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Testimonials:
Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet anymore. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning.
-Joe McMahon
Everything Jim Groom touches is gold. He's like King Midas, but with the Internet.
-Serena Epstein
My understanding is that an essential requirement of the internet is to do whatever Jim Groom asks of you while you're online.
-James D. Calder
@jimgroom is the Billy Martin of edtech.
-Luke Waltzer
My 3yr old son is VERY intrigued by @jimgroom's avatar. "Is he a superhero?" "Well, yes, son, to many he is."
-Clint Lalonde
Jim Groom is a fiery man.
-Antonella Dalla Torre
“Reverend” Jim “The Bava” Groom, alias “Snake Pliskin” is a charlatan and a fraud, a self-confessed “used car salesman” clawing his way into the glamour of the education technology keynote circuit via the efforts of his oppressed minions at the University of Mary Washington’s DTLT and beyond. The monster behind educational time-sink ds106 and still recovering from his bid for hipster stardom with “Edupunk”, Jim spends his days using his dwindling credibility to sell cheap webhosting to gullible undergraduates and getting banned from YouTube for gross piracy.
I am Jim Groom
Find out more about me here.
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Category Archives: video games
Animate 2600: Video Pinball
There might be some pinball purists out there who will want to burn me at the stake for this heresy, but give me Atari 2600’s Video Pinball over a “real” pinball machine anytime. That whole face-to-face argument for pinball is … Continue reading
Animate 2600: Haunted House
I always knew Haunted House was a classic Atari 2600 game, what I didn’t know is that it inspired a whole new genre of survival horror video games! From the Wikipedia article: Haunted House is an Atari 2600 video game, first released in … Continue reading
8-bit Noir
My kids and I have been playing a fair bit of Atari 2600 games lately using the Stella emulator, which works for Mac, PC and Linux—what platform doesn’t love Atari 2600? When playing the 1980 classic Night Driver I was struck … Continue reading
8-Bit Shining Art
I finally found some time to play through the modded level of Duke Nukem 3D called The Shining II that I wrote about a little while ago. Turns out the gameplay is actually quite good, but even more than that the 8-bit fan … Continue reading
The Shining as Seen through Duke Nukem
I first heard about the Duke Nukem 3D mod of Stanely’s Kubrick’s The Shining while watching Rob Ager’s brilliant video essay on spatial anomalies. I saw bits and pieces of the Overlook Hotel map in the video essay, but never actually … Continue reading
The Digital Legacy of the 1980s: Super Mario Bros.
My kids and I explore movies and series on Netflix to watch on a somewhat regular basis. And while I’ve been underwhelmed by their live streaming library as of late like everyone else, we recently stumbled upon The Super Mario Bros. … Continue reading
Bioshock Infinite
Mikhail Gershovich turned me onto the trailer for BioShock Infinite the other day, and I haven’t gotten this excited about the narrative implications of a game since the first BioShock, or even Half-Life 2 (which I talked about here). Where … Continue reading
The Death of Sasquatch
I love posts about videogames more generally, but ds106 internaut Ed Martinez’s recent discussion of the Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare expansion pack was particularly good. Seems like since Rock Star’s release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas fans having … Continue reading
Summer of Love: Yie Ar Kung-Fu
A Perfect Game on Yie Ar Kung-FuI’ve been in the emulator zone as of late after playing around with Dragon’s Lair, so it’s not too surprising the 80s arcade love abounds. And after playing a host of games on MAME … Continue reading
Summer of Love: Dragon’s Lair
I don’t know why the Summer of Love has taken me deep into 1980s video games, but over time I’ve learned to embrace, rather than fight, nostalgia. A few days ago, right after my last post, I started thinking about … Continue reading