Tag Archives: Oregon Trail

Friday Links: Props in AdAge for our Agency Primers, Lego Printers, and more

• We got some nice props in AdAge for our Nerdery Agency Primers. It’s a nice way to start the weekend. If you’re new to our Agency Primers you can check out the notes and recaps of what we’ve offered so far.
• Horatio Alger meets Oregon Trail. As part of Galley Cat’s World’s Longest Literary Remix Contest one game designer mixed Alger’s novel Joe’s Luck: Always Wide Awake with the old-school video game we all know and love (we extra-special love it because one of our own nerds worked on the game back in the day).
• SEOLOL, what people search for when they think nobody’s looking.
• Have you seen the Lego printer? It’s full of awesome.
• John Gruber at Daring Fireball breaks down the good and bad of AT&T’s new data plans.
• From the where are they now file: The Star Wars kid became a lawyer.
• Musical Philosophy: pretty sweet posters that interpret song lyrics typographically.
• How Pixar built Toy Story 3.
• Rebranding the license plate, way more interesting than you’d expect.

Blazing the Oregon Trail; the making of video games in the time of cholera

Last Friday we got the inside scoop on the making of the Oregon Trail video game from our guy John Krenz, who was the lead programmer for the Apple lle version back when he worked for the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC), an organization that set out to teach kids life lessons like the value of strong oxen, a spare axle for your wagon, shooting wild game and steering clear of cholera. Show-and-tell also featured four of John’s former MECC colleagues: Rich Bergeron; Beth Daniels; Tom Zemlin; and Mark Paquette. Here’s a three-minute highlight reel from Friday’s BottleCap Talk, and also the unabridged video. On a personal note, I recently passed away. Cholera.

The Oregon Trail Bottlecap Talk: The Music Video from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

The Oregon Trail Bottlecap Talk from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Go west; secrets of the Oregon Trail revealed at today’s BottleCap Talk

Today we kick it old school at BottleCap talk. We’ll hear from John Krenz – one of the Oregon Trail’s pioneer (pun well-intended) programmers – and these days one of our software development managers.

John was the lead programmer for the Apple lle version of Oregon Trail. Turns out he knew all along that Oregon Trail was educational – tricking kids into learning (social studies and language arts) and playing with computers (the gateway to all kinds of nerdiness) by making it fun.

Education remains fun at Nerdery BottleCap talks – a time (4:30 every Friday) dedicated to peer-to-peer learning (w/beer). Our typical BottleCap is a show-and-tell of a notable Nerdery project launched during the week, and while we unleashed numerous eventual interactive classics this week, John will demo the proud product of his formative years using a classic/relic Apple lle (the way the game was meant to be played, some purists say).

The Trail may be old but the beer is cold. Visitors are welcome – leave us a comment if you’re coming. Ample parking for oxen, bring your own hay.

Surprising things you can learn while editing the Periodic Table of Nerdery

If you want your child to grow up to be a nerd (and really who doesn’t?) a good first job might be as a bagboy or grocery store cashier, at least that’s what my research has discovered. Of the 79 nerds profiled for the Periodic Table of Nerdery, eight of them listed their first job as bagboy or grocery store clerk. Good things coming out those grocery stores, huh?

Some other interesting similarities?

• “Real Genius” was the movie the nerds cited most often for favorite fictional nerd.
• Oregon Trail swept the First Internet/Computer memory category, which is kind of awesome since our own John K worked on the program.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were either a favorite Nintendo game, childhood heroes, or favorite fictional nerd (a shocking upset since I was sure MacGyver would sweep that one).
• No/Can’t was the most popular word/noise to hate, which should give you a lot of insight into the nerdy mindset.
• In the comicbook realm, Superman beat out both Batman and Spiderman for most childhood hero mentions. Batman does deserve some props for getting one fan to talk about “superpower-wielding sallys,” which totally made this blogger laugh out loud.

What have you learned from the Periodic Table of Nerdery that surprised or delighted you the most?

One of my favorites? The Scrooge McDuck quote as best advice.