The Game & Watch

Posted by rizal on Jan 4, 2008 in Vintage Computing | 2 comments

Just added into my vintage collection are these LCD games ,Game & Watch I won at Ebay. Surprisingly (the Octopus game), is still in good condition with the original box! Back in early 80s I used to have two of them — I can clearly recall that night, my aunt, Ngangah came back from her regular shopping in Singapore (that time when SGD1 =RM1) and brought back this Popeye G&W game–it was very late but I forced my self to wake up just to try out what was to me the long awaited “best in the world ever game” -officially that historical day, I would join the coolest guys at school who had this game .

Back in the old days, my old friend Sh. Yusof (was my best friend at primary — he didn’t even completed SPM, I heard ) had this version of Octopus while the Donkey Kong belong to another friend Fadzli (hmm.. I think he was a Cambridge graduate — fate seemed to turn out differently to G&W owners?!).

But being 2nd in the family — by default all games/toys would belong to my big brother and also later we had another version — Mickey Mouse (yes, the one catching the egg from falling ) somehow a “girly” version was belong to my younger sister.

So now, 20++ years later, I finally have my very own Game & Watch Octopus + the multi-screen Donkey Kong too. I was damn good at it before but somehow for the first few attempts yesterday I barely passed beyond 20 points mark! Darn — did it get harder after 20++ years or it was just me getting ..?!

Octopus was released in 1981 while the multiscreen Donkey Kong a year later, 1982. Gunpei Yokoi was the designer of this game — it was believed that this G&W was indeed to be a prototype of Gameboy.
I always wanted to buy this G&W games but was long delayed until one day here in Riyadh, I met my new Thai friend, Kritsada who actually had the same vintage hobby — he showed me two of his G&W collection and after that we spent time talking about the good all days on which version of G&W we had played .

Check this huge collection in Youtube (not mine!)

Edhelper.com

Posted by rizal on Dec 31, 2007 in being a father | 0 comments

Before I start –A Happy New Year to all of you! Ouch! FYI, in 16 days I’ll be 35 and older.
Nothing much I would say about 2008 except I just need to read more than usual, I hope!

Back to the original topic –my kids are in a long holiday (until early January 2008 ) and basically I was not so happy with the kids spending too much time playing or watching TV. Imran would be gone missing with his friends playing — only came back looking for food and before I knew it he would disappear again – and Jaja would be watching cartoon all day as usual. Ammar was bored and during this cold winter in Riyadh he would spend more time under the blanket than anything else ( I think he got it from me ) .

So, I thought of getting them to do some written exercise , the books looked soooo boring — I decide to look in the internet for some Math/Science/English etc etc worksheet exercises. I find a few but one of them Edhelper.com seemed to be the best of them all.

The website looks simple but rich with contents, you can find categories of worksheets — Math, English , Geography , Science and what I like most about it is the Critical Thinking parts + Puzzle . It covers materials for K-12 — (kindergarten to High School) and surprisingly for Special Needs too.
The website can generate random pdf worksheets and can be nicely printed on A4 paper based on the categories chosen (with answers too!) so parents can also plan a daily exercise for the kids accordingly. You should check it out — you can choose to use them for free or decide to have a wider selection or full access by paying some fee at maximum of USD40/year

My Asus EEE PC

Posted by rizal on Dec 25, 2007 in open Source | 0 comments

Finally, the long wait paid off. It was the first day at work after Hajj Holiday and when I reached office at the ground floor– few Malaysian colleagues of mine telling me that there’s a box awaited me at the reception. I knew this would be the day!
My Asus EEE PC finally arrived in Riyadh — I think it would be the first Asus EEE PC 8G in Saudi Arabia as I was told it was just released sometimes early this month in Taiwan!!

So I opened up the box, put the battery on , and press the start switch , as mentioned in few reviews (one here) the boot up time was amazingly fast — maybe my Nokia E90 startup time is much longer than this! Nothing much I can say about the default software bundled with the laptop, Xandros hmm.. — immediately I did my research on which version of Linux would be the best candidate for this machine.

Anyway to cut it short that evening at home — using the guide here , my EEEPC was converted to Ubuntu- I first thought of having a lighter version of Xubuntu but later found that Ubuntu performed quite well with the current specs. ( I got the Ubuntu ISO downloaded last week!)

The only thing I hate about this machine is the keyboard was cramped – the button was to small compared to my huge fingers! But my typing is improving now just need few days of practices .. I hope!