Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines

We visited a small private collection of arcades from the Soviet era in Moscow. Given my field of work and the man years I spent playing video games, I found this interesting.

It was a stark contrast, these games and what was available in the western world. Games contemporary to the Sega Genesis era looked only marginally better than Pong.

Lots of mechanical, as in little moving parts, displays. This, instead of the raster graphics on CRT displays common at the time. I will have to look more into what kind of processors these things used and how capable they were.

Add terrible video games to the list of why it was crappy to grow up in the USSR.

Childhood dream moments

I grew up in the eighties. Like every other healthy kid who grew up in the eighties, I like Star Wars and Back to the Future. Last month there were two moments that made my inner kid happy. I share below.

Captured by the Evil Galactic Empire. At Alamo Drafthouse Village after watching Solo.
Sitting in the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Even got to put on the orange vest. This is at NIWeek 2018.

Ruskipolla 2018

To the excitement of millions of soccer-loving The MKX® readers out there, I want to formally announce:

Ruskipolla 2018

Ruskipolla 2018

The best World Cup pool / game ever anywhere!

This follows a long tradition of awesome “quinielas” started all the way back in 2006.

The system is 100% custom and written from scratch by me, with a bit of help from a few others. It’s all for fun and for my friends and friends of friends. I really think it makes the tournament more fun for everyone involved.

It all started as a bunch of furious all-nighters writing code twelve years ago. On every subsequent polla there have been many improvements. This year, I’ve added the ability to play for free through referrals. We’ll see how it works out.

To be honest, since the last Polla a couple of little kids have taken all of my free time and I wasn’t thinking of launching it. But enough people asked about it… so what the heck.

Join now and spread the word. There’s only two weeks until kickoff!

Book of Mormon

We went to see this last Saturday at the Bass Concert Hall. It’s extremely funny and pretty insuling, although a lot of those insults apply universally to all religions.

I honestly wonder what my mormon colleagues think about it. I’ll ask around.

No ugly people were harmed making this blog.