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Audio&Games

Humongous

Humongous Entertainment created a major wrinkle in that formula. The company, founded in 1992 by Ron Gilbert and Shelley Day, offered something different—a series of kid’s games that were based around narrative, character, and world-building rather than lesson gated modules. The two had come from LucasArts—Day worked as a games producer and Gilbert worked as a programmer and game designer—and specialized in creating adventure games aimed at adults. After seeing how much kids enjoyed playing adventure games, they decided to apply the same principles to games aimed at younger players.

Vice.

Ron Gilbert, who I had grew up playing his games, had this company and was making games to teach. I was in love with Humongous. I had already planned to be a game developer and my little sister was playing those games. I was studying her play and use the mouse. It was so cute. I was genuinely excited about the future of games and learning. There seemed to be so much to do. So much to re-invent.

The mid and late 90s were oblivious to financial pressure. Things were going well. By 2000 they had sold 16 million copies of their games. At a time when people didn’t have access to computers like we all do today. That’s amazing.

But publishers didn’t see it this way and coupled with the massive and drastic move from 2D and DOS/Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 and 3D in game development, edutainment was dead by 2003. Brutal.

I miss it. I miss the opportunity to teach with fun. I miss taking care of kids and respecting them.

We do the exact opposite these days in game development and we need to stop that shit.

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Me Myself&I

Long two, what you gonna do

You can’t shoot the 3 correctly under extreme pressure like a game 7. Four teams played yesterday, they all sucked super hard from behind the arc, far beyond what they can do.

Long 2s win games. Pull-up jumpshots –CJ, Kawhi yesterday- win games because they’re super hard to defend and “doable” even under heavy pressure because they’re close enough for one player to feel good about taking them. Drives can get stripped. 3s not falling mean you give the ball away. Had Ben Simmons being shooting jumpers, the series would have gone the other way and probably ended in game 6. I wanted to see the Sixers toughness against the Bucks instead of having the Toronto Kawhi and a bunch of scrubs (just kidding) go against Milwaukee. We’ll see.

The Warriors game was phenomenal too. Steph just gives no fucks at the line under pressure. Mofo was smiling and shit. 8/8. Portland VS Golden State. We know it’s going to be a sky battle with crazy 3s in the first games. Whatever happens, the Warriors should probably win this but we’ll have fun watching it.

A Bucks/Warriors finals series is something I’m hoping on. Experience VS Length. I’m ready.

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Me Myself&I

That age thing

More people than ever are living long, healthy lives. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average life expectancy is 78.6 years for men and 81.1 for women. More relevant, however, is that as people grow older, their total life expectancy increases. So for those who are now 65, the average life expectancy is 83 for men and over 85 for women. And because I’m 83, I’m expected to live past 90 (but I’m aiming a lot higher than that). And these are averages, which means that perhaps half of us will live even longer.

Fast Company.

As people grow older, their total life expectancy increases. That’s something we don’t spend time thinking about enough. It has giant implications!

He says he’s 83, he was born in 1936. He’s not only still alive today in 2019, but still writing articles and being an active person in this world. It used to be that at that age, you were mostly doing nothing in a chair.

My grandmother is in a chair, mostly doing nothing. She’s 94. That’s a decade more than before.

Which means that my parents, born in the 50s and today in excellent shape, will live for even longer. And I will even more. I believe I’ll be able to still ollie a skateboard past sixty. I had a 73-year-old grandpa banking shots and running around with me two weeks ago.

LIFE IS LONG AND IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE.

Which triggers questions:

– if life’s that long, why do we focus so much on the 20s and 30s? They used to be important because we’d die early. They were important because we used to get house/kids/ at that time but it’s shifted to the next decade now. Those twenty years are about learning and figuring shit out. A lot to process in this global world.

– if life’s that long, why do we want to change things so much? Computer interfaces for instance. It’s unnecessary, we need consistency more than novelty. We need to make enjoyable moves, not re-learn all the time. At first you think it’s fun to re-learn or that it’s no big deal. After twenty iterations of that shit, you’ll be annoyed too. Trust me.

– if life’s that long and that resources on earth are finite, why don’t we slow down? There are so many things to learn or try through decades of life that don’t require full destruction and reconstruction of a part of the economy, like the tech-economy is doing. No need for growth. We need to sustain, now.

It’s one if the biggest shift we’ve ever had to adapt to.

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Me Myself&I

Playoffs

The Bucks basically bitch-slapped the Celtics. The Milwaukee Limbs are scary. They’re long, they’re efficient. Giannis is amazing and barely playing. Sucks to be the other team.

The Sixers could be in a much better position if Ben Simmons could fucking shoot the ball. Jesus Christ. He’s so fast and fluid with the ball but that’s about it. It’s tragic. Of course playing against my Kawhi is something else but the Sixers should have been able to dispute those losses better. Props to Jimmy Butler for never giving up anything.

Chris Paul and Kyrie have been having trouble size-wise. It’s the playoffs and being small(er) is being abused by everyone. Which gives Isaiah Thomas’ 53-pt playoff game a few years ago even more status. This man was on a mission and his dedication will forever stay in the conversation.

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Me Myself&I

NBA shooting problem

I’m impressed by the lack of shooting fundamentals with young NBA players. It’s legit insane.

That’s it. That’s the post.

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Audio&Games

Tera, the city of skulls

This was my first RPG experience, ever.

We –my cousin and I- played this French game on my mom’s IBM PC XT. She’d just bought 2 for her freshly new independent accounting business. We played in the evening and my cousin played up late.


I still have the box goddaaaamn memories.

I just understood how unique that game was and how much it influenced my tastes. First person view? You bet. Procedurally generated gameplay? Check. Mix of fantasy, PSY powers and sci-fi? Triple check. That was almost unheard of at that time. 1986. I remember how pumped I was when we would do the “mental attack” and the IBM speaker would barf some weird square tone arpeggio while the NPCs would lose some health lmao.

Here’s the backstory, thanks to crpgaddict:

The backstory–recapped in a series of opening screenshots–sets the game on neighboring planets called Amarande the Black and Alfol. Once prosperous and unified, the planets are now torn between three factions: scientists and their technology, the religion (transcendance) of priests and vestal virgins, and sorcerers based out of the City of Skulls.

The strife seems to be the work of a demon named Aricoh and his unnamed ally. Followers of technology have entrenched themselves on Alfol, an inhospitable desert planet. The Pirates of Shaam menace the space between the two worlds. There are rumors that the priests have allied with telepathic beings made out of crystal who inhabit a parallel world called Meduz.

BRUH SPACE PIRATES. Even when I wasn’t playing the game, the backstory was just dope enough to trigger my imagination. I loved the fact that we didn’t know much. That things were rumored. That you could use a  “seduce/charm” command to get NPCs to join your squad, fly spaceships and share items. So much freedom and possibilities.

As crpgaddict notes, mapping zones was hard. I think it was one of the first exercise that developed my spatial brain like fucking crazy. I remember struggling to understand positions and movements because the game wasn’t easy on that. Later, Wolf3D and Doom would be easy for 12 year old me to navigate after that hardcore CGA bullshit.

I don’t know how, but my cousin beat that game. He leveled up and one night he went to defeat Arioch, the big boss. My mom was kind of mad because he had left the computer on all night long to show the final page –yes, the end was a page of text explaining that you were the Lord of Whatever and no, we couldn’t save or “resume” at that time-. The easy days.

What I realized earlier this week is that:

– Loriciels the publisher only released that game on MS-DOS. There’s no other version. Loriciels would release games on all platforms but very rarely on that one. That makes the game even more special.

– The developer, Grafmodcolor is unknown: 2 nicknames and that’s about it. They only made that game, apparently. More mystery, more legendary.

Chapeau bas, les gars.

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Me Myself&I

wow

I’m in the middle of many powerful things happening around me.

It’s been five straight years on the west coast. It’s been nuts. From working for Toni Braxton to making dope ass friends to working for the public library and meeting more awesome folks, it’s been wild. I’ve learned a lot. A lot made sense and fit what I suspected and expected. I know, that’s kind of blurry but hey, I’m here for the long haul. You should too.

A new chapter is on the horizon. Feelin’ it.

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Me Myself&I

John Singleton

I love you, man. I can’t believe this is happening, again. Black heroes who are not supposed to say goodbye that early and here we are, again.

I’ve seen most of your movies, of course. I also moved to your city and neighborhood though it wasn’t totally related to Hollywood or blackness but here I am. Re-watching Boyz hits differently now.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that you wrote and directed this movie as a barely out of film school 23 year old. Absolutely brilliant social commentary. Although gang violence decreased by a ton, nothing much has changed. Gentrification is fucking everything up. Just yesterday on a Sunday morning police handcuffing homeless folks next to a new, generic ass probably AI-generated street art piece that says “angeles elevate”. I can’t make this shit up. It makes me want to throw up.

Your work has been so important. Representation. Our angles. Yes sometimes it didn’t age well or it became a bit corny. But all in all, those movies were fine and needed. They always got me in my feelings like no other.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Me Myself&I

Dear Jack

Since the 2016 election, it has grown increasingly clear that allowing young, mostly male technologists to build largely unregulated, proprietary,international networks might have been a large-scale, high-stakes error in judgment.

That Dorsey is now expected to find a solution to unprecedented and unforeseen problems, on a platform designed thirteen years ago for narrow and relatively innocent use cases, seems darkly comical at best—an instance of refusing to learn from our mistakes. “He’s dealing with a scale of a problem that doesn’t have a lot of precedent in human history,” a programmer friend of mine texted.

New Yorker.

1. You force-design Twitter to be all about growth.

2. Tons of people abuse those tools to get engagement and visibility.

3. You refuse to acknowledge the fact that you have a community to moderate and that it is your responsibility.

And now you play the “I didn’t see anything coming, bear with me!”. You suck, Jack.

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Me Myself&I

Round1Game7 part II

It was an awful game. Losing by four in the last game of a series against the second seed is not too bad.

But it wasn’t on. See y’all next year.