This is amazing. Satellite images of before and after the attack on the World Trade Towers in Manhattan.
posted @ 03:59 ( link )
I know I've mentioned it already, but I've been buried in this website for what seems like weeks (and I mean that in a really, really good way). I've been so excited to find games I never thought I'd see again without special equipment (an emulator, or in some cases even a "real" floppy drive, 5.25") that I've spent so much time downloading those games that I haven't even really started to play them yet.
The guys/gals at the Underdogs don't allow simultaneous downloads, but the service they're providing is so incredible that I wouldn't dream of violating that particular statute. This site probably gets my vote for most personally valuable website of the month. Hell, of the year, even. Decade.
Other Sites Which Are Quite Worthy of Mention: Lockergnome Free newsletters on today's technology. Let me rephrase that. Quality free newsletters. When I was culling my e-mail lists to reduce the 500 e-mails I was receiving daily. I kept these newsletters. I also kept my Gamespy Daily Newsletter - Jam-Packed with gaming goodness. mikebonnell.com Classy hi-res 3d wallpapers. This is a skilled man. Along the lines of digitalblasphemy.com Cool backgrounds. Blogger Without which my site would not be nearly as cool (um, it's cool, right? provided you can see it anyway, which pretty much requires IE. Netscape bites!) MopyFish.Net Your screensaver fish buddy. Feed him and he will love you. MPOGD Multi-player on-line game directory. Another absolutely incredible resource. A must for every gamer.
GameFaqs.com For when you just can't stay honest the whole way through. I have a psychological complex that prevents me from cheating in any way shape or form until I've beaten a game at least once. That's partially because I remember a time when you had to write in to the company for your hints and you probably had the game conquered anyway by the time the reply game. Pogo.com Because they have Word Whomp. Which you can play. For money. Gamespy Arcade Because you can play Spades, and it's the best on-line Spades applet I've seen. Let me just say that Yahoo's bites the big one. Zophar's Domain Your one-stop emulation headquarters. It's been around for ages. Window Blinds. You can even make your windows look like a Mac. Why? I'm not sure, I'd shoot myself first.
Lunatix-Online.com The web version of an old BBS door game. Remember those? I also found Legend of the Red Dragon. Classics.
And the mother of all great links: Copernic which can help you find anything else. :)
That's my eclectic list for now. Should be enough to keep anyone occupied for at least a little bit. G'night!
posted @ 03:42 ( link )
9.15.2001
This is a free role-playing game in the spirit of the older Final Fantasies, with the exception of a post-apocalyptic setting and an anti-hero: Abaddon.
posted @ 16:27 ( link )
9.14.2001
Here's another great game that the Underdogs have salvaged: Guild of Thieves.
posted @ 11:37 ( link )
I'm in 7th Heaven today. Here's a shockwave web version of Defenders of the Crown! --> ********
posted @ 11:34 ( link )
Wow, this is the incredible site where the Nine Princes in Amber game originated:Underdogs. It's an Interactive Fiction site! Completely up my alley. I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads in disbelief, but man, I love this stuff. (!!)
posted @ 11:22 ( link )
I used to play Nine Princes in Amber on my Commodore 64 back in the day... I was entertained for so many, many hours by that awkward little box. There were hundreds of games. That was probably because Basic wasn't exactly a difficult language, so almost anyone could publish a game. It wasn't quite the near movie-production type affair that game development is today. The games were quite varied, and some were very weird, yet most were strangely enjoyable. That might seem strange to those, like my little brother, who can't imagine a game being great if it doesn't have cut scenes.... ;)
I've been delving back into nostalgia lately, here's a great site for Commodore 64 disk images. Some of my favorites were the old Infocom games, like Zork, or Moonmist... I also was completely addicted to the original Pirates!, by none other than the venerable Sid Meier (rumor has it that he's going to be crafting a new Pirates with Firaxis... wouldn't that be a treat!). I also played Defender of the Crown, which was put out by Cinemaware. Amazingly enough, some fans of the company got together and have revived the name. Guess what their first game out of the gates is going to be? Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown! I wonder how they'll modernize one of the rewards you got for successfully storming a castle? (the lovely lady therein would slowly drop her robes for you... from the back, of course!)... Anyway, I think you can even download the tape images of their old games from Cinemaware's new website... Now that's cool.
posted @ 11:16 ( link )
9.11.2001
This seems a little sudden.... I haven't even gotten to play the first game yet!
posted @ 16:18 ( link )
In more sober news, what the hell is going on out there? If you've been in a bunker all morning (which is probably not a bad idea, frankly), the World Trade Towers are just a smoky smear in the Eastern subconscious (thanks to a couple hijacked airplanes), the Pentagon has been attacked in the same manner, and there is supposedly yet another death jet headed towards the White House.
What happened to National Security (here's one answer to that slightly rhetorical question)? There had to have been at least some indication that these planes were wildly off course. I realize it's probably not good form to take out aircraft with harmless civilians on board, but given the choice between taking out a plane that was obviously en route to slam into a building with over 10,000 people inside, and saving less than 100, I'd have to choose the former. The good of the many and all that. I haven't exactly fully pondered the concept, so I'm sure there are more ramifications than are immediately obvious, but it seems like something more could have been done than the nothing that actually happened.
This is even more psychologically sobering event than the Oklahoma City bombing, because that at least was an inside job. This is complete outsiders managing to hijack not one, not two, not three, but at least FOUR aircraft and ram them into an array of juicy targets. The whole thing just completely blows my mind. There's one thing that I'm sure of, and that is that many, many people are feeling in need of divine intervention right now, so if you believe in that sort of thing, send a few prayers in the direction of those involved in this travesty.
posted @ 11:50 ( link )
I'm back! My computer went on the fritz, turned out to be a bad hard drive, of all things. I went all out and upgraded my processor (actually, this is my parent's computer, which is my old computer that I used in college) from a 233 MHz to a gig (woo hoo!), memory from 64 to 128 MB, and hard drive from 4GB to 20. Nice, eh? This was the family computer... mine was a little nicer but it's currently languishing with my significant in Iowa (yes, the other in significant is missing on purpose. I'm trying to start a trend).
So anyway, since I feel like an amputee without my computer, this is a lovely situation. The only thing that I'm lacking now is a decent sized monitor. I'm sitting in front of a punty 15"-er.
Before you complain, yes, I realize that my counters are no longer nice-looking. Thecounter.com changed their model so that anything really decent, including verbose statistics and any choice whatsoever in counter look and location requires 19.95 a month. Yeah, right. I'm going to hunt out another free solution right now.
It's so great to be back! I'm almost scared to look at my hotmail account... there's probably over a thousand e-mails. The worst thing is that I've been out for about three weeks, and hotmail just starts chewing up your old mail if your account is over 2MB and it's been a while. So nice. Especially since I applied to many jobs with that e-mail as the response address.
There's so much stuff I want to do! Now that my all my games will run on this box, it sucks that half of my stuff is being held hostage by my b/f's parents, who hate my guts. They won't send me the rest of my things until I send Nic's stuff back, in spite of the fact that all of our stuff is mixed together in boxes at the BACK of storage area that I won't be getting into until I move from this temporary location to a more permanent house that my family will be renting. He was planning on coming down here with me, after all. The annoying part is that they're so petty about things. They even lied to Nic and told him that they sent it down already, since he asked about the boxes when they suddenly disappeared out of his basement. When I asked him about it again, since it had been a few weeks and I was worried my stuff got lost (especially my computer stuff, yeek!), he asked THEM, and they admitted that they had lied and stashed it somewhere and weren't divulging the location.
How childish! He explained that he didn't care when he got the rest of HIS stuff, since he knows I can't get to it right now. They find his opinion irrelevant, as well as the fact that I offered to pay for shipping to get it down here.
Oh, well. I guess I'll have to settle with playing Final Fantasy Tactics for now. I'd forgotten how addicting that game is... I do miss The Sims though... but I can finally play Black & White, I'm so excited!
Also, I'm not completely spacing off the incredibly important things that are going on, I just thought they deserved a new entry, separate from my considerably more upbeat "welcome back world!" note. I'm off to find a Commodore 64 emulator so I can play M.U.L.E. and the original Pirates! :)
p.s. Guess what my first download since regaining the use of my other "appendange" was?
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Copernic! My favorite, indispensable search utility! If you don't have it, you need it. If you don't think you need it, get it anyway!
posted @ 11:16 ( link )
8.8.2001
I know I haven't updated in a while... still here... and yes, I know my counters are messed up. Thecounter.com changed their plan on me. You now have to PAY for an invisible counter. Anyway. Check out Gamespy's Top 50 Games of All Time.
posted @ 22:06 ( link )
7.6.2001
Know anyone that needs to read this?
posted @ 09:56 ( link )
7.5.2001
The layout doesn't quite show up right in my browser, but I couldn't pass up the chance to point out a Crusty Geek.
posted @ 21:18 ( link )
You know... sometimes I'm amazed at where I end up. No, really. Referrer logs are inanely entertaining. lotusmaiden.com has popped up at a site whose purpose is to compile a listing of web pages that use cascading style sheets for positioning and layout instead of tables (those evil, evil things ;). See here: Web Nouveau table-less sites list.
posted @ 21:15 ( link )
New hemp items at the Dave Matthews Band Official Store.
posted @ 20:54 ( link )
I've been getting a lot of traffic from my buddy's MP3 site, so I thought I'd share the wealth: UdownP. Check 'em out. They have a terrific experimental vibe.
posted @ 20:48 ( link )
I'm back with a blazing internet connection, looking out my door at the swooning palms of Orlando, Florida. Did I forget to mention I was relocating from Cedar Rapids, Iowa? Well, here I sit, suffering dial-up for the first time in, oh... hell, ages. My first attempt at connection for the evening netted me a miraculous 19,200 bps. The second, a mind-boggling 49,200, which I have to say that I'm inordinately pleased with at the moment.
I'm in temporary quarters, and all my clothes but a few pairs of shorts and some tank tops are in storage (just as temporary). I quit my wonderful unix admin position on the 21st of June. It took the next week to meet my family in Columbus, pack them out, and drive the Ryder down through a string of unmemorable states until arriving in the not-quite-so-Sunshiney State of Florida. I actually moved from Florida to Iowa in late 96, just in time to finish up my senior year of high school in an unfamiliar place. Now my life has come full circle.
So, I'm jobless and job-hunting. You'd think with my wonderful skill-set I'd have no problem finding something, but things have been pretty dry here in Orlando, supposedly the next up-and-coming tech mecca of the known world. I have bills to pay, and my only interview thus far (out of desperation, don't laugh), is with TARGET. (sigh) I suppose I should give myself some time.... I've only been in town since late last Friday.
Hey, anyone out there looking for a 21-year-old unix guru (HP/Solaris) slash web designer slash MCSE?