When I was a kid, I found a bizarre pen at my grandmother's house. It was a marker with a roller on the tip and it created a dot pattern similar to zip-a-tone when you wrote with it. The ink was a dull purple, like Spider-Man's webbing in a comic book. She called it a "fax highlighter," but I've never been able to find such a thing in office supply stores or on the internet. It sure would be cool to have one for shading and creating a unique look in quick sketches. Help?
posted to Ask Metafilter by clango at 9:17 AM on April 17, 2007 (17 comments)

So you wanna be a rock and roll star. Here's a place to start. GOSK, or the guitarist's online survival kit, is a very handy guide to both scales and modes as well as all chords in all positions on the neck. In order to put it all together, and map modes to chord progressions and really start jamming, this little php widget is pretty helpful. Though in all things, even if you want to learn from the masters, you should never forget the basics. However, if you decide that using these online utilities to improve your performance is too much, you can always go back to school, or else forego training entirely and emulate rock star attitude and style in real life situations.
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 5:15 AM on March 20, 2007 (18 comments)

You've heard of ScummVM and MAME, but harvest time is approaching in the field of reverse-engineered open source re-implementations of other classic games too:
OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon), LinCity (Sim City), Advanced Strategic Command (Battle Isle), Freeciv (Civilization), Enigma (Oxyd), Widelands (Settlers), OpenArena (Quake 3), Spring (Total Annihilation), JJFFE (Frontier First Encounters), Vega Strike and Oolite (Elite), FreeOrion (Master of Orion), Pingus (Lemmings), Stratagus (Warcraft II et al.), CloneKeen (Commander Keen), Exult (Ultima VII), FreeCNC (Command & Conquer), REminiscence (Flashback), LGeneral (Panzer General), Pioneers (Settlers of Catan), and Freedoom (Doom).
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water at 3:27 PM on February 1, 2007 (43 comments)

Play history: Noughts and Crosses (EDSAC, 1952) begat Tennis for Two (Donner & oscilliscope, 1958) begat Spacewars (PDP, 1962) begat Star Trek (SDS Sigma, 1971) begat Hunt the Wumpus (Mainframe, 1972) begat Maze War (Xerox Atlos, 1974) begat DECWAR [warning:telnet(!)] (DEC-10, 1978) begat Zork (PDP-10, 1979) begat World of Warcraft... with a few steps in between. All names (but Maze Wars) go to playable versions. Dates have information on the game itself
posted to MetaFilter by blahblahblah at 12:22 AM on December 8, 2006 (13 comments)

"The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an anti-child mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception." Don't even mention the mind-set behind a vaccine for HPV.
posted to MetaFilter by missbossy at 7:01 PM on May 9, 2006 (1194 comments)

Ted Haggard, one of the most prominent evangelical pastors in the nation, resigned today as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations that he carried on a three-year sexual relationship with a male prostitute. He also steps down as pastor of of his 14,000-member New Life Church while a church panel investigates, saying he could "not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations."
posted to MetaFilter by ericb at 3:43 PM on November 2, 2006 (1829 comments)

Whether it's mislabeling his affiliation, or starting conspiracy theories, the party of responsible government (and their right-wing media organizations) are doing all they can to downplay the Foley scandal.
posted to MetaFilter by jpburns at 5:37 AM on October 4, 2006 (521 comments)

Craig Mullins is a commercial photoshop artist & videogame fan. In the mid 90s, after a couple amateur pieces of fan art he created for the game Marathon made their way to the folks at Bungie, he was hired to create a series of Halo themed art for the company. His full portfolio of commercial & personal work is interesting.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson at 10:30 AM on August 24, 2006 (14 comments)