Spider

Spider

Mr. Warfield's Globaloria class: Watch this video!

Guys and Gals,
Check out this video from one of the students at Greenbrier West!

A Tale of Two Classes

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Yesterday's 8th block waws like A Tale of Two Cities. The students were really getting into the Mini Game Tutorial, overcoming the obstacles of learning new software & working to together. It was really good to see them taking off. Me, on the other hand, I had the anti-Midus touch. Everything I touched yesterday broke. My computer was suffering from an overdose of Facebook Mafia Wars or something, it would not do anything I wanted it to do. I pretty much spent the whole class starting and restarting my computer. Next class will be better, but this blog is really meant to commend my 8th Block Globaloria class on holding things together while I fell apart.

My video game Journey continued.....

Those of you who know me know that I probably know more useless music trivia than any sane human should know. While most people were learning relative’s birthdays and anniversaries, I was reading album liner notes. So I could probably tell you Ace Frehley's guitar tech before I could tell you my mother's birthday. But enough about that. What I am here to blog about is one of the earliest, if not the earliest marriage of rock music and video games. The band Journey was on top of the world in 1983 when Bally Midway decided to capitalize on the bands upcoming U.S. tour and released the Journey video game.
So what you say. This game was really ahead of its time. It had scanned images of the band member’s faces on cartoon bodies trying to retrieve their instruments on different planets. Once you obtained all of the instruments it played their hit song “Separate Ways”. The song was looped on a cassette player inside the machine. Due to the degradation of the cassette tape finding one of these machines that still works is nearly impossible. So you won’t be able to put on your parachute pants and Rising Sun T-shirt and push some quarters into this innovative machine.

A New Perspective

Since the 1^st Globaloria training in June, I have looked at video games in a new light. Until then I had never really cared about what was going on behind the scenes to make these games work. After the June training, whenever I play them now I am thinking in the back of my mind “How did they do this” or “How did they do that”. Recently, I had a flashback. I went into Pizza Hut to pick up some pizzas for my daughter’s birthday party and there before mewas a Donkey Kong machine! This took me right back to 1982.Until I had to put 50 cents in to play.

I will confess, growing up I was a video game junkie. I would pump quarter after quarter into these machines. It started with pinball and evolved to Pac Man, Centipede right on until home platforms got affordable. But seeing this Donkey Kong machine got me thinking. Thinking back to that training in June and how we had a created a game that was comparable in a few hours and how Donkey Kong was state of the art in 1982.

On the ride home I got to thinking about the advances in technology in just the last 20 years. In my adult life I have evolved through Pong, Atari, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Playstations 1 -3, Play station Portable, Nintendo DS. I never would have dreamed that I would have all of this technology in my life.

Bloggers Block

Finally.... every few days for the last month I have opened my blog and stared at the screen racking my brain for a topic to comment on. Every time I drew a blank. I have a big mouth and a lot to say (whether or not it's relevant is another story). But I just haven't posted anything. I have Bloggers Block!

I have this fear of coming across as an idiot or something. Or I'll post something and it will be my view at the time and somebody will comment 6 weeks from now. And my opinion will have changed and I'll look like a hypocrite.

Does anyone else have these fears or am I just over analyzing all of this. Should I just put the pen to the paper and spew out what ever is on my mind. Please advise.