City Via Assassination

Southend on sea, a seaside town in Essex England was promoted to a city because of an assassination; let me explain. 

The local politician for the area, David Amess campaigned for many years to change the status of Southend on sea from a town to a city. On 15 of October 2021 he was assassinated by a Islamist terrorist because he voted for air strikes against Isis. 

Out of pity for his death, the Leadership cabinet, MP Boris Johnson and the Queen of England agreed to change the status of Southend on Sea to a city even though the population was less than half a million. 

A year later the Queen's Son, prince Charles (now King Charles the 3rd) went to Southend to declare Southend on sea a city. The status of the city changing hinged on his death. If he didn't die, they wouldn't carry out his wishes, there were places with a bigger population like Reading that still remained with a town to this day. 

Early 3D Game

You won't think there was a 3d game available on the Atari 2600, but there was. In 1983 CBS electronics released a first person dungeon crawler game called Tunnel runner. 

The game pushed the 1970's hardware of the Atari to its limits. It featured a maze inhabited with monsters. The goal of the game is to get out of the maze and avoid  the monsters. 

In my opinion it is the most graphically advanced 3D game on the console. Very few people were aware the game existed because it didn't have an established marketing network like other games providers. They even tried to add some shading to give some depth to the game. 

When you were confronted by a monster, it felt like it was a part of the game terrain and was animated. 

Tyson Fury

Tyson Fury was named after mike Tyson by his father because we was born premature and only weighed 450 grams so they thought the name would bring him good luck and help him survive because Mike Tyson was a good fighter. 

Run For it

Britain is such a small island that it is possible to run across it in one day. 

If you were able to run at a top human speed you can get anywhere in Britain in 10 hours. No one can though, most humans can only sprint for 2 minutes. 

If you jogged at half the sprinting speed 20km/h or 12 to 14 miles per hour, you could run to any part of Britain in a day. Animals that run fast like horses can't maintain a human jogging speed for long, they would just collapse after a few hours so humans are the fastest long distance runners on earth. 

Hot air and Helium

Hot air has a lower density than regular air and that is why hot air balloons float. Hot air would need a temperature of 1800°c to have the same density as Helium at room temperature.  It would likely melt the envelope containing it at that temperature. 

So hot air is lighter than the surrounding air but Helium at room temperature is much lighter than hot air so it can lift more weight. 

That is why a large hot air balloon lifts a tiny basket yet a Helium blimps have an enclosed cockpit and engine attached. 

Physical Pong

You can buy a real physical Atari pong table. It's sold as a coffee table but it has a real 8bit brick ball that goes back and fourth. 

At the time of writing this post the price was over £2,000 (£2,295.82 to be exact). That is quite expensive for a table. I guess it was built to last and it looks amazing. 

The table uses magnets to drag a cube shaped ball back a fourth across the table to be deflectd by the paddles are a also real objects. It creates quite a nice effect. 

If I was loaded, I would buy one myself. 😍

Games Watches

A family of retro gaming watches is currently being released by www.myplaywatch.com/. They're the same company that made the Atari watch with mini paddle controllers that I mentioned in the previous post. 

They lack connectivity; no WiFi or Bluetooth but they do have fitness tracking and they tell the time and have a selection of themed clock dials. At the time of this post there were three watches being released. I particularly like the space invaders one and Tetris. 

It is nice to have old computer games in a watch.