I was today years old to realise that the music for the Commodore 64 game “Lazy Jones” music is the sample used by Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400“.
Kernkraft 400 became Wales’ anthem after a match away at Belgium in the mid-2010s when the DJ played it at half time. I think the favourable conditions for Wales and the 48 hours of Leffe Blonde meant it was swiftly added to Y Wal Goch’s playlist, so much so that it was played in bars as I travelled around France in Euro 2016, usually the ones filled with the Welsh. We were no trouble, like.
You would have thought I’d have become aware of it, given my love of retro games. But no, I was told today. Thanks Matt!
it is quarter to 7 on day 2 of the Ashes test and England are already 7 down in their second innings, with a lead just shy of 200.
It is 6:47 in the morning, and I have been awake for about half an hour and in that time Carse and Atkinson have put up a dogged resistance.
I have therefore determined in my brilliant, Aggers-like analysis of the game that England only play well when I am awake.
This isn’t good, as I like my sleep and I am not a night owl, but if it means beating the Aussies on their home turf, I may pull a few all nighters. This is important for me and the country, so I am willing to do my duty.
….nevermind, Carse was just caught behind. Back to bed I go.
Away from things I discussed I also discussed the upcoming WordPress 6.9 release, building WordPress blocks with AI (and the security implications that provides) and changes to the Plugin ecosystem.
A rabbit hole I went down yesterday was this article on The New Stack and it went deep into places I don’t ever want to frequent1. In the article, it talked about the sustainability in open source, particularly when large corporations that turn over huge profits view contributions as “here’s a bug, fix it”. I don’t want to believe it, but it does seem like open source is only a viable business solution when somebody gets screwed somewhere down the line.
The XKCD comic you legally must share when talking about open source development.
I remember when I started getting “security researchers” reporting bugs in my plugins, and it got exhausting when individuals came with their cap in hand to my free plugins, putting the bug behind a bitcoin paywall. Oddly since my plugins have joined the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Programme these updates have pretty much stopped.
It got frustrating and stressful for me to push security updates when I was getting a couple every month, and I don’t have Google’s finest security researchers and AI breathing down my neck because my code probably isn’t being used internally in Google, or in Amazon, or Meta. I can understand why people who maintain these libraries are quitting when these are corporate entities are overwhelming volunteers, often with no compensation.
As annoyingly it’s been a few weeks since I attended, so I’m going to leave the images doing the talking, but if you’re ever in the area and you like nerdy stuff like I do it’s well worth paying a visit. The items in the cave and connected Arcade Archive are beautifully maintained – I am struggling to think of a Street Fighter II machine that was so looked after and presented, it worked perfectly.
Whilst I could wax lyrical about the day and the event (it was good seeing folks again also), I would rather pictures tell the story. I will say my favourite little gimmick was the WH Smith esque area where you could scan the games to play them on a Mister. That was effortlessly cool.
Another one from the list!
The excellent looking WH Smith esque storeThe fabulous NEO GEO Pocket. My brother had one of these, no idea where it went. The joystick is wonderfully clickyA lovely tribute to one of my favourite games ever, DoomAn absolute pristine Unreal Tournament box. Literally immaculateGreat Giana Sisters. Super rare as it’s a bugger to get hold of. It’s a C64 take on Super Mario Brothers and Nintendo got Litigious.Beautiful pins. I want the Lemmings ones. Already looked on eBay. No chanceA complete collection of Codemasters games. I’ve a fair few of these (28 in my collection). Notice the Championship Wrestling game with “Hulk Hogan” on the frontThe Nintendo Kiosk. Is a multisystem that was used to advertise the NES in Japan (I believe). The 3 monitors synced up so I was playing “1 bullet, 1 screen” on Duck HuntI wanted this so much as a child. The Cartoon Classics Commodore Amiga…I had this when I was a child. Shudder to think how long I played it for.At least one person out there paid for WinZip!The Tower of Power. I did add a Game Genie to it too…didn’t work.The Acorn Archimedes was a great machine, used to pray for rain so we would boot these up and play Chuck Rock, Manchester United Europe or Lemmings on them.Serious softwareSo the machine on the left is a joint IBM PC and Megadrive. The machine on the right I think is a machine that was in cars. Not sure of the legality of that but there you go.
If you ever get the chance to go, you should. The Cave is brilliant and would love to go back again one day!
