Amazing Mazes

I took this video of some of the truly amazing maze games that teens created in the video game design class we held at the library this summer. Jacob edited it. I uploaded it to YouTube, and then I captured it on vodpod. I put it in one of the widgets on the Virtual Loft. Check it out! (I added it to the sidebar here too).

I love the game in the middle that has spiders, etc., and a big HA! at the end. I was impressed by the multiple levels that the teens created in their games. One of the teens made his sprite leave the screen entirely, and it had to find its way back (that’s when the camera is jiggling and I’m trying to figure out where the sprite is going to reenter the screen). Nothing like thinking out of the box!

Beloit College Mindset List

Do you want to know what the incoming class of college freshmen take for granted? The YALSA blog I subscribe to linked to a fun “mindset list” from Beloit College, “cultural touchstones that shape the lives” of the students leaving for college this month and next.  For fun, I went over the list with some teens. Here are the some they enjoyed most:

• They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
• Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• Students always had Goosebumps.
• The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.
• Students have always been “Rocking the Vote.”
• They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.

Coraline

A sneak preview of Coraline. Check out the book, Coraline, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollines, 2002)

Warhol paints the Loft

There’s a new book on display in the lounge in the Loft.

Pop Art by Christian Demilly (Prestel, 2007)

- It inspired me to Warholize the Loft -

Spore – Best Video Game Ever?

Spore, the ambitious and eagerly anticipated video game, will be in stores this September. You can get the Spore Creature Creator on your AT&T mobile phone now.

Spore is the latest game from Will Wright (Sim City and Sims). It’s a generative game where users can create content (beginning at the cellular level), and players create their own worlds from the microscopic to the galactic, from the cell to evolution to tribe to civilization to space. I’d much rather play this game in science class, or traipse through the woods, than listen to a lecture…

Here’s an interview with Will Wright on this fascinating world that he (and a team of 100 others) has created.

Cory Doctorow on Writing for YAs

Cory Doctorow, author of the recent and widely acclaimed YA novel, Little Brother, thinks it’s very exciting to be writing for young people. “Literature may be the last escape available to young people today. It’s an honor to be writing for them.” Read more from his thoughtful column in Locus Magazine.

Playlists and Wordlists and Such

I am putting together a playlist of songs that Stephenie Meyer listened to while writing the Twilight books (for our Breaking Dawn After Hours Party in the Loft), and apparently she listened to My Chemical Romance a lot. So then, in the name of work, I had to play around with wordle. This song is “I Don’t Love You,” uplifting lyrics…