Bill Lange

My site is down for a while. My wife and I recently moved from Denver to south Florida. I was in Denver last weekend and turned in my cable modem to Comcast hence the site being down. The site will be back up in a a few months or so once we find a more permanent place to live ... once we sell our house in Denver and buy one locally. In the meantime, if someone wants to host the .php source code and images for the tool, I can certainly provide it. I believe I wrote it in PHP4 and it was running on an Apache/Win32 server. Bill

Yea, I'm sure my ISP is loving me right now. Bill

As some of you have already noticed, I zipped up the three directories (cds) of the Holmes collection and they are sitting on my webserver: http://www.langesite.com/Atari/Holmes/ Get them while you can. My wife and I are relocating from Denver to Miami and the bandwidth isn't currently being used (by us). At some point in the near future the web server will be coming down while our stuff is moved. I expect it will be back up a month or so after it goes down, but the zip files will be gone and it will be back to downloading one .atr at a time ... Regards, Bill

Nice article in Gamasutra today about Zork. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14492 It also talks about the Digital Game Cannon which has been discussed in the forum a few months ago. Regards, Bill

In that case, I'd be happy to buy you a pint. Are you in Glasgow? I am staying in a flat a shortbread threw away from George Square. Bill

Hey Steve, I am working up in Glasgow for the next few months. I'll be taking a day trip down to London this Saturday to pick up a few things for the wife at Harrods and Paddington Station (not sure why these particular items can't be more easily purchased on the internet, but there you have it). If your going to be around London, I'll buy you a pint. Bill

Here is a non-Atari but certainly a retro 8-bit article that I read today on the BBC website. How the Spectrum began a revolution http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6572711.stm Regards, Bill

39. Grow up in Toms River, New Jersey. Used to connect to the Bill (now Paula) Kaiser's BBS in Forked River, NJ. Live in Denver, Colorado. Currently working in Glasgow, Scotland for the next three months. 1979 Atari 2600 1982 Atari 400 1984 Atari 800XL 1986 Apple IIc

Check out this 50 Best Tech Products list ... http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.as...79864>1=9332

Here is part three of the article. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13480 Bill

I asked one of the authors of the list about the criteria used in selecting the games. Here is his response ... Hi Bill, I will post something soon to the IGDA Preservation SIG wiki or blog. I've been somewhat overwhelmed at the response to this project, so I am way behind in doing this. One important point: Please note that these are only the first ten games to get into the "canon." We hope that the list will grow with an annual panel adding games, much like the work of the Film Preservation Board for movies. Best, Henry At 11:40 AM 3/30/2007, you wrote: Dr. Lowood, I cross posted your list of "10 most important games of all time" to the Atari 8-bit Forum on the www.AtariAge.com website because of the selection of "Star Raiders". There has been alot of chatter on the forum about the criteria of selecting the games and why such classics as Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man where not included. Is there a link to a description of the selection processes somewhere that I can read and reference on the atariage.com Atari 8-bit forum. Regards, Bill

Today's Playing Catch-Up, a weekly column that dares to speak to notable video game industry figures about their celebrated pasts and promising futures, speaks to Warren Robinett, developer of 1979 Atari title Adventure and co-founder of the Learning Company...... http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13280 Bill

10 most important games of all time March 17, 2007 5:58 AM PDT Video games, like movies, are worth preserving and studying as cultural artifacts. So says Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, who together with game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; academic researcher Matteo Bittanti; and game journalist Christopher Grant came up with a list of the 10 most important video games of all time. The chronological list, submitted for review and potential permanent preservation to the U.S. Library of Congress: Spacewar (1962) Star Raiders (1979) Zork (1980) Tetris (1985) SimCity (1989) Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990) Civilization I/II (1991) Doom (1993) the Warcraft series (beginning 1994) Sensible World of Soccer (1994). Spacewar, conceived by Massachusetts Institute of Technology programmers Steve "Slug" Russell, Martin "Shag" Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen in 1961 and initially released in 1962, is the first multiplayer computer video game, according to The New York Times. It is also the first action game. Each player controls a ship and must shoot against the other ship while avoiding a collision with a nearby star. (The stars have a gravitational pull, but the missiles don't, because that'd take up too much processing power, according to Wikipedia.) Additional links: http://news.com.com/2300-1043_3-6168159-1.html http://www.rome.ro/ (John Romero's [Doom] website)

There is more information on Gamasutra about the Commodore branded high-end gaming PC. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13148 Bill

Commodore To Unveil Line Of Gaming PCs http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13005 Regards, Bill

I was already making mental plans for a short, weekend, end of summer visit to Vegas and then realized that it is in the middle of the week. Thats to bad. They would probably get a better turn out if it was on the weekend. Bill

There is an Adventure (think Zork) Game Convention in Las Vegas at the end of August this year. http://www.adventurecon.org/ Bill

There is a good article on the "bronze" and "silver" age of computer role playing games on Gamasutra. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070223a/barton_01.shtml It discusses Rogue, Ultima, Wizardry, The Bards Tale, etc. Bill

I modified my apache config so that the holmes folders are viewable.

The server crashed about a month ago. I though it was the heat, but it turns out that the eMachine motherboard died. Common problem with the eMachine model. I moved the web server over to a HP that I had laying around. I probably just forget to set up directory browsing under Apache or something. Been meaning to fix the CSS for Firefox .... just have not gotten around to it.

Not sure what that is all about. I'll take a look at the server when I get home tonight.

Your more than welcome to use the tool anyway that you wish. My webserver will be down for a few days as the power supply burned up in the Colorado heat yesterday! Bill

I don't think the tool has gotten much use since I first put it up otherwise I would have finished coding out the options. One of these days I may get around to it. Bill

In case anyone else needs the link: http://www.langesite.com/atari/Holmes/

Sorry, no. There are three cds full of files. Even zipped up it will be close to a gigabyte. If even one person starts to download a gigabyte across my home network, there will be no bandwidth left for me. Sorry.