Little Professor Calc for Android

…with a REAL computer inside!

Before the Speak 'n' Spell, which became an official 80s icon by its inclusion in the movie E.T., there was the Little Professor Calculator that was invented by one-time computing powerhouse, Texas Instruments, in order to finally bring a happier, friendly face to the blood-sucking horror that is modern mathematics. Oh I know that math has brought us countless innovations from toasters that enhance our breakfasts to the latest and greatest supercomputers that spend all day planning military strategies, but let's face it, most kids find it pretty boring. Luckily for rich Western children, TI introduced this educational calculator dressed up as a cartoon professor back in 1976, which was born from the (then) dream that through the use of technology, the human condition could be improved upon and utopia would finally be within mankind's reach. So people started cramming microchips into everything they could get their hands on and now here we are today.
Aside from the kiddy artwork that adorned the casing, the Little Professor was a fairly standard calculator except that it also functioned as a basic quiz game, randomly generating simple equations to which the operator would presumably input the correct answer, resulting in hours and hours of fun and learning. For example: 6 x 9 = ? And the answer is 42. "ERROR!" The Professor would then shame you with stark computer-speak displayed on its LED screen and then give you another chance to enter the correct answer. At the end of a round of questions you got to see your total score which let you know if you were going to be a Humanities student or not.
For those of you old enough to remember this little gem and who perhaps would enjoy sharing childhood memories with your own modern iPad/Netflix electro-children of the 21st century, you can now pick up an app-ified version for your Android device from the Google Play store and (as far as I can tell) it's free. Check out the video demo below and then click the link to visit Google Play and pick it up. Enjoy!

THE LITTLE PROFESSOR CALCULATOR APP FOR ANDROID

Light Those 8-Bit Candles

OK, so apparently Hanukkah ended yesterday and I was trying to get a related post up before then but dammit, there's just not a lot of retro-Hebronic stuff out there on the net. But I did find a little 8-bit styled interactive candle-lighting diversion that's kind of fun. So I apologize for this belated post but the way I see it "belated" is a just another word for "retro" so I'm in the clear. I'll try and do a little better next year. Now, I'm off to start my search for retro-Kwanzaa stuff on the web. That can't be too tough, right? 

Mad Ducketts: The $500 Pac-Man Watch

My kind of smart watch.

OK, these things don't come up often on eBay and when they do, they're gone PDQ. It's the Nelsonic Pac-Man watch and back in 198-whatever, they were hot, very hot, since the Holy Grail of gaming at that time was to bring Pac-Man into the home, even if he was a three millimeter dot on an LCD screen the size of a postage stamp. Nelsonic, who still exists today but just makes boring old regular watches (boo!) produced two different models of the highly coveted Pac-Man watch - one with the tiniest little joystick you've ever seen, and another that employed basic directional buttons instead - apparently the tiny joystick was too easily lost or broken for them to keep producing. 30 years later, Nelsonic's game watches are just as hot as they were when they were new (albeit in a much smaller market) and right now there's one on eBay that hails from the U.K., so I guess you wear it on your other wrist. The starting bid for this electronic bad boy? Just £299.99. That's about $500 to us Yanks, and there's three days left on the auction so I'm pretty sure the price will go up from there. Check out the video below to see a demo of someone else's awesome watch and then click the link to drop some mad ducketts on my Christmas present…and please include a gift receipt if you can. Thanks!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE LISTING FOR THE PAC-MAN WATCH

The 8-Bits of Christmas

…and a cartridge in a pear tree.

Tired of hearing the same old Christmas music, year after year? Me too! So I went to the website, 8bitpeoples.com, and downloaded an all-star chip tune artist album, The 8bits of Christmas, absolutely free! Now you too can enjoy soon-to-be classic holiday songs like Jesus Holy, Born So Lowly, Last Christmas Hot Digi Rmx and The First Blip Blop Noel (sample video below) all played on retro game and computing gear including an NES, a ZX-Spectrum and even a Commodore Vic-20. You can preview the individual tracks or download the entire thing from 8bitpeoples' site. Cover art included.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO 8BITS OF CHRISTMAS AT 8BITPEOPLES SITE

BetaMaXmas 2013

Disturbingly representative of my childhood

Here it is, December of 2013 and so far, where I live, it's been a pretty mild winter with almost zero precipitation. But back when I was a little kid in Wisconsin, my family were afforded no such meteorological reprieves. We may just as well have been living at the North Pole for all the snow, ice and sleet we had to endure, and that was just in the springtime. So after a typical day of trudging through knee-deep snow in my moon-boots trying to keep the snot from freezing up in my nose, I would find that there was no better way to warm back up than to snag one of the less creaky spots on our old pull-out sofa in the basement and zone out in front of a toasty Zenith while I crawled under Grandma's old quilt and watched and waited for that little kid to get his tongue stuck on the pole in A Christmas Story. And if I was extra lucky, mom would let me eat dinner right there in front of the TV -- it's the little things in life, you know?
It's now a whole bunch of years later, but I still miss that shabby little basement with the faux wood panelling and the Suzanne Somers poster hanging next to the baseball-themed dartboard. I miss all three static-filled channels that endlessly streamed the same holiday drivel every year until we'd all had our fill of Alf, He-Man and Smurfs Christmas Specials. And I miss the TV Guide, dammit.
So as fate would have it, a few years ago I discovered a way to relive those warm and fuzzy memories without having to steal a Tardis and, even better, without having to go back to Wisconsin.
The site is called BetaMaXmas.com and basically it's a virtual recreation of the childhood memory I just described, lo-fi and complete with wood paneling. Upon entering the site, you'll be greeted with a couch and an old TV that loops 80s commercials and holiday specials from YouTube ad infinitum. Appropriately, the boob-tube sits atop an 8-Track player and Betamax machine whose clock keeps flashing 12:00. The experience is pretty complete: Don't like the channel? Use the clicker. Too much snow on the screen? Adjust the rabbit ears. Wanna know what else is on? Check out the TV Guide (if anyone under 35 is reading this, their head is probably exploding right now).
Over time, BetaMaXmas become a regular tradition for me and nowadays we turn it on around the Holidays and leave it running for hours at a time. And now that I have kids, I've found that it serves as an excellent historical pop-culture tool I can use to teach them about the time-honored tradition of commercializing Christmas, retro-style.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER BETAMAXMAS.COM