Run For It 2013-02-06

[Fairportfan]

Tiny Twisted Tunnels? Ooooohh... sounds almost like the Keep in the Temple of Elemental Evil module. My name, Dily, is short for Dil'yn'rae which is Drow (dark elf) believe it or not.

Infocom text adventures. Zork.

If you'd like to see what some of the best computer gaming was like when everything was text - you can play Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game online.

A couple of hints: Always count your senses.

Drink lots of beer. But only three times.

Feed the dog.

And (horrible as it may be to contemplate), enjoy Vogon poetry.

You're on your own for the Babel fish.

(Once you've played the whole game, so you know the walkthrough, you can play it again in about four hours, start to finish.

[Just Old Al]

Infocom text adventures. Zork.

Goes back a heckuva lot further tthan that...

I remember playing the original Crowther and Woods version of this on a PDP-11/23 in the late 1970s...told my boss I was running tests on it...and I was, kinda...

The good old days...when computers had less power than a 1990s cellphone.

Al

[Fairportfan]

Infocom text adventures. Zork.

Goes back a heckuva lot further tthan that...

I remember playing the original Crowther and Woods version of this on a PDP-11/23 in the late 1970s...told my boss I was running tests on it...and I was, kinda...

The good old days...when computers had less power than a 1990s cellphone.

Al

Infocom evolved from those, i believe.

[KnightDelight]

I'm getting the feeling this adventure is going to be more lighthearted than what we have seen in the past few months. A nice change of pace. Also, either they aren't going to meet any humans or teen girl thing can morph her bird legs into something human. At least find a long dress maybe. She must be using her mom's pin number to be getting all this access.

[jwhouk]

I'm just thinking that when they come out of the "entrance", they're going to find McBride and Pratt standing there.

And Brandi, who will admonish Kat.

[Yamara]

I'm just thinking that when they come out of the "entrance", they're going to find McBride and Pratt standing there.

And Brandi, who will admonish Kat.

Or it's Sugarbear's world and she's jimmied the exit with a baseball bat.

"Aw, running out on bail again, Atsali? Looks like Bibliothiki's clipped your wings right in the knee."


Sugarbear's world, Sugarbear's rules.

[Dave]

I'm just thinking that when they come out of the "entrance", they're going to find McBride and Pratt standing there.

And Brandi, who will admonish Kat.

A meet-up like that does seem likely at some point (the "convergence of plot threads" protocol) but I rather suspect it will happen later rather than sooner. Katherine and Atsali may end up getting themselves in a bit further over their heads than they had anticipated, and McBride and Pratt (and perhaps Brandi) could end up extricating them from the tar.

[TheSkulker]

They exit the tunnel and find themselves in a clearing. To the north there is a small white house. There is a mailbox here.

That does bring back memories. Them were the good old days...

[TheSkulker]

To the south there is a maze of small twisty passages, all alike.

1975, two brokem legs, with lots of time on my hands, Z80 box running CPM, maxed out 640KB RAM, 80x25 text monitor, dial-up connection to my office PDP 11/23 running RSX ==> a large sheet of paper with lots of colored squiggly lines ... ah yes, those were the days!!!

DECUS was the original freeware (probably).

[KnightDelight]

To the south there is a maze of small twisty passages, all alike.

1975, two brokem legs, with lots of time on my hands, Z80 box running CPM, maxed out 640KB RAM, 80x25 text monitor, dial-up connection to my office PDP 11/23 running RSX ==> a large sheet of paper with lots of colored squiggly lines ... ah yes, those were the days!!!

To me, THESE are the days. I remember those days too, but things are so much better now. We've gone from a 5 MB hard drive the size and weight of a Volkswagen to a 64GB micro SD card the size and weight of a little finger fingernail. Perhaps lighter actually. Not to mention sooo much faster. Nearly unimaginable progress. From computers that could not run for more than a few minutes without needing a tube changed to tremendous computing power running at over a billion Hz which fits in your hand and doesn't need attention for years. These are the truly fun times. There is a certain nostalgia regarding those times, of course, but now, when I think back to then I shudder and really understand what Spock meant when he said "stone knives and bearskins."

[Mark N]

What I still find amazing is that a modern smartphone has more raw computing power than the entire system (Ground and Command Module) for the Apollo 11 flight (or so I heard). I was born 2 months before that moonshot and I got to see the computer revolution as it happened and I am still mystified by the growth of computer tech, especially storage media.

[RunningBull]

I'm just thinking that when they come out of the "entrance", they're going to find McBride and Pratt standing there.

And Brandi, who will admonish Kat.

yeah, I could definitely see that happening. Has Kat actually met Brandi by the way?

[Mark N]

yeah, I could definitely see that happening. Has Kat actually met Brandi by the way?

Now there is a good question.

[MerchManDan]

They exit the tunnel and find themselves in a clearing. To the north there is a small white house. There is a mailbox here.

WHERE'RE THE CHEE-TOS??!?!

[DilyV]

What I still find amazing is that a modern smartphone has more raw computing power than the entire system (Ground and Command Module) for the Apollo 11 flight (or so I heard). I was born 2 months before that moonshot and I got to see the computer revolution as it happened and I am still mystified by the growth of computer tech, especially storage media.

Quite True... I saw a program a while back that said the whole flight computer on the Command module and LEM were only 16KILOBYTES each... Think on that... a 16kb jpeg is about the size of your thumbnail... Think about how selctive they had to be about the information they plugged into those two systems. Now days, a game is several GIGABYTES and I've got an 8 gigabyte micro SD card half the size of my pinky fingernail for my camera that will hold about 1600 photos that are several megs each. The leaps and bounds of technology are amazing.

I have to wonder... It is painfully obvious that Atsali is a drama queen... probaby a cousin or something of Phix, who is undoubtedly wondering where her niece wandered off to and how much trouble is she in...it seems that Atsali is the embodiment of the phrase, "Be careful what you ask for..." Maybe this is a lesson that Phix is trying to teach Kath...

[Fairportfan]

Your desk computer has more power than all of the computers used on the Apollo project put together.

[KnightDelight]

From what I understand the computers in the Apollo spacecraft were initially made from simple IC logic gates and discrete components. No LSI anything. They still had to use the computer between their shoulders a lot. Not to mention slide rules and good old pencil and paper. At least the ground computers could do a lot of the heavy lifting and feed the results to the craft.

[Fairportfan]

From what I understand the computers in the Apollo spacecraft were initially made from simple IC logic gates and discrete components. No LSI anything. They still had to use the computer between their shoulders a lot. Not to mention slide rules and good old pencil and paper. At least the ground computers could do a lot of the heavy lifting and feed the results to the craft.

Well, any calculations needed for the landing had to be done on the spot, given the 1-1/2 second time lag from Earth to Moon, three seconds for a Moon-Earth-Moon signal round trip.

And, in fact, the on-board computer kicked out as the Eagle was landing, and the final second or so of descent was done by eye.

================

And, in case i wasn't clear, i meant that the computer on your desk (or in your lap) is more powerful than the computers on the Eagle, plus the one on Columbia, plus all of the ground-based computers, as well.

[jwhouk]

WP has it at essentially 76 KB, but that's based on the "Wordspace" for programs:

Memory: 16-bit wordlength, 2048 words RAM (magnetic core memory), 36,864 words ROM (core rope memory)

The APC basically ran using a hard-wired code that couldn't be altered (except for that one time) and wasn't all that impressive.

This article basically suggests that the lowest-end IBM PC XT, released in 1979, had anywhere from two to eight times more processing power than the APC.

[Julie]

I'm just thinking that when they come out of the "entrance", they're going to find McBride and Pratt standing there.

And Brandi, who will admonish Kat.

Or it's Sugarbear's world and she's jimmied the exit with a baseball bat.

"Aw, running out on bail again, Atsali? Looks like Bibliothiki's clipped your wings right in the knee."


Sugarbear's world, Sugarbear's rules.

I want this to be true so badly!