Tag: Personal Archaeology

Personal Archaeology: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

IMDB, Star Wars, The Phantom Menace“Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace” on IMDB

Sci-Fi/Adventure, 136 Minutes, 1999

I won’t be seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens [IMDB] for at least a few more days. I hate crowds nearly as much as I adore the franchise, so will sneak into an early matinee sometime soon. All of the fuss has made me think of the last “Star Wars” premier I was excited for. (more…)

Personal Archaeology: We’re Carnies

Cookhouse 2Yes, it’s true. I come from, as defined by Urban Dictionary, the “good, hardworking, trustworthy, honest, good-for-nothing, unreliable, foul-smelling vagrants” who man the traveling carnivals of the United States. My great-grandparents, Carolton and Ruth Mae Davis, operated a cook house and my grandfather would spend summers traveling with them.

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Personal Archaeology: Magazine Mentions

This cat was internet famous for a few minutes. She was also mean and dumb as a rock.

This cat was internet famous for a few minutes. She was also mean and dumb as a rock.

Way back in the history times of 1996 there were no truly “portable” computers; instead you had what were graciously called “luggables”. There was no Wi-Fi or 4G or anything else that my children annoyingly take for granted. If you wanted to read about the web when you were away from your blazing fast 486-class PC you needed to carry around a loosely bound sheaf of paper that other people had written things on.

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Personal Archaeology: Virtual Reality, 1995 Style

Virtually Wired 1995, Virtuality 2000With the simmering success of the Occulus Rift, Sony’s announcement of their “Project Morpheus” device for the PS4 and persistent rumors that Microsoft is doing something similar for the XBox One this definitely seems to be the year when head-mounted VR will make its push into our living rooms. What people forget is that this is far from the first time that this has been promised.

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ESO Dagger Mounted in Style!

Greatness Awaits ESO DaggerAs I posted about before, I won part of the PlayStation 4 “Greatness Awaits” contest. In a stroke of pure-freakin’-genius this contest allowed fans to leverage their gold trophies as entries to win props from the awesome “Perfect Day” PS4 commercial. I won the Dagger from the Elder Scrolls Online segment.

The dagger, based on designs by Bethesda and ZeniMax Online Studios, looked awesome but wasn’t very “presentational” so I spent the last couple of weeks creating a suitable display plaque inspired by those in the “Hearthfire” add-in in “Skyrim”. (Here’s hoping the design is reused for Elder Scrolls Online!)

I’m extremely pleased with the results. I’ll be posting more images and a project walk-through soon, but for now I’m happy to simply present the final product. I was also lucky enough to be a beta participant for Elder Scrolls Online (on the PC) and while I can’t offer specifics, I am enjoying myself! Here’s hoping I’ll be able to use a virtual version of my actual dagger at some point!

It’s a Major Award. I won it!

Kiwidust Dagger WinIn celebration of the release of the Playstaion 4 the PlayStation Greatness Exchange is giving away all of the props from the excellent “A Perfect Day” commercial (below).  In what is a certified stroke of marketing genius this is the second contest which has allowed fans to leverage their PSN Trophy collection to win actual prizes.

(Yes, my PSN handle is “kiwidust”.  Feel free to ping me if you catch me online.  Apologies in advance: I rarely do multi-player due to the enormous, towering, stack of unplayed games looming over me.)

I tossed my lot of trophies on the Elder Scrolls Online Dagger and…. please provide your own drumrolls, I won!  I haven’t actually taken delivery yet (who know how long that will take) but I’m already in negotiations with my lovely bride on how (and where) to mount and display it.  Here’s a few close-ups of the piece provided by PlayStation:

Here’s the commercial. You can see the dagger in the first few seconds being drawn for combat by the thiefy-looking guy on the right. He better not have scratched my dagger!

Once I take official ownership, I’ll be sure to gloat some more!