Tag: Photo

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When “We Remove Vista” Becomes a Selling Point

Here’s a sign displayed in the window of A&D Computer in Milford, New Hampshire:

Sign in a Seattle computer store window: “We remove Vista / We install XP”

Here’s the relevant excerpt from Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog:

Shop manager Aaron Kaplan said they were prompted to put it up because so many people were having problems with Windows Vista, including compatibility issues with older software and trouble adjusting to the interface.

“A lot of people didn’t like using Vista, and a lot of the manufacturers forced people to go up to Vista,” he said.

What was the demand for the service? “We had a lot of people coming in and asking about it,” Kaplan said. “Of all the signs we put up there the last two years, at least, we probably got the most response out of that one. A lot of people coming in.”

Kaplan said they’ve since replaced it with a different message, but they’re thinking about putting the Vista removal message back up.

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“Bioshock” Meets a Shopping Cart

I love this Photoshop job in which Rapture (the setting of the game BioShock) propaganda replaces the standard “Do not leave child unattended” message on grocery shopping carts:

Grocery shopping cart plastic thingy marked “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”

The line is derived from the philosophy of game character Andrew Ryan (whose name and backstory are rearrangements of Ayn Rand). You hear it in an in-game recording in Ryan’s own voice:

I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor.

No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God.

No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible.

I chose…Rapture.

A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.

If you’re looking for a gift for someone with an XBox 360 or a PC with enough horsepower to play modern first-person shooter games, you might want to consider BioShock as a gift. It’s an excellent game that blends gaming action with a very rich backstory — quite possibly the richest since Myst. Better still, it’s can be finished in an amount of time that still lets you have a life: at the “easy” level, I finished it in a about a week, playing a couple of hours a day, and I’m a relatively casual gamer.

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The World’s Best Gamers, Circa 1982

Here’s a photo that’s just over 25 years old — taken on November 7th, 1982, it’s a Life magazine photo featuring the best players of arcade games of that era:

“Best videogame players” photo spread from “Life” magazine, 1982
Rockin’ it old school in 1982! The best videogamers of 1982 pose by the games they’ve mastered. Click the photo to see it at a larger size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

The games featured in the photo are:

For more about what happened when this photo was taken, see this article at Classic Arcade Gaming.

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Harmonix’ Pros and Cons for Making “Guitar Hero”

Here are a couple of shots from a presentation made by Harmonix founder and CEO Alex Rigopoulos in which he talks about the pros and cons they considered when trying to decide whether or not to make a guitar game:

Alex Rigopoulos on the pros and cons of making a guitar game
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

The “pro” argument is all you’d need to convince me!

Update: It looks as though Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood beat me to the punch and has even more details. Damn you, Atwoooooood!

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If You’re Happy and You Know It…

Computer monitor: “If you’re happy and you know it, syntax error!”
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

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Geekery Meets Pop Culture

A Different Kind of “Code Smell”

First, let’s look at a new ad for Axe body spray…

Axe body spray ad featuring fake code
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I think the suggestion in the ad goes double if you start pointing out what’s wrong with the code (“you == understand.this? get as an object name? Couldn’t they have hired a real programmer to write the ad copy?”).

359 is the new 555

Fictitious phone numbers on many TV shows and movies begin with the number 555, which I presume is to avoid the legal hassles that arise when people try to call those numbers (I remember that a number of people whose phone numbers were actually 867-5309 had their phones ringing day and night when Tommy Tutone’s song Jenny became a hit).

The people behind the TV show CSI: Miami probably wanted to avoid similar legal trouble in an episode where an IP address was shown onscreen. I don’t think I’d go to the trouble of portscanning some IP address I’d seen on a fiction TV show, but somewhere, out there, someone just might. Hence their invention of an IP address whose first “octet” is 359. It’s IPv4.5!

IP address displayed on a screen on the TV show “CSI”: 359.33.9.234

And finally, here’s a graphic that I whipped up for an article with links to recent articles on version control on the Tucows Developer Blog:

version_control_star_trek_style.jpg

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Nerd Culture Tidbits

I’m working on an article (working title: Walled Garden…or BEER Garden?), so here’s something to keep you amused in the meantime…

My Obsessions, Circa 1980

Gaggle of Hooters waitresses posing behind an old-school Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

The “Star Wars Trumpet” Video

Well, I can’t make a reference to Battlestar Galactica (the 80’s version) without making one to Star Wars, can I? How ’bout the video that’s making the rounds right now — this so-bad-it’s-good performance of the Star Wars theme on trumpet for the “talent” portion of an old beauty pageant?


Can’t see the video? Click here.

Remind me to tell you folks about my worst on-stage music performance ever sometime.

The description of the video on its YouTube page is as follows:

I work in TV Sports, this tape has circulated amongst our tape rooms for years, I figured it was only natural to be on YouTube. I’m of the understanding it was a statewide beauty pagaent, and Stacy is Miss Douglas County. I have no idea who she is, or if she even knew there was a talent portion of the contest.

It’s believed that the tape has origins in the Kansas City area, and I thought it was a Nebraska beauty pageant.

Obligatory Star Trek Gag

spock_massage.jpg
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.