I see you like to play Transylvania…

Transylvania Title Screen

A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my dad, and for some reason we got to talking about old text-based adventure games we  used to play on an ancient Apple II computer. Now, I’m not really sure what inspired me to do this, but nostalgia is a powerful thing, so recently I decided to search all over the internet for old computer games to see if I could figure out the titles to all the games we used to play.

It was a difficult task. After all, the internet barely existed way back then. Armed with only my faint memories from when I was a youngling (and a little luck), I was able to rediscover this aggravating and frighting game, Transylvania. Even more fun was discovering how to actually play old DOS games on an up-to-date Windows machine.

You need these things:

  1. DOSBox
  2. DOSShell
  3. Some place to download old DOS games

I’ll let you figure out how to piece them together.

The best part about the whole experience was slowly remembering things as I played through the game, though occasionally my memories conflicted with what I was seeing in Transylvania. For example, I distinctly remember picking up a cross on top of the grave… and then you used the cross to kill the vampire in his castle… and then you could go to the basement of the castle to pick up this sweet item… but it wasn’t there! WHY!?

Transylvania Grave

It turns out they made several versions of Transylvania, and the DOS version I found wasn’t the same as the old Apple II game I used to play. It was actually a lot harder, but still quite fun. I totally stayed up until 2:30am and beat the game. On a weeknight. I strongly recommend taking the time jump back into your childhood and finding some of these gems. If anyone can find Grandma’s House, let me know.

Rob / October 12, 2011 / Cool Stuff, Gaming / 0 Comments

One Down…

Lots to go.

So I finished reading The Starfish and the Spider. Hizzah.

The Starfish and the Spider

I don’t typically read, but my uncle sent the book to me, saying that the ideas in the book would be useful to me in my career. I felt a bit obligated to read it. Regardless, he was right. It was actually a pretty good read. I’m happy I got through it.

Here’s a quick summary… The authors of the book compare organizations to spiders and starfish, spiders having a centralized structure in that they have a head and legs. Starfish, on the other hand, don’t have a special place for their brains. Instead, their decision-making parts are throughout the starfish itself. If you take down the head, you kill spiders. If you chop up a starfish, it grows more limbs, and even the pieces can grow to become new starfish. Through countless examples, the authors make the case that starfish organizations are advantaged in many ways. They thrive.

The internet is the prime example of a starfish. Today, this concept is well-known and utilized constantly with sharing, social media and the like. And, unfortunately, the read was pretty repetitious since the authors illustrated the same point over and over again. Still, the concept is worth meticulously analyzing, as it can be applied to many aspects of life. It’s useful in business, politics, war, religion, or just friendships in general. The key to these flourishing groups is decentralization and a common ideology.

If anyone ever cares to read something that’s non-fiction, it’s only 200 pages. Give it a shot.

Now on to learning about wine, and spending hours coding.

Rob / October 2, 2011 / Life / 0 Comments

TODO:

  1. Finish watching wine videos
  2. Finish update to PickOne
  3. Finish reading The Starfish and the Spider
  4. Finish REIRS
  5. Work on Zom-bees
  6. Work on Achievement Academy
  7. Finish watching Game of Thrones
  8. Become addicted to Diablo III
  9. ???
  10. Make millions

Rob / September 25, 2011 / Life / 0 Comments

PickOne has Launched!

AT LAST MY GREATEST INVENTION IS COMPLEEETED!

You can now download PickOne from the Android Marketplace.

Just search for “pickone” or find it in the Games > Casual section.

Enjoy! (And gimme 5 star ratings please.)

Rob / August 31, 2011 / Coding, Cool Stuff / 0 Comments

Go Kill Yourself, MochaHost

Cheap web hosting is just that: cheap. Now here are some things that cheap hosting isn’t:

1. Good
2. Worth your time
3. Worth the money

Dear friends in the blogosphere, don’t ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever do business with MochaHost. They are terrible. Take a moment to Google “MochaHost sucks” or “MochaHost reviews” and you’ll find a plethora of unhappy customers that feel as though they’ve been swindled. I’m one of those customers, and have suffered a mega-loss similar to others. Without a word, they deleted all of my SVN repositories. It was a huge setback for me, and my requests for restoration were met with indifference.

The good news is that I can happily say that I’ll never have to deal with them again. I’m now doing my hosting at DreamHost, which has been, in a word… a dream! I feel like my data is safe, and my money is going to people who care.

May this post serve as a giant middle finger to MochaHost.

Rob / August 28, 2011 / Uncategorized / 0 Comments