Saturday, March 04, 2006

Retro

Patience is a virtue, so give me more of it - now!

I'm waiting for exam results at the moment. These are the exams I took back at the end of January from Southampton, but I sat them here at York. They were released yesterday (Friday), but the student office didn't email them to me as promised. Grr. All was not lost, however: I sent my housemates on a mission to pick them up for me (they're just posted on a noticeboard in the Geography building). They went this morning, but the building was locked up. Grr! So I'll have to wait until Monday. I suppose after a month another 3 days won't make a difference, but I want to know now! Never mind. I'm reasonably confident that I did well, perhaps averaging 67% or so. That's a bad mark in Canada, but a pretty good one in the UK, by the way. The marking here is a lot more lenient, so I'm hopeful I can at least top 70% for this semester! That will contribute well to my new-found determination to get a First, or die trying.

This last week has been pretty hectic - an essay, assignment and midterm exam - so I was seeking some distraction and relaxation last night of the button-mashing variety. Unfortunately, the latop I brought with me (which excels in all other aspects) is no gaming machine, so I'm limited to somewhat older and less demanding titles. I brought some classics with me: Transport Tycoon, Civilisation 2 etc. which have served me well, but hey, novelty's good right? So after a bit of time on Google, I found some really classic games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem etc. If you got your first computer after 1993, you should probably skip this paragraph... what a blast from the past! Fantastic fun, and not exactly a strain on the computer.

20MHz processor? Check.
640KB RAM? Just about.
EGA graphics? Yes!

Technology's certainly come on a long way in the last 15 years, eh? Who'd have imagined, back in 1991, downloading a whole game from the internet in 2 seconds flat? Or watching a DVD on a laptop computer? Madness.

1 comment:

Nicholas Coates said...

Commander Keen is I think one of the classic games of our generation. One through Five, plus Keen Dreams I think.
I downloaded them the other day, brought back so many memories.


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