News You Can Bruise

I was really proud that someone had started a non-bad band named after a game I wrote, and was trying to figure out how to contact this band without creating a Myspace account, and then I did a search on the song lyrics and discovered that all four songs are really by Neil Cicierega of the Massachusets band Lemon Demon, and were put up as "robot finds kitten" songs under different names. Cicierega is also known for creating Flash cartoons like "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" -- so well-known, in fact, that he's also notable.

So, it sucks that the "robot finds kitten" band is either a hoax or a plagiarism, but on the plus side it introduced me to some really great music. Those who like my music (I realize that this is a... select group) will also like Lemon Demon. And according to a message a few months ago to the rfk-dev mailing list, someone is starting a real band called "robotfindskitten".

Also, robot finds panties

I also brought my robotfindskitten page back to life as the Ultimate robotfindskitten Fan Page. There's got to be one, so why shouldn't it be mine? It's got some files of NKIs for use with the Python version.

One day, robot asked the head monk how to find kitten.

"The kitten that can be found is not the true kitten," said the head monk.

"Then why do we search for kitten?" asked robot.

"Why did you drop kitten?" asked the head monk.

At that moment, robot found kitten.

SORRY: this message is created by robot!

Well! That's okay then!

PS: Carrot Cheesecake tries but cannot wrest the carrot crown away from Carrot Cake Soup (nice recipe format there, BTW; is it for some kind of Iron Chef home game?).

I wrote a little CGI for NewsBruiser what implements the MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC APIs. It needs a little refactoring before I commit, but it works. Soon you'll be able to... do various things. And the company that'll bring it to you: NewsBruiser, Inc.

... otherwise it's Dave Griffith, Inform, and robotfindskitten -
together at last! - in Z-machine remake ROBOT FINDS KITTEN (sic)
( http://www.cndb.com/game.html?title=Robot+Finds+Kitten+%282002%29:  
Good shot of robot's ass as it bends over to check whether or not the
thing in the upper right hand corner of the screen is kitten)...

Jeremy Penner, of never-heard-of-him-before fame, has a variety of suggestions:

How about robotfindsnothing, in which there is no kitten nor non-kitten items, and when you bump into empty space, you win?

Or robotfindskitten, Junior Edition, in which there are no non-kitten items, just robot and kitten. Studies have shown that young minds have difficulty handling the frustrating challenge of a full-blown game of rfk, frequently giving up before they actually manage to find kitten. This way, the difficulty level for the game would be better suited to the youngsters.

Or perhaps kittenfindsselfwithrobot, wherein you are kitten, you are unable to move, but you have a remote control with which you can control robot to come find you! This would obviously work well with your "superficial changes" initiative.

And if easy money's what you're after, the best way to go is with licensing! For instance, "Dude, Where's My Kitten?", in which the NKI descriptions are replaced by bad jokes from the hit film.

And Brendan Adkins provides a variety of bad puns, including:

Keep your easily distracted charge away from the muggers and pickpockets in the zoo with robotmindskitten!

For the hearing impaired: robotsignskitten! (Could also be an autograph simulation.)

The tragic sequel to Equus: robotblindskitten!

In the darker Clive Barker version, where DOES that delicious sausage come from? It's robotgrindskitten!

While good ideas (keep sending them in!), all of these require costly development effort and changes to the game mechanics, which would need to be focus-grouped at enormous expense. The easy money lies in simply rebranding the existing game with superficial changes that don't really change anything. For instance, robotfindskitten: special edition would have gold-plated non-kitten-items and be suitable for display on a coffee-table (well, those coffee table video game consoles, anyway). The personalized edition, code-named robotfindsyou, will give you the thrill of actually being found by robot! (Note: for purposes of the game, you will be a kitten). And we can use PayPal to support the pay-per-kitten model of robotfindskitten premium.

We should also go the Super Mario Bros. route and have various 'themed' robotfindskitten levels, such as the 'jungle' level (robotfindsmonkey) and the 'water' level (robotfindsmolamola). And on a very special episode, it's robotfindsrobot.

For those late to the party, here is the canonical rfk page and the sourceforge project.

This code is very cool. Also, I no longer fear function pointers.

I really need to get working on the project I'm doing with Peter.