Intertextuality

Becoming an Alchemist

Posted on by Jax

One of the first game I installed on my Motorola Milestone was Alchemy. Fast forward a month…

The Alchemist by Cornelis Pietersz. Bega

Alchemy: Named for that process of transmutation, the game provides with four basic elements (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water).

screenshot of blank game

What you do is just drag one element over the other to form another element. As simple as that. Dragging Air over Water gives you a new element, Steam. Air and Air mix together to form Wind. Creating elements are sometimes intuitive and at times, a leap of faith like combining Life and Golem to form Man. :)

The elements range from outright playful (like combining Man and Dragon to get Dinosaur and Ash) to very scientific (like combining Kerogen with Pressure to get Bitumen). I really loved this game that blends a lot of knowledge into an entertaining casual game. I never got bored playing this over the past month. When I started playing, there were around 270 elements available in the game. A recent update allows 300 elements to be created. As I write this, I have found 149 elements.

If you have an Android phone, you can scan the QR Code below to enjoy your chance to become an Alchemist.

Blog Redux

Posted on by Jax

When I started blogging several years back, the act was driven by a passion – a very strong passion for writing. But over the past couple of years, I found it difficult to write. The act of writing no longer interested me, personally and professionally. My blogging took a hit and finally died out. I was just keeping up the pretense of blogging.

New-fangled addictions like Twitter and Facebook sucked away time and thoughts. I was no longer looking at writing paragraphs. Every thought had to be condensed into 140 characters or less. Heaven forbid if you had an idea that cannot be expressed in 140 characters.

Then I remembered why I started a blog. It was to write; to write on things I found interesting. And who was I writing for? For myself. I know that sounds narcissistic but it was the truth. My posts was my letters to me, notes to myself on the things I liked or disliked, what I felt, what I experienced, and what moved me. And it’s good to be back again.