Wednesday

So yesterday I woke up and was on my way out to work, when I spotted this on my porch:



I peer around corners, under rugs, in the couch (which we still need to do something with), but nobody's there watching it. No triplines attached to it, no weird explosives hidden in it. So, being the charitable person I am, I transport it to my room and give it a home.

Flash forward nine hours.

I'm out of work, I eat the last of Dan's Steak-ums (which is what he gets for eating all two pounds of my ground beef, asshole), and I'm on a venture to go get batteries. I'll be eco-friendly and get rechargeable ones, since this thing takes six. And I figure, best place to grab these would probably be out at Radio Shack. First, I wasn't thinking at all, because it's never smart to buy anything at Radio Shack. And I know this first hand. My choosing it was mainly because it'd provide a good, long bike ride. Second, rechargeable batteries are not cheap at all in the first place.

Batteries typically come in sets of four or eight. The Casio takes six. I'm looking, looking, looking, and I'm still sweating like crazy because I just rode about four miles in the 80 degree sunny weather we had last afternoon. Finally I find the-- $19.95??? For eight batteries? I look at the alkaline sets. Eight for $6.49. I'm sorry, but I'm a broke college kid. Once I get my credit card finally paid off and an extra couple hundred in the bank at all times, then I'll buy nothing but NiMH's for the rest of my life, or until they invent something better.

Now, whilst at the Shack (as the trendy people call it now), I had my bike parked out in front of the store. Literally right in front, so I could watch it through the window and make sure nobody was stealing it. For I am without a bike lock. This is a problem for me, as I use my bike as my main form of transportation, and if it were stolen I would definitely not be a happy camper.

So I decide from here to spend what money I have left on a bike lock. I ride all the way back from University Plaza to downtown Buffalo in search of a shop. I'm apparently as blind as Anne Frank, because I couldn't find a damn one. I did, however, find something much more cool. If you go to HSBC One:



there's a big brick clearing with a sculpture in the center. From here, you can chill and watch the big screen in Coca Cola Park( or is it field?). So I'll be hitting up some Bison's games there for free.

And that, in a nutshell, was my Wednesday.

Progress on Paper

So, I've started doing a little bit of research on both the arcade front and the game development front, and I've got a bit of info on both.

-Arcade Games:
Arcade games are expensive. No shit. I knew that. What I did NOT know was that it'd be relatively cheaper to buy the game in parts (PCB, CRT, d.i.y. cabinet, etc) and assemble it yourself. I'm not exactly the most proficient person when it comes to building things, but I'm no total slob, either. Plus, if I was to start making my own cabinets for other games, that'd certainly give me the experience I'd need to start designing my own for my own games.

-Game Development:
There's a set of bindings to Python I've been reading up on called "pygame". Python, for those of you who don't know, is a straightforward scripting/programming language that runs on multiple platforms. So, to a broke guy like me that's scraping for every penny on the bottom of the barrel, that reads "You can develop games on a Linux platform with a free toolkit and use it in your own arcade games." This is a thought that makes me grin like a little kid all over again.

So that's what's going on there. If anybody out there has any info they'd like to correct me on, or has some knowledge of owning an arcade, arcade games, or developing games, I'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE: Just found this sick web page/wiki - http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

B-Lo Arcade-a-Mania from a Tron Fan

Mmmmm, what an exciting week. I'm a huge Tron fan. And I mean, HUGE. So seeing all the new stuff from ComiCon about the new sequel Tron Legacy was making me nerdgasm for a better part of the week. Seriously, you should check this shit out.

Flynn Lives
Some secret stuff on the Flynn Lives page including the trailer/test footage in HD
Home of Tron
Official Tron Legacy Page

So yeah, geek-a-mania. If you haven't seen the original, I highly recommend it.

So I saw all this stuff. And videos from the Flynn's Arcade they opened up for people at ComiCon to check out, and it made me think: Why aren't there any cool arcades anymore? I mean, I understand the whole home console and computer gaming scene. But seriously, what's more fun than hanging out with a bunch of friends, having some cheap eats, listening to loud music, and playing ridiculously addicting video games? So, I now have a dream for when I finish college. I want to start an arcade in Buffalo. Classic games, locally published games, local, retro, and obscure tunes, and have it close to someplace that sells pizza or something like that. I mean, how cool would that be? Quarter-to-play games, friends, neon, just a good time. I'm going to do some serious research into it, and start figuring things out, how they'll go from here. And I'll be sure to post info about it here.