Galaxian

Recently I took a portable 8-bit console in the trip. I thought that I didn’t play "Mario" or meditative "Tetris" for a long time and a long trip will allow me to concentrate on the game.

Speccy!

Years pass imperceptible, and it comes to the day when ZX Spectrum celebrates its 30th anniversary!

Two Magic Kung Fu Warriors (Shaolin Never Dies)

I watched "Ip Man" recently... It's not that... I don't like... I don't believe...

As a child I believed! Believed in "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin" and in "Dancing with the Drunken Mantis"... And now, when I reviewed "Mars Villa" with the feeling of nostalgia I felt a childlike sense of belief in the magic of kung fu (and also a good irony over that same belief), "diamond" shirt and so on... One old friend of mine who said once that I have "children's psychological "kung fu" trauma" ;)

I Grew Up!

It happened that on my 30th year of life I suddenly became an i-Guy. And last Sunday during next sync with iTunes I asked myself "How did it happen?"

All that time (ahaha, not really because I got my first PC when I was 6) I considered myself as an advanced PC user. Not geek, not a programmer. But things listed below were easy for me:
- assemblage of PC (incl. BIOS setup and some hardware adjustments);
- installation of MS DOS and Windows (all versions except Millennium and servers);
- installation of lots of desktop software of different kinds and lots of external devices with all those drivers and ports;
- network setup and administration (10 PCs in 1 net with router, DHCP, server and other network stuff);
- mobile devices usage (Windows Mobile, Symbian and so on).
Overall I used to be co-owner of small internet café, so I was advanced)

But it’s all gone! And now I have 3 Apple devices (Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPad) and I even don’t know what is inside them. What processor or how cool is video card? I do not know and if I knew it in the first day I completely forgot it.

8-bit Nostalgia

Technology companies do not stop to amaze us with new products in the IT sector. And not always, these new items carry a some kind of the benefits, or an interesting solution. In any case, all these things are some short term toys and live to the next exit of "another killer of iPhone"... There is no magic in them. That magic, which is a subject of nostalgia for generation of 30-40 years old people, trying to find some calm in listening to vinyl records and tapes, 8-bit games and retro video clips.

But it is possible to go much further in this nostalgia, and try to recreate that magic manually.

Anticipation of the Year

If you do not mind to spend evening in front of the monitor screen, which broadcasts a good boxing match, then you, like me, probably wait for "the third episode" of "Pacquiao-Marquez" epic. I was also very curious. There more that many have bet on the total defeat of Marquez, but his last fights did not bode anything. Except for the hopeless defeat against Mayweather, where Marquez tried to jump above his head and climb up clearly not in his weight, in all other fights after meeting "Pacquiao-Marquez 2" Juan-Manuel defeated all his opponents, and someone even very brutally... I admire the talent of Pacquiao, but if you ever come to the gym, and were brutally beaten, but had the courage to go back there again, then deep in your heart you will always be impressed by such men as Marquez - people with mediocre natural instincts, but with an iron will and perseverance.

Enter the Dragon

I almost never seen in my life any guy who would not admire heroes of Bruce Lee in childhood... Likewise, when I was 12-year-old boy, I've seen enough Chinese movies and wanted to master the mysterious techniques of kung-fu. My childhood is gone, video tape recorders with those movies are gone too, I have not mastered the kung-fu, but Bruce Lee still remained in my life.

In August 1973, shortly after the death of the Master, on the screens out in my opinion the best and most powerful picture with Bruce: "Enter the Dragon". Yes, exactly the same "Dragon's Island", after which we all could stand for hours in front of a mirror for checking: did I correctly "place my fingers"?