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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

Comic Strips

Episode 0

Before we get to the strip, a couple of bits of trivia: First, I didn't actually write it. Second, It makes absolutely no sense out of context.   So, here's what happened...   Back in the late 90's, there was a website I frequented called ClassicGaming.com. Long-since slurped up into the morass that is now IGN, it used to be a cool website. There was a semi-regular column titled "Game of the Week" (long before blogs, mind you), generally written by someone going by the name o
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum in Comic Strips

4

Inter-Tubing

So many YouTube videos... so little time.   So I thought I'd help sort through a few that are worth watching, to save you the trouble.   First up, animation:   Insane cardboard animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18usd0iV3eI   Insaner bunny animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLUAbkRUvVQ (A making-of video is available .)  Animating with sheep. No, I'm not kidding. This one even features Pong! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw   A sort-of poignant story, fe
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Sci-Fri

So last Friday saw the second season premiere of The Clone Wars. It started off quite well with a two-parter about the bounty hunter Cad Bane, attempting to steal something called a Jedi Holocron in the appropriately titled Holocron Heist, and then using it to get some critical information for the Emperor in Cargo of Doom.   The animation seems a bit better this year (still some wonky walking), but the plot was a definite improvement.   First, Cad Bane is an excellent character. Unlike the u
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24

Homebreviews - part 29

I've been looking forward to this one...     Juno First 5/5   Welcome to the best shooter on the 2600. Every once in awhile, a homebrew game will come along that makes you rethink what the venerable 2600 is capable of doing, and Juno First is one of those games. A port of the classic (if not well-known) Konami arcade game, Juno First is sort of Defender flipped on its side. A vertical shooter, your view is above and behind your ship, flying above a moving grid, blasting everything in sig
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6

Homebreviews - part 28

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my blog! And to celebrate the event... the review that nobody thought would ever happen! (And no, I don't mean N.E.R.D.S 2 ) Yes, it's Actionauts. So, you're probably wondering, "How and or why the sweaty heck did you get Actionauts?!?" After all, I wasn't exactly enamored with the marketing fiasco associated with it. Simply put, I got a comp copy for having done some work on the manual and label. Ain't no way I'd plunk down $79.95 for an unfinished/p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

Working backwards

Recently, I've been doing some work for the forthcoming Harmony cart. In case you've missed it, the Harmony is a programmable cartridge for the 2600, which you can use as a multi-cart for playing nearly every 2600 game ever made, or for developing homebrews and testing them on real hardware.   The genesis of the project was in trying to come up with a way to produce homebrew cartridges in a more efficient manner, rather than Albert having to hand-solder and assemble every single circuit board,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

10

Mutton, beef and trout

After being delayed for several months, Herb Alpert's new album - Anything Goes (featuring his wife - Lani Hall) is finally here!     Recorded live during a brief tour last year, this is Herb's most jazz-centric album since 1992's Midnight Sun (currently out-of-print, unfortunately). There's nary a trace of the Tijuana Brass years here, and yet Herb's playing is as instantly identifiable as ever, as is Lani's singing (in case you're unfamiliar, she was the lead vocalist for
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1

(Insert stupid Blog software here)

Well after AtariAge's big transition over to Invision POWER!!!'s latest blog software, I think I've finally gone through and fixed all of the formatting and dates in my blog that got barfed on. A huge thanks to Albert for his help, and all of his hard work in dealing with all of the other problems that happened throughout the forums. If you happen to see anything else in my blog that still needs fixing, please let me know (note: bad writing, atrocious grammar and stupid ideas don't count as thin
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

11

Maybe...

So... with the recent announcement of the PS3 "slim" (which I choose to refer to as the more confusing "PS3-2"), I'm wondering if maybe I should get one?   I've been thinking about getting a Blu-Ray player anyway, the likeliest candidate of which would be the Sony BDP-560 (it does the Bravia-sync thing with my TV, and has built-in WiFi for firmware upgrades and whatnot) which sells for $269... only $30 less than the PS3. However... even though the PS3 is "only" $299, it doesn't come with the $
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

13

Orwellian Dining

While out for lunch with family last week, I had the experience of eating at Old Country Buffet. You know the type of place - where you grab an empty plate and head over to any one of several troughs, er... buffets stocked with all manner of generally mediocre food. This type of restaurant is particularly good for those with kids (we had my three nieces in tow), since it gives them the opportunity to eat whatever they'd like. I myself loved going to The Royal Fork as a little kid for this very r
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

(Insert stupid 3-D here)

(Addendum: The 3-D I'm referring to is stereoscopic 3-D, rather than 3-D computer graphics - although this is a CG film.)   About six weeks after its release, I finally managed to get out and see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs this week. Anymore, it's pretty surprising to still find a movie in the theaters after that length of time; more surprising was that the movie was still in a first-run, digital 3-D theater. Having largely avoided 3-D after that whole sordid Chicken Little affair, I decid
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

11

100,000!

Well, for whatever reason, my blog is the first one here at AtariAge to hit the 100,000 views mark. (Although I'm a little disappointed that the score didn't roll over.)   The rather astonishing thing about this, is that only about 97,532 of those are me either clicking "reload", or going back into my old posts and correcting spelling and grammar mistakes (although regular viewers know full well those almost never happen ). I figure another couple of thousand views are due to various web-bots
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

43

Getting Mooned

I haven't seen a whole lot of movies this summer, including most of the big action blockbusters. Maybe I'm just tired of having my senses (or sensibilities) assaulted, but I really haven't missed them any.   That said, me and a couple of friends wanted to go see something, so we looked through the listings and found Moon.   Moon has kind of fallen under the radar this summer since it's not a big-budget, well-advertised, mainstream-audience movie. But it is well-reviewed, and looked like it w
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Homebreviews - part 27

Many months ago, I teased: Up next: It takes two to tango This was my intention to finish off the last of the games that I had yet to review for the AtariAge store: Two-Player-Only Games. The trick was, finding that second player. Most of the people I know who are inclined to play videogames don't live in the area. So that meant going out of town, and hauling an Atari, controllers and carts with me. This past weekend, I finally got around to doing just that. I went down to my friend Jeff's pl
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6

iBlog

So I've finally joined the rest of the world, and got myself an iPhone. Of course the first appropriately nerdy thing to do with it (after using its GPS to plan an alternate route around the traffic to get home from Northridge), was to type an entire blog entry with it. I must say I'm rather surprised at how well the virtual keyboard works - especially in landscape mode and in no small part thanks to its on-the-fly auto-correct feature*. Of course I could type way faster than this on a real keyb
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

167

Saving $1.29

If you've followed this blog at all, you'd know that I'm a fan of "Weird Al" Yankovic's music.   Well, most of it. Some of his stuff just doesn't work (like pretty-much all of "Poodle Hat" ). But I have all of his albums, plus several DVDs featuring his music videos, TV series, movie, and a live concert. I even have the laserdisc version of The Compleat Al.   That said, I'm not going to buy his new digital-download single, "Craigslist".   Why?   Well, because it's a waste of a $1.29, t
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

13

Upping the ante

So many potential "Up" puns... but I had to pick just one for this entry's title. Such is life.   I finally managed to get out and see Up today, in glorious 2-D! Hey... it was an Imax theater (although not an Imax print), so at least the screen was huge. But we decided as a group that our past experiences with 3-D weren't worth the extra five bucks. Maybe it would have been, since I certainly would have paid more to see Up if I'd had to. (Although after getting lunch first, then tickets and a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

10

Set Phasers on "Preposterous"

I went and saw "Star Trek" Thursday night. And I'm a little disappointed.   You see, I had some choice material already thought-up for my review. About the movie being an utter, unwatchable train-wreck. About how they'd screwed everything up, and the characters were all just vapid, Hollywood pretty-boys. I even had a great line about how Star Trek the movie was basically like an over-the-hill Hollywood starlet that had had one-too-many plastic surgeries, and you kind of felt bad for it because
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

Two months later...

Well, it's been over two months since my last blog entry. I was going to go for three months, but since I'll be seeing Pixar's Up sometime this week, I figured I'd be posting about that anyway, and might as well post an entry now.   Mainly it's been work that's been keeping me out of the whole blogging thing. As with last year, the end of the school year at CalArts (where I work) keeps me extremely busy.   This year, we had some 144 animated films turned in, running just under 7 hours. Putti
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

5

Who watches the Watchmen?

Well, on a Friday afternoon matinee, that would have been about eight people.   Some 20+ years ago, I read Watchmen when it first came out as a limited series comic book. It didn't pick up the "graphic novel" moniker until a later reissue. But even during its first run, it was still widely (or wildly) heralded as a masterpiece.   I really don't remember much about it, other than it seemed to take forever for DC to get all twelve issues out, and after the first run-through, I don't think I ev
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

15
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