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By Jim Trageser
The Whaley House online is a neat educational site, set up to teach about the real and historic Whaley House in San Diego – a nationally registered haunted house, mind you. (Apparently there are ways to go about making your ghosts official.)
The site is a game set in the late 1800s wherein you have to get some records (written, not long-playing) froum the Whaley House and deliver them downtown. You're dropped off by the stagecoach driver and then have to make your way to Old Town.
It's pretty confusing from there. You have to find your way across the raging San Diego River (must have had another El Nino that year) first, but I keep ending up at the Bay. The dirt roads all look alike, and there are too few hints to let an old fart like me figure it out.
The graphics are pretty low-rez – reminiscent of what you see on a lot of educational programs. And the sounds are too rare – some water and a vulture were all I heard.
You'll need the Shockwave plug-in to play the game; if you don't have the latest version (or any version), you can download it before playing by clicking on the "Shock" button on the main menu.
The site is hosted on the Roadrunner site – perhaps it's an opportunity for them to show off the speed of cable Internet access, because the scenes are slower than Moses loading over a phone modem – two to three minutes each.
It's a nice effort, but not really very playable.
This is a page set up for those who are interested in collecting trading cards from the "Star Wars" movie – the original cards from 1977, not any associated from the recent re-release.
The various cards have been scanned in so you can see what was issued. The owner of the page had split the cards up into four different pages, so you don't have to wait forever for all the images to load.
There is also a link to a page about a game called "Dogopoli," a takeoff on "Monopoly" featuring a canine-oriented theme instead.
Larry Salus has set up a series of pages devoted to Pacific Beach. They're more philosophical than directory, with his take on what makes PB special. There are some really sharp photos of the beach area, yet the pages still load pretty fast. (Muzak warning: Turn down your speakers if you don't want to hear the endlessly looping midi files.)
Salus also runs this more informative page about Pacific Beach. This one has info on the PB area (weather, population, etc.), links to PB schools, the PB Town Council, civic groups (toastmasters, Lions, etc.) and the City Council. There is a community calendar, a street map and weather info.