Old Robots

White, white robots, for white, white families.

One of the great promises of my generation and, in fact, of all generations since the advent of mechanical labor, was the promise of futuristic robot armies that would cater to our every desire and unleash electric death upon our enemies while we slowly turned into those people from WALL-E. And while that promise has yet to to be fulfilled, we've come a long toward that goal, although most of mankind's recent attempts at building mechanical cohorts for ourselves have been skewed towards producing Asian sex robots. Call me a xenophobe, but I like my artificial lifeforms to look, well, artificial. Let's face it, would we all have gone gaga over R2-D2 back in '77 if he'd looked like Tia Carrere? Well, maybe that's a bad example. Regardless, when I'm talking about robots I mean beep beep boop bop robots covered in knobs, buttons, lights and other little fiddly bits, you know? And the folks at TheOldRobots.com agree with me. From goofy little squirts that barely function to great big articulated automatons, this site has them all. Check out the videos below for a couple of choice cuts from their collection.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THEOLDROBOTS.COM

Tiny Games

Pew! Pew! But tiny.

Don't have the cash or space to add a full-sized arcade machine to your retro-gaming collection? Sure, we all do! These pint-sized and portable video games from BasicFun, makers of the ViewMaster and Bop-It, not only fit in your pocket, but fit your budget as well. You can pick one of these up for as low as $7.99 so they make great little stocking stuffers. Choose from Tetris, Space Invaders, Centipede or Breakout. They used to make a Frogger edition as well, but you'll have to check eBay or your local Target's bargain bin if you want that one, sorry.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT BASICFUN'S OFFICIAL SITE

Turn Your Phone Into an Arcade

Gaming just got a whole lot itty-bittier with the iCade Jr. from Ion Audio. Just plug in your iPhone or iPod touch and fire up one of the many compatible games from the App Store for a devilishly diminutive retro experience. Featuring a solid arcade-style joystick and eight action buttons (four on the front and four on the back) the iCade Jr. also sports a pass-thru port for use with a USB cable, turning your mini-arcade into the coolest iPhone dock ever. Best of all, it's made to work perfectly with the "Atari's Greatest Hits" app which features 100 classic home and arcade titles from the number one video game maker of the 1980s. But be warned, this little fella costs $69.99, so for 30 bucks more you could pick up its iPad-compatible sibling, the original iCade, instead.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ICADE JR. PRODUCT PAGE

Beam Me Up, Portland!

Leave it Portland, Oregon to keep feeding us white, geeky, hipster news. The land espoused by SNL alum, Fred Armisen, as being a place where "the 90s never died" and "the tattoo ink never runs dry," has dipped a little further back into pop-culture's history to bring us a new summer pastime: Trek in the Park. Check out the video below - my apologies for the ad - for a glimpse of the Oregonian brother-sister duo, Adam and Amy Rosko, staging dramatic recreations of some of the original Star Trek's most-loved episodes to an audience of folks who are too hip to have cable.



CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE AND GALLERY ON CBS NEWS

Tristan Perich: 1-Bit Music

In recent years, the art of producing 8-bit music on 8-bit hardware has been enjoying a sort of renaissance thanks to the generations of kids that grew up with primitive video-game music like the themes from Zelda and Mario. The digital music created on today's modern computers is generally done in 16-bit or 24-bit, both of which allow for a much finer audio resolution and thus much clearer sound than 8-bit. Then there's 1-bit sound, which was employed in 70s and 80s computers such as the Apple II and early IBM PCs to produce rudimentary sound effects and music for video games. In those types of computers, a signal would be sent to a small speaker directly from the CPU which would result in a simple click sound, and since the speaker was either on (making sound) or off (silent), the single click produced was considered to be 1-bit of audio information. Put enough of these click sounds together in rapid succession while varying the oscillation and you've produced a sine wave, one of the building blocks of synthesized tones. Sweat enough blood and you can actually make music with it as did electronic music artist, Tristan Perich. While there are quite a few 1-bit music artists floating around out there on the net, Tristan has gone one step further and created a 1-bit music album, titled "1-bit Music," entirely in hardware. That is, rather than release a recording of his music on a modern format such as mp3 or CD, Tristan's album combines the player and the music into a portable unit which consists of a simple electronic circuit assembled inside a standard CD case. The case itself has a headphone jack mounted on the side that allows the listener to experience 40 minutes of 1-bit music in, as Tristan puts it, the lowest possible representation of audio. You can't buy the album anymore (bummer) but you can visit Tristan's sites and get a glimpse into some really innovative forms of music and visual art, much of which is produced using the same technologies as the album.


CLICK HERE to visit Tristan's 1-BIT MUSIC site

CLICK HERE to go to Tristan's main site

CLICK HERE to explore more 1-bit music