House of Jorob

Spectrum Memories

The Flyers beat the 'Canes at the Spectrum today, the first NHL game in the old Philly hockey palace in over a dozen years, and the last one.

Ever.

The Spectrum is coming down at the end of the season, making way for an entertainment complex.

The Flyers organization put on a heck of a farewell show today.

11 Captains.

Throwback screaming-orange blazers on the broadcasting team, coaches, and management.  Lauren Hart and Kate Smith dueting God Bless America.

And Simone Gagne skating again.

But, unless you've been living west of the Appalachians for the past year, you already knew about the Spectrum coming down.

And about the Last Game. Nothing new there. (Flyers v Phantoms next week doesn't count. Not strictly NHL.) 

From the bowl of memories I have of the Spectrum (and there are plenty--the arena's been around for 41 years, and I'm not yet 50), the ones that kept surfacing during the game were the ones with the kids.

The families had season tickets for the Flyers during the early part of the 90's, way up in the third deck. But before we bought them, and for the years we owned them, the real focus was on the parking lot, after the games.

Back in those days, the Flyers didn't head out after games by secret doors or underground parking lots. They just exited the building, and walked across the lots to their cars/SUVs.

And we were there.

After every game, just to cheer, wave, or if you were really lucky, get an autograph and say a few words. Snap a picture.

Game would be rolling into the third period. Didn't matter what the score was. Pile the kids in, grab any available adult, and onward! Put the game on the car radio to get the score.

We did this every single night.

For years.

Until it faded. Kids got older, tickets got more expensive, life got complicated.

But there are a bunch of us who were actually on first-name basis with our favorite players--they knew us to say hello to. And that always made the kids giggle, when Rick Tocchet or Murray Craven said hi.

I said goodbye to some of that wonderful feeling during the final moments of the game today. The building's going away, taking some of it with it's departure.

But not all of it.

That part I'll carry with me for the rest of my days.

Unca George, All I need is a l'il bit.....

Uncle George says its gonna take 700 billion dollars to bail out all the businesses that make up the country's economy, or we won't have much of an economy.

Seven.

Hundred.

Billion.

700,000,000 freakin' 000.

I don't know about you, but all I need is 50,000. Way fewer zeroes.

Maybe if I incorporate?

Cartoons! No homework! Hooray!

I'm sorry.
I regressed.

About 35 years.

When I was a kid, there was a local television channel, Channel 17, that was the place to be every afternoon after school.

Speed Racer. Marine Boy. A whole string of Japanese imports aired every afteroon on Wee Willie Webber's afternoon kids' TV show.

We didn't have a UHF adapter on our television set the first year I learned about the show.

I spent a lot of afternoons over a buddy's house watching.

Enough so that Dad broke down and bought the UHF adapter--and suddenly our house had four more channels--really good ones, 'cause they had cartoons on them when all the yukky ones had like, Merv Griffin on them at the same time.

What triggered this was spotting my hometown's homegrown movie business.

Wee Willie's giving a couple of lectures about the cartoons from that era.

Right here in my home town!!

In October!!

Wow!!

 gotta make sure my chores are done so I can go!

My Search Engine Ate My Homework

Maybe twenty percent of earning my English degree was memorization.
I was lucky.
That other 80% is what I've built my life around.
I went to St. Joseph's University.

Where you learned how to think during your stay.

But for the secondary schools, high schools that don't seem to teach that way, where the diploma is in the majority made up of spewing back facts memorized in order.....ho boy.

It's like calculators.
There was a time when they were not built into your cell phone.

And they were outright forbidden.

Especially in high school.

The smarter teachers compensated by allowing them, and throwing more problems on the tests. Among other things.

Like doubling the number of written proofs. 

I could have easily shot the kid who brought the TI-30's into my trig class then.

Point is, teachers had to change how they ran their classrooms.
Banning the things was futile.

Same thing will happen in the classroom--sixth grade and up--when all the basic facts are googleable and the kids have full internet access on their handhelds.

Instead of teaching stuff to learn, the classroom becomes a place to learn HOW to learn.
How to find the information, and how to validate it.
Hell, that's what half the non-fast-food jobs in this country are.

School becomes a place to learn by doing: "Okay, James, Ask.com says so, and cites four different supporting articles. Which ones are lies?"

I wonder if the iPhone has parental filters you can work before handing it over to your kid.

Gonna need em, I would think.

The devices won't stay expensive forever.

The Journey of The Demo Disc

Playstation Store launched their video magazine a month ago.

It's called Qore. It's a download, roughly 1.5 Gb.

It's basically the Official Playstation Magazine's demo disc. with two less playable demos, three fewer video trailers, and a bridge named Veronica Belmont acting as host.

I'm still waiting for her personality to show up.

There's a neat easter egg in the two episodes I've seen. Fiddle with your L2 and R2 simultaneously and you bring up a old-fashioned arcade game.

OPM is gone now. Folded up seemingly overnight by their publisher with a shocking "Final Issue" notice parked on the January 2007 cover (issue112) .
The key to that magazine was their demo disc. Video trailers, playable demos, interviews, the works. All included free inside the magazine. But PSM was a Playstation2 magazine, and Sony was pushing PSP and the upcoming PS3, and you couldn't fit a DVD inside a PSP nor could you put blu-ray gaming demos on a regular DVD and so one day it was just....over.

Or Sony pulled the license. Or publisher Ziff-Davis didn't want to keep the magazine going. Or whatever. The editors weren't forthcoming, considering they had already put 98% of the issue to bed when they were told there would be no Issue 113.

Whatever.

An interesting thing happened ten months later, though. In October, 2007.

The other magazine I subscribed to, PSM, a magazine that prided itself on being "The Number One Independent Playstation Magazine," changed its name.

And its entire focus.

The new name?

Playstation: The Official Magazine.

So much for independence.

First thing I did was look inside for the demo disc.

There wasn't one.

Come last month, I'm reading Issue 010 of POTM and the back page has an alpha-numeric code printed on the final page. A page I thought was an ad about Qore.

It was better.

The code got me a free download of the first episode of the video magazine.

Sure, I'm two months behind the release, but the price is right.

And so the Playstation demo has come full circle, once again being provided as a freebie inside a magazine.

If you want the current edition of Qore, the Playstation Store wants $2.99 for it. Or a subscription of $24.99.

Not worth it. At all. From what I've seen, I'd pay .99 for an episode. Maybe subscribe for $11.

The magazine's a better buy at $20 a year, with a ton more content and at least for now, a free demo disk.

Sort of.

Chocobo joke!

So coupla chocos walk inna barrr anna firrst one say, "Phweet."
Barrrtenderrr look atta second choco anna go, "What he say?"
Second choco say, "I dunno. He not frrrom arround herrre."

---Corbi Denergal, 75 THF/37 NIN
Mithra, Diabolos server, FFXI