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Just one more cup.

Here it is, 10:51 on Monday morning and I’m starting in on my fourth cup of java, hoping to find that sweet spot between drowsiness and the shakes, and then I wonder: could I actually OD on this stuff?

I don’t mean jittery, can’t-stop-talking, eighth-time-to-visit-the-toilet overdosing–God knows I’ve had plenty of experience with that–but you know, for real collapsing-into-seizures, burst-blood-vessels-in-the-brain, dying-an-angry-noisy-death overdosing.

One internet search for “will coffee kill me?” later, and I have my answer: Yes, coffee can kill you. But not easily.

Death By Caffeine is a web app that offers precisely this information. You enter your caffeine based drink of choice–whether it’s Mountain Dew, Red Bull or plain old brewed coffee–and then your weight. Push the handy little “Kill Me” button, and you’ll have a surprisingly specific answer as to how much of the poison you can drink before keeling over.

In my case, it would take 94.14 cups of drip coffee to put me in the ground. Useful information, because now I know that if I’ve already had 94 cups of coffee and somebody says “Hey, Ty, can I get you another .15 cup?” I should answer with “No thanks, friend. I’m aware of my limits.” And then quiver my way homeward to spend the rest of the day screaming obscenities at the ceiling, secure in the knowledge that, while I won’t be able to close my eyes for a week, I haven’t actually risked death.

 

Nevermind. It stopped.

• OH, GOD (geoffreyplant) [ Wed Aug 17 2011 6:06 PM ]
  
• Thank God. (robertmcat) [ Fri Nov 25 2011 8:23 AM ]
  

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I spent the majority of my gaming time this weekend checking out Jason Rohrer's recent indie release, Sleep Is Death, an interactive story tool that gets as much of its DNA from improvisational theater as it does from old school gaming. Participants are cast into one of two roles: controller or player, and connect to each other via the Internet. The controller interface provides tools for setting the player in a scene, and adding objects (people, dogs, zombies, etc.) to the scene for the player to interact with. The player's interface allows them to talk by typing into a speech bubble, and to tell the controller what actions they'd like to perform by typing verbs into an action box. This interaction plays back and forth, from scene to scene until the story reaches some sort of conclusion.

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