A recent addition to WordPress 3 is the “Admin Bar”. It allows you to view your site, and at any time skip to your dashboard, add a new post, and a plethora of other handy “Shortcuts” to places you will likely want to go after viewing your site. Initially, I hated it. I looked for, and found plugins such as “Global Hide Admin Bar” to remove it, so I didn’t have to look at it ever again. Although there are still a few sites I have the admin bar disabled on, it does remain on this site. I guess the reason is that on other sites I am the admin/creator/god, and I have no need for the options it offers, so it’s a pain when I am trying to see if my DIVS are correctly aligned. On this site however, it does come in handy when I look at a post, and realise that I have written gibberish that nobody but me could possibly understand, and I need to go back and edit my posts. Yes, I am admin/creator/god on this site, but I am primarily an editor/user, hence in this capacity the bar is slightly more appealing. My feelings towards the admin bar are definitely on a site by site basis. It depends on if I am the creator, or a user of a site. For the most part, I don’t like it, and I could go on living quiet happily without it, even though it has proved useful at times on some sites.
If you are reading my blog, there is a very good chance somebody, somewhere, looks to you as their own personal tech/web help desk. We all know people who need some help, and some need it a lot more than others. Most of the time we understand that not everybody knows everything, and we try to help. However, there are some days when you just want to tell them to “Google it and leave me alone!” – That is the g-rated family friendly version of what we actually think BTW.
For those days when you just want that person to evaporate before your very eyes, there is a really cool way you can point them towards the answer in a not so subtle way, that is sure to get the message across – Let Me Google That For You. The sites description says:
For all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves.
Last week I was asked “How do I re-size my browser windows?” You can view my answer on Let Me Google That For You HERE.
There is also a page where you can view a Live Feed of all of Let Me Google That For You searches occurring in real time, giving you an idea of just how many of those people there really is.
April 1979, I remember it so well. The next 8 months were to be the most painful of my life.
The girl behind me to the right is Lana Baynon – she was my first kiss!
She kissed me and I had no idea what she was doing. I really wanted her to do it again, but she never did.
After relentlessly pestering my parents for my very own Atari 2600, they caved in and said I could have one for Christmas…….8 months away. Now, this is where the story gets cruel. My parents were the most horrible people in the world to me and did something, that words just can’t describe. They went and bought it a day or two later, and made sure I saw them bring it home, and into the house. Then, they hid it until Christmas time. How could these people, my parents, be SO cruel to me. Just knowing it was in the house was a torture beyond comprehension. The anguish and mental trauma I endured would damage me forever. There was nothing I could do, but count the days. This actually made it worse. At any time I could tell you the amount of days remaining in my sentence. I was trying so hard to forget about it. I was trying hard not to count. Being aware of how long I had to wait seemed to slow everything down.
Eventually, the big day arrived. December 25, 1979. I walked into the loungeroom on Christmas morning, and there it was. I could see it, I could touch it, I could take it out of the box, but dad had to wire it in to the Rank Arena color tv, because I wasn’t allowed behind it. I got one game with it. Defender.
httpv://youtu.be/sFa5Lgu11DE
Now, you would think this was a welcome relief from 8 months of pure agony. To a point, it was. This is where family tradition became a factor. Dad took his sweet time wiring it in, and I got to play Defender for about 30 mins, before the command to “Shut it down” came. We had to go to my grandparents place, because that’s just what you have to do on Christmas day! I was like a freaking bomb ready to explode. 8 Months of pure suffering, a 30 minute tease, and then of to the grandparents place for the rest of the day, where they could pull my cheek, and rub my hair, and ooh and ahh over how big I had gotten.
Let your imagine run wild, and visual as far as your mind will allow, just how pissed off I was! Got it? Multiply that by 1000, and you may be in the same state as the ball park! I was ready to murder!
In time I did to get to use my new Atari 2600. I loved it so much. Mum would come and tell me to turn it off, and go outside and ride my bike and get fresh air. “What on earth would I want to do that for?”. She was as relentless in this instance as I was about the purchase of the device. She made it on to “My List” with this behavior. She was marked. I had my eye on her!
To repay my inhumanely cruel parents for the 8 months of brutality, I set about acquiring game cartridges. The “Defender” game was stupid now. I’d played it thousands of times. That was the beauty of the 2600. Unlike the Hanimex unit, which had four different games built in, the Atari was limitless. There were dozens of game cartridges available for purchase. And I made sure my parents had no doubt as to which ones I needed. It wasn’t “want”, it was “NEED”. The first on the list was “Indy 500”. A car racing game, that also came with new controllers. In place of the “Joystick”, Indy 500 required “Paddles”. These were similar to the controls of the Hanimex game console.
httpv://youtu.be/LBu4UmPVNeY
The new year was called 1980. The 80’s were here! More happier about that I could not be, nor have I been since. The 80’s were “The Days”. So much cool stuff happened in the 80’s.
After my brother enjoyed punishing me for a year or so on the Hanimex game console, We noted new, better, color games appearing. These units were at the local milk-bar. The first table I recall was Space Invaders. It was 20c to play, and you got 3 “lifes”.
It was a gigantic leap forward from the pinball machines we were playing previously. There was also another game table out at that time, some yellow thing called PacMan that ate stuff. It was not anywhere as near as cool as shooting aliens though!
httpv://youtu.be/DHaQ3XSyaXk
The fire in me was well and truly lit. I was hooked. Video games were the greatest things in the world to me. In 1978 I heard about a new game console called Atari.
I started seeing them in the mail out catalogs from K-Mart. The games looked great! The first time I saw one in the flesh was my cousin….again. We played “Combat”. We each had a tank, and the object of the game was to shoot each other, which I thought was awesome. Because I had never played one before, and he owned the unit, he too took great enjoyment at thrashing me. I didn’t mind though. This was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Because it was hooked up to their color TV, this one really was in color.
httpv://youtu.be/4Ri37_KhsRw
This was the beginning of the golden age of video games for me, and the beginning of a very long and enjoyable relationship with the Atari 2600.
I am writing this article using a dual quad core Intel Zeon Mac Pro – this thing has 8x 3.2 Ghz processors. 10 Gigs of Ram, 2 Terrabytes of Hard drive, with a 30″ Cinema display, and I LOVE IT! I also have a new Macbook Pro, it too has mind blowing specifications. 4 Gigs of Ram, 500 Gig hard drive, Quad core Intel chip, but only 4x 3.2Ghz Processors.
And here’s Sir Stevie with the 30″ monitor – IT’s HUGE!
But last night I got to thinking, it wasn’t always like this………………….
(insert picture/video of the screen blurring, and imagine we are going through a time warp back to 1977……..seriously…..)
Ah yes – I remember it well! 1977 – I was six years old!
Bet you can’t guess which one is me…….well…..maybe the red circle gives it away. The teacher was Miss O’Hara, such a long time ago! My father was a fireman back then, and one night he came home with a really weird looking cardboard box – It looked a lot like this:
I had NO idea what a “Electronic TV Game” was. I do find it interesting now looking back that the box says “COLOR”. Color what? Colored box?
My first memories of television were in black and white – It was a HMV set – His Masters Voice – The dog looking into the funnel thing. I cant find a pic of anything close, but the closest I can find is this:
Our TV had two BIG ROUND dials, and it required considerable force to turn them to change the channel. Clunk Clunk Clunk, with each channel number you would pass. I remember Mum getting SO cranky when we played with the brightness and contrast buttons. Dad would take of his belt if we went around the back and twisted the horizontal and vertical hold dials. I was never sure why the dog was looking at the funnel:
But now, I expect the dog was thinking “Where the heck is that noise coming from”. I also understand why they didn’t have a Labrador, because that funnel would be bent, broken, chewed……hehehe:)
Colour TV happened in 1978 for the us. Dad bought it from Don Gard’s in Liverpool. Again, I cant find a pic of the set, but it looked a lot like this:
As cool as we were in 78 with our Rank Arena colour TV, in 77 we had the HMV Black and White. Now, when we opened that “Electronic TV Game” box, we saw a space-age plastic and silicon anomaly from the future – what on earth is this?
I give dad credit for buying this, but in our part of the world, I expect the gun was a “add on”, and he didn’t buy it. I found out later that my cousins had the gun, and more pissed off about it I could not be, but I will save that anger for another day. Anyways, My sister had no interest in this, because she was 16, and this was a kiddie toy. My brother was interested, and if it was good enough for him, it was a gift from god to me. My brother was a master of the universe to me. So once we plugged it in and turned it on, he took great pleasure in pulverising me at squash, tennis, hockey, and whatever the other game was, that we couldn’t play because we didn’t have the gun.
My brother and I waged war on each other, and he always won! I didn’t care though, my older brother who always hated me for hanging around all of a sudden found a use for me. This was not only my introduction to technology, this was pretty much THE introduction of “technology”. Life was pretty simple back then. This device was the dawning of not only a new era, but a new way of life.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you “TENNIS”, on the Hanimex game console circa 1977!
During construction of this site, I have viewed it on Firefox on both Mac and Windows, and Safari on the Mac, and it looks great! For some reason, I just fired up Windows to check it out on Internet Explorer…….
The last thing I expected was to see this:
Why is it that the dominant web browser interprets web site code differently to every other browser? Who’s right and who’s wrong?
If you are viewing this site with IE, I apologise, and will try to sort this out soon.
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A recent addition to WordPress 3 is the “Admin Bar”. It allows you to view your site, and at any time skip to your dashboard, add a new post, and a plethora of other handy “Shortcuts” to places you will likely want to go after viewing your site. Initially, I hated it. I looked for, and found plugins such as “Global Hide Admin Bar” to remove it, so I didn’t have to look at it ever again. Although there are still a few sites I have the admin bar disabled on, it does remain on this site. I guess the reason is that on other sites I am the admin/creator/god, and I have no need for the options it offers, so it’s a pain when I am trying to see if my DIVS are correctly aligned. On this site however, it does come in handy when I look at a post, and realise that I have written gibberish that nobody but me could possibly understand, and I need to go back and edit my posts. Yes, I am admin/creator/god on this site, but I am primarily an editor/user, hence in this capacity the bar is slightly more appealing. My feelings towards the admin bar are definitely on a site by site basis. It depends on if I am the creator, or a user of a site. For the most part, I don’t like it, and I could go on living quiet happily without it, even though it has proved useful at times on some sites.
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httpv://youtu.be/28lv3K0pje0
