Flavour of the month

Interesting thread on Slashdot about flavours of things.

Basically arguing that nowadays, after having been exposed to artificial flavours for so long, people expect, say, red things to taste a certain way, even though that taste isn't typically much like any natural flavour (e.g. strawberry or cherry). So the things just taste "red".

(On a related note, I typically expect banana-flavoured things to taste of banana flavour, rather than of banana; the two are fairly different, at least to me, but banana flavour certainly tastes recognisable and I'd identify it as "banana flavour" even if it doesn't taste much like bananas.)

Its Your Turn!

I thought I'd mention ItsYourTurn.com here—a site where you can play board games against other players over the Internet.

It's geared mostly at those who move a couple of times a day rather than those who want to move in real time. Games offered include go-moku, go, chess, backgammon, Stack4, reversi, battleships, and more. See this page for a description.

And no, I don't get paid for saying that, but I find it a fun thing to do to kill time during a break, or to chat with people during a game.

And if one of you wants to invite me to a game, I'm "PNE" (in all caps - userids are case-sensitive there).

Meme: This day in history

The meme:

• If you've had LJ for over a year, look back to one year ago today and link back to and quote from your entries of that day.
• If you have more than one year, go back for the same day for each past year and quote for them as well.
• If you've had LJ for under a year, quote from the first month you had LJ and then halfway through the time you've had it.

The first one fits me; the task was pretty simple for me, since 3 March 2003 only had one two-line entry, which I'll quote in full:

It is not very fun to use a tool which has no documentation and no useful error messages.

That is all.

MLP: What a Crappy Present; Downhill Battle

I think I've linked at least to the first site before, but I just saw it on scribot_feed and was amused. So here you go again.

What a Crappy Present—CD Gift Advice, Parents and Kids

Downhill Battle—music activism