December 2020

Google Nexus 7 Box (I might still have this somewhere…) Foreword: As has become something of a Christmas Eve tradition for me over the years, I was faced with a new challenge with my aging Google Nexus 7 (2012). I only have 2 games that I play on either my phones or the Nexus 7: Flow and Flow Free Hexes. Both games received updates that rendered them incompatible with the CyanogenMod 10.2 (Jelly Bean 4.3) ROM I was using, and since those games encompass my bedtime “chill out” ritual, that was major a problem. Upon a bit of research however I made a radical discovery that people made not just Android Nougat work on the archaic Nexus 7, but even an Oreo build as well. (Though I was unable to get GApps to work with that due to storage limitations.) That’s 3 or 4 new versions of Android since the Nexus 7’s debut of Jelly Bean, and what’s even more incredible, is with some mods it can still perform like it came out of the box in 2012. Nexus 7 unveiling at Google I/O 2012. Background: The Nexus 7 has its place in history, and its own array of lore….

Introduction: Valve’s heavyweight Game of the Year receives a mind-blowing high-definition reappointment and expansion for the ages. Background of Half-Life: Half-Life was Valve’s first game produced upon their founding in 1996 by Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell. Using the Quake engine licensed by id Software they were able to produce a horror first-person shooter that provided many innovations such as NPC (non-playable character) interaction, highly intelligent AI (artificial intelligence), and unique operational properties of the game’s vast arsenal. Couple all of these various facets to an engaging narrative across a sprawling setting and you get the recipe for Game of the Year. Released for Christmas season 1998, Half-Life’s influence on the genre was seismic with its multiple iterations of deathmatch and teamplay modes and modifications including Team Fortress Classic and the vaunted Counter-Strike. With the advent of its sequel in 2004 along with the rise of the Steam platform for purchasing and managing a library of games along with interconnectivity with a Friends list to communicate and gather gamers to play together, Valve gave the 1998 release a visual upgrade using their new Source engine. Half-Life: Source as it was called was a direct port of the 1998 game offering…