Wow, one little writer’s strike can really put a damper on the whole "new episodes" thing. That might be why I haven’t done any posts since December. Yeeess, that’s it, it’s not my limitless lazyness at all. Nope nope. Anyway, i’ve decided that I’m going to do a bit more about the internet in general. I figure I’m not a true geek until I cover the most bizzare and (to the "normals" at least) inexplicable thing out there. So to start us off: PMOG Passively Multiplayer Online Game I read about this recently in Wired and proceeded to the PMOG web site. Sadly however, the lovely staff at Wired utterly FAILED to mention that PMOG is currently in closed beta. Whoops. Luckily, thanks to the wondrous monolith of computing power that is Google, i located InviteShare which has a page for PMOG. Approx. 1 week later, here I am. I just received my access code for my PMOG account, and I’m all set to play. "But how," you ask "DO you play PMOG?" It’s quite simple really. It’s a bit like a normal MMOG, except instead of getting XP for killing sewer rats the size of a small donkey, you receive these things called datapoints just for browsing the web. You acquire 2 datapoints for every domain you visit, which count towards your leveling up. These data points can also act as currency, permitting you to purchase various items such as Mines (they explode when another player finds them, causing a drain in Datapoints), Armor (protects you from Mines), or these little insect-like things called St. Nicks (you can send them to attach to another player, where they will sabotage their next attempt at mine laying). There are also badges that you can get for browsing the Net a certain way, such as the Indie badge which requires that you do not use Google for a 24 hour period, or the Science It Works Bitches! badge which requires that you visit XKCD at least once a week for 4 weeks. All in all an amusing diversion for browsing the web. I wouldn’t recommend it for people with dialup as it seems to slow you loading speed a bit (though that could just be because I have my usual 20 or so tabs open. It can also be very distracting (pff, like the rest of the net isn’t), I admit I got side tracked a few times while writing this article just due to PMOG.

See you around the internets!

Zetta