Just like Garret and Necro (Stefanos), this here blog has its birthday today!
…but this post is two days late! So yeah. Happy birthday Cubimension, and may you see another full year of posts and much much more that is in store for you! 🙂
Category: Cubimension Milestones
Cubilone’s Dimension 2.0!!
Απο τις 24 Μαϊου είναι online η νέα, αναμορφωμένη έκδοση του Cubilone’s Dimension. Αν διαβάζετε το παρόν σίγουρα θα το έχετε προσέξει! Ναι, είναι η σελίδα που επισκεφτήκατε για να μπείτε εδώ μέσα!
Στα πλαίσια μιας εργασίας μου για την σχολή, συγκεκριμένα για την κατασκευή ενός προσωπικού site, άδραξα την ευκαιρία και δημιούργησα, την αρχική σελίδα με CSS και XHTML. Απο εδώ και στο εξής, θα χρησιμεύει σαν hub για δημιουργίες μου, profiles μου, αλλά και σαν πύλη για το ίδιο το blog. Σύντομα, όταν δηλαδή δεν είμαι πνιγμένος με εκκρεμότητες και απολαύσεις της “πραγματικής ζωής”, θα ανανεώσω το περιεχόμενο της δουλειάς μου ακόμα περισσότερο!
Σας αρέσουν τα γράμματα του μενού; Είναι φωτογραφίες απο δική μου γραφή. Πιστεύετε ότι ταιριάζει, δημιουργεί μια οπτική συνοχή με τα σχήματα και τα χρώματα; Πείτε μου την γνώμη σας εδώ και βοηθήστε με να βελτιωθώ!
A blow of the Future
It has finally come to pass: Cubilone’s Dimension is 1 year old today. It’s been a strange year, full of changes and magic. I’ve been reflecting upon these changes by reading my older posts… You may spot these differences if you look up my first posts yourself. This time last year I was waking up early with no aid of alarm clock and feeling happy, really eager to write all about it! This initial, powerful enthusiasm has sadly worn off. That is not to say however that Cubilone’s Dimension isn’t alive. On the contrary: I’m even planning to turn it into something a bit more ambitious! I will say no more however. One year is not a lot of time and this place still has not matured all that much. In fact it has not even reached puberty. What may the Future hold?
Dreams, hopes and nightmares are nothing but floating specs of dust to Its eye. With one lazy movement of its hand, the Future plays with them in the sunlight. No spec is better than the other; afterall, they’re all just dust. Strangely though, they seem to all be floating towards the same direction. It fixes Its eye upon a single spec. “The spec’s weightlessness is a gift but also a burden”, the Future ponders. “Even if it can fly, it can only fly following the wind’s wishes… and when the wind wishes of nothing, then the spec will gently fall. Its stop will only be brief however for any wind can still do with it as it likes…” The Future thought that listening to the wind was a small price to pay for flying.
It watched the spec making its way to the floor, finally touching it with a sound even It could not discern. Feeling mischievous, the Future took a deep breath and blew at the spec. Listening to the wind, it and the other specs scatteringly took to the sky once more.
A tribute to Bubble Bobble and my first steps in gaming
I was re-reading this MySpace blog post I had written about Bubble Bobble and my gaming roots, and I really liked how it sounded. I thought it would be really nice having it here as well, it’s the post which first gave me the idea of having a more permanent blog so I’m copying it onto here. This was originally written on December 5th 2007, one of the days I was playing a lot of BB with Mario.
I was writing a huge blog entry, detailing what my November was like, and how I feel about the forthcoming Christmas. Yes, one wrong keypress and all of my time went in vain… And why is all this I wrote POSTDATA? Can Tom answer me this simple question? Eh? AND WHO THE HELL HAD THIS FANTASTIC IDEA OF HAVING BACKSPACE AS A SHORTCUT FOR BACK?!
I can’t be bothered to write it again, so I guess you’ll read a really huge blog entry from me some other time. Or perhaps I should start a more permanent blog at some site? Hm, why not… It’s not like I haven’t been feeling the waves of inspiration flowing through me as of late. But then again, why should I share this inspiration with you? Maybe I shouldn’t! *trick question*
Anyway, I soon plan on posting a tribute to N64, in a few weeks 10 years will have gone by since I got my little kiddy hands on the thing. And gaming never was the same again for me. Speaking about gaming and matters concerning the whole universe being permanently altered, yesterday and today Mario and me blew through Bubble Bobble, a super classic for me and perhaps the first game I ever played and finished (credit goes to Shaman Alex for the help back then *hi-5*, if he ever reads this. :P)
My first contact with gaming was on an Atari 2600 that I barely remember, and my real first contact with games that I clearly remember was in Australia in 1993, when some kids of a friend of my dad’s played Super Mario Bros. I think I played as well, but seeing how it was my first time with a controller, I failed miserably. Yes I know, other people finished the same game at the same age. Shortly thereafter (or what would appear shortly in a child’s eyes) ,it was a pseudo-NES my dad bought for me. The games it had: Bubble Bobble and 83 games in one. And I remember the first time my dad showed me how to play the game. After that?
It may have been the bubbly bobbly intro screen, the cutesy dinosaurs that made such a weird face when they died, the huge array of different goodies and their “mysterious powers” (it was awesome when a cross appeared on the screen… Now what the hell’s gonna happen, all the bad guys are gonna die!), from tomatoes to diamonds and from cakes to umbrellas, it was all so happy! The baddies were happy, the music was cheerful, loopy and catchy (what every 8-bit tune should be like) and most important of all, the game was fun, even more fun than picking ice from your refrigerator, trying to chase the little scar in your eye fluid or beatboxing with your mouth. It was more fun than doing these combined. How can you not have fun when blowing baddies into bubbles, hopping on your own bubbles or running away from the white “grim reaper whale” who appears in the backdrop of those 5 dreadful notes? It’s such a classic, and rightfully so.
My cartridge back then was hacked and cracked, and we had the choice of playing any stage we wanted, even the boss, and unlocking the good ending the easy way. It was a stunning moment for us, we had seen the ending to that game! We hadn’t played it to its entirety and we didn’t even care, we just saw the dinosaurs saving their girlfriends and the day. But only yesterday, while playing the game with Marios, did I realise that I had never actually and rightfully beaten the game. I had cheated! So, now was the time! We played through every floor, unlocked the happy ending (although I admit we had some trouble figuring HOW to do it) and kicked the crap out of that sorcerer thing. After almost 13 years, I had come back to my first game and beaten it the right way. And that’s just how it all felt; right.
Bubble Bobble, ladies and gentlemen, a game we can truly call a retro classic – just as playable as it was back then, it is today. Let’s see Crysis reaching that kind of status.
May the people cheer and the Prosecco flow!
After having quite some internal battles, deciding whether my droplets of words can actually make any difference at all to this ocean of communication, broadcasting of thought, experience and aspiration we like to call the Internet, I decided to take the plunge. I am now joining the ranks of those who think that what they think and believe others would be interested in reading is actually important!
It’s not a bad thing — we should already admit that personal blogging is one of the most subtle (or perhaps not so subtle?) forms of self-projection and self-admiration: as noted above, to start a web log one must think of himself as important and deem his or her life to be worthy of documenting one way or another. A lot of times it’s interesting solely to the writer… I do want to think that what I’ll be writing here will be interesting to others apart from me (I also keep a more personal diary I occassionally write in… Some certain people like to call it an “emo notebook”; you know who you are!). Quoting Benjamin Franklin:
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
While I’ll admit I have disagreed with Ben before, my goal is to achieve both of the above. Starting now! Prosecco for everyone! (English speakers only please click here.
PostScript: This was originally posted in my proto-blog on Blogspot on 6/12/07. It took only a few hours for me to decide that Blogspot was bad news, and soon thereafter I started working on getting my own domain up and running. And before you lie the results! Let’s have a toast now then… To private blogging! *lifts glass with Prosecco*