As an enthusiastic long-time fan of his products during my childhood, I read this story with a touch of melancholy-infused nostalgia.
Hat tip to my Dad for the link.
We are at the Oakland Arena. I am on stage with a bright red Gibson Les Paul slung low over my shoulders. The crowd is warming up. On my right, Ozzy Osbourne starts the count… 1-2-3-4… and off we go. I start shredding the opening riffs of “Iron Man” – a Black Sabbath anthem. Ozzy starts wailing into the microphone. There is no sign of Tony Iommi, the legendary lead guitarist of Sabbath. With each ensuing note, the crowd gets wilder and by the end of the song, I have achieved guitar hero status. I wrap it up by setting my Gibson on fire à la Hendrix. I hit 98% of the notes right and the morning newspaper gives me and the band a four star rating. My dream of becoming a rock star has finally come to fruition.
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Finally. This Lebanon thing was getting old and we can now move on to plots of blowing up folks on an unprecedented scale.
People have started worrying about dire consequences as a result of this. Such as not being able to carry laptops and i frickin’ Pods on flights. Oh the travesty! What would one do with themselves? No more Nintendo to shut junior up? Perhaps this is the resurgence of the inflight movie? Never. I say our way of life must not be changed by freedom haters.
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Every Red Sox fan knows about game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The Red Sox, seemingly coasting to a victory and championhood, saw their dreams turn into a nightmare. A crucial error by Bill Buckner, off a simple play that should have sealed the deal, led to a loss in game 6 and eventual capitulation in game 7.
Now this event can be relived in a viral video created by a 24 year old. His name is Conor Lastowka, and he created the video by simulating it in a video game known as ‘RBI Baseball’, released by Nintendo in the eighties. He managed to recreate the bottom half of the 10th inning in excruciating detail, saving and redoing each play until he got it just right. Conor had quit his job working as a database administrator, and was unemployed, until his video brought him fame and fortune. He is now a ‘production assistant in charge of guerrilla marketing at Legend’.
Monopoly has always been one of my favorite board games. I grew up with the London version and names like Mayfair, Park Lane, Trafalgar Square, etc., are still etched in the memory. This is in spite of not having played that version for more than fifteen years. I own two sets of Monopoly: 1) The Atlantic City version (with Boardwalk, St. Charles Place, etc.) and 2) The National Parks version (with Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, etc.).
Now Hasbro, the makers of the venerated game is asking us to help it choose the property names of the next version of Monopoly. Most of the big cities in the US are included. Go and vote now for your favorite landmarks (broadband speeds and Flash required). The new game is supposed to hit the shelves this fall.
I consider myself a casual gamer. I mean there are times when I can spend a lot of time (note that lot has a different meaning for a parent of an infant) playing a game, and then I can go about months without touching the PS2 controls. I certainly know people that spend many more hours than I do attached to their preferred gaming environment.
If you by any chance are a reader of Wired magazine, you might have read this month’s set of articles about gaming, latest trends, and where is it going. Or as it has been in the news lately over and over, I am sure you’ve heard about the many cases, especially in Korea, where people die in real life over marathon games and such. NPR issued as story not so long ago about how much money the virtual worlds are generating in real life. A search in EBay can give you an idea how much a weapon in World of Warcraft can cost you in actual US$. One of the articles in Wired tells the story about this person that paid $100K for a virtual space in a virtual moon in a virtual world. Stupid?, well, this person *made* in revenue about $250K the first year, and it is expecting to gain about $2.5 million next year.
And I wish this was the weirdest of the stories, it gets more bizarre. Issues are starting to rise about child pornography, as in these games you could impersonate a child and have virtual sex with an adult. Some of these games have extremely realistic rendering of actual child characters. It goes on and on.
(Read more…)
Time for a productivity enhancer.
How smart are you? Are you sick of the morons who claim to be members of MENSA? Are you tired of MENSA itself? Then do I have an alternate intelligence test for you or what? If you are acronym-challenged (whatever that means) then this is not for you but give it a go otherwise. When you are done with Part 1, go for the more non-biased (culturally speaking) Part 2. I have only done the first part so far.
[Thanks to my (not so) genial professor, at a class I am currently taking, for these links]
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