I stumbled upon SpaceQuest.net the other day. They have all of the old Space Quest games available for download, along with scans of all the manuals, box art, and other cool stuff. I’m not sure why I hadn’t discovered this before; it says it’s been online since ’98.

For those unfamiliar, Space Quest was one of the greats from the dying genre of games know as “adventure games”. The point was to guide your character through interesting stories, puzzles, and usually insults. The best part about them was that they usually didn’t take themselves too seriously. Games today are so deadly serious, as if the premise of a space marine running around with a 4-foot vertical jump while carrying roughly 800 lbs. of weapons, ammo, and armor isn’t inherently ridiculous. It’s refreshing to go back and play games that have their tongue firmly in their cheek…

So is it legal? Given the lack of copyright notices and the fact that Sierra On-line was recently shut down, I’m gonna go with no. But really, who cares? It’s not like there’s anywhere (other than Ebay) I can go to give people money for Space Quest anymore, barring the copy of SQ4 I found in the moldy oldies bin at the local Circuit City.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go scrounge together an old 486…

Pop Filter 2 wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped, unfortunately. I think perhaps they tried to do too much, to grow it too fast, and it just didn’t work as well. I’m glad somebody’s trying, though.

Coffee and Cigarettes was pretty funny, though. The only problem was that it moved kind of slowly, and was a bit difficult to watch at midnight on Saturday when I was already dead tired. I’m going to have to find it to rent some time, so I can actually pay attention to it.

Watched way too much Invader Zim this weekend. It’s one of those cartoons that makes you wonder “why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?”

I brought this up in a conversation a few weeks ago, and got a bunch of blank stares, so here’s a link to an article about how modern music companies can take even a recording which is solid musically and squeeze every last bit of life out of it by compressing the living daylights out of it. It talks about Rush, but the first album that sprang to mind for me was U2′s All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

It gets a bit technical near the end, but it’s definitely worth reading at least down to the part with the huge, all-caps text. It’s a very nice illustration.

Well, I’m wearing the same clothes I was 3 days ago, and I’ve spent the last two nights in parking lots, I’ve got dirt from about 11 different states (and 2 provinces) under my fingernails and I probably smell a little funny. But I’m finally back in the land of obscene humidity and leaden-gray skies. Joy.

I just rolled in, and I’m very tired, so I’m going to go take a shower and get a nap. I’ll probably talk to you all at some point tonight or tomorrow.

Oh, and for those of you who insist on believing that Montana doesn’t have a daytime speed limit, I now have a piece of paper which proves otherwise…

So I guess I’ve got a website now. It’s a bit bare-bones, and will probably remain so for a while. But I wanted a place to be able to post photos and stuff from the road, so now I’ve got it.