Got out of work late. No problem, there's still time to pickup my newly arrived flash unit at the store, it doesn't close before 11 pm.
Yes I got it! Amazing! I need to run home to try it out, I'll sleep in the weekend!
Ok I'm home, opening the box! SO EXCITING! COLOR FILTERS NICE! PUT IT ON THE CAMERA NOW! WOW IT LOOKS AMAZING! TURN IT ON TURN IT ON TURN IT O ---
Damn it I don't have any AA batteries.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Those were the games
I recently found about DOSBox. Yes, it's been around for a while, I know that now. But for the last year the only game on my mind was Lineage 2. Ok and FarmVille, but that one doesn't suit the direction I plan to lead this post into today.
But moving on, DOSBox is, in small words, a DOS emulator that allows you to play DOS games on a Mac/Linux system. This is something big for me, since a lot of my childhood memories are attached to technology and internet, and how both of them evolved since. Sometimes, if I want to rescue old memories that don't emerge easy, I think of old video games I used to play, or how I used to search for stuff in Altavista instead of Google (by the way, Altavista is still up and running). I get that "Good old days" feeling... yeah I need to post on that one of these days.
I haven't yet downloaded all the games I want to play again, mainly because their names are still fuzzy.
Alley Cat
I was sooo young when I had the chance to play this.
This is a very innocent game where you play a stray cat that just goes around being... a sneaky stray cat.
From this starting scene you could jump on top of those metal barrels and then upward to the wires and into windows. All while avoiding the angry dog you can see in the lower right corner, the nasty cats on the rope threads, and stuff being thrown at you from the windows. I like to notice the writings on the wood fence. "Hi!"? "Love them mousies"? Yeah those cats were badass.
Anyway, entering the windows you find different situations, some of them containing other scenarios too, like the room with a fishbowl that you can dive into and hunt fish while avoiding electric eels.
Some rooms got really surreal. There's a room with a giant slice of cheese that you can enter via the emmental-like holes (and discover that the holes are connected); a room with a living broom that tries to clean your "footsteps" (pawsteps?) as you move, until it finally hits you; or a room probably belonging to some lonely old hag that collects dogs:
Pizza Tycoon
This one is particularly dear to me. I didn't use to play it as much as a friend of mine did, and it was at his house that I first met the game. You basically open a new pizza restaurant and have to deal with a lot of the problems that come with it. It starts off by picking a world capital to settle in, then searching the neighborhood for a spot that's for rent. You even have to call the estate agent (the right one!). Now you have an empty place that needs furnishing, kitchenware, cooking waiting and managing employees (with whom you can negotiate wages) and so on. It won't be long before the Mafia storms through to ask you for protection money... against themselves.
You'll have the chance to set up your menu, cook the most familiar pizzas in the world and get fame for it if you do it right, and eventually even make money from recipes you make up. And believe me, making up new pizzas is very very entertaining. Not to mention, it makes you want to eat pizza. I had too microwave a frozen pizza I had yesterday. I had eaten dinner already so I left two slices that I'm gonna warm up and eat right now because thinking of the game made me hungry for pizza.
The amount of specific variables to setup when and while you play is what amazes me the most. It's incredibly deep. In no time you'll be buying weapons from an underground crime world so you can torch/blow up/etc your competitors in the pizza market!
Not only that, but it's a game with a sharp humor. Every character you speak to will make you smile at the choice of faces the coders did. The first realtor I contacted was an alien. He wasn't the right one, the right one was none less than Mikhail Gorbachev. Not to mention the mafia guy, who had a pizza for a head (with a green pepper that bent in a smile when I took his offer).
I was about to load DOSBox and the game to get a couple of screen shots for you but I noticed that the website I got the game from already did it for me. Check them out.
Screenshots from abandonia.com: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/105/Pizza%20Tycoon.html
Vídeo from PizzaTycoon.org: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLr5hGuNcTs
ZORK
I'll end with this outstanding game. Mostly because I'm honestly tired of sitting here looking for screenshots. That's not a problem with Zork though, the game has no images anyway. That's right, you play it in a command line and type the things you want your character to do.
This game is even more interesting today, where all games have amazing 3d environments created on the go and use very modern digital resources. What every game aims for is to be immersive, that is what the player wants and it explains phenomenons like Grand Theft Auto, a game where your freedom of movement and options is hands down entertaining (I used to spend hours just riding a BMX through town in GTA San Andreas... I know, why not go ride a bike in the real world? Well I can't jump over cars in the real world. Nor hit people for that matter. Not without consequences).
In Zork you can try everything. And that's the most helpful attitude you can have in the game. That and saving frequently. When you start the game you are standing near a house. There is a mailbox near you and you have the options of moving in one of the compass directions (north, south, etc) or interact with objects around you. I bet you are already imagining the place in your head... but here's what's shown to you:
Cool right?
Just imagine the cost of a device that could read the electrical activity in your brain, translate it into pictures and than send them to your computer... not only would that be impossibly expensive, you'd still have to wait for the technology to do it. And you'd probably get a headache. Well Zork is just that, it's the most immersive game I have ever played since everything is just precisely according to my imagination. How can it get better than that?Now just to give you an idea of how the game develops, what you would do in a situation like this is "open mailbox", or if you're careful "inspect mailbox". Even "kick mailbox" if you want. The house is there for your entertainment too, and soon you'll be entering underground mazes filled with magic creatures, beautiful mountain scenes (as beautiful as you want) and killing your head to solve some very demanding puzzles.
There's no map to help you since you're supposed to make one yourself. If you take the path north, the path can turn west or east midway and, wherever you get to, going south won't take you back to the first place. It's sometimes very confusing but you can save the game at any point.
Obviously, if you know the internet, you know someone made maps available including all the details and possible solutions to the puzzles. But when the game was released, that wasn't a possibility, and incredibly detailed handmade personal maps were made in the rooms of thousands of geek boys in the year 1979. Be sure to check out this one that stands out today as a relic: http://almy.us/image/dungeon.jpg
(Alright I definitely want to mention a game called Another World next time I post)
But moving on, DOSBox is, in small words, a DOS emulator that allows you to play DOS games on a Mac/Linux system. This is something big for me, since a lot of my childhood memories are attached to technology and internet, and how both of them evolved since. Sometimes, if I want to rescue old memories that don't emerge easy, I think of old video games I used to play, or how I used to search for stuff in Altavista instead of Google (by the way, Altavista is still up and running). I get that "Good old days" feeling... yeah I need to post on that one of these days.
I haven't yet downloaded all the games I want to play again, mainly because their names are still fuzzy.
Alley Cat
I was sooo young when I had the chance to play this.
This is a very innocent game where you play a stray cat that just goes around being... a sneaky stray cat.
From this starting scene you could jump on top of those metal barrels and then upward to the wires and into windows. All while avoiding the angry dog you can see in the lower right corner, the nasty cats on the rope threads, and stuff being thrown at you from the windows. I like to notice the writings on the wood fence. "Hi!"? "Love them mousies"? Yeah those cats were badass.
Anyway, entering the windows you find different situations, some of them containing other scenarios too, like the room with a fishbowl that you can dive into and hunt fish while avoiding electric eels.
Some rooms got really surreal. There's a room with a giant slice of cheese that you can enter via the emmental-like holes (and discover that the holes are connected); a room with a living broom that tries to clean your "footsteps" (pawsteps?) as you move, until it finally hits you; or a room probably belonging to some lonely old hag that collects dogs:
Pizza Tycoon
This one is particularly dear to me. I didn't use to play it as much as a friend of mine did, and it was at his house that I first met the game. You basically open a new pizza restaurant and have to deal with a lot of the problems that come with it. It starts off by picking a world capital to settle in, then searching the neighborhood for a spot that's for rent. You even have to call the estate agent (the right one!). Now you have an empty place that needs furnishing, kitchenware, cooking waiting and managing employees (with whom you can negotiate wages) and so on. It won't be long before the Mafia storms through to ask you for protection money... against themselves.
You'll have the chance to set up your menu, cook the most familiar pizzas in the world and get fame for it if you do it right, and eventually even make money from recipes you make up. And believe me, making up new pizzas is very very entertaining. Not to mention, it makes you want to eat pizza. I had too microwave a frozen pizza I had yesterday. I had eaten dinner already so I left two slices that I'm gonna warm up and eat right now because thinking of the game made me hungry for pizza.
The amount of specific variables to setup when and while you play is what amazes me the most. It's incredibly deep. In no time you'll be buying weapons from an underground crime world so you can torch/blow up/etc your competitors in the pizza market!
Not only that, but it's a game with a sharp humor. Every character you speak to will make you smile at the choice of faces the coders did. The first realtor I contacted was an alien. He wasn't the right one, the right one was none less than Mikhail Gorbachev. Not to mention the mafia guy, who had a pizza for a head (with a green pepper that bent in a smile when I took his offer).
I was about to load DOSBox and the game to get a couple of screen shots for you but I noticed that the website I got the game from already did it for me. Check them out.
Screenshots from abandonia.com: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/105/Pizza%20Tycoon.html
Vídeo from PizzaTycoon.org: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLr5hGuNcTs
ZORK
This game is even more interesting today, where all games have amazing 3d environments created on the go and use very modern digital resources. What every game aims for is to be immersive, that is what the player wants and it explains phenomenons like Grand Theft Auto, a game where your freedom of movement and options is hands down entertaining (I used to spend hours just riding a BMX through town in GTA San Andreas... I know, why not go ride a bike in the real world? Well I can't jump over cars in the real world. Nor hit people for that matter. Not without consequences).
In Zork you can try everything. And that's the most helpful attitude you can have in the game. That and saving frequently. When you start the game you are standing near a house. There is a mailbox near you and you have the options of moving in one of the compass directions (north, south, etc) or interact with objects around you. I bet you are already imagining the place in your head... but here's what's shown to you:
Just imagine the cost of a device that could read the electrical activity in your brain, translate it into pictures and than send them to your computer... not only would that be impossibly expensive, you'd still have to wait for the technology to do it. And you'd probably get a headache. Well Zork is just that, it's the most immersive game I have ever played since everything is just precisely according to my imagination. How can it get better than that?Now just to give you an idea of how the game develops, what you would do in a situation like this is "open mailbox", or if you're careful "inspect mailbox". Even "kick mailbox" if you want. The house is there for your entertainment too, and soon you'll be entering underground mazes filled with magic creatures, beautiful mountain scenes (as beautiful as you want) and killing your head to solve some very demanding puzzles.
There's no map to help you since you're supposed to make one yourself. If you take the path north, the path can turn west or east midway and, wherever you get to, going south won't take you back to the first place. It's sometimes very confusing but you can save the game at any point.
Obviously, if you know the internet, you know someone made maps available including all the details and possible solutions to the puzzles. But when the game was released, that wasn't a possibility, and incredibly detailed handmade personal maps were made in the rooms of thousands of geek boys in the year 1979. Be sure to check out this one that stands out today as a relic: http://almy.us/image/dungeon.jpg
(Alright I definitely want to mention a game called Another World next time I post)
Monday, January 18, 2010
My big Rs
Alright. After that magic video editing adventure until 5 am, I went to bed and fell asleep one hour later because my roommate wouldn't stop snoring. I woke up at 11, started working at 12h30. I didn't stop until 10h30 am of the next day. That's right. A full 22h hours non-stop working, with meal breaks and walking-back-and-forth-in-the-hotel-room-waiting-for-ideas breaks. All night.
Of this wonderful experience I keep a pointy back ache that I sometimes think it's a kidney stone crisis again. "No problem," said I to my girlfriend Sunday night when we went to bed, "you got a rubber hot water back, I got Nolotil pills, we pretty much got it covered for the night".
Damn it. I got home on friday and my brain was liquid. I felt totally drained. Tried to stay awake until at least 10 pm just so I don't mix up my sleeping times like when I did those three 12 hours night shifts. Eventually I dropped on the bed and slept for 17 hours straight - thank god it was from 5 pm to 10 am and my sleep is kinda regular now.
The thing is, I have loads of stuff I want to type about. I wanna talk about Madonna's lyrics, about a bunch of movies I saw, lots of albums I heard last Summer that I mostly felt nothing about, Michel Gondry, a song by Air, human perception, brain stuff, etc. But working these weird hours, it's like a lobotomy at the end of the day when I come and sit here. All I can do is load a few 30 rock episodes on the player's playlist, sit back eating those amazing Continente strawberry filled tartlets and let my mind shutdown.
Apart from that, I've been listening to Grieg who apparently composed some of the most impressive energizing electrifying epic themes I've ever heard. This is the difference between classical music and those zillion bands I listened to last Summer. I don't get this kick out of 99.99999% of contemporary music. I like Rufus Wainwright, a lot, I like Regina Spektor, Ryan Adams and Radiohead and lately, Infected Mushroom (yeah, I know, what the hell?). Everything else is just... irrelevant music. So I keep cycling Infected Mushroom albums and baroque opera arias, squeezing Regina and Richard Swift in now and then.
But Grieg... I listen to his pieces and little video experiments pop into my imagination. I really need to start working on those.
Yeah. Music is like candy to the brain.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Hotels
The thing about hotels is that you walk a lot. In the corridors, I mean. Between your room and the bar, or the upper floor just to see the views. Or the pool. The first day is impressive, I add up a few kilometers because I want to explore everything. Like candy, arriving at hotels makes me feel a bit like a kid again. It's like a new extremely interesting playground. I feel like sneaking in everywhere. And it's always so clean and quiet. It's begging me to pretend I'm a ninja and go through staff-only doors, unravel the mysteries of the laundry room where I'm not supposed to be in, perform a silent make believe swift stealth execution on a couple of employees that pass nearby... You know, the usual stuff.
I wish I could live in a hotel. Hotel beds are always better then my own bed. I know it's heavily because someone flawlessly makes my bed and changes my sheets at the hotel, and if I'm lucky they'll leave a little crappy chocolate on the pillow. Yep, crappy. But you know chocolate, it's like sex. When it's good, it's great. When it's bad, it's still good.
So, it's now 5 am, I just got off work. I can't possibly type anything good right now.
I wish I could live in a hotel. Hotel beds are always better then my own bed. I know it's heavily because someone flawlessly makes my bed and changes my sheets at the hotel, and if I'm lucky they'll leave a little crappy chocolate on the pillow. Yep, crappy. But you know chocolate, it's like sex. When it's good, it's great. When it's bad, it's still good.
So, it's now 5 am, I just got off work. I can't possibly type anything good right now.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A hint
I worked 16 hours yesterday.
In the meantime I noticed how there are over twice more jobs in Oporto right now than in Lisbon or any other area. So not only was I born in the wrong country, apparently I was born in the wrong area too. Not to mention inside my area, the city I was born in. Well at least my parents weren't drug addicts.
Now, did you notice the pattern here? "worked 16 hours"... "jobs"... Yeah, a hint of possible things to come.
In the meantime I noticed how there are over twice more jobs in Oporto right now than in Lisbon or any other area. So not only was I born in the wrong country, apparently I was born in the wrong area too. Not to mention inside my area, the city I was born in. Well at least my parents weren't drug addicts.
Now, did you notice the pattern here? "worked 16 hours"... "jobs"... Yeah, a hint of possible things to come.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Here we go
So here I am again. Blogging.
My history with blogging goes back a few years. I can't tell precisely how many, apparently I have erased my first blog in the meantime... that's me, trashing things from the past. I'm the guy who doesn't keep old photographs, letters from friends and, mainly, letters I wrote to friends that I never sent. Same with old blogs, I guess. They're just not me anymore.
After I quit the first blog (quit, not erase, that was way later) I started a second one that is still up, amazingly. I had the opportunity to go through it recently, and I was amazed that some of the posts I was able to really appreciate and like. I found a lot of trash there too obviously (some of which I immediately erased) but the sporadic moments of good humor or sharp critique, scattered about between 2004 and 2009, were very pleasant reads. I was not expecting this.
So here I am again. By coincidence, sitting on the same chair I typed most of my posts on, even on that legendary pre-2004 first blog. I remember when Blogger wasn't part of Google (it was bought in 2003 so that gives me at least 8 years of blogging now). There was no WYSIWYG text editing bar like you have now. If you wanted colors on your text or even one underlined word, you had to know HTML. Layouts were the ones blogger gave you - more than that you'd have to venture into that pool of code where a misplaced letter or sign could bring your whole page down to a blank. Good days.
There were no widgets, I don't think the word "widget" was even that widespread at that time. There was no "click and drag your page elements to re-organize them" because there were no such things as page elements. Well, the usage of the term was possible. But for what mattered, if you wanted to move things around, it was all code.
I could go on. RSS feeds were around but not this integrated. Following blogs meant having them on your browser's favorites - and having followers listed on your blog with tiny square avatars? That was light-years away. Thank twitter for having it as it is nowadays.
The internet is really an amazing thing, a little miniature of a society with its own rules and meanings and codes and behaviors. You get to know it when you swim around in it for a while, though it never stops surprising you. Changes are hard to predict, but when they happen, you analyze and you eventually think "Yeah it figures it went this way". I remember when YouTube premiered. In a few days, everyone was sharing links and searching it nonstop. I was a late bloomer, and in the first weeks I was still thinking "I don't like this site. What's it good for?". Yeah... "lol", I guess. But the old internet is a topic for another time.
I'm here now, I'm blogging. It will make a couple of people happy. I hope it doesn't make anyone sad. I can't tell what I'll be writing about. I like music and I like movies, so they will come up now and then. Other art forms eventually. I like to speculate on my everyday life, and that's probably what'll make the most of the information here. I love science (hence the title), so expect science.
We'll see.
Comments are online, I will later on this week work on some minor layout tweaks and fine tuning.
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