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Be a Tiger

This blog will now be known as the “Oubliette of Sepulchral Chaos”

One of my favorite parts of early, monster-infested first-person shooters was the names they’d give to the levels. Every time I reached a new level in Quake — “Dimension of the Doomed”, “House of Chthon”, “The Ebon Fortress” — I would quiver with laughter at the I’m-being-ironic-well-maybe-I’m-not aesthetic of John Romero.

Thus, I was thrilled to discover the “First-Person Shooter Level Name Generator”. Pick the style of your imaginary level — “military”, “gothic”, “alien”, “industrial”, etc. — the various other vectors (such as whether it’s characterized by “slime” or “fire”, or whether it contains “Satanic words” or “Lovecraftian words”), and presto: It churns out a stylin’ level name. I quickly generated such delights as …

Entering Azathoth’s Sepulchral Corridors

Zeus’ Forbidden Zone

In Yog-Sothoth’s Citadel of Hate

Crumbling Keep of Torment

Cathedral of Sickening Ruin

You could probably use this thing to generate the name for your next corporate project.


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Bio:

I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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Recent Entries

A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”

Gay squid sex

“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912

Hacking the Model T

“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex

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a bunch of stuff

May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM

From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.

July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S

July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM

My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.

June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM

On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.

June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM

I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives. 

According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable! 

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Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson