the scoop

the scoop

yearbook yourself

Thumbing through your parents’ old yearbooks is always good for a laugh. The hairstyles and fashions that seemed so cool back then look painfully outdated now. Feathered bangs? Jheri curls? Cat-eye glasses? Really?

Imagine if you could put yourself in those old pictures — would you look as silly as your parents? Find out by going online and visiting Yearbook Yourself (yearbookyourself.com).

The Web site, a clever promotional vehicle for a national mall chain, is pretty straightforward. You begin by uploading a front-facing photo of yourself to the site. Next, you drop the photo into the yearbook-like period cutouts, similar to the way you stick your head into lifesize cutouts found at carnivals or amusement parks. The cutouts depict fashion trends from the 1950s to the 2000s. A timeline helps you navigate through the years. The site’s background music changes to reflect the year you select.

The site includes easy-to-use controls so you can adjust your photo to the cutout. You can enlarge or reduce, move your picture up and down, even rotate it. After you finish tweaking your photo, you can save it to your desktop or invite friends to join your “homeroom” where you can share your creations in a central space.

look it up

Finally, a dictionary with definitions you can relate to.

It’s a book in which a label is defined with social classifications: goth, punk, nerd, jock; a club is “just another thing to put on a college application”; and “Facebook” is considered a word.

“The Dictionary of High School B.S.” by Louis Beckwith ($10.95, Zest Books) offers all the terms that really matter to high school students. The definitions of terms like “prom,” “school spirit” and even “the movies” relies on specific ways high school students would view or apply these things in their own lives.

candidates on nick

Nickelodeon provides kids with the rare opportunity to see the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates. Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, answer their questions in “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee: Kids Pick the President,” airing at 9 p.m. Oct. 12.

Hosted by Ellerbee, the show will feature exclusive interviews with McCain and Obama answering kids’ questions on a wide range of hot political topics, including: the economy; the war in Iraq; global warming; health insurance; and immigration.

Following the show, kids will be able to cast their votes by going to nick.com/kpp. Nickelodeon will announce the results at 8 p.m. Oct. 20.

new video games

In stores this week:

Role-playing expert BioWare’s take on a beloved mascot in Sega’s “Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood” (for the DS).

Konami’s gruesome horror franchise finally goes hi-def with “Silent Hill: Homecoming” (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3). ...

Wanna talk gruesome? How about the idea of anyone over 18 playing Namco Bandai’s cheerleader game, “We Cheer” (Wii)?

just like homemade

The biggest mystery among this fall’s video games could be Sony’s “LittleBigPlanet,” a gorgeous PlayStation 3 title that combines running, jumping and puzzle-solving with a complete tool kit that allows you to assemble your own levels. The question: Once “LBP” is out there, will we see a flowering of player creativity? Or will most buyers pack it away once they’ve conquered the built-in levels?

Kareem Ettouney, art director and co-founder of “LBP” developer Media Molecule, is confident that wannabe designers will take full advantage of the game’s capabilities. And in a prerelease experiment, the Media Molecule team invited students at New York’s Parsons the New School of Design to spend 24 hours building original levels.

“We expected people to need our help,” Ettouney said. “Instead, they were using our tools in ways we hadn’t thought of. Some of the results looked more mature than our own stuff.” The winning level, inspired by the PlayStation 2 classic “Shadow of the Colossus,” required the game’s hero, Sackboy, to climb a single, moving monster, dodging stomach acids, parasites and other disgusting internal obstacles.