addiction II: Yes, Pac-man is 30 (with the goodies)

It’s the original Pac-man I’m writing about (not a boxer’s monicker) which Google merited an anniversary GoogleDoodle in animated .png format. What a nice morning surprise!

Next to Tetris, I still have a couple of Pac-man versions installed in my computer which I call upon every now and then to officially divert me from ‘work’, a carry-over from the PC days. I hope I’m not alone in this, what with the vast selection of available games for today’s hardware.

Pac-Man 30 Years logo

Particularly interesting is the story about how its creator, Toru Iwatani, targeted females for this game after establishing the main character’s “look” inspired by an order of pizza minus one slice:

Now that he had the look, he needed that special something to attract his target audience. After listening to girls talk to one another, Iwatani determined that food and eating would be the way to get the fairer sex interested in arcade games. (REF: Top 100 Game Creators)

Google never ceases to surprise its visitors, and with today’s animated, PLAYABLE doodle, it sure does know how to make each user go back to when computing and computer use was basic and fun. The doodle goes live for 48 hours, after which I hope they archive it like they do their easter eggs and all other commemorative doodles.

An insanely fun Friday!

Early marketing flyer with original name "Puck-man", later changed to "Pac-man" in 1980

Toru Iwatani, creator

Wired.com has a Q&A article on Toru Iwatani, Pac-man’s creator, in which, besides confirming the game’s intended target, also gives an insight into Japanese culture:

…Japanese youngsters really wanted “ghost” type characters — not necessarily modeled on creatures, but things that don’t really exist in this world. Even within animation, they want characters that are the products of the writer’s imaginations. In North America at the time, the games were about car races or warfare. They wanted games that simulated the real world, whereas Japan wanted otogibanashi (fairy tales).

Also, when you look at Japanese games, the characters may be deformed in such a way that their heads are half of their total height. This was not popular in the U.S., as you know, they wanted real proportional humans. In Japan, dolls like Hello Kitty are deformed into a different shape, into an animal that doesn’t really exist. The dolls in the U.S. would be a real cat… (REF: Q&A: Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating, Wired.com)

Toru Iwatani, Pac-man creator (image from Wired.com)

And if Google’s commemorative, playable doodle isn’t enough of a gift, Pac-man’s Japanese site offers a lot of Pac-man goodies, too. My favorites are :

[1] The Pac-man Hallmark birthday card
Product Name: Birthday Card Publisher: HALLMARK CARD, INC (U.S.)
Release Date: July Price 2008: US $ 4.99 (U.S.)
Location: USA, Canada only Size: W15.5, H14 (cm)

Birthday card featuring a full-screen Pac-Man game. Melody flows and open Pac-Man game. In honor of Pac-Man in

[2] The Pac-man Wine Glass set with Cork coaster (Made in France)

Product details: Two wine glasses / cork coaster 2 Publisher: Namco Bandai Price: 5,250 yen Glass Specifications: Diameter 52 mm × 180 mm vertical / horizontal 72 mm / 250ml Made in France Coaster specification: diameter 80 mm × thickness 05 mm Origin: Portugal / Processing: Japanese production methods time-to-order book your reservation: April 27, 2010 (Tue) ~ 30 May 2010 (Sun) Expected Delivery: Shipping will begin in late July 2010

[3] The Pac-Man Limited Collection Leather Wallet (I like the red one)

Color: 4 kinds (black, blue, or sky) Price: 14,800 yen Specifications: Leather Wallet (Wallet) Production Method: Book orders in limited quantities Booking period: 30 March 2010 (Tue) ~ Expected Delivery: Shipping will begin in late May 2010

[4] The Pac-Man T Glass Beads and Prism by Kohei Nawa

Glued glass beads, prism sheet, polyurethane foam material Publisher: UNIQLO Co. Price: 1500 yen Release Years: 2009/5/18 URL: Http://Store.uniqlo.com/Jp/Store/Feature/Ut/Pacman/ Contact: Your contact Uniqlo hours TEL :0120-090-296-17 9:00: 00 (7 days a week) cKOHEI NAWA PAC-MAN: cNBGI (As of May 2009) ※ Some products are sold may have been discontinued. Please note.

[5] The Pac-Man T by Kentaro Kobuke

Publisher: UNIQLO Co. Price: 1500 yen Release Years: 2009/5/18 URL: Http://Store.uniqlo.com/Jp/Store/Feature/Ut/Pacman/

See the commemorative collection here. And this is just the 30th year.

And lastly, about the animated, interactive Google Pac-man doodle

The doodle was designed by Marcin Wichary, Google’s senior UX designer and developer, and Ryan Germick, full time Google Doodler. Over at the Google blogs, Marcin wrote:

“…Today, on PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, you can rediscover some of your 8-bit memories—or meet PAC-MAN for the first time—through our first-ever playable Google doodle. To play the game, go to google.com during the next 48 hours (because it’s too cool to keep for just one day) and either press the “Insert Coin” button or just wait for a few seconds.

Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece…”

(Source: Googleblog|Celebrating Pac-man’s 30th Birthday)

He adds (emphasis mine):

“We also added a little easter egg: if you throw in another coin, Ms. PAC-MAN joins the party and you can play together with someone else (PAC-MAN is controlled with arrow keys or by clicking on the maze, Ms. PAC-MAN using the WASD keys).”

The doodle is a couple of layers of a .png file (see below) powered by javascript, HTML and CSS. Not only is it cool, it’s a lot of work to perfect it.

Great job!

The interactive Pac-Man game deconstructed

Now if they only did the same when Google commemorated Tetris.

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More Pac-man:

• Official site: Pacman.com
• Pacman 30 Years Anniversary site [Japanese] with downloadable artworks
• Pacman Facebook page
• GoogleBlogs about the Pac-man anniversary
• DOWNLOAD the game and play offline (no audio).

Play Pac-man online

• Freepacman.org [a fave site with a large Pac-man window. Also has a Space Invaders link]
• Playpacman.net
• Pacmangame.net

Blogger/Blogspot [still] has backend image upload problems

I posted to my Blogspot blog a few minutes, of an entry that took all day to finish only to discover that Blogger/Blogspot had been having troubles with uploaded images in what it calls “image backend problems” since late March 2010.

No, it hasn’t been resolved and I did post to Blogger’s support forum just before this [Posterous] entry, thus:

“Posted an entry a few minutes ago and did a work-around:

uploading the image to a 3rd-party image hosting site from Blogspot’s image source, then linking the image from the 3rd-party site into the post in the hope of circumventing Blogspot’s “backend” problem but I still got a blank space where the image is supposed to be.

Otherwise, all other images and videos in older posts appear fine.

Hope the problem is resolved very soon.”

FYI.

[cross-posted]

superpower: we are the people of the internet

*would have been nicer if the ‘spirit’ morphed into several people (i.e. races) even in some parts of her solo.

[cross-posted]

Old World-New World concepts: Stevenf’s blog on technology

Reading (for continuation offline) Stevenf’s entry “I need to talk to you about computers…“. (http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been)

It is insightful. It is funny. And it is true.

And funny how the old world/new world, old world vs. new world concepts were just discussed by Nicky Perlas at the tete-a-tete last night (28 January 2010).

[cross-posted]

VirusBarrier X5 (from MacHeist)

Membership to Mac-related online apps and sites adds to the unending thrill of being an Apple user, even if it means, like in my case, not  actually being as active or passionate in devoting the same amount of internet time as I used to as when I first signed up for these.

Somehow, Mac-related sites have always been kind of sleek, kind of more fun, requiring a bit more brain power than, say, Windows apps that seem designed with just end-user ‘fun’ in mind, a lot of smooth graphics and little else. This is not meant to be another of those “vs.” posts — never was a fan of that. It’s just how I see and experience it, having come from Windows since the DOS days.

Besides, I never can get into a “vs.” discussion in real life, especially if the discussants are hard core X vs. Y, “Apples vs. Oranges” kind of people.

Anyhow, great online apps and sites provide good diversions from routine and intensive brain+physical work. One such site is MacHeist. Not only are its games (called “Missions”) gems, the bundled apps they have given out so far are great.

While getting squeezed between two major activities in the past few days, I managed to respond to a November Macheist email notification because it was one the best bundles it has ever offered following the one in April ’09.

MacHeist3 (the November edition, aka nanoBundle) includes the following apps:

• ShoveBox from WonderWarp, worth $24.95
• WriteRoom from hogbaysoftware, $24.95
• Twitterific from Iconfactory, $14.95
• TinyGrab from Keyone Productions, £10
• Hordes of Orcs from Freeverse , $24.95 (Win/Mac)
• Mariner Write from MarinerSoftware $49.95 (Win/Mac) - Mariner has loads of writing apps, by the way.
• and the highly-rated VirusBarrier X5 from Intego, $69.95

Except for Hordes of Orcs, I had been able to successfully download all apps as of this writing but have not installed all of them yet. I had used the early WriteRoom version previously and would be looking forward to what the latest has to offer. Meanwhile, still attempting to recover some personal time due to the two major events mentioned (and some other work in between that were not as loaded but were equally demanding of attention), I chose to install VirusBarrier X5 as a supplement to ClamXav.

By the way, I mention the thrill of being an Apple user but I can honesty say the Mac I work on is not all a smooth and easy ride. This Mac in particular is a 1st-generation MacBook Pro (ca. 2006) and its age is showing. It has, on the average, stayed on for 48 hours without shutting down. Its optical drive has been bricked by a nasty firmware update by Apple back in 2008, something, some say, Apple has hidden from the public: not a very noble move by Apple there. (NOTE: I dug up archived sites on this superdrive issue when I was looking for solutions which can be read here and here).

It’s a Mac Anti-Virus program

As the name suggests, VirusBarrier X5 is a virus scanner and anti-virus app for the Mac like ClamXav. It took about 2 hours and 15 minutes to scan the whole 80gb hard drive as it combed through 592,641-plus of combined apps and files.

VirusBarrier X5 interface design is a masculine feel, something the boys will love. It kind of reminds me of the Windows audio player app "Winamp".

The intital scan detected X97M/Yosenio.gen hidden within an Excel macro (.xla) file named “GhostWorld.xla” which, I discovered, was in the Mac. How I got this file is beyond me. Perhaps it was picked up by my USB drive after plugging it into the Windows computer at the neighborhood internet cafe a few weeks ago. (Strangely, all other GhostWorld associated files are dated “12/11/04, 5:29 pm” as revealed in Finder. It predates the Mac in which it now resides, and the installed Office applications, by two years.)

Since I had not run ClamXav after the period in which I suspect I got the Yosenio.gen file from the net cafe, there is no way for me to determine whether ClamXav could have detected or overlooked the file. I noticed that the Mac did exhibit certain unusual behaviors since that period, such as going through a soft crash or freezing up when I plugged in the USB wifi stick, etc. I did plug the USB thumb drive into my mother’s Windows laptop by mistake and, just as I had suspected, its default anti-virus scanner, McAfee, popped an alert faster than I could eject it.

Mac-ros

Ok, the point is Macs may be immune to Windows viruses but it serves as a temporary asylum in which these hibernate until such time that a device, like a USB thumb drive, is stuck into its ports, and just as quickly as a Windows malware jumps into alien environment such as OS X, that it transfers  to an empty space in the removable device waiting to be transported into another computer that it can infect or to successfully cause trouble.

On the other hand, macro viruses are cross-platform viruses and can thrive in both Windows and Mac environments. Macros are helpful application commands designed to enhance certain features of, say MS Word or Excel files. However, since macros are not executable files and are document-related (e.g. they exist within an application’s files and do not need a command to invoke its execution), they are deemed more dangerous than trojans, worms and viruses.

I am always wary about getting Windows viruses because I’d like to avoid being responsible for infecting another computer, specifically a Windows-based computer. The Windows malware may not wreak havoc on the Mac and I can just proceed to work as usual, without any worry of my files being corrupted and such, because Windows malware are programmed to sniff out specific Windows files to play hookey with. But because the Mac serves as convenient transport zone for these suspicious files — as long as they stay undisturbed in a ‘safe’ place (other than the Trash) — that it still makes me very wary of them. Having said that, if one is running Windows on a Mac, it is just as wise to install a Windows-based anti-virus program for one’s protection.

I’ve decided to keep VirusBarrier X5 inspite of my limited hard drive space. It puts an icon on the menu bar for instance access to its other features, and another icon in the dock. It is an unintrusive app that provides real-time scanning without hogging my limited resources. ClamXav, meanwhile,  can slow down my work during background scans, by the way.

I’m quite happy with VirusBarrier X5, and grateful that an excellent site like MacHeist, which has provided my license, has included this app in its bundle and have donated part of the ‘loot’ to charity in the process. I can’t wait to give the other applications a try and for the next bundle to come along.

Well done, Macheist and Intego.

The Internet at 40: Scanning, reading, sharing, knowing…learning

The Guardian.co.uk’s landmark compilation of stories of 40 years of the Internet — and by those who make up the Internet: people like you and I — presents the most attractive Internet timeline just yet.

Scanning through online aggregator’s snippets, specifically of favorite, minimalist popurls.com‘s site, led me to the 40-year tapestry of stories in short but very engaging prose. The linear web of accounts outlines the most important and updated milestones in the ‘Net’s continuing story that I simply feel compelled to share it here, especially to the generation that may not understand the exhilaration associated with (nor recognize the sound of) a digital modem handshake: the generation reared in broadband speed and e-games or playing “house” for hours in their chairs clicking away on their keyboards, or being highly dependent on online search engines — if not their cellphone keypads — for their homework.

 

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…the first message (only the “L-O” of the word “L-O-G-I-N” travelled from UCLA to SRI before the first ‘Net crash…

 

 

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Vinton Cerf et al. published a proposal to link up Arpa-like networks. (It) is notable for containing the first published use of the word "internet"

⇔

The year 1969 is notable for many significant events.

In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos was reelected for another 4-year term; The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Makati (then, a municipality of Rizal Province, now, a city of Metropolitan Manila) had its campus groundbreaking and admitted its first batch of students[1].

In the Middle East, Moammar Khaddafy staged a coup and ousted Libya’s King Idris. In Asia, “the United States, governments of South and North Vietnam, and the Viet Cong met for the first plenary session of peace talks in Paris, France” [2|"American Assistance to the South"], yet Cambodia was at the receiving end of the USA’s B-52 bombs[3] as exposed in the New York Times by William Beecher the same year.  Meanwhile, Andy Warhol and Gerald Malanga co-founded Interview Magazine[4], The Boeing 747, which we grew up to know as the “Jumbo Jet”, took off ground for the first time [5] (as did France’s Concorde in its test flight). Dorothy Fisher became the first female heart transplant recipient under Dr. Christian Barnaard [6], and the first manned spaceflight lands on the moon [7].

Oh, that generation’s version of homeschooling, Sesame Street, premiered in the US the same year, too, and many Filipinos of the 70s, including myself, learned English grammar and alphabet from people interacting with puppets. In the flesh and beauty arena, dusky 18-year old Gloria Diaz made headlines for winning the Philipines’ first Miss Universe crown.

(if video above does not load, watch it here)

In the same year, Seiko unveiled the first quartz watch [8], the microprocessor chip was born [9], and UNIX was developed by Bell Labs [10].

⇔

This post is populated by information made possible in one sitting without getting off my chair, as I, like many from today’s generation who I mean to address, and from the generation ahead of mine, am a beneficiary of all the events mentioned above; but, more profoundly, by this much less significant event in 1969 that is now capable of calling back the past at one’s behest.

The Guardian.co.uk calls it’s project A People’s History of the Internet and starts with the ARPANET research project that was borne out of the Cold War.

These days, many attribute the Internet as this generation’s “great leveler”. It is  just 40 years old, yet, like many of the darkened areas of the world maps back in those days, the internet — as technology and way of life — has still to touch the world’s majority population.

I wonder what people’s history will be like, how the ‘Net will play out in the next 40 years, if we only look back to any of the these significant events, and learn, particularly from those that deal with conflict, crises and territoriality, to build a better world for others from here.

Globe Tattoo-2, Philippine Chronicles…

…or why decent, proprietary Internet access remains a dream for the Filipinos in the Philippines while Finland enforces rules[1] to make Internet access a legal right for all by 2010.[2]

HUWEI E1552
HW v. CD6ATCPU
FW v. 11.608.10.00.00
Mac OS 10.4

The Philippines will probably take decades to even catch up with Finland at this point as it has other Internet and computer technology-related issues to deal with.

And so, I write this post, a follow-up post to an earlier one about Globe Tattoo (Postpaid). I am posting this from a neighborhood internet cafe as sending a 786kb zipped file attachment was a painful experience all day today.

It also did not help that Gmail was both slow to load and even slower in uploading the file. I wasn’t sure if the slowness in the Tattoo connection had anything to do with Google and Gmail’s much slower response time which resulted in my being disconnected several times.

Another recent development with regards Globe Tattoo is how its desktop interface freezes up on manual disconnection.

I have had to force-quit the app several times today. Out of 6 attempts, 4 of them would quit on the Option+Command+Escape window, but remain among the open apps that show up on Alt+Tab toggle command.

I had to do a hard reset 4 times just today because of it; this is not good for the laptop.

Anyone else had a similar experience with Globe Tattoo, especially recently?

WP Notes

By the way, this is my first ever post using a 14in. monitor at the ‘net cafe and, my, do I miss the real estate of the home-based portable.

I am posting on the WP “HTML” view option on Windows XP and IE 6.0(!!!) as the “Visual” view messes up the widgets to the right, causing them to stay on top of the post window.

Oh well.