Internet Orgy

(And no, get thy mind out of the gutter.)

Have been pretty much exhausted to the brink of mental collapse by the second week of an intensive course, a full-day bioinformatics workshop that I had to conduct -alone- the next day, the prospect of working the day after that (ie, tomorrow) and impending plans for setting up the lab (we have no technician at the moment) to accomodate yet another workshop I have to conduct -alone- for teachers, unsoweiter.

Long story short, the stress has been keeping me off the interweb, let alone get much gaming in.

Only two more impending things though, so I've had some time tonight to fool around and do crazy internet stuff.

Like watch a dancing cocktatoo. Or two.

It's all quite fascinating, especially since this has become a very recent "scientific discovery" due to a viral youtube video.

Of course, natural skeptic that I am, we do need to be clear on what's happening here. From combing through all the evidence I was able to search up, from wikipedia to the scientific paper, claims that the birds "developed the dance moves all on their own" might be a tide overblown. My guess is that the birds are indeed cueing off from their owners in terms of beginning the dances, getting motivation to continue, and perhaps ideas for dance moves. Some imitation / mirror neuron behavior is probably going on, as the owners are getting into the dances with the birds on a fairly regular basis, and the encouraging them to do it with positive attention and praise is setting up feedback loops which make the cockatoos more thrilled to dance.

Random thought: It's kinda funny that both owners of the really good dancing cockatoos are female, and the birds are probably male. Wonder if some social mating behavior cues are encouraging the interaction - the birds seem happier to dance when their owners are about, preferably dancing too?

What is cool is two things. One is related to something commented on in my course. That the introduction of females to scientific research is prompting different (possibly more subjective, emotional) questions being raised now, as contrasted to the "ye olde days" of nerdy engineers in their objective, very male, circle of compatriots.

And the other is the one thing that does seem clear on the face of the evidence. Cockatoos, and probably other parrots, can indeed listen to music with a strong beat and follow a rhythm by themselves (aka beat induction.) Alex, the african grey, did spontaneous head-bobbing when music was played to him, following its tempo. A couple other bird videos on youtube (there's a preponderence of altered, worthless ones though) do show head-bobbing in time to actual music played in the background. Pretty darned cool. And fascinating in that it took serendipity to notice this and have stuff all come together. I bet random parrot owners for centuries have seen their pet spontaneously dance and taken it for granted.

There's definitely encouragement by the pet owners going on, certainly. The dance behavior wouldn't have been so elaborate otherwise. That the parrots are capable of it is pretty amazing by itself. It's also interesting to note that the parrots seem to dance better when their owner is facing them and dancing too, I strongly suspect they are using their eyes as well to augment their rhythm with visual cues. And it's neat that they aren't getting any extrinsic motivation in the form of food rewards, it seems naturally enjoyable to them to boogie. (Comfy surroundings and human adulation help, of course.) To our music, nonetheless. And develop 'tastes' for certain songs. Weird but very cool. Raises lots of follow-up questions, like what exactly is it they like in the songs...

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On non-related Steam news, the only game I played last week was some stolen hours of Defence Grid: The Awakening. Fun tower defence game. Well made, with an extra oomph of 3D graphic polish you don't get from Flash games. Bought on the cheap during one of those ubiquitious weekend deals. Only played now, but it's nice to have some waiting in the wings, so to speak.

I passed on last week's deal, after all. Never got around to installing any of the clients. The savings just didn't seem like a huge amount, and there just isn't any more time I can spare to invest in playing long elaborate MMOs. I'm going to guilt-trip maybe a month more with Final Fantasy XI and give it up then, after I've actually ventured out to a few more areas and maybe hit a level I can change classes at. LOTRO is a staple standby, and I guess CoX goes on the back burner again.

This week's deal is rather tempting. I've never tried the Total War series. The newness of the game mechanics is making me drool. The first Rome: Total War is a great bargain, $9.99 for the original game and their Alexandria expansion. Old and cheap, I'm picking it up for sure. The second game, Medieval: Total War, is in a genre I like, but the price point ain't right - it can stew around waiting for a weekend deal. I may pick up the polished third game with the deal since it's on anyway.

The one problem with getting so used to Steam digital downloads is that I find I'm now being tempted to pick up games that AREN'T on a weekend deal simply because it's so convenient and I feel like playing them. NOW. This very instant. It's insidious, this online shopping mall and micropayment thing.

This is all very well as a couple of cheap impulse purchases, akin to window shopping, but I am now facing a big dilemma with regards to PopCap Games.

Yes. The casual game company that churns out heaps of teeny casual games by the dozens. So sue me, I'm an adult, and a girl, and I get to play funky cartoony Flash-like casual games made for older casual gamers if I like them - even if I am a hardcore nerdy gamer who can chant "Go for the eyes, Boo!" with the best of 'em too.

They have a very cunning sales system. Apparently they produce free Flash versions of a game first. Then they do the "deluxe" PC version with more stuff and sell that. For very affordable casual game prices. Their Steam variant offers a free hour of a demo of any game, then asks you to buy the game at $9.99 if you want more. More than fair enough, sort of oldstyle shareware-like.

Thing is, there are number of their games that I am quite interested in. Plants Vs Zombies was their latest offering and people all over the internet are oohing and aahing about it. I'm not as thrilled by the abstract Bejewelled and Peggle, but apparently enough people were that PopCap got a name for themselves. Feeding Frenzy is something I want to try the mechanics of, as it spawned a whole genre of "big things eating small things" gameplay, even if the cartoony graphics are a bit off-putting.

The kicker is when I tried out the demo of the funkily named Bookworm Adventures Deluxe. It's a bloody stupid name, you know. So crazy that I had to open the link and see what the heck the game was about. Turns out it is the illegitimate love child of Scrabble and a turn-based RPG-style combat game. It's classic, appeals to adults and children, lets you romp through a cartoony Greek-based adventure setting fighting fantasy monsters as a green bookworm whose hitting power comes from spelling out looooong words in Scrabble fashion.

I have a weakness for word games. While you can get away with spelling three and four letter words, at the cost of poorer performance, I'm a perfectionistic adult proud of my vocabulary. It's a matter of ego to at least make five letter words, preferably with rare letters, and watch the monsters die in a few hits from one's verbosity. I stood no chance, I was hooked the moment I managed to spell "Lapidary" in the first act and did some whopper damage to the boss monster.

I gotta have this game.

At some point, anyway. All too soon, my free demo came to a close. While ten bucks is fiddlesticks, I'm now caught in the dilemma of wondering if the Complete Popcap Collection is worth it. It's a hefty $99.99 - but for 30 games.

As I mentioned, I'm heartily interested in three of the Popcap games and I want them at some point. I could wait for them to individually go on offer, some unknown time in the future, or I could just pay $30 for them.

Then again, Popcap has a very good reputation for casual games, and there could be some real gems in the other 27 that I'm passing up, why not get the whole lot and have games to spare?

But I have already have so many games I can probably never complete them all!

Pfft, you know your real thrill is in trying out all the different game mechanics!

If you say so, then I should just be able to settle for the trial versions and demos that are free, right?!

Or perhaps we can all wait until the PopCap collection goes on a weekend deal. If they even take 25% of the price off, it would be fantastic.

But but... I wanted to play Bookworm Adventures real soon. Like now now. :(

It isn't worth it if you start buying the games separately for full price, silly!

As you can tell, the voices in my head are having a little party over this. For now I'm going to wait in the hope that a discount involving PopCap games of interest come up soon. It's likely that my resolve will steadily weaken as I randomly play demos of their various games since they are free for an hour anyway.

To distract myself, I'm installing the free trial of The Hunter, and going back to work on games that already are in my collection.

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Video Games Live concert yesterday was freaking neat, btw. More on it some other time.