MPJ

I am not absolutely sure that 'Retro Games' is correct title here, after all in the realm of video games, what is today ultra modern and state of the art within current level of GPU and gaming consoles, literally tomorrow we can start considering retro. On the other side, imagination of people in gaming industry is never old and some games from the past, despite obsolete graphics will always be on the top shelf of mine. Not to mention that familiar nostalgia moments when I stumble to some vintage and familiar screen, that always remind me of some happy moments from the past. To cut the story short, one of those vintage moments triggered the idea for Viktor's and mine new blog-vlog collab to explore couple of old games for his channel and this small cover story. We made an easy deal and divided tasks for me to choose the games and for him to play them in front of the camera. It was interesting enough to see how 12 years old reacts to the old graphics and different nature...

My first encounter with Intelligence Quotient, aka IQ, was 25 years ago during my preliminary exam for the mandatory military service. In those years Serbia was part of a former socialist federation of Yugoslavia along with couple of more countries and avoiding army service was impossible. Everybody had to go to serve the "time" for one whole year and they used those preliminary tests to better fit you into suitable unit and doing a form of an IQ test was part of it. They didn't give us the result, but I probably did it pretty well since they put me to be main operator of a ground-to-ground missile unit. At least my little bit higher intelligence than average "soldier" spared me from the mud, dirt, long marches, carrying heavy weaponry and other meaningless activities of the service. So I spent most of the time in a classroom surrounded with state of the art simulators, playing video games made specially for practicing real time guidance of the missile in simula...

There are numerous ways of how our civilization might end. I said plenty in the past about real threats, either from heavens or from within the Earth or ourselves. It was the main theme in the second half of 2012, around the Mayan's doomsday date and I contributed with several posts related to this, including Doomsday , Biodiversity and The Apocalypse Aftermath and in all those stories I was mainly focusing on the mother nature and catastrophes we can do little or nothing about. It was either some wrath from the distant universe in form of deadly gamma rays and supernovae implosions or some judgment day originated from our own Sun or asteroid impacts or even the ultimate rage from our planet by some super volcanic or tectonic disaster. But I only timidly mentioned all those man made events I referred as 'other human stupidities', including nuclear holocaust and biological hazards. So perhaps now is the time to continue the thread and glimpse into two great stories behind ...

Recently, every time when I am trying to shut down our Xbox 360, loud laughter fills our living room as my wife is every time equally entertained by my heavily accented "turn off" command, especially in all those times when I am repeatedly saying it again and again with different levels of enthusiasm until the poor thing finally understands what I really want it to do. I don't mind, even though the laugh is on my account, I am positive that voice commands are the most effective way to shutdown the Xbox. Alternatives are either to use its motion sensor and in series of waves force it to turn off or to find the controller (which is always located under the last pillow in the farthest corner of living room) and in a series of clicks do the same. But this is also not the only reason I like to use voice commands. The main reason is that I really like to try and use new features in nowadays computers simply because no matter how rudimentary they are they surely represent the fu...