2004-02-20 - 9:39 a.m.

I had what was perhaps my geekiest moment ever in library school yesterday when we decided, in our Online Information Services group, that searching Dialog was like playing interactive fiction, in that the user navigates using poorly defined syntax and spends most of the time trying to figure out what, exactly, one is supposed to type. We degenerated into saying things like "Thou hast found a goblet" and "There are no exits to the north," which is a fine way to find patent information. Thank god my lonely childhood of playing haphazardly programmed text adventures has come to some good. If only I can put my encyclopediac knowledge of 80's cartoon shows to some use!

Of course, the question you are all asking now is, "Has someone ported Zork to java?" The answer is yes.