well, at least it isn’t the adaptation of the movie
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So I haven’t been on DCUI much lately (work has been brutal), but I found some time to catch up a little and go through some of the past few weeks of Office Hours. Just wanted to chime in on a few posts here. (I’ll just make it one big post so that anyone who wants to ignore me only has to ignore me once. Pretty efficient that way, eh? 
)
1.)
My hometown is near the coastline area that is the nearest point on land to where TWA Flight 800 (the flight that Mr. Johns’s sister was on) went down in the Atlantic. Now I’m not sure if many people here know this, but there is a memorial to Flight 800 at that coastline area at Smith Point on Fire Island (one of only two places on Fire Island that you can drive to). The memorial is only a few dozen yards from the Ocean. After getting the vaccine, I knew I was overdue to see relatives, so I decided on my way there to visit the memorial to pay my respects and take some photos for you guys to see it. (My apologies for some awkward camera angles but the polished granite gets rather reflective in pictures and I didn’t want to be reflected and be a distraction.)
From the back:
The beginning:
Into the Memorial:
A wide view:
The wall with the names:
Ms. Johns, with respect:
The Memorial is incredibly well-designed and wonderfully constructed. These photos don’t do it justice. During winter months, not only are crowds not present, but also the slightly chilled air coming in from the Ocean feels apropos to the moment. In addition, as I understand it, the memorial site has a buried tomb containing some of the personal belongings of the victims, which adds so much to what already has an immense amount of gravitas there. With the Ocean sounds in the background, it is emotionally breathtaking!
I know very few are travelling these days, but if you have the chance in the future to visit Suffolk County on Long Island, visit the Memorial, then go take a tour of the wineries on the North Fork and raise a pint at Blue Point Brewery in Patchogue and give a toast to the departed (then go spend the night at Danfords Hotel in the marina in Port Jefferson).
Ok, onto to lighter things.
2.)
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this, but there’s a company called AtGames that makes an arcade machine called Legends Ultimate. It comes with about 350 old school video games built in. I picked one up a few months ago.
With all sorts of arcade controls (although I’d recommend a modification to play Tron).
(again awkward camera angles to avoid reflections.)
And with a little computer knowledge, you can add games including old console games.
Thought you might enjoy.
3.)
Ok, if you get to the aforementioned Blue Point Brewery in the aforementioned Patchogue, walk over to Gino’s Pizza, a hole in the wall pizzeria that’s been there since before dirt was invented. Get a couple of slices, as is, no other toppings. Just dough, sauce, herbs & spices, and cheese, nothing else needed. You can taste the sheer greatness!
4.)
Oh, c’mon on! This is just so wrong! I know this seems impossible, but there’s gotta be a way for us to chip in for Uber Eats or something and get Applejack a great dinner when she’s doing Office Hours. If Paypal can conduct a financial transaction between two parties and they still remain anonymous, why not also a culinary transaction? I mean, AJ does so much for us, can’t someone even get her a cup of tea? This is just criminal!
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Thankyou so much for sharing. The memorial to flight 800 look beautiful.
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You’re welcome. I added a couple of lines to flesh out the experience.
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I should also point out that @Applejack is now doing office hours from 5-7 now, giving her a enough time to eat a nice dinner.
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Thanks, I read that too. I would maintain my point is still valid. It’s a Golden Rule kind of thing.
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Dinner is very important…it’s my favorite meal of the day 
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Wow Doc! Those are good pictures. 
Oh I did, thank you. 
I used to have something similar to one of those but as a much smaller version that plugged into the TV. I know Dig Dug well. 
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Oh… Hey there Applejack! 
Hope that you have been well into another week.
On to this weeks business… 
So I was looking around my profile at different things. 
I happened to look under the “Preferences” tab and then clicking under the “Notifications” option the “Categories” and “Tags” options, as so below. 
Now, for “Categories,” clicking in that “Watched” box I see these options (also tried for “Tracked” and saw the same).
Clicked on “New Comic Releases,” and then scrolled down a bit and clicked on “Save Changes.”
So now when another “New Comic Releases” thread appears in April, I should not miss it, correct? Since I did not get a notification with the later tags when they were in the “Tracked” section, I put it in the “Watching First Post” and around April that should work… Will report back on it then for this instance. To be continued… 
Same situation for “Tags” as well if, say, Putting in “Tech Tuesday,” “Acroverse,” or Meta Madhouse, among others as well, I should get a nice little notification to make sure I won’t miss them, correct? I’ll be back to confirm tomorrow that happens so maybe this might just be a guide for others to look after threads or categories that are of interest. Edit: Hmmm… Now back again and did not see any notification as I just saved them in the “Tracked” position. Interesting if you have one of the tags in the “Tracked” position you can’t have it also in “Watching First Post” or “Watched” either… Switched them to be in the “Watching First Post” so perhaps that might have a notification pop up later.
Ah, and now for the next order of business. 
Since a certain cut of a film is on the horizon in the next week… Have you happened to view the Richard Donner Cut of Superman II? I was thinking of watching it before Mr. Synder’s.
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I have to give them respect for getting Asteroids in there… the others were presumably copying software around, but Asteroids used an entirely different display system (vector graphics) so converting that over to “raster that looks like vector” must have been a serious piece of work.
Are Tempest (hardcore multicolor vector graphics) and/or Warlords (man I loved the tabletop version) in there?
Also, great pics of the Memorial. 
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Hi @Applejack,
How has your week been going so far? Do you have any new and/or exciting news to share?
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Ah! A true scholar of the video game history! I like that!
As for vector graphics conversion, I think it was probably easier than you think. I suspect, instead of rewriting the game code, they just took the original code from the original game ROMs and ran it through a vector graphics emulator, similar to AAE (“Another Arcade Emulator”). I say that because the graphics aren’t always just quite right, like, for instance, a horizontal line might be missing in certain display formats, and if someone was recoding it, well, that [censored] just wouldn’t fly! Fortunately the display formats can be changed easily to optimize it for a particular game.
As for other games, vector and otherwise, there’s Asteroids Deluxe:
Gravitar:
Space Duel:
And as you requested, Tempest:
and Warlords:
Now I really should bring this around to DC Comics, so…
On this menu screen, after checking out the Star Wars games, you might notice three other games with the main title of Swordquest. These were three of a planned four game series released for the Atari 2600 system that had a somewhat controversial history which I need not go into here. What makes them relevant here was that the original cartridges came with comic books produced by DC (then a corporate cousin of Atari) that were written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, and drawn and inked by George Pérez and Dick Giordano. I think I picked them up somewhere in my travels after they were released. If I find them, I’ll post them in the Doc’s Bootlegs thread.
Anyways, it’s a cool machine that goes well with these other machines my uncle gave me.
They were quite dead when I got them, but somehow I used my mad engineering skillz to bring them to life. Much fun!
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Oh, and I should thank you for your post! You gave me a way to conclude all this.
Anyone who is familiar with vector graphics and familiar with an old school oscilloscope would note they share a certain genetic history (and if someone only knows one, then the other would be quite similiar). They is appropriate because (and I’m doing this from memory, so if I get something wrong, please tell me) the very first video game was done on an oscilloscope. It was called “Tennis for Two”, looking obviously like a vector graphics game, and was displayed in 1958 (way, way, way, WAY before my time!). It was shown at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a very well known research facility, but on that day, it was all fun and games.
Now, to get to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, you would go from the nearest interstate to the William Floyd Parkway and go north.
But, instead of north, let’s say you went south on the William Floyd Parkway. Where would you end up?
At Smith Point, on Fire Island, at the TWA Flight 800 Memorial.
“And now you know the rest of the story.”
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Philadelphia’s Hero
Billy: Just another boring school day, sometime I wish to be like my hero, Rocky Balboa. He’s a real hero here in Philadelphia!
Maxwell Lord: Granted! Just shout his famous catch Phrase!
Billy: Ok, Yo Adrian!
Billy: Whoa this is awesome! I better try running up those famous museum step!
Billy: I DID IT! I love Philadelphia! YO ADRIAN!
Freddy: Billy you were Rocky Balboa this whole time?! Awesome! I wish I can train you!
Maxwell Lord: Granted!
Freddy: Oh this is so wrong!!!
The End!!!
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Does the game play like this?
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Sharika means African princess? I thought it meant hips don’t lie!
Oh, so many jokes, so little time!
I’d love to post more and reminisce about Phil Hartman, but I’m sure my posts have been too tangential recently, and besides, I gotta go hurt people!
Thanks for the Hartmann video!
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I remember that one very well! “Hi, I’m Bill Clinton and I’m running for President. You gonna eat them fries?” You can tell how early it was in the campaign by the fact that, AFAICR, there were no jokes about him and the ladies.
Warlords was nothing like Bill Clinton 
. It was that “killer app” of an arcade game, multi-player tabletop.
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My favorite Phil Hartman moment is Jingle All The Way. That Christmas movie is such a funny classic! I thought Hartman was such a funny comedian.
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(…“sigh” I knew I said I was gonna resist more tangential posts,…but…I…can’t…resist!)
My favorite Hartmann bit on SNL was a commercial parody of a real ad at the time with Mr. Hartmann as Telly Savalas. If you’ve seen it, you know. And that’s all I’m saying!
…except…
“I’m talking two-ply, baby!”
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My suggestion is suffer through the first 3 episodes, they don’t make sense and are all set up material. When they start explaining in episode 4, it all comes together and vastly improves.
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