I was fresh out of college in the early 90s, so most of my DOS gaming was done as a young adult, spending nearly every penny of my first full-time job on hardware and games. 😀

In grades 8-12 I was a computer nerd on the Apple IIe, but back then it was so new I don't think it was yet associated with the label "nerd". At least I don't ever remember being teased about it...

beigemore wrote:

...did a book report on the Space Quest Companion in 5th grade English class. We also had to design a t-shirt to go with the book report (kind of weird). My t-shirt design had the scene from Space Quest II where Roger has to walk through the vine maze.

Anyone else reach those levels of nerdiness?

I definitely did. My 7th grade project was an attempt to compile indepth game guides (descriptions + walkthroughs) for some PC games I played at that time. I think I was doing Prince of Persia, Dangerous Dave, CD-Man, Golden Axe, and maybe one or two more. This was before the internet was everywhere, and I didn't even have general computer skills back then, so it was all hand-written, pencil on paper, complete with my lame attempts at illustrations. 😊

I thought it was super cool, but it was not really liked by the teachers. They obviously didn't have the same passion for video games as I did, and they did not understand the point of writing walkthroughs to games. I was told that the idea of these projects was for us to do some research, and not just put in writings things we already know. In retrospective, I can understand that point of view, and even agree with it, but at the time I felt quite hurt by their attutide. 😢

dr_st wrote:

complete with my lame attempts at illustrations. 😊

I'm picturing Napoleon Dynamite's liger right now.

dr_st wrote:

I was told that the idea of these projects was for us to do some research, and not just put in writings things we already know. In retrospective, I can understand that point of view, and even agree with it, but at the time I felt quite hurt by their attutide. 😢

But, but playing the games could be considered research 🙄
I'd have argued something like that and asked for a game that I haven't played before to be assigned to me. Free games! 🤣

_____________

From what I remember...

In elementary school I got flak for doing my homework on the computer, not only typing but doing my own drawings/illustrations on paint programs. My work would get rejected and my parents called in to the school, I now assume the teachers thought I couldn't possibly have done those things on my own, I obviously ripped them off or had an adult do them for me. My parents had to go and argue that 'yes we do have a multimedia PC with a color inkjet printer at home, and yes our son can produce that kind of work on it on his own, and will keep on doing so whether you like it or not' or something along those lines. I believe the school reluctantly agreed and stopped making a fuss about it. My parents aren't hardcore techies but they certainly were ahead of the curve and I owe them a lot for that.

Later I did the odd video game themed assignment here and there but I don't remember getting any memorable reactions from it - guess my teachers didn't know or care for video games, and as for being nerdy, yeah it was totally nerdy but violent video games were starting to be perceived as cool by my male peers (computer violence, that's what every kid wants, after all).

In high school I had to write some essay about cults/sects/religions or something like that for a philosophy class. I believe I did it about open source vs. proprietary software and how both movements displayed cult-like features or something along those lines 'cause that's something I was delving into at the time - I got a bad grade because the teacher didn't believe I wrote it, so from then on I never put another ounce of effort on that class. I was already known as a computer nerd so having my essay exposed to my classmates wouldn't have changed much. 😜

...wrote my GCSE music coursework using Scream Tracker. I got 90% for it. I also helped my mate write his and he got 95%. Want happy about that.

Haha, this brings back memories. I remember mapping a game and sending the map into a magazine, and they published it on a 2-page spread. I took it into school and showed everybody. I didn't get teased about it. People were pretty impressed. Also, a bit later I got a program published on the cover disk of another magazine.

brassicGamer wrote:

...wrote my GCSE music coursework using Scream Tracker. I got 90% for it. I also helped my mate write his and he got 95%. Want happy about that.

This is seriously awesome! I can see your exam paper now.

"Name a famous composer who changed the way we understand music"

"Purple Motion"

For my Computing GCSE my project was an analysis of the trajectory of various games in the UK charts. Got an A for it and with hindsight I'm not sure how as it was little more than "Doom II stayed at number 1 for 10 weeks because killing demons is really fun". 🤣 Suspect the teacher was a closet gamer.

I might have tried to tie chart success with review scores but I can't remember exactly. Would love to read that one again.

Spring of -94 we were supposed to make a song with Octamed, but instead spent the week listening to different music and tunes. I don't think anyone bothered to check if we had actually accomplished anything. 😒

beigemore wrote:

Anyone else reach those levels of nerdiness?

Not computer related, though in 1999 I wrote the final "paper" when I attended at Senior Highschool for adults.
The "paper" is supposed to be this big one, that has a final outcome on the grades.
It was about the Viking settlements on Greenland from aprox 890bc to aprox 1500bc.
Yes. It is right about when Greenland was discovered by Erich the Red and to the point when they simply vanished.
I wrote about how they managed to survive, making cloth, cheese and encounters by the native people.

I scored what is the equivelant of an "A". If I use the American grade's-system. Not bad....

133MHz wrote:

From what I remember...

In elementary school I got flak for doing my homework on the computer, not only typing but doing my own drawings/illustrations on paint programs. My work would get rejected and my parents called in to the school, I now assume the teachers thought I couldn't possibly have done those things on my own, I obviously ripped them off or had an adult do them for me. My parents had to go and argue that 'yes we do have a multimedia PC with a color inkjet printer at home, and yes our son can produce that kind of work on it on his own, and will keep on doing so whether you like it or not' or something along those lines. I believe the school reluctantly agreed and stopped making a fuss about it. My parents aren't hardcore techies but they certainly were ahead of the curve and I owe them a lot for that.

Ahhh... I remember those times, when electronic calculators were forbidden and we were not allowed to use computers.
When I started to argue on the pro's of using computers, they made an counter argument to why it was a "no-go".
5 years after... Their arguments on to why they wanted children to use computers, were the same as I had in the first place.
Oh well... Being 5 years, sometimes 10 years ahead of them all in the mid 90's. Were not fun at all. I hated school.
And I do not like school to this date eighter.... Those 10 years from the summer of 1981, was the worst in my life.

I once had do a report on Lord of the Flies for an English class. I used a tape recorder and got a bunch of sound effects from the 4th Commander Keen game. There was a girl in the class that fell out of her chair laughing.

In tenth grade I attempted to type up my math notes. It would be trivial nowadays in MS Word with vector shapes and floating text boxes and so on; even then I might have managed if I had stuck with ClarisWorks on the school Macs. But no, I attempted to wrestle with WordPerfect 5.1 (good for a great many things, but definitely not graphics-heavy page layouts) and bitmapped graphics from Dr. Halo III. My ambitions did not last long.

dr_st wrote:

I can understand that point of view, and even agree with it

Really? I don't

butterfly wrote:

dr_st wrote:

I can understand that point of view, and even agree with it

Really? I don't

It depends on how the project goals are defined. In that case, they were supposed to be research projects, not essays.

...composed two synth pop dance songs using MODEDIT in DOS. Too bad the diskettes (where I stored the song) had been lost.

...connected our Yamaha Electone organ to the computer, then played Caesar using the Electone as sound moduke. It didn't sound quite right, because despite the Yamaha supports MIDI, it doesn't support General MIDI.

...played Wing Commander, hit the pause button, then recorded the song into cassette tapes to be played later. Then did the same with Dune, Cobra Mission, Laser Squad, Ultima 6, and MiG-29 Fulcrum.

...purchased Bob Guerra's Gunship 2000 Official Strategy Guide to help me in the game, only to enjoy the book more as stand-alone reading material due to its excellent pseudo-storyline.

...wrote a small BASIC program to simulate ballistic trajectory as part of high school term paper.

...swap computer games with schoolmates.

...introduced Warlord to university classmates, which was already outdated at that time, only to find them addicted to Civilization shortly afterwards.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

...played Wing Commander, hit the pause button, then recorded the song into cassette tapes to be played later. Then did the same with Dune, Cobra Mission, Laser Squad, Ultima 6, and MiG-29 Fulcrum.

Haha. I remember doing this with songs on the radio. Hi fidelity. 😉

clueless1 wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

...played Wing Commander, hit the pause button, then recorded the song into cassette tapes to be played later. Then did the same with Dune, Cobra Mission, Laser Squad, Ultima 6, and MiG-29 Fulcrum.

Haha. I remember doing this with songs on the radio. Hi fidelity. 😉

Yup, radio tapings. Those were the days, eh? 🤣

Nothing beats computer game music --despite FM synth sound. For example, I loved this song much better than any radio top fourties at that time.

Läther - This was originally intended to be a four record set in 1977. Warner Brothers balked at the idea of releasing such a massive volume and refused to release it in the intended form.
Warner's said he still owed them 4 albums so Zappa decided to cut it up and release four separate albums at the same time. They wouldn't pay him so Zappa took matters into his own hands again.
Zappa took it to a radio station and told all the listeners to get their tape recorders ready. He was going to play them all 8 sides of the album for the listeners in an attempt to piss off and thwart Warner Brothers from screwing with his music.

- From https://rateyourmusic.com/board_message?message_id=2652747