SunFyre...words from a seated position

One of my favorite games sites is orisinal.com. The games are truly original. Each one is a unique concept.

I'm definitely a videogame addict, but rarely do I get to feed my addiction with something new. First it was Defender, with a steady stream of copycats. Then came Super Mario Brothers, then countless hundreds of knockoffs. I don't even know which game was the first first-person shooter, but now the top 10 always seems to have five or six of them. I think EverQuest gets the credit as the first true massively multiplayer online role-playing game. My only every couple of years and do we see something original. Heck, even Tetris has been knocked off about 4000 times.

But this website, created by one individual, has a huge number of miniature games that are original as they are addicting. Beyond that, the artistry is phenomenal and completely unique. The music is completely original, and for most of the games, is soothing rather than annoying. And finally, they are family-friendly. With two children who are just starting their adventures in video games, I can appreciate games that don't feature blood and gore. These games actually have extremely mild violence if any at all, and no death and destruction.

The newest game is called Winterbells. I won't say it's my favorite, but it's definitely fun, and absolutely adorable. Check them all out when you get a chance.

Labels: Orisinal, video games

I saw this story today, courtesy of Reuters, about a man who gave up sex over 75 years ago.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday.

"I don't know why I have lived this long," Chan Chi -- one of Hong Kong's oldest people -- was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post during an annual feast for the city's elders. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years -- since I was 30," said Chan, a widower whose youthful bride perished during the Japanese invasion in World War Two.

Chan, from Hong Kong's less built-up New Territories hinterland, was pictured looking sprightly and eating heartily at the banquet. A former chef, he said a low-fat diet and regular dawn exercises had helped him fight off the ravages of old age.

But the centenarian, who's had no difficulty living a monastic existence for nearly 80 years, admits the pleasures of tobacco have been harder to resist.

"Now I want to quit," he was quoted as saying of his decades-long cigarette addiction. "Maybe the government should ban cigarette sales so I can give it up," he added.

Well, I have to seriously wonder if this guy's life is worth living? I know, I know, every life has value. Let's not start the flames yet. I'm a little bit serious.

So apparently, the guy was about 30 years old when his wife died. I'm all in favor of monogamy, as a concept. But I don't think anyone would have blamed the guy for having a couple of dates. Even his wife, whom I'm sure he loved, would have probably said "check her out" and encouraged him to get a little sumptin' sumptin'.

I just feel like this guy is probably pretty depressed. Okay, a year or two out of respect for the dead wife. Maybe another year or two to get back into the swing of dating, if he's ugly. But after three or four years, that's just depression.

My favorite part about the article, however, has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with the fact that a guy who can abstain or for 75 years, can't give up the cigarettes, even though he wishes he could. Sure, big tobacco will probably put this guy in a poster with the caption "see, they don't really kill you", but even he wants to quit.

Labels: Big Tobacco, Centenarians, Hong Kong, sex

Ever since I read the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I wanted to be an inventor. To this day Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison are my heroes. I didn't want to become rich and famous. I didn't want to invent everything and anything like Edison. I simply wanted to say "I created that" about something that influences everyone's lives.

Robert Alder did that. Imagine the world without the remote control. There's an entire generation of people who have never stood up and walked across the room to switch channels. But let's look at the bigger picture. Remote controls allow me to personally navigate my life far better. But does that with all of us, but for someone in a wheelchair remote controls are essential.

They're useful for far more than switching between House, 24, and American Idol. They allow my mother-in-law to switch the channel during an unexpected nude scene on HBO, even though no one in the room is under the age of 30. Remote controls allow us to dim the lights, turn on soft music, and have a romantic interlude without ever leaving the sofa. The same technology allows me to use a portable doorbell so I can get the attention of my caregivers and my family when I need it, even from the opposite end of my long house.

Robert Alder you are a hero, at least to me. And until today, I didn't even know your name.

Below are some excerpts from an obituary, courtesy of the Associated Press.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote, Robert Adler, has died.

Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

In a May 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Adler recalled being among two dozen engineers at Zenith given the mission to find a new way for television viewers to change channels without getting out of their chairs or tripping over a cable.

But he downplayed his role when asked if he felt his invention helped raise a new generation of couch potatoes. "People ask me all the time -- 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say that's ridiculous," he said. "It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."

Various sources have credited either Polley, another Zenith engineer, or Adler as the inventor of the device. Polley created the "Flashmatic," a wireless remote introduced in 1955 that operated on photo cells. Adler introduced ultrasonics, or high-frequency sound, to make the device more efficient in 1956.

Zenith credits them as co-inventors, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded both Adler and Polley an Emmy in 1997 for the landmark invention.

"He was part of a project that changed the world," Polley said from his home in Lombard, Illinois.

Adler joined Zenith's research division in 1941 after earning a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. He retired as research vice president in 1979, and served as a technical consultant until 1999, when Zenith merged with LG Electronics Inc.

During World War II, Adler specialized in military communications equipment. He later helped develop sensitive amplifiers for ultra high frequency signals used by radio astronomers and by the U.S. Air Force for long-range missile detection.

Adler also was considered a pioneer in SAW technology, or surface acoustic waves, in color television sets and touch screens. The technology has also been used in cellular telephones.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch screen technology, on February 1.

His wife, Ingrid, said Adler wouldn't have chosen the remote control as his favorite invention. In fact, he didn't even watch much television.

"He was more of a reader," she said. "He was a man who would dream in the night and wake up and say, 'I just solved a problem.' He was always thinking science."

Adler wished he had been recognized for more of his broad-ranging applications that were useful in the war and in space and were building blocks of other technology, she said, "but then the remote control changed the life of every man."

Labels: inventors, remote control, Robert Alder, smart homes, technology, television

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