At the end of July, the whole family spent 4 days on Cape Cod. I managed to squeeze in a bit of kite flying with one of our daughters. She’s flying her Uncle Christopher’s shark kite, and I’m flying a brand new parafoil 5. You might not be able to tell, but she got it …
Category Archives: Amusements
Boxer & Pro Pinball: Big Race
I’ve been getting some older games working again courtesy of Boxer. Boxer allows modern Macs to run games from the DOS era with a minimum of fuss. I happen to have a few programs left over from that era since some mac games included the DOS versions, and some I just bought for my (infrequent) …
Best product of CES 2011
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is over. Sadly it was not the latest and greatest technological innovation that caught my eye amongst all of the product announcements. It was an April Fool’s Joke. Specifically, it was yet another joke product from the minds of the screaming monkeys at thinkgeek.com. Every year for April Fool’s day …
Erector/Meccano sets
With the youngest munchkin showing a distinct interest in tools and building things we picked up a couple of erector sets at the store this weekend. We picked up a set for the kid, and since I had never had Erector sets before one for me as well. I won’t know about smaller set until …
Reading List
I just finished American Gods (for 1 Book, 1 Twitter #1b1t). Pretty good, better than my previous read; which was The Dream of Perpetual Motion. That book started out well enough, but I think the author either didn’t have a satisfactory ending planned, or needed serious editorial input. It followed the typical not ready feel …
RobotWar
This 10 top list of computer games includes an honorable mention for RobotWar. I actually discovered RobotWar when my friend Steve Green created a version for X11. While we had a great time coding robots I think the most interesting things was figuring out how Silas Warner managed to program it on an Apple ][. …
Vintage Star Wars Posters
I ran across these while looking around Zazzle last night, and frankly I just had to order one. Modified from vintage WPA travel posters of the 30’s, these Star Wars posters just hit too many pressure points for me not to love them. I ordered the Hoth version, but really both are great. I’m not …
Internet TV convergence?
I’m considering getting something that will bring more media from our computers to our TV. There are a couple obvious choices (Apple TV, TiVo Premiere, etc), but I’m looking for suggestions. We already have an Xbox 360 attached to the TV, but I’m not particularly interested in getting deeply into the Zune Marketplace. If the …
Diversions: Gravity Hook
From the people who brought us “Canabalt“, there’s now Gravity Hook HD. It’s only available online at the moment, but it’s coming soon for the iPhone. I’m already kinda into it. It’s not Canabalt, but it’s still pretty fun. Like Doodle Jump with different mechanics.
Quick Pinball Fix
I took Anne’s advice (after much hand-wringing trying to get Virtual Pinmame working), and purchased Williams Pinball Hall of Fame (for the XBox 360). Mostly, I got this one (as opposed to the Gottlieb version) because it has two of my all time favorite pinball machine in it: Funhouse and Medieval Madness. I have to …