I had a discussion with my mother once about wanting to play Freecell but she didn’t have access to a computer. “You know, you can play Freecell with a deck of cards…” She was not amused. What is amusing is how popular Microsoft Solitaire is as it turns 30 years old. Solitaire has 35 million monthly players which is 3 times the number of people playing World of Warcraft. In other Microsoft news, GW BASIC is now open source. BASIC started Microsoft, so this is a bit of interesting history.

Has Zoom video conferencing gotten bland? What about some new locations for your virtual meetings? Meet the company that is holding meetings in Red Dead Redemption 2. There are a few downsides, but it sounds awesome.

Turn on your 60s era mainframe with Alexa

Some people may be afraid of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially after Nvidia’s AI generated a Pac-man clone after watching 50,000 hours of Pac-Man, but I don’t see too much to get worked up about. Just like that annoying kid in school who copied your answers for the test, Nvidia’s AI created nothing new, it just copied.

I’m one of the first people to hop on the Zack Snyder sucks bandwagon after the travesty of Batman Vs. Superman. Seriously, the movie was so boring that I heard a guy snoring during the big battle scene at the end. But, after watching the extended version of BvS, parts of the movie now made sense. This elevated the movie almost to the level of mediocrity.

Because of personal issues, Joss Whedon came in to finish the Justice League movie, adding some much-needed humor. Since then, fans have been clamoring for the ‘Snyder Cut’ of Justice League, and it is now happening on HBO Max. I hardly remember watching Justice League the first time, so my second viewing will seem like the first time all over again.

One of the first things I did when we signed up for Disney+ was to check out The Simpsons. I was hoping Disney wouldn’t fail like FX, but I was too hopeful and it crushed my dreams. The Simpsons on Disney+ were the cropped versions, which means several site gags were lost. Fortunately, Disney has seen the light, and will be releasing The Simpsons in their original aspect ratio on May 28th. Now if we can get the video distributors to stop cropping popular TV shows that were released pre-HD. Friends and Seinfeld look terrible with the framing of the shots being off.

DEVO’s “Mongoloid” about the arcade game Asteroids

Back in the 80s, everyone talked about how cool it would be to be able to have video calls and work from home, and how did that work out for us? Apple added Facetime in 2010, and I can count the number of Facetime calls I’ve ever done on two hands. Now the coronavirus has been driving us to the online world we were promised.

Need something beside Netflix to watch online? How about checking out
the free shows being offered by HBO. Maybe you prefer YouTube over HBO? Here’s a way to watch YouTube videos in 3D with others, including text and video chat.

No, 5G is not the cause of the coronavirus, but some people are believing the conspiracy and shooting at cell towers. I’ve heard the telecommunication workers are also getting death threats.

Here’s a little blooper with the special effects of Star Trek Voyager when they left a cursor on the screen.

In the 90s, point and click adventures were a big deal. Here is the concept of a Seinfeld point and click adventure. I’m hoping George will be a non-playing character because, really, who would want to be him in the game.

Along with point and click adventures, BBS games (called door games) were big. They made such an impact on the developers at Slack that those developers used BBS dor games names in the documentation for the API.

Don’t you hate organizing your MIDI files?

I’m all for the if it ain’t broke then don’t touch it mentality, but with technology 10 years is an eternity. Yet governments are having problems because they are still using COBOL, a language from 60 years ago. Now I wish I would have paid better attention to my COBOL classes in college. Along the same line, because Boeing didn’t want to upgrade the computers in the 737 Max, the same hardware is now holding up a fix.

We’re all stuck at home, so how about checking out
Wizards of the Coast’s page of free D&D materials and resources. I also stumbled across this list of games to play online.

Did you ever wonder what the sheet music for various video games would looke like? Wonder no more!

Halt and Catch Fire was not the most popular show on AMC, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. Here’s a retrospective on what made it great. The secret to enjoying the show is to not nitpick how the technology is depicted. It took me a few showings until I got over the problems with the technology and to sit back and enjoy the story. If you haven’t seen it, then go watch it!

I sometimes wonder what I would put on my gravestone. He died out of spite sounds pretty good, and that is why I totally understand building a Nintendo Switch out of spite because of scalpers.

Finally, if you want a new game to play during quarantine, how about a version of Space Invaders where the invaders are replaced with the letters that spell virus? Requires an Atari 2600 and an SD cart if you want to play it on real hardware, which any self-respective geek would have in their basement or lair.

How will society change in the future? Some of the dominoes have started to fall. The value of conferences has been debated far and wide, but this year the question is moot since every conference is canceled, and a lot are soldiering on virtual. O’Reilly Media is going all in on virtual conferences and canceling their physical conferences. I wonder how many conferences will be virtual in the future?

There are tons of reasons why being physically at a conference is beneficial, but I always wonder what virtual conferences would be like if employers gave employees time off to attend one. Let the employees stay home and attend a virtual conference. They can share what they learn when the conference is over.

I’ve heard of elections being decided with a coin flip, but FIFA pros settle match with Rock, Paper, Scissors after a server error.

Here are 2 hours of Seinfeld bloopers

The bloopers were apparently created for the cast and crew, and this particular copy made its way to a flea market.

Radiooooo lets you pick a decade and country, and will then stream the popular songs from your selection.

A 4k, 60 fps Trip Through New York City in 1911

After watching this video, I realized how lucky the people of 2120 will be. There will be millions of hours of HD footage of the early 21st century available, letting them essentially time travel to 2020.

Mastermind turns 50! We played the crap out of this game growing up.

SXSW, a major conference in Austin Texas shows off all sorts of pop culture, movies, and more. One big feature of the conference is the showing of up and coming filmakers. It was canceled this year, but Mailchimp stepped in to release the SXSW 2020 Shorts online for free.

How good is the Space Shuttle Insulation?