One of them, better known online as Furyo, is quite the game designer. Like me, he believes in learning by doing, so a couple years ago, he started designing a map for Day of Defeat (a WWII mod for Half Life) after the town we lived in at the time, Dijon, just to teach himself. I saw the map when it was just a bunch of gray blocks floating in a sky blue universe. It is now a truly amazing gaming experience and a wonder of design. (Click on the screenshots to better appreciate them.)

Here’s where you come in. The map is in a contest on Gameflood.com. If the map is in the top 3 of its category, my brother shares into a $25,000 prize and gets plenty kudos from the profession. Please do me a huge favor and go vote for it. A quick, easy, free registration is needed.

And if you’re anything of a gamer, check it out.

Really.

I disappeared for 2 days because my computer was temporarily dead. Remind me to tell you all the crap I think of Apple’s magsafe power cords. Before that unfortunate return to the Unplugged world, I was working hard on perfecting my digital identity. Calvert Collins taught me two things: a/ writing her name gets me readers, and b/ learn to control what the Internet has to say about you before you lose your job. In my case it would be before you never have a chance to get your first job. I’m still working on a lot of things, but you can already find me on LinkedIn. I’m not half happy that of my four connections there, there’s already one at the New York Times. And if you Google “J junkie” (without the quotes even), I will be your first find, ahead of Junkie XL, some band you don’t have to know.

Little did I know, some people make a living off it. A new type of PR firms work not only to help make you more visible on the Internets, but to actually create positive postings about you to offset all the reputation-slashers who have top hits on Google. It’s not censorship of negative posts or making up false good deeds, it’s only playing smart with Google’s algorithm. Bush could use their service right now because people around me in the coffee house are hella pissed about his commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence. The twist of the story is, when I googled one of those firms, Reputation Defenders, to find the Wapo story I had heard earlier today on a podcast (I’m addicted to those babies), the first post was one absolutely trashing the company’s founders. They might wanna apply their own tricks to themselves.

Other items of note:
- Notice a longer blogroll at right. Send me your links, and if I half-like what you’re posting, chances are you’ll show up on there soon. I just ask that you send me only blogs that are updated regularly. So far, my blogroll links to a lot of Missouri people. Why not? There are a lot of Missouri people I admire.
- In my Unplugged interim, I had time to get seriously started on the Spanish method I just bought. Turns out I was just hired as managing editor/English of Adelante, a monthly bilingual publication of the Columbia Missourian for mid-Missouri’s Latino community. (We’re only the sixth result on Google, after a gay latino magazine, a foundation, a non-profit, a guidebook and a fraternity in Iowa. We’ll work on that.) I’ll start in the fall and I’m psyched. Knowing Spanish isn’t a job requirement, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. Plus, I’ve pretty much gone as far as I can with English. Time for a new challenge. I may try it on you sometimes. As friend, future associate editor and Spaniard extraordinaire Jeronimo Nisa said, “YIHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!”