Saturday, February 16, 2008

Lunacy. Round II

So, I've had and rejected a few different ideas for the next Lunatic Challenge to throw out at you guys. And really, we all deserve some more lunacy sometime within the next few weeks.

One idea that I keep coming back to is an Internet Scavenger Hunt. Now, I'm not talking some pansy-assed educational thing where you do searches and answer questions. Fie on that.

Now, I haven't figured out exactly how this should work yet, so I'm open to suggestions Here's what I've (kinda) got so far.

The idea will be to collect something from a list we'll all be working from.
-comments from strangers?
-pictures of items you get from non-participants?
-??

Whatever is being collected, it only counts if you get it from people who are not linked on your blog. (poaching from other people's links would be permitted.)

If it's pictures (or something like that) being collected, we'd produce a list of, say 20 things? The game would go on for one week and whoever collects the most items would be the winner.
(Just getting stuff off the net wouldn't count, you have to actually communicate with a person who provides whatever it is we're looking for. I think the honor system might need to be in play).

As a side idea, each participant could throw Ten Bucks into a pot, winner take all.

As always, I thought this through in a thoroughly half-assed fashion. I think there's a good idea in there somewhere, but I haven't really rooted it out yet. I hereby through the suggestion box open for contributions.

13 comments:

Shawn Powers said...

I'm in. No deleting your blogrolls though, because that's cheating.

Not that I'm opposed to money, because as a thing to get, it's one of my favorites. What if we made the stake a little more like, everyone sending the winner a favorite book or two. Or something unique to their geographic location? Like from me, maybe a Petoskey Stone.

What do you think?

Nathan said...

Well, I like money but if everybody wanted to do something else, I could send a stale bagel to bang against a Petoskey Stone (which looks cool, btw).

Any bright ideas on how we structure this thing?

I was thinking that the stuff we're looking for would be stuff like:

-photo of a "Welcome to Maine" highway sign.

-photo of any recognizable landmark (natural or manmade).

stuff like that.

Tom said...

I like the ideas. I'm neutral on the money or prize thing. Maybe we all post a "So-and-so PWNS the Internet" post or something.

But count me in!

Random Michelle K said...

Instead of doing something still right now, what if--in the name of John Scalzi's auction--we try and collect people willing to donate to DAV?

I've already got a small post on my website, but it would be great if we could really push people to donate.

Then we can do something still later.

Jeff Hentosz said...

Boobs.

I heard rumors there are pictures of actual nekkid female boobs somewhere on the internet. We could look for those.

This comment was helpful: __ Y __ N

Nathan said...

Jeff,

I need some more help with HTML. I've dragged your avatar to my desktop, so I have it there as a .png file. I need the HTML, so I can paste it into a comment.

Then under the picture, I can write, "The Boob. I have found it."

Can I get some help with that? XD

MWT said...

Whatever it is, it should be something that everyone has an equal shot at. And doesn't involve money. The most cash I'd be willing to put into it would be postcards (and not more than two or three).

And I'd really rather not attempt to require participation from people who know nothing about the UCF.

Also, my boss is currently sapping away my will to live, so if there's going to be a date/time attached to a discrete event, it would ideally be after he's already at the conference that this poster we're making is for.

Nathan said...

MWT

1. I don't see any way it wouldn't be something that everyone has a shot at.

2. The money pool was just a side idea. I'm not married to it.

3 As far as outside participation, think of the scavenger hunts when you were a kid. You had to run into the 7-11 and talk the lady into giving you an egg. She wasn't part of it but knew there was a game on. In my example, fer'instance, "pic of welcome to Maine photo". First I'd check my stats for a reader in Maine. Barring that, I'd go to Chang's website (linking off of Scalzi's site) and ask him if he'd be driving by one of those signs any time this week. (Yes, I'd explain that its for a scavenger hunt.)

4. I don't have any particular time frame in mind. let us know when the wicked witch of the south is going away.

5. I'm still totally open to how to structure this thing.

Anonymous said...

I'm more into the no-innocent-bystanders approach as well. I do have about three groups of folks who I blog with/to... you 'e' refugees, my friends in the SSBM (secret society of beast moms) and my family and other RL friends. I'd hate to alienate the other two. ;)

Ideas? Photos that are unique. Obscure bits of difficult-to-google info. Photoshoppery. Bringing home trophy freeze dried whack-a-loons. Tagging others blogs with hijack-ish comments.

And I don't care about money - it's just fun to do.

Janiece said...

I'm in, and no, I don't have any cool or interesting ideas.

But I'm willing to throw in a gold-plated aspen leaf as a prize (see how that's unique to Colorado?).

Does that count?

Tom said...

Hey, you're the Idea Guy! I'm just the backer. You know how that works. At the last minute I come up with some off-the-wall requirement that makes hash of months of planning.

One "item to find" could be a Google search that comes up with minimum results. Another would be a web site that hasn't been updated in a year+.

There ya go. 2 ideas. I'll put my small brain to work on more.

And by the way, these comments had me LOLing, literally!

MWT said...

Finally managed to figure out when the conference is - early March. We're basically done with the poster that has my name on it, but now he's got me working on my coworker's poster. o.O So I'll be busy for a while yet.

Tania said...

I like the photo idea and I could throw in some prize - a frozen Copper River Salmon? A dozen oatmeal-butterscotch cookies? A wad of cat hair from their comb?

Just random ideas, nothing too concrete yet.