Cataloging the Detritus of my Life
The above animation can be yours as a program or screensaver for either Macs or Windows if you give absolutely anything to the Americares Foundation which is raising money right now to help those caught in the on-going disaster in Japan.
This is a really nice piece of pixel art and you can proudly show it off on your desktop and do something nice for those in need!
Here in California it is finally spring; and, since it is I dusted off the bicycle and took a quick 36 mile ride to next town over. It was a lovely ride and I’m really excited about cycling this year through summer and into fall. As you can tell by the picture at the top though, this isn’t a post about cycling.
The ride was good but uneventful. All the way until the end when while stopped at a stop sign in town. I leaned the wrong way with my foot clipped in and fell, SMACK, right onto the curb and right onto my phone. That is what you see up top there. That old LG Shine (I think that’s what it was) wasn’t a very fancy phone. It couldn’t do the Twitters, or the Facebooks, or the Foursquares. It could accept phone calls and send texts and that is really all I needed it to do. With the cracks on the screen it can’t even do those simple tasks.
So, I ended up getting a new phone:
That is a HTC Inspire 4G, and Android phone. It is apparently capable of many, many things. I’m not really quite sure how it all works, it didn’t come with a manual. I can find tutorials for it on-line though! So that is nice. The Inspire does do the Twitter, and the Facebook, and the Foursquare, and a lot of other stuff too, I think.
Like, I said it I’m not quite sure how it all works. I’ll figure it out, I hope.
Don’t forget that I’m giving a book away this week! You can find all the details here.
Despite the fact that I have a backlog of video games that is, let me check… At least in the double digits (I haven’t updated it in awhile) I find myself returning to the same stable of games again and again.
Am I the only person who does this? I’m guessing not, going by all the videos, forum threads, and websites dedicated to old video games; how to find them, how to play them, how to beat them, how to exploit them, and on and on. (I even indulge in this myself. Click on that ‘Let’s Play’ tab at the very top of the page to see.)
I like to think that this is more than blind nostalgia operating. That there are very good objective, quantifiable reasons why I play Megaman 2, Castlevania, or King’s Quest IV time after time and year after year. The problem of course is that games, as works of art, are notoriously difficult to objectively quantify or qualify. The hobby does have widely held corpus of “great” games, but the list is highly mutable and it has been argued contain sgames that are present merely for their age. Furthermore, what qualifies a game as “great?” The criteria available to use is nigh endless and contradictory.
I’m no ludologist (and I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to pretend to be an amateur one ) so I’m not going to attempt creating a list of the various components of games that qualify them as “greats.” I’m sure if I could isolate said components they would not match up with others’ lists anyway.
Sometimes it is merely the presence of the ineffable that defines greatness, I suppose…
Here’s my list of games I just can’t, and wouldn’t want to, quit (in no order):
Do you find yourself going back to a set of “knowns” time and time again? Regardless of how many new “unknowns” you might have and want to consume? If so, please share them below in the comments and why you think it is you keep going back to them!
I bought this original Boy Scout Handbook, and another, two years ago. The one in better condition I gave to my father as a Christmas present and a reminder of all the great times we shared in the Scouting program. I’ve been flipping through mine recently and noticing some things.
Boy Scouts have been around for a long time. Here, in the United States they were incorporated on February 8, 1910. The oldest Scouting organization, in the United Kingdom, was founded in 1907. I ‘m somewhat surprised how much of Scouting has been retained over the past 1oo hundred years. The Boy Scout oath, law, and motto have not changed since that time but many other things have, from rank requirements to merit badges. I thought I’d share a some of the ones I found just flipping through the book. (I wish I had my old Boy Scout Handbook from when I was in the program, as well as a current edition just to compare, I’m doing this from memory… If you want a good, cheap resource for outdoor and first aid skills a Boy Scout Handbook isn’t a bad choice, by the way.)
Some of the Merit Badges one could earn then but no longer:
Cement Work, handicraft, beekeeping, blacksmithing, foundry practice, invention, pathfinding, signalling, and taxidermy.
A few requirements that didn’t make it into this millennium, They probably didn’t make it through the ’70s: make a round trip alone (or with a fellow scout) to a point at least seven miles away going on foot, or rowing boat. Or, construct a raft which will carry two people and their duffle safely, and demonstrate his ability to make practical use of it.