It is a truly tragic time when someone dies. Even though you may never have personally met, you may feel greatly affected by them as they have inspired you either by the technology they create, the music they play, their moving speeches, or how they actively fought for worthy causes which inspire others to follow suit.
Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple Inc. passed away yesterday at the young age of 56 from a rare type of cancer. He leaves behind an amazing legacy of technological and social innovations including: the creation of cutting edge jobs and appealing technology for the world to “mould like clay” so to speak, he made the computer more personal and beyond and online shopping for music and software more effective, created a portable music player which defined portable multimedia, and a mobile phone which inspires other companies today. The tech industry has lost an amazing individual who shaped the way we use computers and phones, as well as music players and tablet devices. His vision and perspective on life and people regarding technology has inspired many people to think more outside the square.
Here’s an interesting retro-gaming fact that you folks may not be aware of. You know the game Breakout right? Well, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak both worked for Atari at one point, in particular on designing and building the circuit board for the Breakout game.
Steve Job’s influence spans a whole generation of gaming; he is a visionary who will be missed, but forever remembered for the inspiration of the technology we use today.
Whilst on the topic of Macs, I came across this programme a while back but never got to mention it to anyone except in the first video made for the website. DOSbox is a fantastic way to play DOS games on modern computers, however Boxer knocks it up a notch. This has to be one of the cleanest frontends for DOSbox that I’ve ever seen. It’s a free download and available on http://boxerapp.com/
This week sees the release of Rage from id Software. Is this the next groundbreaking first person shooter which is destined to be a classic? No idea, I haven’t played it yet! However, there are elements in the game that could definitely help to make it a classic. And so far, I have found two homages to this game. The first one is in the YouTube video above, and is an easter egg of Wolfenstein 3D.
But it’s not as big as the next easter egg…
The second one in the video above is of the first level of Doom.
And thirdly here’s one of Quake. I say good on id for putting these little tidbits into the game. Show the world your roots!
Finally, here’s a cool looking pair of Converse Chucks. They are from Deviant Art artist maya-plisetskaya, who is also responsible for the Street Fighter fingernail artwork we mentioned the other day.