Here is a fas­ci­nat­ing in-depth look at the his­tory of the world’s first video game. That’s right, the game known as Pong, invented by Ralph H. Baer.

Read all about this now. It’s really a treat and makes you truly appre­ci­ate how far the indus­try of video games has progressed.

URL: PONG-Story 

Went and saw the #1 Box Office movie, The Dare­devil, over the week­end and must say that it wasn’t half bad. While I didn’t enjoy it as much as Spider-man or XMen — it did man­age to hold my inter­est and keep me enter­tained for the bet­ter half of the 2-hour movie.

I sup­pose the only com­plaint I can muster in my head is the lack of dia­logue and incon­sis­ten­cies in the script. Although, like I always say, if you want enter­tain­ment see a movie. You want real­ism? Watch the Dis­cov­ery Channel.

Mainly, I went into the movie know­ing noth­ing (nada, zip, zilch, naw-naw) about the sto­ry­line of Dare­devil. The most impres­sive aspect of this char­ac­ter is his dis­abil­ity and how it fights to over­come it. It doesn’t hurt that his senses are extremely over­bear­ing and ‘mag­i­cally’ in tune with the world. He may not be able to see but he really can kick your $#@!% for a hand­i­capped guy.

It was good. Not the cream of the crop but cer­tainly enjoy­able and enter­tain­ing. Kudos to the hyper­ac­tive sen­sory effect. Very, very cool looking.

B - 

Pixel Art has since become a wildly pop­u­lar Inter­net graph­ics phe­nom­e­non. Sev­eral sites have adopted Pixel-driven art to off­set real­is­tic graph­ics and sub­par “trendy” grid databases.

Pixel Art is none other than cre­at­ing dig­i­tal por­traits of peo­ple, places, things and objects with mim­i­nal tools. Mainly, the 1 pixel by 1 pixel for­mat com­bined with a 256-color (or more if pre­ferred) palette. Pixel Artists from all over the globe have cre­ated amaz­ing works of art that are dis­played on sites around the Inter­net. How­ever, the birth of this art­form was orig­i­nally and more com­monly used for early com­puter games (notably the Kings Quest series by Robert Williams).

Soft­ware artists used this pix­el­ing tech­nique to por­tray exotic islands, fan­tasy realms and sci­ence fic­tion set­tings. This tech­nique, since replaced by 3-dimensional graph­ics is still promi­nent in some iso­met­ric and cultural/city build­ing games.

Yet, with the adop­tion of the Inter­net as a pop-culture ref­er­ence tool — Pixel Art has a place to stay. Whether it be in a web designer’s inter­face or to sim­ply dress the entire site in an inter­est­ing mask of pixel good­ness — Pixel Art takes patience and that makes you appre­ci­ate the artists even more so.

Here’s some great sites painted in Pixel Art:

Pro­tokid is a chat-powered realm that is entirely show­cased in Pix­el­ness. Reg­is­ter your avatar and get typing!

City Cre­ator is a Pixel-driven site that allows you to cre­ate tiny urban cul­tures. Sim­ply choose your graphic (house, street, tree, etc.) — place it on the grid area and build your­self an envi­ron­ment for Tiny Midget peo­ple. Yes, that’s redun­dant. I know.

So You Wanna Be a Pixel Artist is for those of you who are inter­ested in doing this for a liv­ing or just dab­bling in it for fun. It’s a step-by-step guide with help­ful hints and links to bet­ter hone your pixelness!

Dude Stu­dios, while not exactly Pixel art, still deserves a spot in this link­age for the work this guy has put into this series. Basi­cally he’s re-done the Star Wars Tril­ogy in cutesy car­toon style, but the real gem is the visual style and the mere 2–5 min­utes (per episode) his car­toons cover as opposed to the 2+ hours the real movies took to tell the same story.

Meomi is “ded­i­cated to the cre­ation of com­pelling visual expe­ri­ences and nar­ra­tives. We do work for mul­ti­ple medi­ums and strongly believe in design that delights, entices, and inspires” — accord­ing to the site’s cre­ator. I espe­cially like the Meomilizer, essen­tially a char­ac­ter cre­ation area. Really neat features. 

Last night I watched the final episode of Joe Mil­lion­aire. Inter­est­ingly enough, it was the first and the last episode I watched of this “real­ity” series. Any­body think that Evan “Joe” Mar­riott looks dis­turbingly like a gigan­tic Tarzan. He seemed kind of frozen in time when they revealed the twist at the end, when the lit­tle hob­bit but­ler put in his two cents and then pre­sented the cou­ple with a million-dollar check. Woo. Real­ity TV. Woo.

Sar­casm aside, here’s some odd links that you might find enjoy­able and sweetly satisfying;

Scroll­bar Rac­ing sounds strange and the mechan­ics of this site are in fact, strange. You see, you’ve got 4 multi-colored scroll­bars that scroll and you vote on which bar is going to win the ver­ti­cal dive first. That’s it.

Pho­toma­con is a car­toon pro­file gen­er­a­tor. Much like the Pop­corn­heads on kartooner.com, the only dif­fer­ence here being that the site is entirely in French. No wor­ries though, it’s all self-explanatory. Is it just me or do these char­ac­ters look sim­i­lar to Duck­man? Oh how I miss the buck-toothed wise guy.

Dub­ster’ Park­ing Spots is an odd­ity mixed with pure genius. Sim­ply con­coct a sim­ple idea that sparks a sense of inge­nu­ity and you’ve got some­thing like this. Play­ing with per­spec­tive and scale has always been the guilty plea­sure of homosapi­ens across the Earth. How­ever, using these meth­ods with toy cars and var­i­ous loca­tions — well.. just take a look for your­self. It really is novel.

Orisi­nal by Ferry Halim is a col­lec­tion of cutesy pastel-colored inven­tions. Ever played a Flash game at Shockwave.com and said to your­self, “It was good. But, not that orig­i­nal.”? Well, look no fur­ther because these Flash games are all about orig­i­nal­ity! They’re addic­tive lit­tle bug­gers. Try some. 

Out of all of the Pres­i­dents that have occu­pied the grounds of the White House and gov­erned the soil of the United States, no other Pres­i­dent has attained so much atten­tion towards his strengths while in office than Abra­ham Lincoln.

More promi­nent the fact that he is only one of three Pres­i­dents that were assas­i­nated, respect­fully; William McKin­ley (1897−1901) and John F. Kennedy (1961−1963) being the other two Pres­i­dents that have suc­cumbed to such tragedies.

I’ve always had a cer­tain inter­est towards this man whom I never knew but always admired. So much in fact I’ve learned as much about his life as I could and in honor of his birth­day today, here is a snip­pet from Biography.com;

“Six­teenth pres­i­dent of the United States and pres­i­dent dur­ing the Civil War. Born Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809, in a log cabin on a farm in Hardin County, Ken­tucky. His father had come with his par­ents from Vir­ginia and had grown to man­hood on the Ken­tucky fron­tier. He had evi­dently become mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful as a farmer and car­pen­ter, for in 1803 he was able to pay ?118 for a farm near Eliz­a­beth­town. Three years later he mar­ried Nancy Hanks, described as “intel­li­gent, deeply reli­gious, kindly, and affec­tion­ate,” but as “illit­er­ate” as him­self. Of her fam­ily and back­ground lit­tle is known.”

- read the rest of Lincoln’s story at Biography.com 

Ear­lier today I was search­ing the ‘Net for some graphic design related web sites. Not only was my ven­ture a suc­cess­ful one, but one in which I’ll share with you the links I’ve added to my Favorites list.

Also, of note­wor­thy men­tion — tomor­row (Fri­day the 14^th) is Valen­tines Day and Abe Lincoln’s birth­day. So, party hardy!

Tomor­row I’m going to a nice din­ner and to the movie, “How to lose a Guy in 10 Days”. Maybe it will be a con­tender for the Male’s Top 3 Chick Flick Awards? So far My Big Fat Greek Wed­ding is in the lead!

Link­ages

Chuck Greens’ Jumpola is a wealth of valu­able design infor­ma­tion. Every­thing from help­ful design tips to illus­tra­tions, it’s a plethora of great resources offered on one site! I rec­om­mend this to Begin­ner and Advanced design­ers alike.

Color Schemer is a site that offers a color-wheel design sys­tem. Sim­ply choose a color from the web-safe palette and instan­ta­neously emerges new schemes based on your color. Awe­some util­ity. Comes in two fla­vors; Online and Shareware.

istockphoto.com and Morgue File are two won­der­ful royalty-photo resources. While istock does offer free down­loads based on a credit basis, Morgue File is free for all (for the time being any­ways). Both great sites for the graphic artist in need of turn­ing sta­tic pho­tos of pink flamin­gos into breath­tak­ing pieces of dig­i­tal inspiration.

Designs by Mark is well, designs by Mark! Self-explanatory, huh? Actu­ally, this dig­i­tal artist presents a great data­base of Pho­to­shop tuto­ri­als and resources galore. He even has updated the site with a ‘How-To’ Valen­tines Day card for the ladies (or lady).

:: more to come :: 

Wish­ing to encour­age her young son’s progress on the piano, a mother took the small boy to a Paderewski con­cert. After they were seated, the mother spot­ted a friend in the audi­ence and walked down the aisle to greet her. Seiz­ing the oppor­tu­nity to explore the won­ders of the con­cert hall, the lit­tle boy rose and even­tu­ally explored his way through a door marked “NO ADMITTANCE.”

When the house lights dimmed and the con­cert was about to begin, the mother returned to her seat and dis­cov­ered that her son was miss­ing. Sud­denly, the cur­tains parted and spot­lights focused on the impres­sive Stein­way on stage. In hor­ror, the mother saw her lit­tle boy sit­ting at the key­board, inno­cently pick­ing out “Twin­kle, Twin­kle Lit­tle Star.”

At that moment, the great piano mas­ter made his entrance, quickly moved to the piano, and whis­pered in the boy’s ear, “Don’t quit, keep play­ing.” Then lean­ing over, Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began fill­ing in a bass part. Soon his right arm reached around to the other side of the child and he added a run­ning obbli­gato. Together, the old mas­ter and the young novice trans­formed a fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tion into a won­der­fully cre­ative experience.

- Author Unknown 

Per the X-E Enter­tain­ment web site:

“By pop­u­lar request, here’s down­loads for fifty dif­fer­ent 80s com­mer­cials, rang­ing in sub­ject from food to toys to video games and beyond. Over the past few years I’ve got­ten more e-mails ask­ing how peo­ple can view these old ads than I can count, so I’m tak­ing the bull by its mar­ket­ing horns and giv­ing you more pro­mo­tional fun than pre­vi­ously thought pos­si­ble. Or some­thing like that. To watch a com­mer­cial, click on the one you want. A page will pop up with the link for you to down­load the file. Each com­mer­cial is a .wmv (Win­dows Media Player) file, and all are roughly 1 MB in size a piece. All files are of great qual­ity, nice video and near-perfect sound.”

Down­load them. Enjoy the nos­tal­gia of the 80s. Mmm-mmm-good. 

Accord­ing to BBC News:

“Thou­sands of Simp­sons fans have got e-mails — from Homer him­self! His e-mail address — chunkylover53@aol.com — appeared on an episode of the cartoon.

Homer had hired a pri­vate detec­tive to keep an eye on Lisa and the snoop e-mailed him back at that address.

Straight away, thou­sands of fans sent in mes­sages to see if they’d get a reply.

And they did! (Although, as of this writ­ing the address is now defunct accord­ing to a test email I sent to the email address, which was bounced back to me.)

The show’s writer Matt Sel­man logged in the night that the episode aired and the inbox was imme­di­ately filled with the max­i­mum num­ber of responses.

“He’s tried to answer every one of them and then as soon as he answers a hun­dred, a hun­dred more pop in,” said The Simp­sons exec­u­tive pro­ducer, Al Jean.

“He’s try­ing to answer them as Homer and give advice.” 

Here’s a few sites that delve into the magic of imag­i­na­tion and pure wonderment:

The Ani­ma­trix is a four-part series of Animé-style car­toons fea­tur­ing the deeper expla­na­tion of the ques­tion: What is the Matrix? From what I’ve seen of it so far (since it’s still down­load­ing), the ani­ma­tion and story appear to be top-notch. Since every­one is eagerly antic­i­pat­ing the sequels; The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Rev­o­lu­tions, this comes as a well added edi­tion to the mys­tery that is the Matrix.

Dream Por­tal is an inter­est­ing psuedo-web realm wherein the magi­cian David Cop­per­field presents the viewer (or user) a glimpse into a world full of bril­liant shapes and designs. It’s con­cept is inter­est­ing although it leaves the viewer with con­fu­sion and awe. Much like Copperfield’s stage shows.

Homestarrunner.com is the defin­i­tive source for hilar­i­ous humor mixed in with great char­ac­ter inter­ac­tion. Of notable men­tion is the fea­ture called ‘Strong­bad Email’ where fans of the site can.. well, email Strong­bad. Every­thing on this site screams cre­ativ­ity and the imag­i­na­tion of the cre­ators is over the top and best of all squeaky clean, which is an amaz­ing feat in pro­vid­ing good com­edy. Home­s­tar­run­ner, it’s dot net!