Anniversaries and Commemorations - Tetris, Rik Mayall, the Wars

week of anniversaries and commemorations.

6 June was the thirtieth anniversary of Tetris! I remember playing the game on a desktop pc in 1992 or thereabouts. We had one 3.5" disk with Tetris on it, one with PacMan and two (because one didn't have enough memory!) with a set of games called California Games, which included things like hackey sack and BMX. Oh yes, and another disk with J-Bird and two with Dark Castle -- an awesome game that I was never very good at. I watched my dad and my sister play. They were good at Kingdom of Kroz too, but I loved Moraff's Revenge. I think I even have a semi updated version of Moraff's Revenge on the laptop I'm using right now. Yet I always go back to Tetris. At one point I had the highest score in the family. My grandmother, meanwhile, beat us all at PacMan.

Every once in a while I take a break and play for a while over at Free Tetris, but it's not the same colours and music that I remember. And I'm not allowed breaks at the moment as I haven't made time for my ROW80 goals at all!

And now something sad - Rik Mayall has passed away.

You might remember him from such classic shows as:

The Young Ones

Bottom

Blackadder

And speaking of the wars - I learned two new things this week thanks to History Needs You (Historian, Edutainer and Broadcaster Matthew Ward, and Manager, Editor and Writer Gill Fraser Lee):

The explosion of the Messines mines during World War I:

The Mulberry Harbours, immense piers and landings constructed in only a few days (after trials in Scotland and Wales) to aid the DDay landings:

Other commemorations - the latest book in the Outlander series, Written in My Own Heart's Blood, is out! I am avoiding any and all mentions for fear of possible spoilers, until my copy is delivered. It's hard not to open tantalisingly titled threads on the Compuserve Books and Writers Community, or messages from the Yahoo mailing lists... If you have it, don't say anything!

And bloggers! I've gotten so many lovely comments this past month - I've got to drop by and visit you all!

What are you commemorating this week?