Relive your memories of travelling the Oregon Trail in computer class!→

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If you are anything like me, having a computer class in elementary/high school in the early to mid 90s was less of an excuse to learn how to use computers, and more of an excuse to play video games at school.  

One such game that masqueraded as an "educational" experience was The Oregon Trail.  Now to be fair, The Oregon Trail is about as educational as today's Assassin's Creed series, but it was a lot of fun and a great way to waste an hour of a day.  

Now you can relive the memories of those disks spinning up and showing that MECC logo in a modern web browser!   The Internet Archive, the library of all things digital, has added in-browser support for emulated copies of many pieces of old software including a lot of your old favorite games.   Oregon Trail,  check.   Carmen Sandiego?  Check.   Prince of Persia?  Check.  Heck, they even have the original Sim City!    The library is actually surprisingly extensive.  You need to check it out!

One small bit of warning.   Don't let the kids roam around on here,  there is a bit of adult software in here as well.   Also, my apologies if I've just wasted a couple of weeks for you.   But hey, you had fun!.

Carnival's Super Bowl ad shows how sea travel is a magical experience

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While this may not have been technically-speaking the best ad of this year's Super Bowl,  it was certainly one of the most effective.   This is the first bit of advertising from any cruise line that actually captures the majesty and awe-inspiring nature of ocean travel.   This is about as far as you can get from the average waterslide, massage, dance club, broadway show laden cruise ad that wants to try as hard as possible to make you forget that you're at sea.  Great, great ad.

Rewatching Star Wars Episode I: The Beginning

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Found this blast from the past on Youtube earlier today.   Star Wars Episode I: The Beginning was a documentary that was bundled with the original DVD of Star Wars Episode I way back at it's original release.   Looking back at it with nearly 20 years of distance, it's interesting in almost the same way that it's interesting to watch a car crash in slow motion.

From the very beginning you can almost sense in the glances between people around George Lucas that people realized George had no idea what he was doing, and that they had no real power to say anything about it.   This was especially evident seeing John Knoll, the head of special effects on Episode 1, and one of the creators of Adobe Photoshop.   Throughout the documentary he looked like a man who was just trying desperately to keep the train he had boarded vaguely on the tracks.

Take an hour or so out of your day one day and check this out.    It's incredibly interesting to watch it to see how easily one can take a beloved property and completely mess it up.

A Hit Sundance Film was shot solely on an iPhone.→

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Courtesy of The Verge

Courtesy of The Verge

Here is a great piece from The Verge on "Tangerine", a film getting rave reviews from this year's Sundance Film Festival that was shot entirely on an iPhone 5s.    Pretty interesting video about how/why it was done as well.   Can you imagine arriving on set to film a movie and finding out that they were about to film the entire thing on a PHONE?   Kudos to the actors and crew for seeing it through,  I'm sure there are many who wouldn't have been able to take it seriously.

Also, it never ceases to amaze what people are able to create with iPhones.  Super impressive.

Fujifilm lets you virtually test all of their lenses→

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Fujifilm has slowly been making inroads as a serious alternative to Canon and Nikon with their X-series cameras.   From providing firmware updates to older cameras that actually add significant features, to building a stable of some of the best optics in the business for their X-system, they have done a lot to impress me over the past couple of years.

This new website is yet another cool thing that is so obvious, that I'm surprised it's never been done before.   Fuji is letting you take a test drive of all of its lenses,  letting you select the focal length and aperture of each lens to see what the results look like with any of Fuji's X lenses as they would look taken with the X-T1.   Having used the Fuji X-System, I have to say It actually gives you a pretty good feel for the results you can get.   Definitely worth checking out, if not just to see what Fuji has been doing with their stellar series of lenses lately.