Look at this beautiful video from LoadingReadyRun. It’s about how to talk like a pirate. Some background: on the 19th September is the so called “International Talk like a Pirate Day“. Maybe good to know. So don’t be surprised if you read blog postings like this or that. You can even game like a pirate and don’t we all like to remember the lovely Monkey Island? According to Wikipedia the Sims2 on the Nintendo DS also have a Pirate Day on the 19th September. I am absolutely not sure if I go with the Pirates or better choose the Ninjas.

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Small DS on big screens. Loopy made it possible and he said, that this fun only cost about 600$, but he used mostly parts from older projects. Technical details available! I’ll bet you can also drive this on two video beamers to get even more power in your hands, but using the pen on the video beamer would be more difficult.

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I still can’t hold myself, because I got in touch with the 30 year anniversary of the Homebrew Computer Club, you know, that Club that can be called responsible for the first Apple Computers that were build with Steve Wozniak as the most famous club member. I don’t want to get more into the details here, but that poster below from the Finite State Fantasies and other things that can be found on the rich archive from DigiBarn Computer Museum website are truly brilliant. So get in touch!

Poster taken from DigitBarn website. The poster was part of the Finite State Fantasies by Rich Didday.

Another interesting gameplay ahead with the game Portal. Innovative gaming seems to slowly overcome the market, although I still think that still most of the commercial games are some kind of bloodless (if you take it literally this is clearly a good thing, but on a meta level this games don’t seem to communicate much). This is very fast opinion though on Portal, in fact I did not even played Portal, but it looks very first person shooter-like, just with puzzle elements and different game mechanics. Nevertheless interesting game mechanics, though.

There are kind of demos, that are even in the demoscene very unappreciated: so called demos in “Text Mode“. Text Mode demos are derived from ASCII-art that went through mailboxes. As ASCII-art developed from building simple scenes to “simulating” graphics with ASCII also animations were build.

Picture from Wikipedia

It is very amazing to see virtual worlds and videoclips with great 3D-effects made just with colored texts and is in fact a special form of computer-based art, best described as animated ASCII art. The website TMDC (literally for Text Mode Demo Contest!) features a competition every year and they make it for ten years now. The prices last year were not that spectacular, but they are searching for new sponsors! There is also a 5 Minutes interview with Jari Komppa available who manages this competition. The TMDC X will be from 11.11.2007 – 12.12.2007.

Screenshot from Devious by Traction

For a better future I would want more awareness and better prices for Text Mode demo, that are jewels of computer-based art made within nice constrains, unveiling real demoscene power. The complete archive of the Text Mode Demo Contest is available on Pouet.net

A very lovely Amiga retro trip information site is Lemon Amiga. They not only deliver information on all Amiga models that has been release, but also come along with a cute and very well complete pixel-styled website with all informations, screenshots, scanned boxes, old advertisements, cheats, manuals, reviews and other stuff on all Amiga games. Ever stuck in an Amiga game and could not go through to the end? Then endings.lemonamiga is for you. Get your nostalgic trip now!

Second picture by Sargant.

This entry is about a very special topic on user interface design – it’s about the labeling of (volume) controls on analog and digital boxes. Ordinary volume controls are labeled with numbers just from 0 to 10, well I guess because we have ten fingers and generally live in a decimal system. Now why are there knobs going to eleven? The origin is going back to a rockumentary video made by the reality/parody band The Spinal Tap back in 1984. In this video Nigel Tufnel speaks about their Marshall amps that have a very clever feature, because all volume controls are labeled from 0 to 11. Opposed to the ordinary Guitar player who plays at the maximum volume with all controllers turned up to ten they are able to turn their amps “one more louder” – up to eleven. See the originating part of the video below.

Up to eleven became a synonym for “to the maximum level” or “taking it to the extreme” and lots of nice and interesting stories are wrapped around that parody video, that still influences the user interfaces of mostly musical gear. Read much more and a comprehensive list of 11-appearances at the Wikipedia site.

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