Computer Archaeology

Matt was kind enough to scrounge up a USB 3.5" floppy for me (thanks Matt!), so I dug deeper into the past with DosBox... back to times where EGA graphics were top of the line (look it up, whippersnappers... :)). Back to times where manuals were huge, in part to distract you during the forever-install process. Back to when companies actually used a 720k floppy for the last disk of an install set, because it was cheaper than all the 1.44M floppies they had to use otherwise.

It was an interesting journey... and not entirely fruitless, either, between things like Dungeon Hack and the original Sam & Max game. Sad to say, I just couldn't bring myself to install Windows 3.1 on the Mac... some wrongness is just best left untouched.

Edibles twofer

• If you're like me, every so often you go back to the basic 'pasta and tomato sauce' dinner... something I tried tonight that was surprisingly good -- cook some Brussel sprouts with the pasta, and brown up some cubed Spam to add to the sauce.
• In case you didn't know, the Easter candy's out... which means, in my case, the evil that is Cadbury Dark Chocolate Mini-Eggs. Not the gooey pseudo-eggs, although those are okay in small (like once-a-year) quantities, rather the oversized M&M replacements, with "better" (if not "good") solid chocolate innards, in your choice of milk or dark chocolate. Om nom nom nom... :)
  

Lego + Star Wars = Fun

Got $20 burning a hole in your pocket, and looking for some fun? Might I suggest Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy? Based on the "good" Star Wars trilogy, it's a bit of an oddity... sort of an adventure/puzzle game disguised as an action game. Yes, you do get to run around blasting and light-sabering stormtroopers and the like... but that will only get you so far. Besides which, there's one big unexpected mechanic for an action game... you can't die.

I should clarify... yes, you do have a health meter, and you can get "killed"... but you don't have any limit on how many times you can die, and all dying really does to you is lose some in-game cash (and not even a particularly large amount of that). This mechanic allows you to take your inevitable demise from a horde of troopers or a bad jump in stride, while you concentrate on another major mechanic... building stuff.

This is a Lego game after all... creation and destruction are part and parcel of that system. In this game, building comes both from manually gathering bits and pieces to form objects and controls (and pretty simply at that), or, in some cases, "using the Force" to accomplish the same sort of thing writ large (can't have a Star Wars game without the Force now, can you?).

Apart from that... well, you get some running-around levels with a team of Legoized characters from the films, and fly-around levels with Legoized vehicles from the films, and the encompassing collection game that surrounds the whole mess... it's good, clean, wholesome fun... and, unlike my usual usage of that phrase, I mean that literally this time. Those of you on next-gen consoles might have to pony up for the "complete" Lego Star Wars... I might balk at what they're wanting for that just now, but keep an eye on it... at some point, it'll be cheap enough to "take a chance" on... and I heartily recommend you do.

Field Day

I'm working in the housing industry just now, which means things are pretty slow at work... there are plans in the works to change that, but it doesn't change the fact that I honestly have nothing useful to do at work right now. It's bad enough that I decided to head home at lunch today and give the house a good field day. For those of you unfamiliar with that Navy phrase, it's spending the entire day doing nothing but cleaning, usually with the expectation of getting your area inspected thereafter (based on the results of which there may be more cleaning in your future, or, in rare instances, getting the rest of the day off, that sort of thing).

So now, the cobwebs are knocked down, every room has been dusted and swept/mopped/vacuumed, the bathroom's thoroughly swabbed out, and most of the glass/chrome bits are cleaned up. It's not inspection-ready, and I really wish I could air the place out a bit, but it's not too shabby, either. Now, I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow.

Lunar Eclipse

I snuck a peek at tonight's lunar eclipse a couple of times... a reasonably cool thing, and watchable from the warmth and comfort of my house, so why not. I tried taking pictures but, well, pictures in the dark just don't work that well, as I've found before. No worries, I'm sure there's some around somewhere if you missed it.

FIVE discs?

I was doing my irregular update of my NetFlix queue today, and one of the recommendations I got fed was for a 5-disc series of Strong Bad emails. Now, I actually enjoy watching this online series every so often (like, say, when a new one comes out), and, if you haven't seen it, well, here's a link for you... but I have to wonder mightily about this particular package.

I mean, first off, the package includes the first 100 emails they did, from what I gather... I'm sorry, but for all that I find it reasonably funny in small doses, that strikes me as being just a little bit of overkill, like watching the Monty Python fish-slapping dance for two hours straight. Second... FIVE discs? Honestly, each of those shorts runs about five minutes long... unless there's just a ton of bonus material on those discs, the only reason I can see for making a five-disc set of it was to justify charging a five-disc price. It's the sort of sales/marketing "tactic" that, in my humble opinion, ought to be banned outright, and the perpetrators flayed and keelhauled... okay, some of that may just be my nasty cold/flu talking, but only a little... :)

Games, for better or worse

Well, I finally finished my initial sort... looks like I've removed about half the assorted game boxes I had laying about, and none too soon at that, considering the layers of dust and cat hair I found on some of them. All the games I have left now, I can run whenever I want, without thinking about how long it'll take to get it installed, will it work on my system, etc, etc.

One odd bit I noticed in the process... it seems like many of the games I thought of as being "pretty cool" in earlier days were the ones that gave me the most grief... so, no Fallout, no Black & White, no Thief, no System Shock 2... and, from what I can tell, it's mostly because the makers of those games made assumptions that just aren't valid these days (multi-core processors, for example, are the single biggest source of grief I found).

Oh well, I've still got a hoard of games to play with now (decided to start with Wizardry 8, because it's old enough that I barely remember anything about it, which is saying something when it comes to my memory), and space to put more when I get them. Too bad I just found out that the game I was most looking forward to (Spore) got pushed back to a September release. A pity, but I'm not sure whether I'm really that put out about it... yes, I would like some new shinies to play with, but with all the RPGs at my disposal now, it might be a while before I really "need" a new game... :)