Grrr.

So I noticed something weird going on with the right hand sidebar floating over the body text. Not sure what’s going on yet but I’ll try to fix it ASAP.

I may start posting some poetry here in the future. Maybe not. I haven’t decided yet. I don’t want anyone reading anything into it and beyond that I haven’t figured out how to get the music that goes along with it captured from my head to accompany the writing.

Let me stew on this, as I’m not sure if there is any good that come from this or not.

I’m also pushing out a backlog of draft posts from the last year in case the question comes up.

Over the years I seem to consistently get two e-mail questions…

The first is where to get a copy of Picture Publisher from. This makes sense I suppose since I maintain the only known repository for all of the Micrografx product updates. Even about.com links to my collection.

So, in answer to the question. Check E-bay. Corel appears to have been pretty thorough in recalling all unsold product from the retail channel so the chance of finding a stray copy of Graphic Suite on some store shelf is pretty much not going to happen. Even finding the demo downloads for Picture Publisher 10 have been getting pretty sparse. The only thing I would warn you about buying from E-bay is be mindful of what you think you’re buying. The primary listings I regularly see (as of mid 2010) for PP10 Pro are either a pirated/bootleg copy or a cracked version of the time-limited demo. Off and on there are legit copies of PP10 DCE version but that is just a feature crippled version of PP10. The next best bet is PP9 or PP8. Personally I felt 8 was a bit buggy and 9 wasn’t too bad. 10 Pro is the way to go if you can find it though.

The second question I get is why is the Game Zero site so ugly and bland looking. Well, that’s pretty easy to answer as well. The site was built from 1994-1996. The last significant visual design changes were made around 1995. What you are seeing on this archived site is a state of the art web design for 1995 that was created for optimal delivery and presentation for common modem based web users running at speeds of 14.4Kilobits or 28.8Kilobits with common screen resolutions of 640×480 and 800×600 (maybe even 1024×768 at best). Compare that to today’s speeds measured in MegaBytes and HD screens.

The next question that follows that is sometimes why don’t we update the site? Well, because it’s an archived site. The reason the site is even still up is because it is one of the only (if not the only) site with period reference for video game activity for the time span. Nearly every other site from that era is long gone and archive.org didn’t start indexing the web until late 1996. In fact archive.org didn’t even get around to start indexing both Game Zero sites until 1998 (that would be the U.S. site and the Italian mirror). Maybe some day if I have the spare time I might tweak some of the multi-page article navigation at some point to make the content more accessible but frankly it’s a low priority.

If you’re up to exploring though you can browse the Archive.org indexes for www.gamezero.com and our Vol.it hosted European mirror.

Thanks for stopping by.

Some of you may have last year about Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam after his conversion to Islam) throwing out to the press the idea that he might consider suing Coldplay over a suggested infringement of his song Foreigner Suite via their chart topping song Viva La Vida. His song is a 30 year old track that likely nobody under 20 has ever heard of.

I’ve listened to both songs. Ah… yeah. Whatever. Keep dreaming the dream.

Anyways what got me was the transparently lame marketing ploy that this was. Yusuf is a washed up 70’s rock star looking for a fresh 15 minutes of fame in the U.S. while he tours his new album. He did one of those brilliant Prince like moves several years ago when he converted to Islam and changed his name to something nobody can remember or would even associate with his music. Hey I’m all for religious freedom. He seems happy with his life and I could really care less about his personal beliefs. From a marketing stand point this wasn’t the best move unless he was going to ditch his legacy work and start with a clean slate.

But that’s not what he did, so his P.R team has had a nightmare of trying to expose his non-core fans to the brand change with his name so they get as many baby boomers out to his tour dates as possible. They also need to hopefully scratch out a few new fans for his new work in the process (of course he’s been trying to get new fans for years and hasn’t gotten much traction, hence the need to dig up boomers for ticket sales). Yusuf is alot like Jimmy Buffet in this regard. Yawn.

Anyways, his P.R. team has went so far as too play the 9/11 sympathy card in going on about how his name was mistakenly on the DHS terrorist watch list preventing him from flying into the U.S. for several years. That alone got him a day or two of front page news when he flew in to start his tour.

This then got me thinking about how a lot of people sue other people simply for the press coverage. Front page brand exposure is expensive! But front page exposure where the news is talking about your frivolous lawsuit is free. Personally I think the whole practice is unethical and a waste of public resources but there are clearly people out there without ethics or an appreciation for the fact that our court system has real work to do. This activity is the basis of why so many companies quickly pay out on settlements fast before the story can make it into the news cycle.

People! Isn’t there a better way to handle all of this?