Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Happy 1985 Everybody!
Monday, December 22, 2014
Betamaxmas: Updated for Mobile
Is it real, or is it Betamaxmas? |
CLICK HERE TO VISIT BETAMAXMAS.COM
Thursday, November 6, 2014
The future is retro
♫ Make new friends, but keep the old, one is retro and the other's not ♫One thing I've noticed about the my most fiendish Retrogeeker friends, they're some of the most cutting-edge mofos I know. If the idea of a retro computing nut makes you think of that dad–the one who spent countless evenings typing in basic programs from magazines on his C-64, to store on C-90 compact cassettes–but then stopped using computers altogether by 1986–think again; this ain't your grandfather's retro. Every true retrophile I know today is also a true technophile. (Which I guess makes them/us retro-techno-philes?)
Examples are all around me, incidentally with dudes who've been my friend for 20 - 30 years:
- Mark, the guy who runs retrogeeker.com is already running iOS9 on an iPhone 7 (impossible, right?) but he also has a basement full of Performas and 8-bit Atari computers that he still puts to good use.
See 43 weird articles of promotional crap that fetches mad ducketts on ebay... |
- My friend KevinO is the first person in the known universe to start geocaching, yet when asked about the upcoming release of the Apple Watch, said, "I got an Apple Watch btw. No big whoop."
- I use my quad-core i7 Mavericks machine to automate the most menial tasks, recognize my voice commands over the telephone, and flip on and off light switches in Bangkok. Yet few would believe that I sent my first e-mail in the summer of '81, coded my first webpage in 1993, and was the first person to register kate.com back when domains could be registered at no cost. And yet, my latest purchase was a dusty old Pong machine - a chip-for-chip clone of Atari's 1972 coin-op hit released by Allied Leisure in March of 1973 called "Paddle Battle."
I've been reflecting on stuff like this a lot lately, and today stumbled upon this essay reflecting on our brief tech history and how it intersects with our humanity. Highly-recommended 23-minute read:
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Friday, August 1, 2014
Can you pick Ally Sheedy out of a lineup?
Today's retro quiz - go back to 1975 and tell me - which of these three young ladies is the real Alley Sheedy, the one you later came to adore in 80's classics like Short Circuit, The Breakfast Club, and WarGames?
This is a difficult task so we'll give you the advantage of placing your answer 40 years in the future. No cheating!
Friday, July 25, 2014
HISHE: Tron Rap
An example of early computer animation. |
If you're a dork like me, you'll love this. Although I still would have preferred a more old-school rap style for this particular video, like UTFO.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
eBay Watch: Mini Arcade Replicas
Not real, but an incredible simulation. |
CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE TEENY TINY ARCADE GAMES!
Friday, July 11, 2014
The Animated Adventures of Indiana Jones
Sunday, July 6, 2014
The Division Bell 20th Anniversary
Some of the many variations of the Division Bell album cover. |
It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since the last Pink Floyd studio release, The Division Bell, which also ended up serving as their swan song. Since then the band have continued to pay for their wait-staff and limo drivers by repackaging and reselling their extensive back catalog as well as releasing the occasional live album every few years. In celebration of this
The set boasts a two-LP, 180-gram vinyl edition of the album, remastered from the original analog tapes by Doug Sax and filled with all the original full-length tracks, which were initially shortened to fit on a single LP. The vinyl will also be available as a separate purchase from the box set.The box set also includes a version of the album mixed in 5.1 surround sound on a Blu-Ray disc that also contains an HD stereo mix of the album and a brand new video for "Marooned." Directed by Aubrey Powell, the clip opens with digital footage of an ostensibly abandoned space station, before returning to Earth where the camera follows a man as he runs through ruins, which still bear markers of the Soviet Union. The clip was shot in Ukraine during the first week of April, and is streaming below.The rest of the six disc set will include a CD of the 2011 Discovery version of The Division Bell, plus three replica colored vinyl: A red 7-inch single for "Take it Back" with a live rendition of "Astronomy Domine" on the B side; a clear 7-inch with edits of "High Hopes" and "Keep Talking"; and a blue 12-inch disc with the full versions of "High Hopes" and "Keep Talking," plus a live version of "One of These Days" (the flip side of that last disc also features a laser-etched design).To top it off, the set will come with five collector' art prints designed by Hipgnosis/StormStudios, who also designed the 180-gram LP's gatefold sleeve.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Captain Nicole Janeway
Nicole vs. Kathryn |
You may know her as the powerful inmate Galina "Red" Reznikov on the Netflix original series, Orange is the New Black, but to me, Kate Mulgrew will always be Captain Kathryn Janeway, the bold and decisive intra-galactic spacefarer from Star Trek: Voyager (and also that evil bitch from Throw Momma From the Train). Mulgrew made headlines at the time of Voyager's premiere as the first female captain to head a Star Trek series. But it almost wasn't so. Despite the fact that Kate nailed the part in her audition and subsequently went on to become a fan-favorite, the part had originally been cast with another actress, Geneviève Bujold, as Captain Nicole Janeway. However, the Canadian actress best known for her portrayal of Anne Boleyn in the film Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), was not up to the rigorous production schedule of a weekly television series, and promptly left the show after shooting only a handful of scenes for the first episode. Lucky for us, Kate was waiting in the wings to take the helm, literally, and the rest is Trek history. Thanks to the tireless video-editing efforts of a fan known only as "aobadge," we can now get a glimpse of how Geneviève might have performed in the lead role had she chosen to stay on board with the crew of the Voyager back in 1994. Check out the video below for a look at what might have been, at the time, the future of Star Trek.
BONUS VIDEOS: NICOLE JANEWAY VS. KATHRYN JANEWAY - PARTS 1 & 2
Friday, June 20, 2014
The Return of Retro-Cade
Retro Reading
My kids think magazines are broken iPads. |
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HOME OF RETRO MAGAZINE
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Today in Music: June 1984
From left: Joe Jackson, Culture Club, Phil McKraken, Two of the Pointer Sisters and of course, Sirhan Sirhan |
Quick! Can you name all 20 of Billboard's hottest singles for June…of 1984?! Don't know? Don't care? Weren't aware that time goes back further than 1992? Well check out today's video for a little refresher, courtesy of Billboard Magazine!
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Retro Round-Up
Lando Calrissian Returns in Star Wars: Rebels Animated Series
Dissed by Abrams but still loved by Disney, our favorite space-scoundrel-turned-malt-liquor-pimp strikes back!
The City on the Edge of Forever #1 Out This Wednesday
The classic Harlan Ellison-penned original series Star Trek episode gets its own graphic novel this week.
Turn Your Old Mac Into a New Amiga
Got some old Amiga software? Got a PowerPC computer you're not using? Well then, you're probably the only person you know who'll enjoy this.
It Was 20 Years Ago Today: The OJ. Chase
Relive the excitement of television's first combination live celebrity car chase and Ford Bronco commercial!
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Star Wars VII Cast Announced
No Lando? |
If you haven't already heard, the cast for the upcoming Episode VII of the Star Wars has finally been announced: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow. And as expected, original trilogy stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker have all been confirmed as well.
CLICK HERE TO MEET THE NEW CAST
Monday, April 28, 2014
The Terminator - How It Should End
"I'll be governor!" |
So leave it to the geniuses at "How It Should Have Ended" to come up with a final story to permanently close the series' final plot-loop-hole* and terminate the franchise forever. And how does one achieve this? Why, go back in time and kill the man who invented time-travel, of course! Enjoy the video!
*Patent-pending on that word.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Breaking: E.T. Atari Cart Landfill Legend
Instant Karma Got Atari |
Here's the brief: Around Christmas '82, Atari released a rushed E.T. game for their 2600 home system. The game blew so it stopped selling and the company was left with tons of unsold inventory on their embarrassed hands. About a year later the media reported that Atari would be dumping 14 truckloads of games and other gear into a landfill somewhere in New Mexico so that they could write off the loss. Of course, rumors immediately sprang up speculating that thousands of leftover E.T. carts were part of the burial. Not too long after this incident, the entire video-game market crashed hard and of course, people eventually began to point to the shamefully horrible E.T. game as one of the many nails in the Atari coffin.
But now, today in fact (April 26, 2014), this enduring mystery may finally be solved. A group of filmmakers are currently in New Mexico digging up the infamous site in hopes to finally get an answer to this 30 year-old legend.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY AT THE GUARDIAN
UPDATE: E.T. CARTS FOUND!! WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Mad Ducketts: Every Video Game Manual Ever
Here's the list of included items:
- Approx. 120 poster inserts
- 5 PS1 Manuals
- 2 large posters
- 10 PS2 Manuals
- 7 M Network Manuals
- 6 xbox live and other code papers. I do not know if the xbox live free months have been used.
- 8 Sega Dreamcast Manuals
- 4 PS3 Manuals and 1 PS3 Art cover
- 5 NES Manuals
- 2 SNES Manuals
- 3 N64 Operational Cards
- Approx. 350 Random manuals and inserts
- 107 Sega Genesis & Game Gear Manuals
- 7 Atari/Sega Manuals
- 12 GameCube Manuals
- 5 Intellivision Manuals
- 16 Sega Saturn Manuals
- 10 Imagic Manuals
- 39 Activision Manuals
- 2 Xbox Manuals
- 2 Sears Tele-games
- 2 Wii Manuals
- 9 Sega CD Manuals
- 19 Coleco Vision Manuals
- 85 Atari
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Kids React to Walkman
Little River Band cassette not included. |
BONUS VIDEO: SOME AWESOME OLD AD FOR A STEREO STORE IN TULSA
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tastes just like the 80's
Quick! How many monster cereals were there? Two? Or Three? Or more???
Just watch this ridiculous video for a silly romp back to mornings of carefree hyperactive breakfasts haunted with artificially-flavored, artificially-colored, full-sugar madness.
Building a retro gaming engine is more affordable than ever before, thanks to the RetroPie Project
AKA ♪♫ Tonight we're gonna compute like it's 1999 ♬
What if you could buy a computer brand new in 2014 that was equally as powerful as the Pentium III you used in 1999? That would be pretty retro right? But what if that computer only cost $35 and had a motherboard slightly bigger than a credit card allowing it to conveniently fit just about anywhere?
If your first thought is "that would run MAME," LEVEL UP: you're a true Retrogeeker.™
But a wise geeker doesn't have the spare geek hours for yet another knock-down drag-out tech project that would waste time-better-spent playing Centipede. No, a wise retrogeeker would put that idea on the back burner until a preconfigured bootable SD image is released by someone with geek to burn.
- That time is now.
- That download is called "Retro Pie."
- That project makes it easy to emulate your favorite games from some of the most nostalgia-inducing systems including:
- MAME
- Intellivision
- Amiga
- Game Boy Advance
- Atari 2600
- NeoGeo
- Sega Master System
- Sega Megadrive
- Super-NES
- Turbo Grafx 16
- Playstation 1
- and others
These videos like motherfucking Clarissa explain it all:
Basic overview
Install and configure
Add games
Links
All the steps are detailed in this Lifehacker article. And updated Retropie info can be found at petrockblock.comMore links
Adafruit's excellent overview of basically the same projectTuesday, February 25, 2014
People We'll Miss: Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis 1944-2014 |
Monday, February 24, 2014
Game Boy in the Palm of Your Hand
12 AA batteries not required |
CLICK HERE TO VISIT BEN MIDI'S GAMEBOY PAGE
Friday, February 21, 2014
Goodnight Dune
It is by will alone my teddy bear sets its mind in motion. |
BONUS VIDEO: THE ORIGNAL GOODNIGHT MOON ANIMATED
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Super-Frosted Sugar-Bombs
I prefer Mr. & Mrs. T, myself. |
So let's take a look back at some of those classic, diabetes-inducing offerings from an age where money was God and good health and nutrition were just for hippies.
Friday, February 7, 2014
The Voice…Not.
That's British for "you suck." |
So there we are in late '89, trucking away to the sound of Van Halen slowly turning into the worst band in the universe, and along comes the 90s. Then suddenly, for some unexplained reason, every male lead singer between the ages of 18 and 35 decided that it would be better if they sounded exactly like Eddie Vedder, even Scott Weiland. Sadly this trend contaminated the genetic lineage of pop music so thoroughly that even today, bands still crop up at random sporting a Vedder wannabe at the mic. Things only got worse when a little band called Green Day came out of nowhere and decided to screw up punk rock forever by putting a professionally-trained singer at the helm. (wtf?) Luckily, Billy-Ray Arrmstrong's over-the-top SoCal accent caused so much confusion amongst the masses that nobody even noticed. "Is he trying to sound British?"
But then, in 2002, the game changed forever. After a decade of everyone complaining about how pop music and its associated artists no longer had any heart and had just become part of a massive manufacturing process which removed anything remotely human from the source talent in order to form it into the perfect plastic product, along comes Simon Fuller with American Idol. Bastard. This Gong Show retread took the world by storm and slowly killed off the notion that anything less than utter perfection in a vocalist was desirable. The inevitable imitators followed en masse and now every kid that's grown up in the last decade thinks Daughtry is the pinnacle of rock and roll.
Digital perfection. That's all popular music is about now. No heart, no earth, no whimsy. Just Taylor Swift.
So since there's no longer anything worth listening to on the radio (was there ever, really?) I'm going to put on some Talking Heads. Enjoy and have a good weekend.
Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime by hushhush112
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Star Trek Continues
Star Trek: The Re-Reboot |
The latest entry into this sci-fi sub-genre is titled Star Trek Continues, an off-Hollywood but fairly professional attempt to continue the original five-year mission of the starship Enterprise and her loyal crew. Featuring one of James Doohan's own sons, Christopher, reprising his father's role as Scotty, the ship's hard-drinking, fist-throwing engineer, Star Trek Continues does an admirable job of emulating the Crayola-color lighting, the oddball camera angles and the quirky TV dialogue of those late-1960s Desilu productions and even manages to make you forget you're watching a fan-flick, most of the time. Although I'd say the casting could use some tweaking, and some of the acting is, well, bad, the impressive attention to detail and the bonus inclusion of original series guest star, Michael Forest, who played Apollo in the episode Who Mourns for Adonais?, makes the whole affair a worthy homage to an American science fiction classic. Check the video below for a look at the very first episode, Pilgrim of Eternity -- and to you mega-geeks out there, make sure to watch (and listen) for some quick but notable cameos by some space-opera royalty including Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Go ahead, watch it. What else you doing on a cold-ass Saturday afternoon?
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HOME OF STAR TREK CONTINUES
Star Trek Continues E01 "Pilgrim of Eternity" from Star Trek Continues on Vimeo.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Happy Birthday Mac!
Thursday, January 23, 2014
1984 Revisited
Not as confusing as Prometheus |
Do you prefer brand X over brand Y? |
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the commercial's original public broadcast and tomorrow will be the 30th anniversary of the introduction of Macintosh itself. When you get a chance, take a minute or two to watch Apple's little micro-epic and consider how much our world has changed in the years between 1984 and 2014. Thirty years may seem like a long time, but as the great philosopher, Ferris Bueller once said: life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Abbey Road: Live!
Huh, I guess Paul IS dead. |
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ABBEY ROAD CROSSING LIVE IN ACTION!
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Future Retrospect
Thomas Watson of IBM: Not as visionary as one might think. |
It wasn't that long ago that you had to sit down at a computer desk to access the internet, or actually go to the phone to get a pizza delivered. Well flash forward a few years later and here we are, posting video rants on YouTube and ordering sandwiches from Jimmy Johns all while dropping a deuce in the bathroom. Thank you smartphone!
Yes, we modernaires rarely get blindsided by new technology anymore; in fact we pretty much expect that everything new and cool that was invented this year will be completely obsolete by the next. But humanity wasn't always so forward-thinking and people actually used to possess an arguably healthy skepticism regarding new-fangled devices and concepts. This, hilariously, led to even our best and brightest minds making wildly inaccurate predictions about the future which now seem completely ridiculous. As they say, hindsight is something something so let's take a peek at a few of these short-sighted quotes regarding the future of modern technology.
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949
"But what...is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Lost: The Sitcom
Monday, January 13, 2014
Cassettes Come Back
Courtesy of stealing from the internet. |
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Stalking E.T.
Do not attempt this at home. |
Unlike Star Wars, the story of E.T. is not set in a galaxy far, far away and in fact takes place entirely on our own planet, which may help explain the film's more universal appeal. Instead of trying to digest a menagerie of alien peoples and bizarre locales, viewers quickly embraced the story of a single, out-of-place alien set against the backdrop of a comfortably familiar suburban America. The realistic accessibility of the film's settings, coupled with the emotional artillery of Spielberg's vision, is why, I believe, so many
Well if you were one of those kids whose favorite candy suddenly became Reese's Pieces because of this adorable little