Podcast on GozGeek - The Geek for All of Us

About Podcast on GozGeek - The Geek for All of Us

Recent content in Podcast on GozGeek - The Geek for All of Us

Publisher

The Goz

Category

leisure

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 Jul 2020

Latest episode

21 Aug 2020

Latest episodes

5 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Aug 2020

   🏃 New Battle Royale for Epic and more - This Geek in Review for 21 Aug 2020

   Download the podcast of this post (https://cdn.collinsoft.com/file/cdn-collinsoft/gozgeek.com/podcast/2020/200821FortniteTGiR.mp3) or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Search for GozGeek. The article is also available as a video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/W19acXELyHY), you can also subscribe there. New Battle Royale Mode - Apple/Google vs Fortnite When Apple created their app store, they set a fee of 30% for developers. This meant that when a developer sold a game for $10.00, Apple received $3 and the developer received $7. Google followed suit with the fees for their Android Play store. This was all well and good at the beginning, but then developers started to wonder what they were getting for their 30%. Credit card fees are usually around 3% plus a per transaction fee of approximately. So, a developer could sell an app on their website for $10, and pay 60 cents to process the transaction. Wait a minute Goz, there are also costs with running the app store, hosting the apps, and providing bandwidth for downloads. Yes, that is true, but does it really cost $2.40 for that? Hosting a 100 megabyte app costs pennies a month, for a large company like Apple this price is basically a rounding error. Apple is making pretty good bank on the app store but Fortnite is a free app, so they don’t make any money from Fortnite downloads. What Apple does get is 30% of Fortnite’s V-Bucks when they are purchased on iOS. And V-Bucks have no incidental cost for Apple except for credit card process fees. Well, Epic is sick of it and went to war against Apple and Google (https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/14/21368504/fortnite-apple-google-app-store-brief-incomplete-timeline). In a server side update to Fortnite, Epic added an option to bypass the Apple or Google store and buy directly from Epic for a 20% discount. It took less than a day for the Fortnite app to be removed from the Apple Store. Epic knew this was going to happen. They had created a video mocking Apple’s famous 1984 ad along with filing a lawsuit. Where will it end up? I don’t know. I don’t game much on my iPhone, I have much better systems to play on. Plus, I like to have physical controls. Along with Apple ruining our Fortnite fun, they have also said that cloud gaming services (https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gaming-microsoft-xcloud-google-stadia-ios-app-store-guidelines-violations) such as Microsoft’s Xcloud and Google’s Stadia are also banned. The Holiday Special aired at Thanksgiving Back in 1978, in what I assume was a money grab by 20th Century Fox and George Lucas, the abomination known as the Star Wars Holiday Special aired. At the time, variety shows were a huge deal, so apparently someone thought that the Star Wars universe needed it’s own variety show. The stars in the show were huge, but they couldn’t save the show. Disney+ will show a Lego Star Wars Holiday Special on Wookiee Life Day (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1699035). I just don’t know, with Bea Arthur or Art Carney, will the show even be worth watching? I’m assuming these are HD floppies Dig out those floppy disks and read about what it takes to perform a system update on a Boeing 747 (https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/10/boeing_747_floppy_drive_updates_walkthrough/). No word on how many disks it takes, but at least they are 3 1/2" floppies. At least they’re not Zip drives, where on a 747 they could give a whole new meaning to the “click of death”. Good enough for you is good enough for me A great movie from my youth was Goonies. Along with the fame came the Atari 8-bit computer game Goonies. It was awesome, several screens of puzzles that you had to work through. And now there is a Goonies game in development for the Intellivision (http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2020/08/03/goonies-inspired-gooninuff-for-intellivision-sees-new-alpha-release/). Unfortunately, that means you have to play with those horrible disk controllers. Amazing encryption tricks News comes this week that IBM completed successful field trials on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1695410). Stop your snickering, what are you, 12? This technology allows a third party to perform functions on fully encrypted data, without decrypting the data. Now that blows my mind! If I had a million dollars In a couple of weeks there is an auction of Television and movie items (https://propstore.com/entertainment-memorabilia-live-auction-la-2020/). If you are looking at getting me anything for Christmas, the Airwolf miniature would be at the top of the list. Or anything from Back to the Future, Star Wars, or Star Trek. Things I’ll pass on include Stiffler’s suit from American Wedding. There are 251 pages of geekiness in the flyer! And, you can bid over the phone, you don’t have to be in LA. Now I can bid on some memorabilia! Here’s a fascinating story behind cracking an encrypted zip file that held the key to $300,000 worth of Bitcoin (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1697561). Spoiler alert, the Bitcoin was liberated, and for a cheaper price than the original $100,000 that the owner was quoted. Fin And that is it for this week! Be sure to check out gozgeek.com to find out how to keep up with the Goz. Stay brilliant beasts!

2. 

   14 Aug 2020

   ⌨ The CoCo is 40 and more - This Geek in Review for 14 Aug 2020

   Download the podcast of this post (https://cdn.collinsoft.com/file/cdn-collinsoft/gozgeek.com/podcast/2020/200814COCOTGiR.mp3) or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Search for GozGeek. The article is also available as a video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/m8irmv7shM0), you can also subscribe there. The turning point Where I am with my life and how I got here are the result of two events in my life. One, Watching Star Wars: A New Hope and two, going to visit my aunt and uncle in the summer of ‘83. The trip with my cousin and grandparents was pretty uneventful until we got to my aunt and uncle’s house. My uncle had bought a Radio Shack Color Computer. I was mesmerized by it, that computer was the first computer I was able to really use. During the week we were there I taught myself Basic and started to write little games. I had no way to store my programs, so I would write them down in a notebook to save them. I wonder where that notebook went? Back in July, the Color Computer turned 40 (https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/i24dqd/tandy_radio_shack_color_computer_turned_40_on/). Congratulations to the CoCo. While you may not have gotten the fame you deserve, I will always have a special place in my heart for you. Real Genius lives up to its name I don’t remember the first time I saw Real Genius, but I know I rewatched it a lot in the 80s. This year Real Genius turns 35 (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1697354). I don’t mean to write about so many anniversaries here on GozGeek (https://www.gozgeek.com), but it is these anniversaries that remind me how awesome things in the 80s are! Real Genius follows a child prodigy to college with Val Kilmer as his mentor. The science is real, and the whole movie is very enjoyable. Real Genius is currently available to stream with ads on The Roku Channel or you can rent it. One man can make a difference In other awesome news, there is a Knight Rider film in the works (https://deadline.com/2020/08/knight-rider-feature-spyglass-media-james-wan-tj-fixman-scripting-1203006206/)! No word on casting, but I’m more interested in what car they use for KITT. The film is rumored to take place in the present day, and I’m not thinking of any car with the wow factor that the original Trans Am had. I’m hoping David Hasselhoff will be involved in someway, and in front of the camera! I also found out the NBC has episodes of Knight Rider (https://www.nbc.com/knight-rider-classic) available for streaming! Another week, another hack Following the Nintendo hack last week, more than 20GB of Intel source code and proprietary data has been dumped online (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1697330). The files were found in an unsecured content delivery network server. While the information may be interesting to some, most of it was already available from Intel with a signed NDA. Why don’t you fix the tool? So, because the tool is messing up names, scientists are going to rename human genes because Excel thinks the names are dates (https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates)? Why don’t they talk to Microsoft and tell them to stop that. Or, learn how to us the software and change when Excel formats dates (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/stop-automatically-changing-numbers-to-dates-452bd2db-cc96-47d1-81e4-72cec11c4ed8). Research AND verify John Boyne wrote a book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and while writing he looked up traditional methods of dying clothes. He didn’t look too closely at the source since he used a Zelda Breath of the Wild online guide for the recipe to dye clothes (https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/8/3/21352299/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-red-clothes-dye-traveler-gates-of-wisdom-john-boyne-google-search-results). Ingredients required include red lizalfos tails and Hylian shrooms. Happy Happy Joy Joy Final news for today, Ren & Stimpy, the cartoon from the 90s that aired on Nickelodeon (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/ren-stimpy-show-revived-at-comedy-central-1306011) is coming back! Billy West is an amazing voice actor who did the voices in the original and he is slated to return for the revival. Fin And that is it for this week! Be sure to check out gozgeek.com to find out how to keep up with the Goz. Stay brilliant beasts!

3. 

   7 Aug 2020

   🎮 Huge Nintendo leak and more - This Geek in Review for 7 Aug 2020

   Download the podcast of this post (https://cdn.collinsoft.com/file/cdn-collinsoft/gozgeek.com/podcast/2020/200807TGiR.mp3) or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Search for GozGeek. The article is also available as a video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/EDtF6sofex0), you can also subscribe there. Hackers do what Nintendon’t Nintendo fans were suprised with a huge leak of internal Nintendo files and prototypes (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1694547) this past week. There was a ton of unreleased and in progress game prototypes and assets from the Super Nintendo and N-64 era. Most notably, this includes a Luigi model for Super Mario 64, probably for an unreleased two player mode, a ton of Pokémon, and high quality voice samples from Star Fox 64, F-Zero X, and Super Mario 64. While this looks terrible for Nintendo, it has caused a little bit of a ruckus with video game archivists and historians. Since the data is still copyrighted, can they legally keep a copy? I know, the ROMs of Nintendo games will be distributed beyond the heat death of the universe, but this leak is different than publicly distributed games. This information was never meant to be distributed. Should archivists keep a copy? Let me know at feedback@gozgeek.com (mailto:feedback@gozgeek.com) Welcome to the uncanny valley A couple of months back Nascar went the virtual route to restart some of their races using the technology from iRacing (https://www.iracing.com/). I watched part of a race that was posted to YouTube, and came away really impressed. It almost looked like a real Nascar race. Now, Major League Baseball (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/25/21336017/fox-sports-baseball-virtual-fans-epic-unreal-engine-empty-stadiums-mlb) and the NBA (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/24/21337326/nba-microsoft-teams-together-mode-basketball-virtual-experience-fans) are looking at doing the same with virtual spectators of real life games. The results… are not convincing. But hey, maybe in a few years the virtual fans can watch the virtual players, and the creation of the matrix will be complete. I welcome our copyright overlords There are tons of horror stories of YouTube overzealous Content ID that is used to block access to copyrighted material. Mostly, the problems are with small producers, but even the big guys aren’t safe when the Star Trek virtual ComicCon panel is blocked due to Content ID (https://deadline.com/2020/07/star-trek-comiccon-panel-glitch-copyright-discovery-picard-lower-decks-prodigy-cbs-1202993401/). After about 15 minutes, the panel’s YouTube stream was knocked out for copyright infringement. At least CBS was able to get someone to fix the issue after only 20 minutes. In other Comic Con news comes the story from 2015 when John Lewis Cosplayed himself at Comic Con (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/07/13/the-real-origin-story-behind-how-rep-john-lewis-became-the-hit-of-comic-con/). At his first Comic Con, Mr. Lewis marveled (pun intended) at the cosplay going on, so he decided at the next one he was going to cosplay himself. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right to turn the computer on If you didn’t know. konami (https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1267/731/index.html) makes PCs. Javascript, is there nothing it can’t do? JavaScript is an interpreted programming language that is used on almost every website. It’s not known for being the best thing ever, so why not create a Macintosh emulator running Mac OS 8 (https://github.com/felixrieseberg/macintosh.js)? Felix Rieseberg has done just that, putting up cross platform apps that let you experience a late 90s Mac. I played around with it, and it works quite well, better then I thought it would. Duke Nukem runs a little slow, but hail to the king! Back when newspapers were a thing There is a Paperboy Intellivision port (http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2020/07/27/paperboy-intellivision-port-work-in-progress/) in progress. I’ve never been able to get into the home conversions of Paperboy, mainly because of the controls. In the arcade game, you are a newspaper delivery boy, riding your bike delivering papers while avoiding obstacles and trying not to break windows. The controls were a set of bike handlebars, giving you the feel of riding a bike. It’s a safe bet that the Intellivision controllers will NOT be an improvement. No, not that kind of seed Computers are terrible at creating random numbers. They usually use a pseudo random number generator (PRNG) algorithm. The algorithm is given a number called a seed, and from then on the algorithm will spit out random numbers. Random numbers with a twist. The sequence of random numbers generated is always the same for a given seed. To help with the randomness, the seed is usually generated from some random input and things a computer may know such as the time. Minecraft uses a PRNG to create its worlds. If you have the seed you can regenerate the world based on that seed. Some internet individuals discovered the seed of Minecraft’s classic title screen (https://boingboing.net/2020/07/27/intrepid-diggers-figure-out-th.html). In other Minecraft news, while its no Macintosh, you can now boot a Windows 95 PC inside Minecraft and play Doom on it (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/25/21338092/minecraft-windows-95-pc-doom-vm-computers-mod). And that’s it! And that’s it for this week! Be sure to check out gozgeek.com to find out how to keep up with the Goz. Stay brilliant beasts! Goz out!

4. 

   31 Jul 2020

   👽 E.T. is not the worst video game ever and more - This Geek in Review for 31 Jul 2020

   Download the podcast of this post (https://cdn.collinsoft.com/file/cdn-collinsoft/gozgeek.com/podcast/2020/200731ETTGiR.mp3) or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Search for GozGeek. The article is also available as a video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/3nMlZg7UDoo), you can also subscribe there. No Virginia, E.T. is not the worst video game ever This past week screenrant.com made the list, disparaging the game E.T. The Extraterrestrial for the 2600 (https://screenrant.com/atari-et-extra-terrestrial-game-industry-crash-landfill/). Let me set the record straight: E.T. is not the worst game ever made nor is it the cause of the video game crash of 1983. Today I want to talk about both of these talking points, using opinion, anecdotes, and data. Ok, mostly opinion and anecdotes, but on the internet those can literally take the place of data. First up is this opinion that E.T. is the worst game ever. We got the game for Christmas in 1982, and played the crap out of it. It was the first game with a title screen, and had pretty good game play. Except for those pits. Yes, the pits are a pain, if you suck. The secret is to hit your button immediately if you start to fall. This will save you from falling to the bottom. If you want to play E.T., read the manual first. I think this is what causes most of the complaints about the game. You’ll be totally lost on what to do without reading the manual. In the 80s, software came with these big thick books that told you how to use the software. Today, you’re expected to “discover” how an app works, which leads you to things such as searching for what the red dot means at the top of the Apple Watch display (https://www.gozgeek.com/posts/2020/revisiting-x-men-and-more-this-geek-in-review/). The second point that is usually brought up is that E.T. brought on the video game crash. One game can’t take a $3.2 billion industry down to $100 million in two years. The video game crash was mostly brought on by two things. Atari’s insistence that the 2600 will live forever and the onslaught of crappy third party titles. The 2600 was released in 1977 and was already 5 years old at this time. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot of time, but technology was advancing faster at the time then it is now. It’s hard to compare, so let’s look at pricing for memory as a yardstick. These are non-adjusted dollars, but in 1977, the price per megabyte of memory was almost $37,000. By 1982, the price had dropped to around $2-3,000 per megabyte. In video games, memory is almost everything, and the 2600 had 128 bytes. This is the memory used to store information of the game you’re playing, things like the score, position of players & enemies, speeds of object, etc. That is less than the memory required to store the data of a tweet. More memory means bigger games with more depth. By the way, today’s memory costs 3 tenths of a cent ($0.003) per megabyte. Atari’s engineers had already designed it’s replacement, which was released in 1979 as the Atari 400 and 800 computer. But, Atari was making too much money from the 2600 as is to push a replacement on people, so Atari hobbled on with the 2600. Besides Atari not wanting to upset the Apple cart, thousands of companies wanted to cash in on the video game craze. This resulted in hundreds of crappy games being released to market. With no internet and too many games to be reviewed in magazines, buying a game became a literal crap shoot, and people just… stopped. Get ready for a surprise It’s been 30 years since Total Recall came to the theaters. The one with Arnold Schwarzenegger, not the new one with Colin Farrell. The new one isn’t bad, but I still prefer the Arnold version. Syfy has a couple (https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/total-recall-at-30-cohaagen-benny-johnny-cab-interviews) of retrospectives (https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/total-recall-action-fantasy-escapism) on the movie and what it meant for the actions genre. I don’t remember seeing Total Recall for the first time, but we must of had a copy on tape somewhere, because I remember watching it a lot. It got to the point where we could almost do all of the lines from the movie. And what’s not to like about the movie, I love all the practical effects. The movie keeps you guessing on whether it is really happening or just some figment of Douglas Quaid’s imagination. So, was it a dream or was it real? The director came forward in 2016 with the answer (https://www.mandatory.com/culture/1162415-exclusive-paul-verhoeven-finally-explains-ending-total-recall). I’m not going to give it away, but the answer fits perfectly with the movie. You’ll have to go read the article. A blast from the past In the 90s, before it became TechTV, G4 was the video network that I loved to watch. We didn’t have online video, so this was the closest we got to watching and learning from others all things video games and tech. Well, apparently G4 is coming back in some form (https://www.ign.com/articles/g4-teaser-2021-g4tv-x-play-attack-of-the-show). The trailer doesn’t show much, a tour of an abandoned warehouse, probably overseen by Top Men. I’ll check it out when/if they release and I’ll be sure to post my feelings. Who am I kidding, it will probably be a rant in some form or another. One of these keys is not like the other Look at your keyboard, the key above the right shift key. Notice how it says Return? If you have a number pad, look to the far right. Notice it says Enter? Although they appear to do the same thing the Return and Enter keys are two different keys (https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/return_and_enter). For example, most word processors will enter a page break when you hit Enter. They’re called Lego bricks I remember when I got my first set of Lego bricks. It was the late 70s, disco was still played with impunity and onions may have been worn on the belt. The Lego mini figs weren’t called mini figs and they didn’t have a face or poseable arms and legs. I didn’t know what Lego bricks even were. Since that time I bought a lot of Lego bricks, mostly in bulk containers and a few in specialist sets. I’m not a big fan of the specialist sets though, basically your building a model. When we got Lego sets, you would build whatever was on the box once, and then mix all the Lego bricks together and build whatever you wanted to build after that. No Kragle (https://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Kragle) involved! And now Lego has released a 2,600 piece Nintendo Entertainment System (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/14/21322481/lego-nintendo-nes-super-mario-interactive-set-replica) set with controller and TV. I’m assuming once you build that, you’re not ever going to take it apart again. But, I guess if you’re going to build models out of Lego bricks, you can’t fault life sized Pokemon (https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/hn8061/i_made_lifesized_pokemon_out_of_lego/). The models look amazing. Although I rant against building models out of Lego bricks, I could easily get behind these Pokemon. The desktop makes a comeback Back in March, I started to use my desktop a lot more than I had been in the past. I thought, maybe the desktop will make a comeback. Well, they have. Shipments of desktops have surged (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319750/pc-shipments-coronavirus-pandemic-idc-gartner-q2-2020) with all of the work from home that has been required. I can’t believe how good of a machine you can buy nowadays. We’ve laptops for so long that is surprising how powerful of of a desktop you can buy for less than what you spend on the laptop. I love my windows desktop. And I thought I would never say that. Plus, I can use a real webcam because most laptop webcams suck (https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/laptops-need-better-webcams/). Enter the amazing world of live sea-monkeys If you read any comic book in the 1970s or 80s, you’ve probably seen a full page ad about buying sea monkeys. Sea monkeys are neither monkeys or from the sea. They are a hybrid breed of brine shrimp. These brine shrimp can enter a state of suspended animation, which means when you ordered them they would come in a packet of what looks like powder. Adding the powder to purified water brings them back to life. Well, I guess they made a lot of money because people are suing over who gets the fortune the sea monkeys fortune (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-battle-over-the-sea-monkey-fortune.html). Making The Rise of Skywalker better If you have talked to me about Star Wars, you know that I was not impressed with episode VII, VIII, or IX. But thankfully, fans have jumped in to help fix some of these movies. One particular fan has edited the final battle in episode IX between Rey and Emperor Palpatine and added force ghosts of the past characters instead of just hearing their voices. It helps the scene a lot. I guess spoiler alert but if you’re reading this then I’m assuming you have watched episode IX. STAR WARS The Rise of Skywalker - Rey vs Palpatine (Force Ghost Edit) 2.0 - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iELUFjl16-U) And that’s it for this week! Be sure to check out gozgeek.com to find out how to keep up with the Goz. Stay brilliant beasts! Goz out!

5. 

   24 Jul 2020

   🤓 Revisiting X-Men and more - This Geek in Review for 24 Jul 2020

   Download the podcast of this post (https://cdn.collinsoft.com/file/cdn-collinsoft/gozgeek.com/podcast/2020/200724%20X-Men%20-%20This%20Geek%20in%20Review.mp3) or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Search for GozGeek. The article is also available as a video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/-mFQP0E2V7M), you can also subscribe there. What do they call you? Wheels? I grew up with the 80s version of X-Men, so twenty years ago I was pretty stoked for the X-Men movie (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/17/21328323/x-men-20-year-anniversary-hugh-jackman-wolverine). What I got was disappointment. Some of the casting was genius. Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen? Fantastic. Other casting was less so. Hugh Jackman was great in the role of Wolverine, but his Wolverine was not the version from the comic books. He was way to tall for starters. Conversely, Halle Berry was also great as Storm, but she was way too short! Plus, they had a phenomenal actress and gave her 20 lines in the whole movie. My final disappointment was the lack of the Danger Room. It was one of my favorite things from the comic book, and was originally suppose to be in the first X-Men movie, but it was deleted. The Danger Room was alluded to in X2, but didn’t show up until the third X-Men movie, The Last Stand. And then it was a glorified holodeck, not at all what I imagined from the comic books. We at least finally had a look at the Sentinels. Before the finale, there is a scene with a three dimensional display that looks a lot like the sand tables in Black Panther. Foreshadowing? Does X-Men hold up after 20 years? Up to the X-Men release, there had been 3 great superhero movies released. Superman in 1978, Batman in 1989, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990. X-Men is not better than these three, so the answer is no, it wasn’t great then, and it’s not great now. It has its moments, especially the friction between Wolverine and Cyclops. But, not enough to make me say the movie is great. X-Men is available to stream on any of the HBO services and DirecTV or to rent from any of the other services. You can also buy a digital copy. Amazon has it the cheapest at $9.99. If you’re a fan, you probably already own the DVD, but, if you don’t, Amazon has you covered for $6.45 Prime (https://amzn.to/39jcV9G). I bet you could also hit the $5 bin at Walmart the next time you’re there. If Bitcoin is mentioned, it’s probably a scam This past week hackers broke in to several popular Twitter accounts, including those of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1692068). What would you do if you were able to tweet as these people? Apparently try to get others to send me Bitcoin I guess. The hackers were able to get almost $120,000 worth of Bitcoin before Twitter shut them down. Who knew the Egyptians got it right? Pretty soon we won’t need letters to form sentences and will be able to write entirely in Emoji? More emoji is coming this year (https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/17/21327722/emoji-unicode-13-ios-14-android-11-turtle-bubble-tea-dodo-designs), including a dodo, pinata, and from the I don’t know how we survived this long without it department, the ninja emoji! “My wife just sent me a message with the married couple emoji and the dodo. Does this mean she wants a divorce or that she wants to eat a bird with me?” I need my videogames! Things are all sorts of nuts right now in this dumpster fire of a year we call 20202, but the NBA is trying to bring some sort of normalcy to the sport by quarantining all of the NBA teams and players in Orlando (https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29446366/what-nba-players-coaches-saying-florida-campus). At the time of the planning, Orlando sounded like a good place, but now I wouldn’t go near Florida with a six foot pole. What I found interesting was what some of the players brought with them to FL. They will be there for three months, away from their families and friends, so I guess you need to find something to take up your time. The number of players with videogames, laptops, and their whole streaming set up is really cool. Me, I’m in my own bubble in the basement. Not as cool as Disney World, but some call it the Disney World of Ohio. And by some I mean me. Remember when things came with manuals? When I first got my Apple Watch, I remember one of my first searches. There was a red dot at the top of the face, and I didn’t know what it meant. Nowhere did I see any description of the dot. It turns out, the red dot means I have notifications. I think I should get some slack for that, since the red dot doesn’t do anything when you tap it, you have to pull down from the top to see notifications. On the other hand, people are now realizing that the button labeled Tip in the Apple Watch calculator app can calculate the tip on a check (https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/apple-watch-user-discovers-easy-162825789.html). I think that is worse than me not knowing what the red dot means. By the way, if you need to use a calculator to calculate a 20% tip, here’s how to do it in your head. Take the total, move the decimal point one place to the left, and double what you see. $17? Move the decimal left to give you $1.70 and double that to $3.40. Now I just saved you from buying a $300 watch. Email me at feedback@gozgeek.com (mailto:feedback@gozgeek.com) and I will give you my PayPal address. Actors are just regular people Have you ever wondered what Superman did in his spare time? Apparently he builds gaming PCs (https://www.theverge.com/tldr/21327260/henry-cavill-gaming-pc-instagram-witcher-superman). I’m very impressed with his perseverance, especially after he has to disassemble the computer after he realizes he put in the cooler upside down. Get some major geek cred with these fonts The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack (https://boingboing.net/2020/07/17/ultimate-oldschool-pc-font-pac.html) contains every nerdy font you need. Oh, how far we’ve come It’s easy to forget all of the tech goodies that have been released in the last 30 years. We’ve come from acoustic couplers and 300 baud modems to super computers and high speed networking that we carry in a pocket. Here is a video of two daughters receiving iPods for Christmas. I love their look of, “I have no idea what this is”. Fin That’s it for this week! Be sure to get all the deets on Goz from gozgeek.com, your one stop shop for everything geek.

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