TimeMachinerThe roots of rap and hip hop are intertwined with past music. From the earliest releases to the latest hits, so many songs use samples of prior music. Puff Daddy made mega-hits of songs in the 90s based off 80s samples. So have Dr. Dre, The Fugees, and Eminem. The list goes on and on.…Continue readingRapper’s Delight
We can joke around that modern movies using 80s pop culture properties have not usually worked out: Battleship and GI Joe are two examples. If it hadn’t been milked to death, Transformers would’ve broken that trend. Now we get a drama coming soon that looks to actually do what Transformers could not. And that property…Continue readingTetris: The Movie
Video game music is an art form. Composers finally have their own category at the Grammy awards. But watching the music get composed for pinball in the 80s is where some real magic happens. Composer Suzanne Ciani is the main composer in this documentary video showing how she creates music and digitizes speech for Xenon.…Continue readingPinball Wizard Music
The saying goes “what’s old is new again” and that really applies to vinyl records. The music format went from the only game in town to a decline with cassettes and CDs to death’s door in less than two decades. The late 90s to early aughts were a time when getting an album on vinyl…Continue readingPressing Vinyl
If a singular game made an impact on the arcade scene in the 90s, it is undoubtedly Mortal Kombat. This game could be the pure definition of Right Place at the Right Time. Arcades were thriving, fighting games were hot thanks to Street Fighter II, and this new game was using digitized actors instead of…Continue reading30 Years of Mortal Kombat
We tend to think that in this age of digital entertainment that things will always be accessible. But what about things such as video games that were all created before the internet? That’s where two ambitious people come in. Kelsey Lewin and Frank Cifaldi are the heads of the Video Game History Foundation, and these…Continue readingThe Game Preservers
One oddity of 90s video gaming is Sega’s clandestine work with Michael Jackson. It was rumored for many years that Jackson composed the music for Sonic The Hedgehog 3 along with Sonic & Knuckles. Even more incredible is recently-found footage of Jackson’s work with an unknown Sega simulator game where all the footage has been…Continue readingSEGA Shamone
The internet is a place where people make connections for a variety of reasons. None more odd & interesting was an unknown-to-me way was group chats for people who had the same first name. Incredibly, many of these groups that formed a decade or more ago continue to endure and live on today. Annie Rauwerda…Continue readingThe First Name Club
Does anyone like Clippy? For anyone who’s initial response is “Who?” let’s rewind. Back in the mid 90’s, Microsoft introduced an assistant into Word named Clippy. It was an animated paperclip with eyes. It would monitor what you were doing and interrupt your work with suggestions. It was… annoying. Dipping into the nostalgia well, Microsoft…Continue readingIt Looks Like You Need a Sweater
One of the longest-running and successful apps on iOS has been Evernote. This note-taking app was an amazing piece of software in the early days of the iPhone. From OCR to web syncing to a complete organizational method, Evernote (for a time) was *THE* note-taking app to use. That road seems to be over in…Continue readingEvernote’s End
Leave it to a mega star like Janet Jackson to create a cyber security situation back in the mid-2000s. The pop singer of yesteryear released a song called Rhythm Nation which happened to emit some frequencies that would legit crash a nearby computer. Rob Thubron at Techspot has more of this odd tale. Jackson’s track…Continue readingThat’s Miss Jackson, if You’re Crashy
Doom is one of the most well-known and earliest entries into successful PC gaming. Id practically invented the FPS (First Person Shooter) genre with Wolfenstein and then Doom. For years, the joke is asking if a piece of technology runs Doom. Now, we get the ultimate Doom: running in Notepad. Chris Kerr at Game Developer…Continue readingNotepad of Doom
The Weather Channel has been around since the beginning of cable television. One popular portion of their offerings has been Weatherscan channel. It’s a 24/7 feed of local weather without any anchors, meteorologists, or interruptions. It’s just weather set to jazz music. And now weather lovers are saving it before the official shutdown. Benj Edwards…Continue readingHobbyist Weather Project
McDonald’s is doing what a lot of other companies love to do: cash in on nostalgia. Many things from the ’80s and ’90s are back these days. Now “Mickey D’s” has done something pretty cool: an adult happy meal. It’s a collaboration with a secretive streetwear brand called Cactus Plant Flea Market. Even better, it…Continue readingThe Happy Meal for Adults
If I were to ask you “Remember the ‘S’ from school?” I bet more than a handful would answer “absolutely.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it is an angular letter S that is drawn with six vertical lines and then connecting them with some diagonal lines. But where did it come from?…Continue readingThat S We All Drew in School
You can’t keep a good classic down. Leave it to the Spielberg movie that made everyone afraid of the water to make big bucks in a limited return to theaters. Recently national theater chains held a National Cinema Day event and movie tickets were a cool $3 to see a movie. Jaws ended up being…Continue readingJaws Bites the Box Office
The early days of the internet lasted a long time. Notably, the start of people getting online differed from childhood, to something teenagers tried out, to people only getting a computer in the home past 2000. It wasn’t like the iPhone where people all got it within a compressed timeframe. Because of that long time,…Continue readingInternet Power Explains the “World Wide Web” in 1995
The phrase “OK, Boomer” is nearly played out, but still makes a point to an older generation about the way to do things. Playing on this, Bronwyn Petry at MoneyWise makes a list attempting to equate “old things” with “don’t do this anymore” or “this is a good skill to have”. The weirdness of Petry’s…Continue readingNot Quite Boomin’
Atari was a fascinating company, responsible for both the rise of home video game consoles in the US and also the market crash of the same industry. The legendary 2600 was everywhere in the early 80s and there was certainly no shortage of software. The company may be a shell of itself these days, but…Continue readingAn Atari Lookback
Weird Al is one of those national treasures of incredible talent. The man has been making parody music for over four decades and he hasn’t stopped. Most musical eras contain clever parodies of his and original music that easily gets stuck in your head. Recently, there’s a video has hit YouTube with an entire alternate…Continue readingAlternate Eating
On this anniversary of TimeMachiner, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite stories of the past year. There have been many random happenings I’ve written about that I think are still funny, insightful, and interesting today. The archive has filled up nicely since I started and I want to share with you the…Continue readingWe’ve Gotta Go Back
Once considered the future of aviation, the Concorde is now a notable part of flying history. However, it doesn’t stop the fascinating impact it had on air travel. Over on YouTube, the Imperial War Museum channel has a great video going over the history of the Concorde’s testing phases. The video interviews some of the…Continue readingEight Years of Concorde Testing
One of the most infamous Apple products to hit the market in the first Non-Steve-Jobs Era was the Newton. This PDA (remember those!?!?) was Apple’s attempt to make a device that could be portable, useful, and have some amazing technology in it. The Newton was an absolute failure for Apple. Now, 30 years later, Jeremy…Continue readingEgg Freckles
One thing I love about retro gaming is the efforts to preserve history. There are many instances where someone stumbles upon a prototype or unfinished game and the community jumps on it to copy the code. Game preservation is super important because this software can be lost to time. Equally important is the literature surrounding…Continue readingEvery SNES Manual Permanently Archived
I came across this fun video last week that visualizes the most popular websites using data going back to January 1993. In only two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, James Eagle’s video shows how much the web has changed in 29 years. Some notable items that caught my eye were just how dominant Yahoo was for…Continue reading29 Years of Popular Websites in 2 Minutes
There is a fascinating time between January 2007 and January 2010 in the world of smartphones. This short 3-year span was one where Apple was blazing a trail with the iPhone and other manufacturers responding in kind. One standout is the BlackBerry Storm phone. It was a revolutionary failure. Rewinding to Steve Jobs’ unveiling of…Continue readingBlackBerry Meant Well
One of my favorite parts of writing TimeMachiner is finding things that should be on the internet but aren’t. Those little things that fall through the cracks. This video certainly is one of them! Back in the mid-1970s Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, reprised her role on Sesame…Continue readingThe Witch Of Sesame Street
It’s 2022 and incredibly it is only this year that we see the closure of the final location of Howard Johnson’s restaurants. Once sporting a thousand locations, “HoJo’s” as many called it, is really gone for good. The final location resided in Lake George, NY which is a popular summer destination. Many visit the area…Continue readingWave G’bye to HoJo
Fresh from the sewer and re-emerging from any late-80’s / early 90’s kid’s heart, comes the long-awaited TMNT game for modern game systems. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is a modern-day take on the classic TMNT video games we saw in the arcade and on home consoles back in the day. Game publisher Dotemu…Continue readingCowabunga! TMNT Shredder’s Revenge Is Finally Here
Tech events unveiling new software, gadgets, and services are pretty common nowadays. However, back in the earlier times of computers, it was still a nerd’s paradise. Computers were a niche product, existing mostly in professional settings or schools. The Internet was still in its infancy. So, to say that Microsoft’s Windows 95 was a big…Continue readingWindows 95 Launch Video Reminds Us How 90s the 90’s Were