Tag: birthday celebrations

Birthday Wishes

My lovely wife turned 25 yesterday. An alarming number of people (six) wished her a happy birthday on her Facebook profile expressing a hope that I had “spoiled” her…

Now, I don’t buy into the whole “spoiling” thing. I think I treat Robyn with due specialness all year round…

But I did “spoil” her. With an almost surprise high tea party organised at the last minute after she told me quite clearly a week in advance (after having previously told me that she didn’t want anything) that she still didn’t want a party, but that if she did, she’d like it to be a high tea.

Thanks to those who brought stuff. I would have photos to post had I remembered that I owned a camera – and had I not been churning out the coffees and hot chocolates and making sure children didn’t trample our turtles.

Since I didn’t have a camera with me here’s an old photo.

November 9, 2009

Happy Birthday: Tetris


Tetris turned 25 yesterday (or today, depending on where you sit on the international date line). 25 years ago Russian progammer Aleksei Pazhitnov sat down and wrote the most addictive game ever.

It is arguably the greatest Russian invention ever. Greater even than the Great Moscow Circus.

The Guardian has a great feature on the game to celebrate the milestone.

Twenty-five years ago, inside the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a young artificial intelligence researcher received his first desktop computer – the Soviet-built Elektronika 60, a copy of an American minicomputer called a PDP-11 – and began writing programs for it.

But not numerical ones. He ended up creating one that would infest the dreams of those who played it, spurring addictions and even the suspicion that it was a Russian plot to divert the youth of America in a pointless exercise.

Here’s what it originally looked like…

And here’s what the creator looked like in 1989…

And here’s what he looks like now (on the right)…

And here are all my previous Tetris posts to mark the occasion.

June 3, 2009