I’m pretty busy right now. The project I sold to management demands a fast pace, so I am actually working day and night to meet the ambitious deadline. We also decided to do an Open House event on September 1st, which is going to take place in a hangar of a nearby airport. Most of the planning and preparation has to be done by my team. But at least I can assign some tasks here. So don’t be surprised if I am a bit silent right now.
On July 23, 1985, the Commodore Amiga was officially launched in New York. During the launch party, Andy Warhol did live image manipulation of portraits of Debbie Harry, lead singer of Blondie.
The Commodore Amiga introduced 16bit technology to home computers. Due to its extended use of specialized circuitry for dedicated tasks like music generation and video processing, it was the most powerful personal computer of its era and almost instantly made its way into many TV studios.
Its decline started when IBM compatible PC’s became more and more powerful in multimedia issues. The brand name “Amiga” has changed owners many times since then. The operating system, which is very Unix-like and allowed multitasking already back in 1985 can be licensed for different hardware platforms – without apparent success. Imho.
I myself used an Amiga 2000 for many years – and only a few days ago wrote about its gaming qualities – not knowing that the Anniversary would be imminent.
Thanks to Detlef for bringing this to my attention.
Later this afternoon, news of the second London attack broke. But the news that touched me more today was the one of James Doohans death. I felt like crying when I first heard it, I felt like crying every time since then when I though about it again. Does this make me a bad or an ignorant person? Is it a self-defense mechanism of the brain to not go completely nuts? (Note to myself: re-read “The Shockwave Rider“)
Nevertheless, I did a quick scan of the blogosphere. A lot of blogs cover Doohans demise. There seem to be two favorite headlines:
- He’s dead, Jim
- Scotty (was) beamed up
I too was tempted to quote Scotties famous line in my post. It seemed strangely out of line though. And as for “He’s dead, Jim” – that’s just bad taste. Imho.
I just heard the news that James Doohan has passed away yesterday at the age of 85. Doohan became famous for acting the role of “Mr. Scott”, the engineer of the USS Enterprise starship in the TV series “Star Trek”. Doohan – or better – Scotty – was one of the heroes of my childhood. He gave me many hours of fascination, suspense and joy. The remains of his body will be burnt, the ashes will be sent into space – in death he can finally go where he – for all of us – always was.
My most favorite scene with Scotty did not take place in the original Star Trek series, but in the sequel Relics in Star Trek, the Next Generation (ST-TNG). Scotty was saved – well beyond his natural lifespan – from “temporary storage” in a transporter buffer. He had difficulties to adjust to the new surroundings and tried to make himself useful. Captain Picard issued an order to Mr. Data, asking how long it would take. Data answered a time span exactly up to a split second. Once Picard went offline, Scotty asked Data “And how long does it really take?”. Data – surprised – gave the exact same answer he just gave to Picard. Scotty – even more surprised – couldn’t believe Data had not given an actually longer time span to the Captain than what he would actually need. The scene closed with Scotties remark “You have a lot to learn to become a wiz-kid”.
Farewell, Scotty, and thanks for everything.
Further reading:
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/12920.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/20/obit.doohan.ap/
I saved Middle Earth! It took me almost 6 weeks, but I don’t complain since this is significantly shorter compared to the journey of the Fellowship.
Computer games have come a long way since my first game “Gruds in Space“. I’m not a big game person. I play the occasional game, but I rarely get hooked to one. I can only recall a couple of games at all. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m please to see that Nuclear Moose is online again. After he ranted about Wordpress, his blog fell silent – resp. his site was completely unaccessible! A week ago he started blogging again. No reason given for the downtime. Welcome back, Moose!
Coming from work I stopped by a do-it-yourself-store. When I stood in line in front of the checkout, I witnessed the following conversation:
She: I ordered terry cloth rompers on eBay.
He: That’s what mothers do – ordering such things on eBay
Anything remarkable in that conversation? Did you get it too?
They did not say auctioned! Nor did they say bought. They said ordered! So they are a mail order store now?
Kristian brought a nice “how-to” back to my mind, which deserves it to be made a little better known:
Attention all Evil Overlord List Aspirants: Contrary to popular belief, taking over the universe is not as easy as it would first appear. Due to the complexity of this task, Peter regrets that he is currently unable to give the list the attention it deserves. The list is therefore going on a temporary hiatus. This is a temporary condition. As soon as he is able to respond in a timely manner — or until he becomes unquestioned lord and master of all things, whichever comes first — the list will not be updated and no new suggestions will be considered. He would sincerely apologize for this inconvenience, were it in character for an Evil Overlord to do so.
I “sold” a project to management on Monday, and in its wake I had to order a whole bunch of software to get it completed. Guess the manufacturers “created with the demoversion of XYZ” watermarks were quite convincing 
It’s the first major expenditure I made for some time and – working for a software company myself – makes me feel actually rather good. I’m tempted to experiment with those great tools myself, but my graphics designer is just as eager and actually will make better use of it. Sigh.
I have not yet made up my mind of how much of my business occupation I am prepared to disclose here, so until then no specifics. Please bear with me (if anyone reads this at all…).
100% (read: 3 of 3) of all the participants in my poll regarding the Amazon logo have not realized the message behind the arrow pointing from A to Z. Now Tom points out another (potentially) subliminal message in a Logo to me. This time it’s FedEx:
Tom claims that there is an arrow hidden in the logo – hidden in plain sight that is. It took me about a minute to spot it. What about you?
However, I think it’s not on purpose. But maybe the purpose is to appear not on purpose? Who knows…