So on Sunday I went to the “Game On” exhibition at the London Science Museum. The Exhibition was about the history of computer games and games consoles. It was a really interesting day and seeing all the different consoles and games was an interesting flashback from my past. They had Jeff Crammonds Grand Prix on show and available to play and I can still remember buying this game, inserting the floppy discs into my external floppy drive on my 1^st Laptop (Toshiba Portege 4700 a 486 system), running the game and thinking WOW how cool is this! It still had the same “fun factor” I remembered but seeing the graphics again just makes you realise how much things have advanced in just 12 years!

Also seeing the PDP-1 which was the 1^st computer to run a game was really neat, that thing is as big as my bedroom, seriously! There was a whole segment devoted to what has to be one of my all time favourite games – Tomb Raider, they had TR1 available to play as well as posters and concept art from the original game and the Bafta that was awarded to Core Design in 1999.

There was a section on the evolution of hand held gaming devices as well which was interesting to see, from the old grey Game Boys to the Game Gear and now the PSP, it had them all. I took a video of all of them which will be posted below.

The last thing we did at the exhibition was play on the new F1 Championship game on the PS3! It was amazing to see the graphics quality of the game and showed the amazing contrast from the Orginal Jeff Crammond Grand Prix game. I took a video of Tom racing a 3 lap race around Albert Park, Melbourne which I will also Post below!

The evening after the exhibition was good also, with Tom, Kiwi and myself going to the pub for some drinks and dinner and later being met buy one of Tom and Kiwi’s friends Harriet, she was a lovely person and it was really good to meet her!

The Photos from the day are here

and the videos are here:

Tom’s Race

The evolution of handheld gaming

Virtua Fighter 2 – Tom Getting beaten by Kiwi who had never played the game!!!

The Secret of Monkey Island – A fantastic game

BlogJet today announced version 2 of there ever popular blogging tool for windows! I have used this for a few months now and believe me it is excellent! The new version is even better and has had a total revamp in the GUI! With Flickr and YouTube integration it’s so easy to add videos and photos!

Go Check it out!

On another note, I am off to Hull later so I doubt I will be blogging from there as it is a birthday party and we are going to some club! I’m back at some point tomorrow though so I will make sure I post then and add some photos for you to see!

Also in the news today is the imminent strike of BA’s workforce:

Cabin crew have complained that a new regime on sickness pay, introduced 18 months ago, means they are forced to work when they are ill.

BA insists it is merely cutting high levels of sickness absence. It says it has already cut the average of 22 days sickness absence per worker to 12, but this is still above the UK average of seven.

Another issue is starter pay rates for crew members, which begin at £10,000, in addition to general pay levels and promotion opportunities.

Now I can understand their dispute, on pay 10k starting salary is pretty pathetic, but the sick days issue, 12 days should be plenty, cripes 22 days average is just nuts. If they are sick for some major reason and need more than that in a year then have an extenuating cirmcumstances process. If they just have a cold then they should take a day and spend that day shaking it and be back to work! That’s my view – you can’t bring the worlds largest airline to a hault over this, the Unions and BA need to reslove this ASAP and avoid a major cockup! 

Right I need some lunch now. Happy Thursday to you all!

A

P.s. Please all feel sorry for Dave who order a spinky new graphics card only to get this e-mail today