Jeff Milner

I took advantage of the new flickr meme going around. It’s from the same folks that brought us the Flickr Badge Maker. It’s called the Flickr Magazine Cover Maker. It lets you convert photos from your flickr photostream into magazine covers. Granted this is one of the worst photos I have, but I decided to use it because it was one of my most recent shots. I also made a flickrbadge awhile ago:

I don’t really know why I bother, but it’s kind of a fun distraction. See all of Flagrant Disregard’s Flickr Toys.

I downloaded a new extension for Firefox today called Spellbound. It allows you to verify your spelling in forms and comment boxes using the language of your choice. I choose to download English (Canada).

I recommend trying it out if you are prone to typos and misspellings like me.

Previously I Heart Firefox.

I stumbled upon this site the other day about handheld devices that are able to play ported versions of the classic first person shooter, Doom.

It turns out the iPod Photo when loaded with a Linux OS can handle playing Doom (although from the video it seems pretty slow).

Still, it looks cool to see Doom on an iPod and maybe in the future they will fix it so that it’s not so choppy. Apparently it plays all wad files: Doom I Shareware (won’t play demos), Doom II Shareware, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom wads, and my personal favorite Doom II. Check out http://www.ipodlinux.org/Doom for more info, photos, and video.

Disclaimer: I never tried this on my own iPod. For now I’m happy just using the default iPod OS.

The average age of video game players is increasing daily as those of us that were raised on Nintendo in the 80’s are still playing games. These days, with the increasing popularity of online games like World of Warcraft, it was only a matter of time until something like this happened: Busted. Grounded.

In the thread linked below, little boy Brion makes a rather innocent-sounding forum post at 3:30 AM. Trouble is, his mother notices because she reads that same forum. She responds:

“Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here.. But, Brion – if you don’t want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning – DON’T post on a forum that she reads. Busted. Grounded.”

After writing that she was going to punish her son by making him stay home and watch Steel Magnolias or Moulin Rouge with her, she wrote this (#192).

Great news for those of us that can’t get enough good quality podcasts: I just discovered several new NPR podcasts for your free subscription enjoyment. Check out their podcast listing page.

Here are some advanced tips from Blogger’s help section.

It’s a Big Ad – file under successful viral marketing.

This morning I came across a collection of reworked “Super Mario World” music. I was skeptical at first but these songs are fun to listen to and they bring back the nostalgia.

The complete soundtrack to Super Mario World, covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public. Dedicated to Koji Kondo. –XOC

Playing them reminded me of a Super Nintendo contest I was in a few years ago (a few being somewhere around 15). It was held at the Medicine Hat Mall. Four different Super Nintendo consoles were setup to play the brand new Super Mario World.

When the contest started the rules dictated that the winner would be the player that was able to “get the farthest” in the game within a short period of time. Each of the four consoles would be run as if it were it’s own contest so even if you got the second farthest in the game, it was possible that the person who got the farthest could have done so on the same console as you and you would still lose.

It didn’t take long for the organizers to realize that in a game like Super Mario World, where the map is a kind of maze that requires backtracking and allows warping it was going to be pretty hard to figure out which player actually made it the farthest. So after about 4 or 5 people had played attempting to get the farthest, they changed the rules. Instead of distance traveled, the decision would be based on high score. Players with the highest score on their own console would win a free Super Nintendo.

My turn was just about to start, and let’s face it, I played a lot of Nintendo as a kid. I subscribed to Nintendo Power and I even scored the occasional blister from marathon sessions of Super Mario World. Not only did I possess a lot of game playing experience, but I also had a secret technique and I really wanted to win.

I raced through the first level in record time. Then instead of moving on to the next level, I re-entered the same level and picked up that famous first empty turtle shell and sent it flying through the 8 or so live turtles running up incremental runs of points: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, 1Up! Then came my secret: start followed by select. It was documented right in the instruction manual, (who reads video game manuals anyway?), pressing Start and then Select on a level you have previously cleared will bring you right out to the world map. So that was it, kill 9 turtles in one go, rinse, and repeat.

I totally clobbered any previously imaginable high score. It was insane! After about 5 minutes of running up my score the “judges” decided that what I was doing wasn’t fair to the people who initially thought they had to get as far as they could through the map so they told me to stop doing my trick, that I had obviously won and that now I should just go for distance.

My instructions were to go right. When I tried to go for the block palace (left) they told me that I had to go right. I think they might have thought I was going back into the first level. Anyway assured that I had won the contest, what did it matter?

I never won the contest. I had the second highest score of the day but I would not be going home with any of the four Super Nintendos. Apparently some other smart fellow did my trick as well and on the same console as me. The judges insisted it was all fair because they only let him do it up to the same amount of points that I did it for. Of course after he was done he went to the block palace and got the high bonus points for completing that level.

The lesson to be learned from all of this? Video game contests in the early 90’s were rarely fair. Judges always seem to be changing the rules mid-stream and they didn’t really know what they are doing in general. It doesn’t really matter that I didn’t win a Super Nintendo – I already had one, but still I felt ripped off. If you ever run a contest, try and be as fair as possible by deciding the rules ahead of time, thinking about what could go wrong by actually trying the game yourself and once the contest has started stick to your plan.