When I was a kid, I didn’t have an atari, or a comodore 64 or any of those things. I had an Apple II+ (or was that an E?). Anyway, there weren’t a whole lot of games for the thing, I had a favorite named Sneakers, which was essentially space invaders with giant sneakers with feet (yeah, a little odd now that I think about it) instead of space ships.

The first programming I ever did was on that thing as well, i wrote a little GI Joe game, that was basically a choose your own adventure. I learned however, that it’s not that fun to play games that you wrote, because you always know the ending…

I also had a typing game where you were given a word to type and if you typed it fast enough, you’d kill the spaceship coming at you. If you didn’t, the space ship would kill you. I actually had a really good time with it and appreciate the skills that I learned with it even today. So I’m sure you sitting there asking yourself, “what the hell is Josh going on about now”. I’ll get there, keep yer skivvies on…

I know that there have been a number of games out there for people to learn piano via the computer in a similar way as the typing game. And then there’s the popularity of Guitar Hero (which is a hell of a lot of fun). So then I see this: http://www.guitarrising.com I’m REALLY excited about guitar rising. Not only does it make things a little more interesting (and useful) for the people that play guitar hero and the like, but it also I think will be VERY interesting for people that know how to play guitar. Having something like that could really “improve the chops” as they say.