After 19 years I still have this fucking advertisement stuck in my head. I’ll worship Nintendo’s marketing as advertising gods for creating a meme that is still lodged in my hippocampus two decades after the fact, but I still want to be…unpleasant…to all of you, all the same.
So holy non-existent childhood memories, Batman. The Grealish family never owned a SNES. I remember when it first came out in Ireland, when I first laid eyes on its aesthetically-pleasing goodness, the console cost £350, or $628/€445 in today’s currency. Welcome to Ireland, where electronics costs twice as much as they do anywhere else in the world, which still continues today. I’ve known more than one person in Galway (Frank?)who went to New York to purchase high-end electronics (laptops, professional camera bodies and lenses) and used the savings over Irish prices to pay for a weekend stay in the Big Apple. As it stands I firmly believe that could have trekked across the Sahara desert from Casablanca to fucking Timbuktu and bought a SNES there for less than what it would’ve cost from Smyths Toys in 1990.
And, as happens, at the tine my dad tended to drink most of our free money. Go dad. Hmm. I also remember Magic: The Gathering arriving on our windswept shores at around the same time, so consoles and Mario were forgotten in favour of playing strong open Green/Red. Turn 1: Drop a forest, cast Tinderwall. Sac it, drop two Kird Apes. Turn 2: Drop another forest, cast Tinderwall. Attack! Turn 3: Sac Tinerwall, cast Ernham Djinn (haha, I went searching for ”Ernham Djinn” and found this by the card’s artist). Turn 4. Win the game!
Blah. Distractions.
So I never had a SNES, but thanks to the I get to experience it all from the comfort of my own laptop!
Someone asked for dark, contrasted and evil.
This is Muffin.
She He will destroy you and all whom you love.
I’ve tried to take a few panoramas within Northrend…in World of Warcraft, but the going has been very slow due to some very real technical hurdles – low (1024×600) screen resolution, and a processor that simply wasn’t intended for intensive graphics and photo post-processing needed to create them. Wrestling with 5 FPS and waiting for more than hour for the images to compile is tedious tedious tedious.
Tweaking after stitching is minimal – I boost saturation, contrast and brightness slightly, otherwise the images will tend to look a little dull on screen.
Send your donations for a Mac Pro to…
Gun’drak
From WoWWiki:
This is the Drakkari capital, the only large city in Zul’Drak and the home to the Drakkari Frost King. It is a massive place, with thick walls, tall guard towers and heavy gates. Inside, the buildings are tiered and covered in steps, and wind about one another like a nest of small animals, each fitting into the next.
Utgrade Pinnacle
From Wowhead:
Utgarde Keep is the first dungeon hub located on the shores of Lake Cauldros in the Howling Fjord of Northrend. Inhabited by the vrykul (led by King Ymiron), a half-giant Viking-like race bent on proving their strength to the Lich King, they are raising the most worthy of their warriors to serve him beyond the grave here at their main base of operations.
(01:08:52 PM) Mark: …wait
(01:09:12 PM) Mark: http://twitter.com/devices
(01:09:15 PM) Mark: Add your phone!
(01:09:35 PM) Mariah: i cant until phone is charged
(01:09:44 PM) Mark: Go drive somewhere for BBW
(01:09:48 PM) Mark: Fuck
(01:09:52 PM) Mark: BBQ
GET THE CHILDRE….well hi there!
So I got a netbook, as you may recall. The webcam works. I didn’t have to sacrifice any mammals to the Threefold Lords of the Not-Earth, forever blessed be their names, or pray to a more mundane deity. Maybe Mark Shuttleworth really is the devil? I mean, he’s peddling a Linux distribution, Ubuntu, where all the hardware works without tedious hunting for drivers or obscure hacks.
I’m actually a little pissed off because I had expected to spend several weeks tweaking my machine to get it all working. Now I’m in search of a new project.
Cool breeze off the mountains on my face. Soothing silent shadows surround. No noisome street lights here, only the Big Dipper wheeling ’round Polaris, and Orion rising over my shoulder. A noise? I stop, listen. All I hear is the chorus of ten thousand chirping grasshoppers. What a perfect night.
I start walking again.
I’ve always half-believed in the fae, of a world just a little bit away from ours, and when I go out walking at midnight there are moment’s when it’s around the next corner or past the crossroads. It puts the spring in my step.
No sooner had I left the house last night when someone’s self-confident black cat took it upon herself to flop down in my path and demand thorough attention before she’d let me pass! I scratched her belly until she couldn’t keep in the happy thrills, and then I ran.
She followed! I was faster.
Las Vegas is a seriously pretty city at night. After midnight. I cannot fathom why. Galway…Galway is gorgeous during the day, but just a collection of hard surfaces, florescent lightings and wet tar after the sun sets. Las Vegas softens. The ugly mountain ridges transform into the jagged teeth of fantastical storybook peaks that stand between me and the empty land whose few maps are studies in a neat cursive script that reads ”here be dragons.” The people are all gone on the roads that I tread. Not a sinner in sight. The houses set back in their gardens become ruins, become the broken mausoleums of a culture long since vanished from the face of this not-Earth, anything but four mortar walls and a tile roof hiding two slumbering parents, three sleeping children and a motley variety of small animals!
And the dark? Ah! This isn’t the dark that hides half-felt terrors, but one hints and titillates. Whispers in my ear about what’s down this or that path. That leaves me standing at a blackened crossroad turning in circles with my arms stretched wide while I try to decide which way to go. Which one leads somewhere else? I choose: Follow Polaris. I turn North.
Welcome to my world.
I was surprised to find that I had not posted this here yet! Nagrand in the Outland:
Or self-censoring?
I’ve been going through everything of mine recently – my own website, my Flickr, my other online and offline records, logs and other random crap – and pruning them. Deleting the pure trash, tidying what wasn’t and otherwise auditing almost the only records of my own life for the past few years. Hopefully it’s sanitized enough for the kids to come because Mariah and I are in the first generation that can be easily searched out on the internet. Want to know what dad did in his younger days? Open a browser, put my name in and otherwise giggle in naughty titillation at what you find. Or not. Be horrified! I’ll do my own part by saying HEY KIDS DID YOU KNOW YOUR MOM AND I HAD SEX? Oh yeah, Caira, I can see your eyes watering now.
Yeah, I’m a bastard.
