[Index]

LL :: Volume 43 :: LR
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  Famous for Fourteen Minutes
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*   Fads of the Home
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  The Spraygun Theory of Interior Decoration is a simple plugin for your colorant wall-surfaces. You get a pistol-shaped interface device with color controls, an angle-of-divergence dial, and a trigger. Point it as you like, pull the trigger, and splotches appear on your wall. (It won't color your furniture or pets -- it's not a persistent-field tool -- it just interfaces with your wall logic.)

You can use it for crazy rainbow graffiti-splattering, of course; that's practically mandatory when you first play with it. But more understated effects are also possible. A few strokes of darker or lighter tint in a colored room give an organic feel to the space; and it's much easier to splash them around directly, by hand, than to lay them out in a modelling application.

The device supports varying levels of transparency, so you can lay down thin layers of color blended onto the existing scheme. You can even spray out tiled patterns, or blend one pre-defined scheme onto another. The plugin works with most 2D art interfaces, so the limits really are up to you.

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*   Product Development In Depth
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  One: "String that is intangible to itself -- it passes right through itself -- so it will never tangle!"

Two: Hacker creates untanglable string, implemented as field tool embedded in aglet.

Three: Impossible to tie knot in string. String is thus useless for all stringy tasks.

Four: Hacker adjusts tool so that intangibility does not apply to any segment of string which is kinked or curved (radius of curvature 1 cm or less). Knots now hold adequately.

Five: Now string can become tangled (since tangles tend to include kinks and bends). Give up on idea?

Five: Unsuspected advantage! Many knots are easier to tie, since straight lengths of string can be passed through each other, then hooked into (tangible) loops or bights.

Six: Change marketing from "untanglable" to "easy-knotting" string.

Seven: Mindshare!

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*   Fads of the Kitchen
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  Graduated Noodles are sweet-and-sour flavor -- sweet at one end, and sour at the other. As the name suggests, there is a smooth transition down the length of the noodle.

Sluuuuuuuurp.

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*   Technology Spinoffs
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  Gloomlurk is an atmospheric set-piece based on shadow hysteresis. A sensor field extends through a room, or several, and detects shadow -- any region where direct light does not fall. Such regions slowly "accumulate" shadow. The field gradually darkens. It does not go all the way to opacity; but since the field itself reduces the light passing through it, shadows equilibriate much darker than they ought to be. Dim corners beneath furniture really do wind up nearly impenetrable.

Since regions near light sources are unaffected, your vision does not adjust to overall darkness. Bright areas are just as bright, but the shadows are deeper, and press more closely.

A brisk sweep with a bright handlight will clear up the shadows... but they grow back. And what would a moody darkplayer be doing with a bright handlight, anyway?

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*   Life of the Mind
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  Possibly have to an enterpreter inter tell us if they approximately a Muppet Show gag. It's no good grief, I didn't uses a registers who I've recycled from his is minuscule; all totaller doesn't another sincept it have evidences, but which is might, is fine who haven't either -- is fact...

Now, ever, the 16-25 cross the value of time. It's an enlight. I hatevery improved be and yon.

A conside to handle this on RAIFM (does Gary amount it they share fairly were talk about when I get the murgles. RTFZSpec :)

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