With modern consoles offering gamers graphics so photorealistic that they blur the line between CGI and reality, it's easy forget just how cartoonishly blocky they were in the 8-bit era. In his new book, Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Arcade Games, legendary game designer and programmer Warren Davis recalls his halcyon days imagining and designing some of the biggest hits to ever grace an arcade. In the excerpt below, Davis explains how the industry made its technological leap from 8- to 12-bit graphics. Santa Monica Press©2021 Santa Monica PressBack at my regular day job, I became particularly fascinated with a new product that came out for the Amiga computer: a video digitizer made by a company called A-Squared. Let’s unpack all that slowly.The Amiga was a recently released home computer capable of unprecedented graphics and sound: 4,096 colors! Eight-bit stereo sound! There were image manipulation programs for it that could do things no other computer, including the IBM PC, could do. We had one at Williams not only because of its capabilities, but also because our own Jack Haeger, an immensely talented artist who’d worked on Sinistar at Williams a few years earlier, was also the art director for the Amiga design team.Video digitization is the process of grabbing a video image from some video source, like a camera or a videotape, and converting it into pixel data that a computer system (or video game) could use. A full-color photograph might contain millions of... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2021-12-25 16:30:11 UTC ]
Macmillan has abandoned its controversial lending policy on e-books for US libraries in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-18 05:44:27 UTC ]
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The Uncensored Library — Reporters Without Borders built a library in Minecraft, in which you can read banned books. (via Gizmodo) Shmoocon 2020 Talk Recordings — everything from email addresses to Verilog by way of Zero Trust, social media, and choose-your-own-adventure ransomware. Differential... Continue reading at O'Reilly Radar
[ O'Reilly Radar | 2020-03-16 12:07:03 UTC ]
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How one school librarian has addressed fake news in his curriculum -- and how it can be replicated. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-03-15 10:31:27 UTC ]
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Help build the libraries of schools around the country by donating a few bucks to these DonorsChoose projects. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-03-13 10:40:37 UTC ]
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This morning, both the Chief Librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library and the President of the New York Public Library released statements announcing that they would be cancelling public library programs for the rest of March, in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19 and encourage social... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-12 16:51:47 UTC ]
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I draw, write, speak about, teach, facilitate and organise events about comics. After graduating with a degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Sussex, I attended art college and worked as a freelance illustrator. In 2008, I began to incorporate comics into my practice. I also... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-03-11 13:11:13 UTC ]
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The use of libraries for community activities rather than just as a repository for books has led to a fall in their use rather than an increase, according to a new report by campaigner Tim Coates. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-10 22:33:22 UTC ]
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Quibi, the new short-form video streaming service led by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has released a list of 51 shows that will be available when it launches next month. Quibi plans to offer 175 original shows and 8,500 short-form episodes called “quick bites” within its first year. When... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2020-03-10 11:05:18 UTC ]
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MLflow — an open source platform to manage the ML lifecycle, including experimentation, reproducibility, and deployment. It currently offers three components: tracking, projects, and models. Eventing Facets (Tim Bray) — the word “eventing” makes my skin crawl, but this series of posts has A+... Continue reading at O'Reilly Radar
[ O'Reilly Radar | 2020-03-10 04:01:00 UTC ]
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Simon Savidge has left his role at Liverpool Libraries to take charge of logistics for the BBC’s Novels That Shaped Our World libraries events programme. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-09 06:33:08 UTC ]
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How J. Edgar Hoover used the power of libraries for (gasp!) evil. | Lit Hub History “Mechanical travel blunts our sense of the world.” On the reverie and detachment of the American road trip. | Lit Hub Travel On the magic sentences of Lauren Groff, creating action without verbs. | Lit... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-07 12:30:11 UTC ]
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Adobe has released a new Gmail add-on to make it easier for Creative Cloud users to share their work over email. The plugin allows you to attach synced files, libraries or mobile creations you have stored on your Creative Cloud account as links. Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2020-03-05 18:10:00 UTC ]
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Once a revered political figure the public looked to for advice on everything from crime to child rearing, J. Edgar Hoover—the former director of the FBI from its inception in 1935 to his death in 1972—is now known as a bigot who abused his power to squash progressive causes and spy on political... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-04 09:48:43 UTC ]
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This week, the ongoing protests in India in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial new citizenship law, which discriminates against Indian Muslims, have intensified and turned violent. But one bright spot is the fact that, as Maroosha Muzaffar reports at Ozy, some volunteers... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-26 16:11:24 UTC ]
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Taking a look at some of the world's most innovative libraries and library projects as a way of looking toward the future of these important institutions. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-02-26 11:38:35 UTC ]
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How a career in libraries is paying dividends for PW columnist Sari Feldman in her new role—grandmother. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-02-21 05:00:00 UTC ]
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As a girl, the author of “Wild” and “Tiny Beautiful Things” spent hours studying Scholastic book club catalogs. But “my family was too poor to pay for the books,” she says. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-02-18 15:29:22 UTC ]
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Libraries across Southern California are aiming to serve the immigrant readers of rapidly changing cities by purchasing books in a variety of languages. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-17 13:00:04 UTC ]
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Bradford Council has reversed planned £1.05m cuts to its libraries but says some services could still be moved to other buildings in a bid to make them financially viable. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-16 18:54:07 UTC ]
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As we all know, there is only one Valentine and it is every book. Luckily, Harrison Ford talking about how great libraries are is an acceptable human Valentine proxy for all books. Why—besides the fact that you can’t spell”Harrison Ford, you irascible Jedi” without “Library”—is Ford making PSAs... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-14 14:17:02 UTC ]
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