Always fun when I leave my Mac alone for an hour and come back to it, only to be told I don’t have permission to write to the document I’ve been working on all afternoon. (Fortunately, I could just duplicate it and didn’t lose anything. Still…)
Just heard that @CameronDavis has sadly passed away. He was a long-time games journo, who was instrumental on resurrecting Zzap!64 in 2002, for which ex-editor Gordon Houghton came back on board, and I did the art/design. Over the years, he also drew a ton of very sweet and often funny cartoons.
As ever, far too young to go. RIP, Gazunta! You will be missed.
Not even close. In that game alone, there were harder puzzles. But elsewhere in Infocom’s catalogue – and more widely in text adventures – there were tougher tests.
Where the Babel Fish puzzle got things right was through being clever, funny and absurd, and in also deviating radically from expectations. It’s as far as possible from other media, where the fish is simply put into Arthur’s ear. And so that makes it memorable. #retrogaming
“Thousands in Devon no longer have to boil drinking water, says supplier”
That’s quite the headline, in the UK. It’s amazing how our water quality has gone from being really very good to absolute shite (or, in the case of open water, literal shite) since leaving the EU.
@craiggrannell You're so right, but I think the timescale is coincidental - since privatisation is probably better starting point.
And the absolute hypocritical bullshit of Southern Water telling us in their latest adverts to save water while all the time they are polluting our beaches and chucking rain water straight into the sea and rivers.
🤖 Google AI will help you but could kill the open web
🍎 What I want to see at WWDC24
👾 RetroArch for iPhone and reporting on emulation
🖼️ Samsung’s tablet ad isn’t great either
🌐 Best iPhone browsers
🧱 Upcoming Lego sets
I see Apple Insider since ran a story on this. They should have got eBay’s PR team in the mix. And then also asked why eBay is allowing such auctions and dismissing anyone who flags them with AI replies. (I didn’t have that with this one, but I did with a recent expensive comics auction that broke eBay’s own terms in multiple ways and where the seller didn’t have the goods. I just hope that one didn’t sell too.)
Oof. It’s all going to come tumbling down. The sad thing is that while Internet Archive without doubt overreached multiple times and breached IP law countless times, it’s also doing great work in keeping media alive that would otherwise be gone, not least web pages via Wayback.
Some will doubtless see gimmickry here. But this subtle effect surely has potential benefits, in providing another visual cue regarding a tool that doesn’t exist in reality, including its orientation. Previously, just the mark was previewed. Now, the shape of the tool can be seen. It’d be interesting to hear from digital artists whether they find this useful.