Operation Game
June 14th, 2020Today will be a good day. Happy Mio Monday everyone.
8/6 2020
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Had my half-yearly checkup at the eye doctor today. No news. Things are stable, which is all I can hope for. Until they invent a miracle cure for blindness anyway.
No news is good news. Although it’s weird not shaking hands when you say hello. What a bleak, dark future we live in.
8/6 2020
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This is one of Sky’s favourite places. On top of the pile of branches. She likes it there because it’s a safe space. The others can get up there too, but you can’t run there. You have to carefully climb around on the branches and pallets. It’s a slow approach. So if she feels a littel threatened, especially by Sassy, then she’ll get up there and she knows she can’t get rammed out of the blue. She’s a little sweetheart.
8/6 2020
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June 1st was the 30th anniversary of the reelase of Ultima 6. Wow.
One of the most important games, or pieces of art or whatever, in my life.
If you’ll excuse a nostalgic ramble.
I came up from the Commodore 64 and the relatively simple games of the 8-bit era. I can’t remember exactly when I got it, but Ultima 6 must have been one of the first games I bought when I got my Amiga. How could you resist that box art? The majestic hero bathed in golden light, foot planted on the chest of a demonic gargoyle. And yet there’s something sinister about it. It turns out that the False Prophet of the subtitle is actually you. And the gargoyles that you start off thinking are monsters that you have to kill, they are actually sentient beings and the ‘evil’ things they’re doing are actually a reaction to things that the ‘good’ humans have been doing to their homeworld and to their beliefs. The story is actually fairly complex and nuanced. You think it’s ‘hero slays the monsters’ story, but it goes way deeper than that and there’s a lot of interesting stuff about racial tension, morality, faith and religion and inequality. I’m not saying it’s Shakespeare, but it was much deeper than what I was used to. And it must have been the first real open-world game I ever played. Every object in the game could be interactted with. Famously you could bake your own bread, going through the process from harvesting wheat, making flour, getting all the ingredients and putting them in the oven. That game from 1990 was way more interactive than most modern games I ever played. The whole world was huge and living and breathing and beautiful. And you could go anywhere and do anything. Maybe the most striking moment of my computer gaming life was when I figured out how to exit the castle you begin the game in. I had no concept of who big the game would be. Just the initial castle seemed like a huge, complex world. And then I got the drawbridge lowered and I crossed the river and I walked on the road and my jaw dropped when I realised I was walking into a town. A town much larger than the castle. And just one town of many. And there were NPC characters walking around in the town. And they all lived their lives, going to work in the morning, going home in the evening. Working the shops, hanging aroundl having stories and dialogues and it was so massive and beautiful. And I walked south along the road and go to an intersection. North, south, east west. You buildings in all directions. You could go anywhere and do anything and it was spell binding. Especially for a maladjust nerdy loner who had a hard time in the real world. Here was a beautiful magical world to escape into.
The game was so big that it came compressed on the floppies. Today that’s nothing remarkable, everyone has tried unzipping an archive when you download something from the internet. But I had never seen anything like that before. You had to supply 4 blank floppy discs yourself. And then the installer unpacked all the files onto the floppies. A Player disc, a Program disc, a Populace disc and a Portrait disc. There was a lot of disc swapping when you played, I don’t think I had experienced that with any other game before either. A game bigger than one floppy?! Unheard of!
I loved exploring the world. I never did complete it. I never really got around to actually seriously trying to complete it. When I played it I just mostly .. wandered around. Talked to people. Solved side quests. Marvelled at the surroundings. One of the things I remember vividly was encounting a couple of cyclops. Big threatening monsters that seemed like something you had to fight. But just like with the gargoyles this was a case of don’t judge the book by its cover. It turned out you could talk to them. And the reason they were upset and angry was that a human adventurer had stolen their child. Something like that. So instead of killing the big brutish monsters you end up having to help them get their kid back from the supposedly good human adventurer. Such a far cry from all the games I used to play where you basically had to go from left to right and kill everything. It sounds silly and quaint nowadays, but it was revolutioanry and moving experience for me at the time. I didn’t know games could do this kind of thing. Be meaningful and thought provoking. It wasn’t a bout murdering everyone and stealing everything in sight. You had to actually try to be a good person and think about things and consequences. And find a way to have peace between humans and gargoyles, instead of a genocide to wipe out the other side.
And the music. It still transports me back to that world. I still listen to the soundtrack several times a week. If I need to put some background music on while doing stuff I’ll often just load it up on youtube. So full of nostalgia and memories and feelings. It takes me away. And I have always need to be taken away. The way I dream these days. When I can’t handle the real world. I need the otherworlds.
When I eventually upgraded to a PC, one of the big reasons was seeing Ultima 7 Serpent Isle on my schoolmate’s PC. A huge step up in terms of graphics, still with huge worlds and peoples and stories. Ultima 7 parts 1 and 1 are better games than Ultima 6, mostly because of technical issues and improved technology. But 6 will always be that game that showed me what computer games could do. That first step into another world. It’s a masterpiece and a milestone and it means so much to me. Like the best books and movies. Maybe you can’t understand that a computer game could mean that much to me, but I’m sure you might very well have a book or movie that means a lot to you. And a computer game, especially a deep roleplaying game with lots of text and story and world building, it’s not that different.
So anyway. Happy anniversary Ultima 6. Thanks for changing my life. I wish you could send mea moongate.
https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/69412-ultima-vi-the-false-prophet-amiga-front-cover.jpg
8/6 2020
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And if you’re just here for the goats, here’s a goatlog.
8/6 2020
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Look, I don’t like complimenting Trump . But you gotta hand it to him. They way he stood there with a bible in his hand.. without bursting into flames or his face melting like the nazis when they opened the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. That was impressive.
8/6 2020
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Oh, I see Sassy is going out for a walk.
8/6 2020
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Today will be a good day. HappY Yogi daY everyone.
9/6 2020
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The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only
9/6 2020
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here comes that panic attack. my heart stops.
9/6 2020
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Gotta feed the beast
9/6 2020
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Angry is good
9/6 2020
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Today will be a good day. Here’s auntie Kamel with bonus grandma Mio. Happy Hump Day everyone.
10/6 2020
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Good goat times today. A lovely warm and sunny day. I was greeted by bleats from the horse field. The goat gang had been relocated. All the construction work has moved into the goat pen. I could see that they moved the shelter and dug up the ground there. I hope they’ll put the shelter back when they’re done.. and don’t make too much of a mess in the goat pen.
But anyway, I got to spend the day in the horse field with the goats. It’s a nice and big space for them. Although there’s less to do. In the goat pen there’s the goat house and the shelter and the platforms I’ve made, the pile of branches and the ‘tower’ and the rocks. There’s not a lot of stuff in the horse field. But the space is nice and I think the goats like grass in there better than the grass in the goat pen. We’ll see how long it takes before they can go back in the own pen.
It’s nice to run along with the goats in the field. I got Mia to do some Palle pronks running arlong with me. Although I’m not in the best of shape to do a lot of running. Phew. Other than the running and some grazing and pulling down branchs, most of the time was spent just relaxing in the sun. Goats settling down in pairs and trios. Getting up to get some water, then sitting back down. We’re back above 20/68 degrees, which is where it starts to feel really nice and summery.
10/6 2020
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Why is we not in our pen, wonders Sky?
10/6 2020
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Goats in the horse field.
10/6 2020
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Today installment of ‘god I miss the 90s’.
Was just reminded of this one. I love the song, and I loooved the video back in the day when we got the mtv and the mtv was good.
10/6 2020
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Speaking of songs, why does this one make me cry when I feel like it makes everyone else roll their eyes?
10/6 2020
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A little look at the work in the goat pen. You can see they moved the shelter out away from the wall on the right. I’m glad they were able to just move it to the left, so they didn’t have to demolish it. Hopefully that means they can move it back up against the wall when they’re done with that digging.
10/6 2020
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I am heading off to the dreamscape now. Tomorrow is the day for my father’s surgery. I thought it was his hip that they were going to operate on, but it turns out I had the details a bit wrong. And I’m still not completely clear on teh exact details. I think it’s something with parts of his rib that are loose and nerve endings exposed.. Well in any case I hope they’ll be able to fix him up so he doesn’t have to walk around in pain anymore.
I can’t help worrying about the surgery, but hopefully there won’t be any problems and it will all go according to plan. I appreciate all the good thoughts you can send him tomorrow.
10/6 2020
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Today will be a good day. Here’s Fuzzy from 2016.
Happy to report that my dad’s surgery went well. He is recuperating now and if all goes well he should be allowed to go home tomorrow. He’ll be out of commission for a week or two while he recovers, but hopefully he’ll be without pain now. Thank you everyone who sent their positive thoughts. We appreciate it!
11/6 2020
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Sometimes when you scroll through the camera roll you just gotta stop and laugh.
Clearly Mia is thrilled with me using her as a pillow.
11/6 2020
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Ooh, I didn’t know that Craig Ferguson’s Doctor Who song was made to an Orbital son. Neat.
Also, incidentally I just downloaded 26 seasons of classic Doctor Who so once I get through all that I might start watcfhing the modern Who.
Or maybe I’ll watch more The Soup.
12/6 2020
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Hot takes: I don’t care about Columbus and statues are dumb. Why don’t you put up some statues of teachers and nurses and scientists, but like not famous super scientists. Just regular ones that work everyday in the lab to make life better. If you need a statue to remember your history then you have no history. You have a cheat sheet. Worry more about the future not the past.
PS it’s 2:14 am and I don’t know what i’m talking about
12/6 2020
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Today will be a good day. Here’s Preben from 2012.
12/6 2020
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Dominc Monaghan or Jorge Garcia playing Sawyer. Now there’s a trip.
If you’re a Lost fanatic as myself, I recommend looking at reddit.com/r/815
I haven’t looked at it all yet, but there’s some fascinating stuff. Like the first outlines and pitches and ideas for the show. Good stuff.
Still my favourite show of all time.
12/6 2020
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Big gal and little gal all snuggly together.
12/6 2020
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An update on my dad. He is now back home and doing well. The wonders of modern medicine and science. In the olden days he would have had to stay in the hospital for a week or two probably. I think it was a fairly serious operation. But now he’s up on his feet and back home. It sounded like things went very well. He’s already feeling big improvements in his moboility and lack of pain etc. Although of course he’s still recovering from the anesthesia and having been cut open and such. But he sounded really positive and optimistic about it, so that made me happy. Not gonna lie, I was pretty nerous about it all. So I’m just glad that everything has gone well and seems to have been very succesful.
Once again thank you to everyone who expressed positive thoughts and caring, we appreciate it!
12/6 2020
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Today will bea good day. Here’s Pong from 2016.
13/6 2020
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Not completely sure what the neighbours are cooking, but I have a feeling it has garlic. And by ‘has garlic’ I mean ‘is all the garlic in the known universe’.
13/6 2020
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Still can’t believe Hot Shots Part Deux didn’t win an oscar.
13/6 2020
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goatlog
13/6 2020
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Helping the goats get some green
13/6 2020
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Hmm, what’s this? A new chicken coop? Maybe the feathery fowls won’t be bunking with the goats after all. I guess we’ll see.
13/6 2020
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Today will be a good day. Happy Funday everyone.
14/6 2020
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If you want to make me smile play me Kim Vilfort’s 2-0 goal against Germanty in the European Championship final in 1992. It never fails. Once in a lifetime. Once in a human history.
If you’re into sports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDe2N9ykR6A
14/6 2020
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Of all the tables in all the towns in all the world, she climbs onto mine. Bleat it again, Mia.
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14/6 2020
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That’s all for now.
