Category: Tech

Twenty Things We Saw At The Fair

August 17, 2013

It was time once again to visit the annual Altamont fair! It doesn’t change much from year to year, but I can’t resist the lure of the rides! Here’s twenty things we saw today:

1) A new ride, called ‘Pharoah’s Fury’. Basically a version of the Pirate Ship, this was notable for the 90 degree maximum incline that created sustained zero-g. KLS was screaming almost non-stop. A very fun ride 🙂

2) Another new ride, called ‘Vertigo’. I was impressed with how high it was! Unfortunately, since it’s a rotator, I didn’t ride it due to motion sickness.

3) All the old favourite rides returned, staffed by the usual gang of creepy ~~murderous ex-felons~~ carnies. We saw a guy ‘fixing’ The Zipper using a piece of string (not a joke!)

4) I saw KLS eat delicious fries with me, shortly after I had eaten a hamburger myself.

5) We saw this device, but for the life of us couldn’t work out what it was called or what it was supposed to do:

6) We saw a tiny, tiny goat:

7) And a kangaroo with a joey in it’s pouch. She bent down to eat some grass and the joey ate as well!

8) We saw a very special duck…

9) And an evil looking chicken…

10) And a happy sheep… in a barn full of happy sheep 🙂

11) Over in the art contest displays, we even saw Doctor Who!

12) Nearby, the first prize winning scarecrow wasn’t perhaps as scary as you’d imagine:

13) Here is a princess being defended by a dragon:

14) Heading back to the midway, past the vendors selling spa’s, blenders and insurance, I found an unusual sight!

15) We didn’t go on that many rides, mostly because they almost all go in circles. The Ferris Wheel is always fun though. Right next to it this year was a ‘cryptozoology museum’ with some extraordinary art hanging out the front:

16) Oh, I almost forgot! The giraffe was back:

17) As was the circus we saw last year. We didn’t go since we were a bit tired and it was very, very hot.

18) The games on the midway are as dubious as ever. Surprising prizes this time around included live goldfish and knives!

19) The animals are fun, but for me the fair is always about the garbage food…

20) And the big, noisy, scary and quite possibly life-threateningly dangerous rides:

I just wish I was 12 again, so I could ride them all without getting sick 🙂

Apotheosis of The Machine Brain

August 10, 2013

It’s 8 pm and I’m sitting on the promenade outside the ~~castle~~ hotel overlooking the Saint Lawrence river. There will be fireworks later; people are everywhere! It will be a fun end to a busy day!

Here’s the very start:

We’d return to this bakery later for bread and pastries for our dinner!

In the morning we caught a bus upriver to the famous Montmorency Falls.

Beautiful! See the bridge over the top? We walked that. The photo above is taken from a steep staircase that leads from the top to the bottom:

Here’s a shot from the lookout to the south side of the falls, visible on the left in the first photo:

We started at the top, took the stairs down, then got to the top again via a rope way!

Here’s me hamming it up in the car:

Growing up in Australia waterfalls are not exactly common and it’s always a treat to visit one. It was a sight definitely worth seeing 🙂

Afterwards, we returned to the city and headed down to old town, at the base of the cliffs on which stands the hotel. Here I met a lovely bird:

Whose hand is that? ONLY MINE!

I petted him and he leaned into my hand. So cute!

We wandered on, and ignorantly walked right past the Canadian Museum of Civilization! Booooooring, we all might think. But stop the presses since a certain poster caught my eye…

What’s this? A froggy museum exhibit on the history of video games in Quebec, Canada? Could it be good? Was it worth $15?!?!?

Yes, my friends, it absolutely was!

The exhibit, which was divided into various eras (Origin, Arcades, 3D etc.) contained over 500 items including a staggering 88 playable consoles and arcade games!

And believe me, whoever curated this exhibit was no slouch to game history and the landmark games from each era.

The above snap shows Barbarian playable on an Amstrad!?! I was in hog heaven as I effortlessly demoed the 1-hit kill move to Jim almost 30 years since I had last played.

I would go on to play PC-Engine, MSX (!!), C-64 and countless other gems, including…

Tempest 2000 on a Jaguar! Jim got in on the action as well:

That’s him playing an Amiga for the first time. The game? Turrican!

Here’s a cute display:

That’s Bubble Bobble demonstrated on 4 different machines. A fifth was playable adjacent to this display.

I also went a bit menerk when I found Thunderforce III playable for Mega Drive. It was as if this exhibit was custom designed for me!

Oh and the relics! They ranged from breathtaking original working Space Invaders Deluxe cocktail cabinets:

To displays of rare game merchandise:

To awesomely nostalgic game packaging:

And to stuff bizarre beyond words:

There was so much to see and play, from Odyssey to iOS and Wii U. Superb beyond my mere words, this exhibit was one memory after another. As I got to this screen on my first man:

In this game:

I knew my visit to the ~~boooooring~~ Museum of Civilization was one I’d probably remember forever 🙂

Oh yes, and later in the day we saw this:

Gotta run! Fireworks 🙂

Retro Gamer

July 17, 2013

This is an arcade system from 1982 called the Vectrex:

Specifically, the above is KLS’s Vectrex, purchased during the fire sales of 1983 that followed the crash of the video game industry. About 1X years ago, I found the above in an attic at her parents house and ferretted it away into our attic, where it now lives. We have the system (which still works!), one controller and about a dozen games including the screen overlays and the manuals.

Here’s an example of a manual for one of the games:

Last week, when KLS’s parents were in town, I got the Vectrex out for a tournament. The rules were simple: KLS, JBF and myself would play each game precisely once. The highest score in each game got a point, and the most points won. We started with the inbuilt game, Mine Storm:

That’s me playing like a pro, sans overlay. The raster works perfectly and it still looks breathtaking. This is rare in devices of this nature that are 30 years old like ours is, so the dry darkness of our attic seems to be a good environment for it!

Other games followed: Berserk, Cosmic Crash, Spike (with voice!). Here’s some shots of the action:

You can see the overlays – which are transparent plastic – add colour to the black and white raster.

We also had several games that we couldn’t get working at all, probably due to the contacts being hosed. I suppose if I spent time cleaning them I may have seen more success, but we skipped them and focused on the games that worked. After JBF left I also managed to get another game – Fortress of Narzod – working, so KLS and I played that one as well. Here’s a shot of her scoring big!

And so… the final score!

Rather than spell it out here, I’ll just show you the score card itself:

Yes my friends, even if we ignore Spike (which bugged out and inflated her score for no reason), she still won every game but one, beating both myself and Jim quite handily. Who knew she was an expert retro gamer?! 🙂

Robot Claw