Friday, March 24, 2006

Gaming Links

Because you really don't to work this afternoon, anyway.

Here's a terrific link to a screenshot comparison of 1985 games with current games. It's a real eye-opener (thanks Kotaku). Here's the link:
http://gadgets.fosfor.se/gaming-now-and-then.

From Sirius, a link to The Musee Mechanique, or "Mechanical Museum." From their website
(http://www.museemechanique.org/):
Welcome to the Musee Mecanique, one of the world’s largest privately owned collections of mechanically operated musical instruments and antique arcade machines. We will take you on a journey from turn of the century hand cranked music boxes to modern video arcade games.

The Musee Mechanique is in San Francisco, and I've actually been there with Gloria--on our honeymoon. It's amazing to see an arcade machine simulating the seven-day cycling race (which were very popular in the 1910's).

From Extreme Tech, an excellent article by Loyd Case on building a quiet computer:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C1697%2C1938568%2C00.asp.

Also from Extreme Tech, their notes on the Game Developer's Conference:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1941621,00.asp.

And now, in an entirely unexpected move, we veer away from gaming and into other interesting "stuff."

First, an article about the Money Pit, otherwise known as the Oak Island Treasure (thanks, Squid56). Here's an excerpt:
One summer day in 1795 Daniel McGinnis, then a teenager, was wandering about Oak Island, Nova Scotia when he came across a curious circular depression in the ground. Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches had been cut in a way which looked like it had been used as a pulley. Having heard tales of pirates in the area he decided to return home to get friends and return later to investigate the hole.

Well, 211 years later, the money's still there. It's a fascinating story, and here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/j25bv.

Here's another one from Squid56, and it's just as interesting. It's about The Voynich Manuscript, and here's an excerpt:
The Voynich Manuscript is considered to be 'The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World'. To this day this medieval artifact resists all efforts at translation. It is either an ingenious hoax or an unbreakable cipher.

The manuscript is named after its discoverer, the American antique book dealer and collector, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who discovered it in 1912, amongst a collection of ancient manuscripts kept in villa Mondragone in Frascati, near Rome, which had been by then turned into a Jesuit College (closed in 1953).

It's an amazing story, and here's the link:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_13.htm.

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