Speak Quietly blog has a post about a Librarian game described as follows:-
Shelving books may not sound very sporty, but if you have ever wondered how fast can you shelve a cart of books, then there’s now an app for that.
Last October, my wife and I began working with a developer to create a game just for librarians. The game is called “Sheleved” and it went live last week.
The game features three different modes of play: LOC, Dewey, and Alphabetical.
Its available on the Ipod and Ipad.
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The glorious past of the ZX Spectrum
I recently recieved a £20.00 amazon token from Cilip for introducing someone. With this I bought Race for a New Game Machine, The: Creating the Chips Inside the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, The Ultimate History of Video Games, Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, Arcade Mania: The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers. I've started Race for a New Game Machine, but was so boring. I therefore started reading The Ultimate History of Video Game, which is much better, but very American orientated read.
It seems there's little been little written on the ZX Spectrum, the object that started my love of PCs and especially games. The only area of coverage of the Spectrum's history was the BBC program last year.
I was first given a computer in 1983, a ZX 81, which had 1 K of memory and an awful keyboard for gaming. To this could be added a wobbly 16k expansion pack, which often caused the machine to crash. A tape recorder and television would be required to load the game. The tape recorder had to have clean heads and be at the correct tone to load the game. The best game was Forty niner in my opinion. Due to the 16k memory, some of the games were fairly rudimentary at best.
Whilst at school my peer group had access to these relics and a few BBC computer. If you were fortunate enough, and your father was a teacher, you could perhaps take this home at the weekend and play Chuckie Egg on it.
To me, the Spectrum was a revelation. I was a teenager and this machine was what most of my peer group was using. The spectrum, not only created a buzz about the games from British companies, that seemed to be sailing a wave f a future service industry based economy. These companies included Imagine software based in Liverpool. Ultimate based in Ashby De La Zouch. Ocean software based in Manchester. Gremlin Interactive. Each one had a different platform of gaming they represented.
Ultimate, usually had the most aesthetic and colourful games. These included Atic Atac, was an arcade adventure game in a haunted house. The best arcade adventures came from them.
Ocean, often got Sega and sports games, including Match day and Daley Thompson's decathlon. Many a joystick would be broken playing these games.
Imagine was best remembered for its incredible demise which was caught on a BBC documentary.
The Spectrum boom also created British programmers who hacked games for the Spectrum and became rich as teenagers. People such as Matthew Smith who created Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. In the early 1990's he disappeared and ended in a commune in Holland.
On top of this, the Spectrum created other careers. For example a weird thing called 'game journalism', with Magazines such as Crash which was a Spectrum only magazine, and used some incredible art work by Oliver Frey. The writing was usually witty and tongue in cheek. Perfect for teenagers.
Another interesting thing about the Spectrum was the politics of the games reflected the period. For example, in 1984 Gremlin produced Wanted: Monty Mole. A mole in platform game in which character had to escape flying pickets and King Arthur [Scargill], at the height of the coal miners strike.
Another political aspect of gaming was the company Automata UK. All there games were non-violent, reflecting the still often cited claim that games create violent individuals
In 1984, with my first months wages I could afford my own Spectrum. My adventure's from now on in would always be based around a computer.
It seems there's little been little written on the ZX Spectrum, the object that started my love of PCs and especially games. The only area of coverage of the Spectrum's history was the BBC program last year.
I was first given a computer in 1983, a ZX 81, which had 1 K of memory and an awful keyboard for gaming. To this could be added a wobbly 16k expansion pack, which often caused the machine to crash. A tape recorder and television would be required to load the game. The tape recorder had to have clean heads and be at the correct tone to load the game. The best game was Forty niner in my opinion. Due to the 16k memory, some of the games were fairly rudimentary at best.
Whilst at school my peer group had access to these relics and a few BBC computer. If you were fortunate enough, and your father was a teacher, you could perhaps take this home at the weekend and play Chuckie Egg on it.
To me, the Spectrum was a revelation. I was a teenager and this machine was what most of my peer group was using. The spectrum, not only created a buzz about the games from British companies, that seemed to be sailing a wave f a future service industry based economy. These companies included Imagine software based in Liverpool. Ultimate based in Ashby De La Zouch. Ocean software based in Manchester. Gremlin Interactive. Each one had a different platform of gaming they represented.
Ultimate, usually had the most aesthetic and colourful games. These included Atic Atac, was an arcade adventure game in a haunted house. The best arcade adventures came from them.
Ocean, often got Sega and sports games, including Match day and Daley Thompson's decathlon. Many a joystick would be broken playing these games.
Imagine was best remembered for its incredible demise which was caught on a BBC documentary.
The Spectrum boom also created British programmers who hacked games for the Spectrum and became rich as teenagers. People such as Matthew Smith who created Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. In the early 1990's he disappeared and ended in a commune in Holland.
On top of this, the Spectrum created other careers. For example a weird thing called 'game journalism', with Magazines such as Crash which was a Spectrum only magazine, and used some incredible art work by Oliver Frey. The writing was usually witty and tongue in cheek. Perfect for teenagers.
Another interesting thing about the Spectrum was the politics of the games reflected the period. For example, in 1984 Gremlin produced Wanted: Monty Mole. A mole in platform game in which character had to escape flying pickets and King Arthur [Scargill], at the height of the coal miners strike.
Another political aspect of gaming was the company Automata UK. All there games were non-violent, reflecting the still often cited claim that games create violent individuals
In 1984, with my first months wages I could afford my own Spectrum. My adventure's from now on in would always be based around a computer.
Friday, July 02, 2010
The Library got game.....
(Found via here). University of Illinois:-
will finish archiving over a dozen famous computer games, then step back to consider where to go next with their project. These programs go back over four decades, and include a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT's Spacewar! circa 1962.
We wondered, given the gaming nature of most of the software being preserved, why the venture is calling itself the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. So we called up the project's coordinator, Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, to ask him about the name.
According to the article here.
Great job if you can get it ;)
will finish archiving over a dozen famous computer games, then step back to consider where to go next with their project. These programs go back over four decades, and include a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT's Spacewar! circa 1962.
We wondered, given the gaming nature of most of the software being preserved, why the venture is calling itself the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. So we called up the project's coordinator, Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, to ask him about the name.
According to the article here.
Great job if you can get it ;)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Micromen review
Having the good fortune to have a day off from work, I had the opportunity to watch Micro Men, which I had mentioned last week. The programme looked at the early 1980's rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair Spectrum computer and his former work colleague Chris Curry and his Acorn computers.
The programme is around an hour and half long, showing there declining relationship, there building new companies and empires, and in the British computing industry getting the most important contract of the early 1980's. This was the BBC computer literacy project. This was designed with an emphasis on education it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system. Acorn won this competition in 1981 and with it, the computer was used on The Computer Programme.
In the next few years we see how fruitful the 2 companies become. Acorn, the programmers toy of choice, whilst the Spectrum is the gamers choice. But both are dissatisfied with there lot, as they want a share of each others market. When the fade of 1984 comes in, as computer aficionado's we know the computing world would never be the same.
Both colleagues take wrong turns, Curry with the doomed electron and Sir Clive's QL. When they finally meet for a drink Curry says 'If we joined together we could have taken on IBM.' Back then, as a teenager it felt like it could have happened.
I do feel this area is rarely covered by social and computer historians. In the 1980's we had great games like Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy by Matthew Smith, who made a fortune and disappeared to commune in Holland. Gaming companies like Imagine Software, who climbed great heights and went belly up before our eyes in a BBC documentary. Very few books have been written on this era excluding one on the Spectrum and a Chapter on the Game Elite (originally made for the BBC and then transported to the Spectrum). Its a shame really.
In all it is a melancholy trip down memory lane, of when we were young, were full of dreams and could take on the world. How middle age makes fools of us all.
The programme is around an hour and half long, showing there declining relationship, there building new companies and empires, and in the British computing industry getting the most important contract of the early 1980's. This was the BBC computer literacy project. This was designed with an emphasis on education it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system. Acorn won this competition in 1981 and with it, the computer was used on The Computer Programme.
In the next few years we see how fruitful the 2 companies become. Acorn, the programmers toy of choice, whilst the Spectrum is the gamers choice. But both are dissatisfied with there lot, as they want a share of each others market. When the fade of 1984 comes in, as computer aficionado's we know the computing world would never be the same.
Both colleagues take wrong turns, Curry with the doomed electron and Sir Clive's QL. When they finally meet for a drink Curry says 'If we joined together we could have taken on IBM.' Back then, as a teenager it felt like it could have happened.
I do feel this area is rarely covered by social and computer historians. In the 1980's we had great games like Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy by Matthew Smith, who made a fortune and disappeared to commune in Holland. Gaming companies like Imagine Software, who climbed great heights and went belly up before our eyes in a BBC documentary. Very few books have been written on this era excluding one on the Spectrum and a Chapter on the Game Elite (originally made for the BBC and then transported to the Spectrum). Its a shame really.
In all it is a melancholy trip down memory lane, of when we were young, were full of dreams and could take on the world. How middle age makes fools of us all.
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