learn a new word, feed the poor
January 30, 2008, 2:34 am
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games Came across an interesting site some time ago, forgot about it for awhile, but now that it has crept back into my conscious, I thought I’d introduce it to you guys. Basically, it’s a game of sorts whereby you are given a word and you are to choose, from a list of four, the word that most closely parallels it in meaning. In other words (har har), it’s a vocabulary challenge.
The fun thing about it is that they’ve grouped words into several “levels” according to their difficulty (i.e. their rarity) so that you can gauge how good you are and not attempt to learn words that are too bizarre for you. Progress is made to subsequent levels when you accomplish 3 correct answers in a row, but you lose a level if you make just 1 mistake.
Coolest thing is that for each correct word you choose, a donation of 20 grains of rice is made through the United Nations. I know it doesn’t sound much, but play it and before you know it, you would have amassed quite a significant contribution. Gets a little repetitive after awhile, but it sure beats reading the dictionary during your spare time. Ahem. And it’s a nice way to do some charity (size does not matter here folks) and to promote awareness regarding poverty. An awesome idea and a worthy cause, so check it out!
us boys and our toys
A couple of days back, Yew Vern got the green light from his dad to get a new video game console as a gift from his parents for his birthday this year. So, I followed him to the HMV near Piccadilly Circus to get this (drum-roll, please)… Welcome, our latest excuse for not working on our Final Year Projects…
… the Xbox 360!
Got it at quite a decent price and the package deal came with Halo 3. Apart from that we also got 2 other games (1 of which I paid for as his birthday gift =D) - Gears of War and Mass Effect. The Xbox definitely (obviously) trumps his old PS2 in terms of graphics. but, being the lousy gamer that I am, it took me a short while to get used to the controls. Once I’ve managed to “work out the kinks”, I must say I really enjoy the difference in gameplay with the PS range that I have been so accustomed to.
The same night we took home the console, we started playing Gears of War and finished it the next day. 14 hours of awesome shoot-em-up goodness! Overkill, perhaps, but as soon as it blows over and we shake ourselves off with some other games, we will play it again at difficulty level: insane. Heh. W3 b3 g33ks. To read Yew Vern’s review of the game, visit his blog here. If it isn’t up yet, I’m sure it will be soon enough. 
