Comments on: It's not every day you get to help launch a time machine.

It's not every day you get to help launch a time machine.

carsonb — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:52:04 -0800

Look, I know G+ is a dead zone socially for a lot of people, but you can help change that! Come argue with me about what to do next over on shakespeherian's page there, where he's just started a brand new Choose Your Own Adventure By Committee. And it's about time travel!!!

If you're not sure what I mean when I say "Choose Your Own Adventure By Committee" then check out juv3nal's excellent post with a rundown of and links to the first three stories. (The fourth Adventure picked up the first Adventure's story and ran with it; this new one so far seems to be unrelated to any of the other stories, but one never knows where Bjorn will hit ya'!) I look forward to resenting your unexplained choices!

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:56:50 -0800

"Dr. Q".

I see what you did there.

By: asnider

asnider — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:05:24 -0800

OK, I'm in. In case you need to add me to your circles for this (which I assume isn't necessarily, since the posts are public), I'm Adam Snider.

By: chatongriffes

chatongriffes — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:17:10 -0800

I have been participating since the first story and CYOA is almost always one of the highlights of my workday. Best coffee break EVAR. Everyone should come play!

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:34:47 -0800

Hey folks it's true, I just started this thing. I've been doing these CYOA things for over a year now (Jesus) so I like to think I've gotten the hang of it but so far every single one has been terrifying. In any case I'm pretty excited about this one, I've got some hot shit lined up but it's going to be a lot more up-in-the-air, narratively speaking, than most of the previous stories were, so please participate and make non-boring choices because you're in the driver's seat.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:45:13 -0800

This would be so awesome for erotica.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:46:56 -0800

Time travel is a great choice, shakespeherian.
Now when carsonb convinces the sheeple into going along with a wrongity-wrong-wrong choice, we can go back in time and change the futar/past.

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:49:20 -0800

This would be so awesome for erotica.

Please accept this business card featuring a picture of my partner and I, nekkid.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:52:05 -0800

This would be so awesome for erotica.

The pants lie crumpled in a corner, and Your bare muscles are flexed, straining. A drop of sweat trickles behind your ear. Are You...

A. Good
B. Giving
C. Game

By: asnider

asnider — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 12:13:00 -0800

D. All of the above.

By: ChuraChura

ChuraChura — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 12:43:40 -0800

You can also check out the stuff going on in science on google+ - I posted a project earlier this month about some of the cool things the science community is up to!

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 12:59:49 -0800

Brandon Blatcher: "This would be so awesome for erotica."

We're not doing "Kiss Toes" again. In fact, just get rid of those damn dice.

By: mrgoat

mrgoat — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:09:18 -0800

This is great! I'm going to have to try doing one for my friends sometime.

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:10:03 -0800

I know G+ is a dead zone socially for a lot of people, but you can help change that!

It's not my responsibility to shield Google from the consequences of its mistakes.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:17:35 -0800

Nobody said you had to, don't be obtuse. What a weird comment.

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:11:08 -0800

I thought that comment was self-evidently facetious, but I guess not.

I apologize for any offense given - especially to shakes, whom I quite like.

By: misha

misha — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:22:35 -0800

Hurrah! I have officially weighed in and voted on my choice, which seems like the unanimous one over there right now.

Brandon, an erotica one could be fun; more fun done as a parody, especially since Google is less likely to ban my ass if I wrote it that way. Perhaps even a parody of shakespeherian's CYOA storyline.

I am 100% seriously considering writing that parody now. Though, compared to shakespeherian's content, which is golden, it would very likely suck (in more ways than one).

By: Pudhoho

Pudhoho — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:35:51 -0800

The pants lie crumpled in a corner, and Your bare muscles are flexed, straining. A drop of sweat trickles behind your ear. Are You...

A. Good
B. Giving
C. Game
D. Likely to be eaten by a grue.

By: spitbull

spitbull — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:32:49 -0800

Wait, people use Google+ still?

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:58:38 -0800

Only cool kids.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:16:41 -0800

Wait, people use Google+ still?

Nope, this whole thread is an attempt to gaslight you!

By: subbes

subbes — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:22:14 -0800

And it was going so well!

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:27:51 -0800

We're using Google Wave for the next one!

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:35:09 -0800

I'm in. I'm expecting to see an AskMe soon asking if it's safe to eat a week old T-Rex.

By: KevinSkomsvold

KevinSkomsvold — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:22:01 -0800

Wait, people use Google+ still?

Yeah. Facebook is just too heady for us.

By: Jpfed

Jpfed — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:01:22 -0800

Wait, people use Google+ still?

G+ makes it super-easy to share messages with the right groups of people. This is important for people who, for work reasons, have to present a particular kind of public face. It's also really great for hobbyists to find each other and talk shop.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:11:33 -0800

G+ also makes it really super easy to find out when shakespeherian updates with a new episode (they'll drop around lunchtime MST every weekday, if you like a schedule) or when someone else rebuts your chain of reasoning because of that lovely little red box that follows you around the various google sites when you're logged in.

My phone also buzzes me when one of you disagrees.

There was a bit of discussion with participants in the last few stories about moving the CYOABC off G+, but I think the automated reminders and readymade posting system won out over Dead Social Network Syndrome. Even if you never use G+ and only ever access gmail, you'll still find out every time an episode you participated in is updated, including new episodes.

Vote early and often!

By: immlass

immlass — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:24:11 -0800

I love CYOABC. It's the highlight of my day. Come play!

By: brieche

brieche — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:35:45 -0800

Ahh, I have no idea how to G+; what's the best way to get updates, ideally in my email inbox or feed reader?

Also, look at this attractive group of real live people! My favorite subset of profile pictures is the one where people have to duck their heads to get into the frame.

By: bardic

bardic — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 22:10:34 -0800

Google Plus. What was that, 2011 or so?

By: escabeche

escabeche — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 22:17:11 -0800

Wait, people use Google+ still?

Google Plus. What was that, 2011 or so?

I post to G+ most days and get more comments than I do on Facebook. People are using it, even if the people you know aren't using it.

By: Deoridhe

Deoridhe — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:36:46 -0800

I can't go on G+. They don't allow persistent pseudonyms without a lot of evidence that they're established, and even when the person accomplishes that their account can be taken away again since there seems to be no internal means of determining that someone's account has been internally green flagged. If they ever allow people to use their name which they've used for over a decade, online and offline, when it is non-standard English and explicitly say they allow it, do let me know.

By: Decani

Decani — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 01:33:06 -0800

One day I might Google G+ to find out exactly what it is.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 05:39:53 -0800

Wow Google+ zingers, thanks for the encouragement everyone!

By: gilrain

gilrain — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:14:52 -0800

Ooh, this is quite fun.

Incidentally, is there a convenient list relating Mefi users to their G+ accounts? Also, is there a convenient way to associate a Mefi username with its G+ account -- like, have it displayed in parenthesis after the real name? I'm never going to be able to remember which real name is which Mefi user, even if I keep them all in a specific circle.

By: snorkmaiden

snorkmaiden — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:45:12 -0800

This looks awesome! Placing a vote riiiiiight now.

By: chatongriffes

chatongriffes — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:00:39 -0800

gilrain, there is indeed a way to put your MetaFilter user name in your profile. Unfortunately, I think everyone has to do it on their own end. I don't know of a way for you to assign them. Most people do have their username included, though.

I'm pretty sure there's a giant list somewhere on MetaTalk, but I can't find it at the moment.

By: gilrain

gilrain — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:04:24 -0800

chatongriffes: Unfortunately, I think everyone has to do it on their own end.

I'm actually writing a userscript right now that will allow you to associate G+ user IDs with whatever pseudonym you like such that the pseudonym will show in parenthesis after the real name.

By: Jpfed

Jpfed — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:14:10 -0800

That's awesome! Thanks gilrain!

By: carsonb

carsonb — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:31:53 -0800

Episode 2, for those of you following in Recent Activity.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:53:30 -0800

G+ actually has a shockingly active table top gaming community. People use it to organize online games and discuss D&D and crap like that. For reals.

By: Karmakaze

Karmakaze — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:07:21 -0800

I am Kit Kendrick on G+.

By: gilrain

gilrain — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:41:51 -0800

I have the script working to my satisfaction in Chrome and Firefox, now. I'll make a full post about it in a little bit, but... I have a dilemma.

To make things easy, it pulls the pseudonym/G+ID pairs from a Google spreadsheet. I can't decide, though, whether to make the spreadsheet publicly editable or not. It's unlikely anyone would want to ruin our good time, but it would be possible. (The script heavily sanitizes input down to only alphanumerics, so trolling would be limited to a nuisance rather than a danger.)

By: phaedon

phaedon — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:40:48 -0800

I'm having a complete meltdown on Facebook (nobody gives a shit about the same things I do) so I may have to transition over to G+. I may see you there.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:57:59 -0800

Episode 3!

By: Joh

Joh — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:21:52 -0800

This is awesome!

By: carsonb

carsonb — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 12:32:56 -0800

Episode 4

By: misha

misha — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:32:38 -0800

Wow, I didn't expect Hitler to show up so soon! And the guy in the gorilla suit totally had me guessing right up until the blimp went down.

Not really. I'm just messin' with y'all.
I totally clued in to gorilla guy from day one.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 08:44:30 -0800

"Episode 5 will melt your shit." - Tim Coe

By: misha

misha — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 21:14:39 -0800

OMG OMG OMG You guys I can't wait until Monday! Shakespeherian is killing me with suspense now.

By: undue influence

undue influence — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 05:44:54 -0800

What, we gotta wait til Monday? (Which is practically Tuesday for me anyway...)

I want that time machine and I want it now.

sadly, I think that is a pony even the venerable pb cannot procure

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:42:28 -0800

Weekends are the only reason I am as jolly as I am.

By: undue influence

undue influence — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:54:19 -0800

Sorry shakespeherian, didn't meet to be flip. You know you just have us all furiously refreshing the page, hanging off every word. It's a great story, thank you.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 09:14:25 -0800

Oh no offense was taken at all, truly. Be as flip as you like. I love you all, my children.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:39:19 -0800

So, two things: Time travel is possible, and you are going to die. These things are related. (Ep. 6!)