Category: general

Some things I’ve scanned and uploaded to Archive.org

I’ve been trying to keep somewhat productive during the pandemic (until my gallbladder started acting up but I’m fine now). Rather than writing or researching, I did something easier: scanning in stuff and uploading it to archive.org. I’ve mostly scanned in posters that came with issues of Edge magazine. I don’t know if they still do these but for several years they would do wall calendars that had Nintendo themes on them. I’ve scanned in all the Edge posters so now I’m starting to scan in a few other things (and I may have uploaded some pdfs that I didn’t scan).

So if anyone has any interest in them, here they are: https://archive.org/details/@jccalhoun

E-sports in odd places

The other day I was at work waiting on the microwave to finish and glanced over at the recycling bin and noticed an issue of Ed Tech magazine. Now I had never heard of this magazine but the cover caught my eye:

An article on how a college IT staff can help launch an esports team. I had to grab it out of recycling and make a copy of it.

So, in violation of all sorts of copyright, here is the article:

The article ends with a link to their website where they have a whitepaper on esports.

I don’t even pirate any more

Back in the day I used to pirate a decent number of games but I don’t any more. It isn’t because I turned over a new leaf or stopped playing games. No, it is because I have so many free games that I can’t play them all. Between freebies that places like Humblebundle, Steam, and GoG give away from time to time and Twitch giving away games every month, I just don’t bother pirating games.

I used to either pirate a game or just wait until it was on sale but now I just play the free games or the same old games like Overwatch or even Civ V.

So maybe the solution to piracy isn’t DRM which only serves to inconvenience people who actually buy the game. Maybe the solution is just to give away so many games that you can’t play them all? I mean that might not work well for their bottom line but it has certainly has minimized my piracy…

Still alive

I was taking care of some spam and thought I would post to prove I am still alive. I’m teaching at a community college and I’m trying to decide where I want to go with my professional life. I’m working on a couple things that I hope to get out in the next month or so.

September 2017 update post! woooo

Long time without posting. You know, life gets in the way.

Teaching, trying to revise a paper only to have it end up rejected…. playing games, trying to find a full time job.

Been trying to play Overwatch but my internet has been really laggy lately so that doesn’t work too well.

Playing through The Witcher 3 now that I have a good computer. Like it a lot (I”m through the main game and now I’m doing the DLC). However, at times I do find myself wishing it there was some Assassin’s Creed-style running across rooftops. In games like these I always feel weird going into an NCP’s house and stealing stuff as they stand there. I know some games have had things where the NCPs react to it (and there are times in Witcher 3 where guards will attack you for stealing) but I wish it was more common. Maybe at some point we will get a game where some of these “gamey” limitations are gone. It would change how the game is played for sure but it would still be an interesting game to play.

What I’m playing november 2016

I’ve been busy teaching so I haven’t done much blogging but I have managed to play some games. I thought I would post what I’m playing as a way to get a new post on here to prove this site isn’t dead – if only to myself.

1. Paladins – people say it is an Overwatch clone but I wouldn’t know because I haven’t bought Overwatch. From what I’ve seen Overwatch seems like Team Fortress 2.5 anyway – shots fired! Overwatch is entertaining enough. It is free to play so it has that going for it. It is in beta so they keep changing things which is kind of interesting to observe.

2. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker – I have never been that big of a Nintendo fan. I had an NES but never an SNES. I got an N64 several years after it was out and never had a Gamecube. Now that the Wii U is nearly dead I decided to buy a Wii and softmod it. So I’ve started playing through the gamecube games I’ve missed. Wind Waker is the first one. I think the only other Zelda game I ever played was Link to the Past that a guy in the dorm in college had on his SNES so it has been an interesting experience. I’m currently at the part where you gether the triforce. It is getting a little tedious so I might give up on it.

3. Alien: Isolation – I heard a lot of praise for this so I was looking forward to it. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. The gameplay seems really straight forward and I don’t like the mini cut scenes that pop up or the pre-scripted story elements. Avoiding the Alien and other things can be quite tense but after it keeps coming back it gets monotonous (or tedious? I guess I should look up the difference between those! Hmmm… well this isn’t any help: “As adjectives the difference between monotonous and tedious is that monotonous is having an unvarying tone or pitch while tedious is boring, monotonous, time consuming, wearisome.” Merriam Webster states that monotonous means “used to describe something that is boring because it is always the same” while tedious is “boring and too slow or long.” So I guess I feel Wind Waker is becoming tedious while Alien: Isolation is becoming monotonous? One think I do know is that this post is becoming tedious!)

4. Candy Crush Soda – I guess it says something about my own perception of what counts as a “real game” that I didn’t originally think to include this or the other android games I play. I was playing Pokemon GO but they banned rooted phones so I can’t play any more. I would like to play Inkle’s Sorcery 4 but I know I would get too into it. Maybe over Thanksgiving. I’ve been thinking about how to use their Inkle Writer in my classes as a way to have students make games that revolve around a theme in the course. It looks more plug and play than twine. I don’t know that I’ve figured out what to use it for tough.

Analog keyboard may become a real thing?

I meant to post this a while ago but I never got around to it until now (when I’m procrastinating instead of dealing with the stress of actually submitting a paper to a journal).

A little over a year ago I posted my idea for an analog keyboard. Well, I ran across a post on PCPerspective about a kickstarter for an analog keyboard. I’m poor so I didn’t back it. And I generally stay away from kickstarting hardware.

More interesting is that I wasn’t exactly the first person to have the idea for an analog keyboard (not that I really thought I was). As it turns out, back in 2012 the Ben Heck Show made their own analog keyboard and in the video they show it working basically how I thought it would:

Analog WASD Gaming Keyboard – The Ben Heck Show by BenHeckShow

Maybe some day one of these will actually be available in stores. Now we just need rumble mice…

Old Wolfenstein 3D review

i ran across this review of Wolfenstein 3-D from the November 1992 issue of PCGames magazine and thought it was interesting enough to share.

Gaming in the Penthouse?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a digital hoarder. One of the things I hoard is pdfs of gaming magazines. There are a few sites out there that post gaming magazines but, of course, they don’t just post gaming magazines. They post all kinds of magazines. Sometimes I will stray away from the gaming mags section into the front page of the site and skim through to see if there are any other magazines that look interesting.

I was doing that recently when I saw this image:

I thought it was interesting that Penthouse would have a picture of the torso of a woman with a Nintendo Game and Watch covering her vagina so I downloaded the pdf — yes I downloaded it for the articles, really!

The “article” is just a few pages of a woman in progressively fewer clothes with some vintage and modern gaming stuff and some text explaining what the gaming stuff is. Oddly, although they credit the photographer, the source of the gaming stuff, and the clothing company, they don’t seem to state the woman’s name. Keep it classy, Penthouse…

In this same issue there is also a one page article on current games but, to make things more interesting, it doesn’t seem like having videogames in Penthouse is a one-time thing because the site where I downloaded the pdf lists recent issues of the magazine and I noticed that this was the previous month’s cover which has a story “Professional Gamers are Making More Than You”:

The article is only one page with a half page picture from what looks like The International or some other DotA 2 tournament and 5 paragraphs of text.

So is this a trend within Penthouse or just a coincidence? It would be interesting if Penthouse was trying to attract a gamer market. Other magazines have tried to mix objectification of women with gaming but haven’t really stuck around. What will be next? Mincraft porn?

(I’m afraid to search for that because I’m afraid it already exists…)

Old LAN Party article from PCXL

I’m kind of a digital hoarder and one of the things I like to hoard is old gaming magazines for that mythical day in the future when I will need them. So I make it a habit to check out sites like Retro Mags and Old Game Mags. I’ve recently came across marktrade who is posting his scans on archive.org and while looking through his uploads I came across an article from the November 1998 issue of PCXL about LAN parties. I thought I would post the relevant pages here in case anyone else was interested:

PCXL_03_00035 PCXL_03_00038 PCXL_03_00039