Сatena is an entertaining word game that helps develop creative thinking. Catena trains a free, associative style of thinking, and assists in observing both dominant patterns and vertical thinking. In also has many other uses.

I initially thought that I invented that game in 1990 when I served in Soviet Army, but it rather looks like I adapted it from some unknown source and gradually developed its rules. I took the name from philosophy — the term «Catena Mundi» was used by Descartes for describing a mystical chain that connects everything.

Here are some catenas:

• market, mist:
  market — forecast — mist,
  market — morning — mist
• mather, atom:
  mother — nature — physics — atom,
  mother — warmth — energy — atom
• Prague, stool:
  Prague — bar — stool
• euro, eternity:
  euro — coin — circle — eternity
• ticket, thought:
  ticket — road — crossword — thought

Give it a try — your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Twitter is an example of how a new genre comes out of a new media. Never before sms messaging was considered a valid literary genre. What comes to mind are Latin wax tablets, probably as stimulating for brevity as sms is, and wall writings, another ancient tradition regenerated, ranging from profane to silly to divine.

As for me, I decided to use my twitter page to quickly capture germs of thoughts and ideas, a sort of ideaflow. Aside links, upcoming events and travel details will go there, too.