02.22.06

Number of the Beast

Posted in Rants, Religion, amusements, comics at 10:16 am by spryken

Revelation 3:17 so that no-one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Some have claimed that the National ID will fulfill this scripture. I am not convinced that the Book of Revelation is prophecy as we understand prophecy. That is the foretelling of the future. Prophecy, strictly speaking, is Forth Telling or proclaiming, not predicting. And the Book of Revelation is actually Apocalyptic Literature, which is a separate genre’ of writing. The basic message is “Things are bad, they are going to get worse. But hold on to your faith, because we win in the end.”

The National ID is a scary proposition. Just think George Orwell and Big Brother. Now, with all of that said, a friend sent me this link, a fun, amusing and yes, scary view of that future(Audio Warning). It may be closer than we think.

01.20.06

Sudoku

Posted in addictions, comics, games at 11:38 am by spryken

Unless you have many hours to burn, avoid this game at all costs!!

Sudoku is a crossword style puzzle. Meaning that is played on a grid like a crossword. There are no words involved, just numbers. But don’t worry, no math either. I won’t go into explaining the rules here, check out the website.

My rant is on the amount of time I spend on the game. I started playing online last year at DailyInk.com (no affiliation). I started playing print versions in the newspaper last Thanksgiving. The difference is the online version is computer generated (a Java Applet) and is not necessarily a “logical” game. That is, there may be more than 1 correct solution and you reach a point where you have to guess. The print versions are “logical”. There is only 1 correct solution and you should never have to guess. I would suggest the print version for that reason.

I have spent hours working the puzzles. The ones I really like are hard - extremely. Sometimes I like the easy ones, but I really like the ones that take a long time to solve. Of course, as you work you learn more and better strategies and so your working time decreases.

Sudoku has all the traits for a great individual game. It is simple to learn, challenging enough to keep you interested and addictive. As if I have time for that…. That’s why I refuse to buy computer games. I know that I will burn away productive hours sitting in front of the computer……..wait a minute…..that’s what I’m doing now…….

Oh well, there are worse addictions than Sudoku and blogging……… ;)