I Ride the Line

(with apologies to Johnny Cash)

It's midday on the last working day before a long July 4th weekend, so I'm sure your mind is definitely on work, right?  As I'm struggling to keep my head in the world of ASP.NET routing, the timing was perfect to learn of a cool new, on-line Silverlight 2 experience (ok, it's a game) - www.linerider.com. 

This effort is a new incarnation of a Flash-based, LAMP implementation(!) just launched by InXile Entertainment in conjunction with the guys from Cynergy Systems, many of whom I had the pleasure of working with during my previous life at Sybase. 

The premise of the game is simple - you might have caught wind of it already on a series of McDonald's ads - build a track with ramps, hills, and jumps for the sledder (who, I hear, is named Bosh) and see how far you can get him before he wipes out.  With the integration to Windows Live Messenger you can even send your game tracks to your friends on line and chat while in the game. 

So there, spend some time with Line Rider, and if the boss is looking over your shoulder, tell him or her that you're doing research... Silverlight, cloud computing, software + services... yeah, that's the ticket.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July!