Adam’s Armchair Empire interview.

Universe at War: Earth Assault Post Mortem Q&A

“So in the end, you could look at the transition of RTS from PC to console as “dumbing down” of the genre, but really that’s completely inaccurate. The evolution of RTS from PC to console is all about re-discovering the core fun of the genre while stripping away the redundancy, over-complication, and bloat that has been attaching itself to RTS games over the years. If anything, I’m glad that console is becoming dominant for gaming because it’s going to force some evolution on a genre that has been fairly static for quite some time. We need to grow the RTS market and bring in new players, not isolate it further into eventual niche obscurity.”

Oops.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Norwegian Seed Vault Opens

Norway does some pretty cool things.

“The is our insurance policy,” Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates at the opening ceremony. “It is the Noah’s Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations.”

More on the Clark County Dem Convention

I’ve got a whole slew of stuff from the day captured on audio, but others have done better and provided some actual video. This makes me happy, now all I’ve gotta do is write up a few words and toss out links versus spending the evening cleaning up sound files. Hurray internet!

Update: Eh whatever, it was easy, added a few audio files to the post.

So, in roughly chronological order…

From PolitickerNV, here’s Bill Stanley attempting to recess the convention due to the chaos of the day. At this time, the crowd didn’t exactly care for the idea.

I’ve uploaded audio of the whole exchange:

Somewhere in the middle of things, Al Franken gave his speech.

I missed the first few seconds where he quipped about how none of the day’s events were his fault, but the rest is there. It was a good speech, and I wish him the best of luck in Minnesota.

Next came the motion to caucus, which went slightly better:

Franky sent over his video of Billy Vassiliadis addressing the Obama campaign gathering (where I was located) after the two camps decided to split up and figure out a way to resolve the day’s mess:

As you can see, this time around the same proposal to recess had an ultimately favorable reaction. The two campaigns regrouped in the main hall, the motion passed, and everyone went home, shaking their heads.

More from PolitickerNV:
Pandemonium! The 2008 Clark County Democratic Convention

And here’s the RJ take on things:
COUNTY CONVENTION: Chaos delays Democratic vote

Clark County Democratic Convention

Been a crazy day so far, six hours into it. Updating the interesting bits on twitter as the day progresses.

Vintage Computer Cables

I stumbled across the NKC Electronics ebay store via a post on the AtariAge forums, and purchased an S-Video cable for the Atari 800 so I could plug it into the tv in my office. Wow. The difference compared to RF is amazing:

(as seen on the tv in the Petroglyph lobby, it may not look it but the edges are crisp and the colors clean. Thanks for the lovely orange, iPhone)

If you’ve got an old Atari (or one of the handful of other computers/consoles he supplies for) that you’ve considered blowing the dust off of and plugging in, I recommend his stuff. Sent a couple questions that he replied to promptly, and I had the cable in hand within three days. RECOMMENDED WILL BUY AGAIN A+++++!!

Getting Political.

Huh, looks like I’m gonna be a delegate at the Clark County Democratic Convention this weekend, taking place at Bally’s with a keynote by Al Franken. Should be an interesting experience.

Also, Lessig ‘08 - Change Congress. Run Lawrence, run!

Games we play, music we make.

Not much on their homepage aside from the above video, but here it is for safe keeping.

The guy on the iPhone is using the just-released iAno, by mister.aardvark. iAno features a complete keyboard (you can navigate up and down octaves using the buttons above the keys) and the ability to play chords thanks to the multitouch capability of the iPhone.

The 2nd iPhone player is using PocketGuitar, another recently developed app.

The DS is running Electroplankton in performance mode, with the plankton of choice being the Luminaria, little guys that follow a user-defined path on a grid (you can see him set up the paths at the beginning of the above video).

Bah, as I was finishing this up, I noticed that the instruments were listed on the gizmodo post that started the whole thing. Oh well, figuring em out was still fun.

Bestest evars.

For the record, my Personal Top 20 Games, from the F13 thread that didn’t become an article.

1. Warlords - Atari - Atari 2600 - 1981
2. Star Raiders - Atari - Atari 8-bit - 1979
3. Mail Order Monsters - Electronic Arts, Inc - Atari 8-bit - 1986
4. Eastern Front 1941 - Atari - Atari 8-bit - 1982
5. Archon: The Light and the Dark - Free Fall Assoc - Atari 8-bit - 1983
6. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar - ORIGIN Systems, Inc - Atari 8-bit - 1986
7. TRON - Bally Midway - Arcade - 1982
8. Sinistar - Williams - Arcade - 1982
9. Cyberball - Atari Games - Arcade - 1988
10. The Ninja Warriors - Taito - Arcade - 1988
11. Herzog Zwei - TecnoSoft - Genesis - 1990
12. Space Empire Elite - Jon Radoff - Atari ST BBS - ?
13. Warlords - SSG Strategic Studies Group Pty Ltd. - Amiga - 1990
14. Myth: The Fallen Lords - Bungie Software Products - Mac- 1997
15. Fallout - Interplay Productions - Mac - 1997
16. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos - Blizzard Entertainment - Mac - 2002
17. Halo: Combat Evolved - Bungie Studios - Xbox - 2001
18. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem - Silicon Knights - GC - 2002
19. EverQuest - 989 Studios - Windows - 1999
20. Starcraft - Blizzard Entertainment - Windows - 1998

No particular order, generally grouped by system…these are all games that at one time or another really struck a nerve. Due to the improving effects of nostalgia and my impressionable youth, most of the titles are from the old days. Sorry Madden ‘93, no room for you.

It’s alive.

1 hour after watering:

6 hours after watering: