Otaku No Zoku

The past month or two I’ve received e-mails from law students working on various EFF patent busting cases. The first one was dealing with a computerised version of Solitaire granted in 1995, which is completely absurd as I shipped at least three solitaire games in the very early 1980’s for the Acorn Atom and ZX 81. I even have an old code listing from a magazine that is dated 1981. Thomas Warfield, author of Pretty Good Solitaire has more information and a better perspective on the details.

The latest patent is regarding the game of blackjack, specifically blackjack played online. This one was granted in 1997 but the EFF is seeking examples since before January 1995.

Tricky. I didn’t work on any online blackjack games until the end of 1995.

However, I do remember playing blackjack with a group of friends in real-time on various bulletin board systems spread all over the place. These blackjack games were homed on either single BBS servers with multiple telephone lines or multiple servers connected via regular old dial up modem in the pre-Internet days.

I’m sure that some of the students enquiring about online blackjack have performed many fruitless Google searches looking for details. But the information is all there, you just gotta know how to say it.

Just ask about “BBS Doors” and watch Google throw back thousands of hits on various blackjack BBS doors going as far back as the Tandy TRS-80 and Commodore 64.

If you want to stretch the definition of “online” all the way to the boundaries of its actual meaning you can even include “online” blackjack for the PDP-10 & PDP-11, the Perkin Elmer mini computer running UNIX and many other mini-computer & mainframe variants. I understand that the PDP-11 version dates from around 1973.

Absurd.

Just absurd.

Ugh! I hate intractable yak shaving problems. Today’s was just pitiful. Luckily I can dodge most of them, but there is always one that has my name on it…

So today I had the classic Yak Shaving problem. I encounter about one intractable Yak per week that just makes me blow my top and vent steam for about 10 minutes. My cats are beginning to recognise this behaviour pattern and hide under the couch until it passes.

My room-mate, Sharan, has a piece of homework she wants help with.

So Sharan starts up Visual Studio on her laptop and Visual Assist performs a scan of the local network and finds that the registration key it is installed with is already in use on my workstation in the other room and refuses to start. I have multiple Visual Assist keys so it must be that she inadvertently installed a key that was already in use.

So my room-mate asks me what the problem is and I tell her, and that she should use another key and it’s stored in the archive on the file server.

When she looks there is only one key listed there. I remember I put the newly purchased keys on the company wiki so I tell her to look there.

But she doesn’t have an account to the company intranet but she does have access to the company file server. So I have to add her details to the intranet server. This requires me to log in to the intranet.

But I’m logging in from my laptop which I just re-installed the OS on and I can’t remember my intranet password. I try all of my default passwords but none seem to work.

So I have to log in to the intranet server via windows terminal services to recover my intranet password before I can add my room-mate’s details to the intranet server.

But the intranet server is reporting that no terminal server client access licenses are available.

So I have to physically go to the intranet server and log in as the administrator to find out why the terminal server licence manager isn’t issuing licenses properly.

Which requires me to log on to MSDN on Microsoft’s website to read a help file, but that username & password are stored in the backup on the file server which I haven’t restored to my laptop yet.

But the information is also contained in the MSDN on CD.

But I don’t have the complete library installed.

So I have to install that.

But first I have to locate the proper disc in the MSDN box.

So I install the proper MSDN Library disc and I read the help file and log in to the file server at the console to flip the bit that switches on the Terminal License Server that lets me return to my workstation to log in via Remote Terminal to reset my intranet password to something I can remember to let me log in to the intranet to add Sharan’s details to the intranet to let her access the company wiki to retrieve another Visual Assist license key to enable her to do her homework.

I’m reminded of the nursery song “There was an old woman who swallowed a fly…”

The IGDA hosted a presentation by Initiative Media on Media Opportunities in Game Development at the Art Institute of Santa Monica. I was there, with my remarkable photography skills to capture the presentation.

On Thursday, March 3rd, the IGDA Los Angeles chapter hosted a presentation by Lucas and Yousaf of Initiative Media entitled “Media Opportunities for Game Development.”

Unfortunately due to some last minute cancellations the panel discussion on in-game advertising did not occur as planned.

I was there, again armed with my camera (and a tripod), to film whatever I could. I am getting better at this stuff. I did realise after a minute of recording that the camera was pointing at the wrong guy (too busy messing about with my Canon SLR to think about the Sony DV).

DOWNLOAD

Click here for the video (WMV) of the IGDA Media Opportunities in Game Development.

Warning: This video is 32MB in length and runs for approximately 32 minutes. I suggest you download to your local computer before attempting to play the video.

The IGDA held a panel discussion covering Quality of Life within the games industry and what we, as developers, can do about the perceived problems that the industry is facing. I was there with my video camera (unfortunately for you people) and managed to capture almost the entire event.

Wednesday, 9th of February the IGDA Los Angeles chapter held a Quality of Life discussion, kindly hosted by Tim Langdell & USC. The meeting was well attended with a large mix of students and professionals taking part in the discussion. Main speakers were Tom Sloper and Jeff Lander, with additional contributions by Jim Charne and myself. Other people contributed during the discussion but I didn’t get everyone’s names.

The video quality isn’t great. Various reasons. I could not locate the shoe for my tripod so I had no way of setting up my video camera properly. The camera wound up balanced on top of a computer monitor. There’s a lot of the tops of people’s heads in the frame. As we all know, cameras and I do not get on well together.

No matter which side of the lens I happen to be on.

I’ve posted the video as a link here for those interested in reviewing it. Jason DeLaRoca (I hope I spelt his name correctly) will be speaking about this subject at Game Developers Conference 2005, March 7th to 11th in San Francisco.

Just in case you aren’t aware, there will be another IGDA Los Angeles gathering this Thursday, the 3rd of March, at the Art Institute in Santa Monica in the “big room.” Initiative Media will be giving a presentation on Media Opportunities for Game Development. There will also be a panel discussion on in-game advertising.

The Art Institute, Santa Monica is located at 2900 31st Street, Santa Monica, CA 90405. The meeting is scheduled for 6:30PM. Prior to the main meeting there will be a short talk given by a member the Art Institute that you are invited to attend.

You do not have to be either an Art Institute student or an IGDA member to attend this meeting. Attendance is free and there is ample parking (street parking is best as it is free.)

DOWNLOAD

Click here for the video (WMV) of the IGDA Quality of Life discussion.

Warning: This video is 95MB in length and runs for approximately one hour & thirty minutes. I suggest you download to your local computer before attempting to play the video.