Games Archives - The Philippine Beat

Rescan your digital TV receivers! Interactive PIE channel brings fun and prizes to the digital TV experience

Posted on May 27, 2022 by jane

The TV is called the “idiot box” because viewers are fed TV and cable shows — a one-way experience for us who sit for hours watching the news, movies, or our favorite teleseryes. Not anymore! Digital TV opens up viewers’ experiences, allowing viewers and content creators to interact with those in the studios and immersing you virtually in whatever show you are watching. You can do so much more with digital TV than with analog TV!

ABS-CBN launched the Pinoy Interactive Entertainment (PIE) channel last May 23. PIE, the Philippines’ first multiscreen, real-time interactive TV channel, brings together BEAM, 917Ventures, tradigital entertainment company KROMA, and the country’s leading storyteller and content creator ABS-CBN. From 5 am to 2 am daily, PIE is accessible to 11 million digital TV households in Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Zamboanga, Naga, Baguio, and nearby provinces through partner station BEAM.

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Got a budding chef in the family? Check out this comprehensive culinary site, culinaryschools.org

Posted on January 27, 2022January 27, 2022 by jane

There was a time in my kids’ lives when two of them entertained the idea of taking up a culinary course. Well, sort of. They were in high school and to be honest, they were not really that active in the kitchen so I was not sure then if it was just wishful thinking or a serious career plan.

Our dilemma then was that we knew next to nothing about the culinary arts. My husband and I were both graduates of business courses. What did we know about baking and cooking? Our kids eventually ended up studying in the school of their choice (the blue school in Katipunan) taking other courses. That blue school, many years later, opened its own culinary school, Le Cordon Bleu, but by then, all my kids had already graduated. What one of my daughters does now when she suddenly gets the culinary urge is to enroll in short courses offered by a popular local chef. Another daughter who now lives far from us has learned on her own how to cook several dishes. Her Facebook photo album is now filling up with different kinds of dishes she has learned to whip up.

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Playing Solitaire and solving puzzles make me remember my Mom

Posted on October 28, 2021October 28, 2021 by jane

I inherited my love for puzzles from my Mom. She was a crossword expert. I could only manage to solve crosswords of moderate difficulty but my Mom? She solved them all, including the expert levels. She also loved anagrams, logic puzzles, math puzzles, and word searches. We spent many occasions rummaging through secondhand bookstores, like Booksale, looking for these puzzle magazines (our favorite brand was Dell).

On special occasions, we gifted each other with these puzzle magazines. She taught me how to solve logic puzzles and eventually, it became my favorite type of puzzle. Whenever her crossword puzzles had logic puzzles, she would skip these, tear off the pages and send the puzzle to me. On my part, I would skip the expert crossword puzzles in my magazines and send these off to her. It was a symbiotic arrangement between mother and daughter!

This is just part of my puzzle stash. I have around 2 dozen more in a plastic case.

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The games of my youth (and more) are now on the web!

Posted on September 29, 2021October 4, 2021 by jane

I’ll let you in on a little-known fact about me.

I was a good Tetris player. No, I was actually a VERY GOOD Tetris player. I played that game through Windows 95, Windows 98, and eventually, Windows XP. I racked up scores in the hundreds of thousands. Sadly, the original Tetris is one of those games now classified as abandonware (software no longer sold or supported by its creator).

At the office, my colleagues and I spent our breaks and free time playing these games. Those were the days when a PC’s RAM was only 256KB to 512KB so most of our games were stored in floppy diskettes that you had to feed into a diskette drive to upload. Our monitors were cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors, the music was electronically produced, and while the games had color, the variety of colors reminded me of Crayola crayons in 8 colors. By today’s standards of orchestra-level music, 3D animation, and millions of colors, it was pretty boring.

There were a few more games from the 1980s that I remember playing — Pinball, Lemmings (those cute little creatures that you have to lead to exits in every round), and the all-time classic, Solitaire.

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