Got linked to a video of some of his contemporaries skating in various locations, and found some similarities with THPS level designs. This would be interesting to know what the inspiration was for those games.

Here is a 3-part documentary:

Blind ~ Video Days

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_diRc_9qEOM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nINb3bXAbWg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a2ua86wzLM

Side note: Mark was born the same year as Tony Hawk (1968)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXbCdkEIGnE

Feeling For You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deo8TP0cB1w

The word did not exist in the wine lexicon until 1977 when Shirley Copperman coined it for her new bring-your-own-wine restaurant she and her husband dubbed “Oenophilia”, located on the upper West Side of Manhattan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oenophilia

Chinese want to capture an asteroid into Earth’s orbit:

At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those “what could possible go wrong” scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon. The orbit would be unstable, and eventually (after a few years) the asteroid would head back out into space from whence it came, but it would stick there long enough for us to poke around on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ixFf4ljuCg

Filmed guerilla style. No crew. First two episodes made on a $500 budget, not including previous capital. Valve flew the brothers out to Seattle before it the release, and mentioned they were ‘blown away’ by the project on Steam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lyUNs7eNhs

A story about the connection that grows between two people during the battle for city 17. Made in the same gritty guerrilla style as the original, it was made on a $250 budget, previously owned/donated software, time, and an HVX200 camera.

BBC News – When algorithms control the world:

There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.

(DONGGUAN, China) — A young Chinese couple has sold all three of their children in exchange for money to play online games at Internet cafes, reports a southern Chinese newspaper.

According to Sanxiang City News, the couple met in an Internet cafe back in 2007 and bonded over their obsession with online video games.  A year later, the parents — who are both under 21 — welcomed their first child, a son.  Days after his birth, they left him home alone while they went to play online games at an Internet cafe 30 km away.

In 2009, Li Lin and Li Juan welcomed their second child, a baby girl, and came up with the idea to sell her for money to fund their online game obsession.  They did so, receiving RMB 3,000 (less than $500), which they spent entirely shortly after.  The couple then proceeded to sell their first child and got 10 times as much for him — RMB 30,000, or about $4600.