Category: Computers/Tech/Games

A New Day, A New RAID

A few years ago when I decided to build my first data storage RAID for the house, I didn’t have enough room in my server’s case to add four additional hard drives … so I went out to the garage, pulled one of my old computer cases off the shelf, and added four hard drives to it. I then bought some 3′ SATA cables, ran them out the back of my server and into the back of this tower to the drives, created a software RAID5, and began filling it with movies and music. I give you … Mr. Moonpie.… (read more)

RobOHara2 Comments

Celebration Station

This weekend, Morgan and I attended a birthday party at Celebration Station which, if you’ve not been or don’t have one near you, is essentially a Chuck E. Cheese clone. They have pizza, arcade games, lots of outdoor activities, and animatronic … dogs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1sbt_a9P8Y (Not my video.) Below are a few pictures I snapped at the party. Down the left-hand side of the arcade sat all the racing games, lined up and ready to go. And here are some of the shooting games. Upstairs, tucked away in the corner, were three pinball machines. The middle one was turned off, but… (read more)

RobOHara5 Comments

Why My Desk Looks Like This

Monday evening after hours I got a call informing me that one of our most important servers at work was offline. I’m not officially “on call” like I used to be years ago, but when something like this happens you throw your shoes back on and go see what’s up. What was “up” — or technically, what wasn’t “up”, was the server’s RAID card. No RAID card meant no hard drives. Being a relatively old server, I didn’t have any spares of the same make or model available at my disposal, and the RAID card was attached to the motherboard… (read more)

RobOHara1 Comment

Commodork on the Virtual Shelf

Commodork reader Frank Burcaw recently e-mailed me the following screenshot from his iPad: I’m not sure how deserving my book is to sit on the same shelf with The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and Jobs’ biography — even virtually — but I’m tickled nonetheless to see it there. Thanks again for sending me the picture, Frank! As a reminder, both of my books (Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie and Invading Spaces: A Beginner’s Guide to Collecting Arcade Games) are both available via Amazon or from this site as a DRM-Free PDF.

RobOHara1 Comment

OVGE 2012: The Recap

This weekend marked the 9th annual Oklahoma Video Game Expo (OVGE) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I attended the first show in 2003 as a spectator, but have participated as a presenter (almost) every year since then. Along for the ride this year were my friends Robb and Steve, who I previously mentioned flew in from Colorado and New York (respectively) to attend the show. Robb Sherwin is, among other things, the author of the award winning interactive fiction game Cryptozookeeper. Steve and Robb have known each other since the BBS days. Photo by Brandon Staggs Since our local NBA team (the… (read more)

RobOHara1 Comment

OVGE this Saturday in Tulsa

The 9th Annual (wow!) Oklahoma Video Game Expo (OVGE) will take place this Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As always, I and some friends will have a table set up and once again the entire hall will be filled with people buying, selling, and playing video games. At my table this year, I will be joined by two friends: award-winning Interactive Fiction author Robb “Ice Cream Jonsey” Sherwin, and the creator of the infamous remote controlled phone video, Steve “Aardvark” Davis. Additionally, I will be sharing a bit of table space with Charles “Ubikuberalles” Pearson, who will be showing off some… (read more)

RobOHara1 Comment

You Don’t Know Flack Episode 115: Text Adventures

Episode 115 of my podcast You Don’t Know Flack went online earlier today for some strange reason. I had actually scheduled the post to go live this Saturday, but something went wonky with WordPress and the post decided to go live on its own today. So, there you go. Episode 115 is all about text adventures. This episode is unique in multiple ways. Not only does it feature the infamous Interactive Fiction author Robb Sherwin via Skype … but it features him for approximately two hours. What can I say? Robb and I got carried away talking about text adventures!… (read more)

RobOHara

Interactive Fiction: Random Nuggets

At last year’s Oklahoma Video Game Expo (OVGE), I officially debuted my first full-length text adventure. Hangar 22, written in Inform 6, was a light-hearted text-based work of interactive fiction that involved aliens, tacos, and a talking GPS that sounded like Sir Mix-A-Lot. Over the past 30 years lots of people have written lots of great (and lots of not-so-great) text adventures and works of interactive fiction, so completing one does not make me an expert or authority on the matter. I did, however, jot down a few notes about writing text adventures as I was working on the game.… (read more)

RobOHara3 Comments

Jack Tramiel (1928-2012)

Jack Tramiel once said “business is war,” and based on his track record, he must have meant it. He was said, “anybody who sells a product against me I would like to wipe out.” Jack Tramiel was ruthless in business. One of his first tasks at Atari was cutting his new staff of 1,200 employees down to 100 [1]. Chuck Peddle, Tramiel’s right hand man at Commodore, once said of the man, “he destroyed me, he destroyed my family, he did all kinds of terrible things” [2]. If Tramiel’s actions were considered ruthless, he had good reason; up until the… (read more)

RobOHara4 Comments

YDKF Episode 114: Arcade Auctions

Episode 114 of You Don’t Know Flack is all about Arcade Auctions. In this episode I talk about my experiences of buying arcade games at auctions. I share some tips and tricks of the trade, including what to bring, what to look for, and what to expect. I have been attending arcade auctions for almost 20 years, and have purchased around 70 arcade games from auctions during that time. At You Don’t Know Flack you can download the podcast in mp3 format, or stream it directly from the site. There’s an RSS feed available, if you track your updates that… (read more)

RobOHara4 Comments