Arr, this pirate-talk business be gettin’ mighty old, mateys! Somebody kill this holiday now. Mateys. Arr.

Geek Out

Ring-a-ding-ding. I feel a little let down when I see the words “false color image” below spectacular space imagery. I understand why they have to juice the pictures, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing to learn that space isn’t always a technicolor wonderland. The images of Saturn sent back to Earth by the Cassini-Huygens mission, on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History (CPW & 79th St.), are special because they show off the planet’s true colors. We know Saturn as a tannish-orange planet, but it also has a striking steel blue that gets obscured from our distant vantage point. Yes, there are some false-color shots in the AMNH exhibit, too. Still, it’s nice to meet a planet that’s willing to dispense with the airbrushing.

Geek In

Discover your inner gamer. I typically eschew the “What character from Gossip Girl are YOU?”-type quizzes, for obvious reasons, but quiz site GamerDNA is actually a clever idea. The site offers a battery of tests to determine what kind of RPG player you are and then not only recommends games but also tries to connect you with like-minded gamers. I’ve never been too much of an MMORPG sort because I never wanted to bother with the social networking aspect. I do enough social networking in the real world. GamerDNA has the potential to take a lot of the drudgery out of the process.

The site recently got publicity for having completed its 500,000th test, and its fragile Rails framework is not handling the traffic too well. Things have calmed since this afternoon, though, so if you can get through, the Bartle Test of Gamer Pscyhology is the most essential one. I was skeptical at first—the test has a whiff of Myers-Briggs pseudoscience about it—but it categorized me pretty well, pegging me as an “Explorer” who avoids unnecessary violence. Make love, not Warcraft.