle – “instead of MySpace and video games, they’re playing chess!”. There’s nothing wrong with playing chess, but is there something wrong with games. People will often say that there is some sort of inherent “badness” about them, but the thing is this “badness” doesn’t exist – its created and spread by misunderstanding and fear.

I’m fed up with “culture wars”, and I’m fed up with the things I enjoy being seen as a lesser form of “culture” because someone further up an imaginary hierarchy says it is. Isn’t culture supposed to be defined by the people?