The Legend of Beavis

The internet is an amazing place to mix two separate things together and create comedy. Over on YouTube, someone took a Legend of Zelda animated short and overlaid it with audio from Beavis and Butt Head. Not only does it work, but it’s quite funny. Back in the 80’s the Super Mario Bros Super Show was a massive hit. Part live action and part animated shorts, the show was a quick pulling-together of work in order to get something related to Nintendo on the small screen. One great part of the show was that on Fridays, the animated short changed…

A Farewell to iPod

It’s hard to imagine Apple without the iPod. In the Steve Jobs era, the iPod was the device that took them from “doing okay” to becoming a monumental success of a company. Even if you weren’t (or aren’t) an Apple fan, you had or were surrounded by iPods in the early aughts. And now that era is over. On May 10th Apple put out a press release stating what we all knew was coming at some point: the iPod Touch was being fully discontinued. Since its introduction over 20 years ago, iPod has captivated users all over the world who love the…

All The Data

The same news comes around every few years: Friends, the TV show that shows no slowing down in popularity, moves to another streaming service. From Netflix to HBO Go Max, this is one show that always makes headlines when it moves. Plenty of others makes the rounds too: Seinfeld, classic Disney films, etc. But there are those who are immune to this Where’s Waldo of programming. People who look to own their media and have it always available at the press of a button, regardless of where it’s available for streaming. In their cases, they may not even have a…

The Discman was amazing. The Discman was awful.

When it comes to music in the “before times” prior to the iPod, there was a huge boon when Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player. It was the first time someone could go anywhere and hear their music without carrying a giant boombox. It was the first time you could use headphones on the go to listen to whatever you wanted. Technology carried on and soon the Discman, and products like it came to replace the Walkman. And that is where things became… difficult. The idea of the Discman was insanely basic: do what the Walkman / portable cassette…

Grunge Is Old

Get ready Xennials and older folks because I’m about to say something that will make you shudder: Gen Z has deemed Grunge music as Oldies. 😱 I know, right? But there is a big plus to this admission of age: rediscovery. When it comes to Nirvana, songs the band put out are reaching 20 years old. But, because of TikTok and videos talking about “songs you should know”, these tracks are making some big moves. Richie Assaly at the Toronto Star has more. As of this week, “Something In The Way” has been used to soundtrack nearly 200,000 TikTok videos.…

Finish Him

One staple of the mid-nineties is Mortal Kombat. The arcade game took the world by storm due to its digitized fighters recorded from real actors. Oh, and there was violence galore. So it came as no surprise when a sequel came out soon thereafter. Mortal Kombat II was a phenomenon and (in my opinion) the best of the series. Midway took everything great about the first one, dialed it up to the extreme, and improved it in so many ways. Now, YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer goes over the AI of Mortal Kombat II and how it looks like the game…

Little Prince

Prince is one of the greatest modern musicians. His influence was huge and certainly, he left this planet way too early. But something that can bring a smile to music-lovers faces is this happy accident courtesy of WCCO’s archives. While viewing archive material to find teacher strike footage, a reporter’s eye was caught at the sight of a boy interviewed. It only takes a moment to know who this boy is. And then the magic happens. I can say more, but the story is so heartwarming that I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. Just sit back and enjoy.

First To Find

Years ago, I don’t even know how, I learned about a weird treasure hunting game. Something called “Geocaching” was a game wherein you printed some GPS coordinates out and put them into your Garmin device. Then you worked to get to that location. Once there, you would find a cache that held items for trade and a logbook to sign. Diving deep into the well of nostalgia is this video. On October 5, 2008 Dave Ulmer uploaded a recording of the first geocache which he hid on May 3, 2000 in Portland, Oregon. His “GPS Stash” was a bucket filled…

Reboot Madness

Clicking around the internet, you may be looking for something new to watch. Some TV shows look interesting while some have run their course, yet continue for another season. But then you spot it. Something familiar. A title that hasn’t crossed your mind in 5, 10, or even 20 years. A TV show that once graced the airwaves is in the news again. But it’s not because of some controversy. It’s because it’s new. And it’s coming back. It happens again and again and it’s the state of many streaming services to bring back “TV comfort food”. Because we live…

Rotary Dial

If you’re looking to combine retro-tech with new-age capabilities, look no further than this innovative idea. (Fellow Long Islander) Justine Haupt is someone who wants to carry a cell phone but make calls with it. Nothing more. So, she built her own. That uses a rotary dialer. And it does nothing else. This short YouTube video has all the details. Haupt 3D printed the casing and built the entire system herself. Even better than seeing this in action is the fact that she is selling these as a kit! Her website Sky’s Edge describes it as the Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit.…

Next Of Kin

The unveiling of a new product is a milestone for any company. Years of R&D, hundreds of hours in meetings, immense time and money spent, all to coalesce into a single moment: the launch. Every company has high hopes for their new products, but some fly higher than others. Even mediocre products can float along for years before a company kills them off. In 2010 Microsoft held one of their unveilings. A mysterious new product aimed at an under-targeted demographic was to unleash a new era of communications. They had all their ducks in a row: the experience of an…

Walking The Catalog

It’s a normal Saturday afternoon of browsing shelf after shelf of items for sale. Some displays are elaborately laid out. Other sections have setups that feature wonderful layouts on the walls. In the middle of it all is a jewelry section complete with attendants waiting to help their next customer. After going through the immaculate display of a store, you decide that the stereo you saw earlier was the one to take home. And this is where things are different. Because there are no boxes in this store. No stock of products waiting to be brought to the checkout. Here,…

Pokemon Uncut

Eagle-eyed reporting from Matt Jarvis at Dicebreaker. He caught this unusual item up for auction: an uncut sheet of Pokemon cards from the 1998 Base Set. The uncut sheet – produced before the individual cards are cut out later in the manufacturing process – includes all 16 of the holographic ‘shiny’ cards from the Pokémon TCG’s 1999 Base Set, its first English-language release. Among the holo cards is the ever-popular shiny Charizard, along with fellow first-gen evolutions Blastoise and Venusaur, which appeared on the front of the series’ Game Boy games Pokémon Red, Blue and Green. Dicebreaker The auction house…

Page ‘Em

It’s a beautiful day in the woods. Far off the grid, away from stores, people, or even shelters more stable than a tent, Jeff Wilson is backpacking through deep woods. It’s a return to nature that brings him enjoyment and is a complete disconnection from society. But Jeff has no connection to the world at large and in this case, unaware of what is coming. He is deep in the forest when a loud series of beeps emits from his pocket. The small plastic rectangle continues to sound until Jeff pulls it out and silences it with a push of…

CDs Bounce Back

Leave it to the constant march of time to give CDs a nostalgic resurgence. News out of Pitchfork, like it’s 1999, shows that 2021 was the first time CD’s have increased in sales in 17 years. Madison Bloom has the scoop: The top-10 CD sales list also includes Taylor Swift’s Evermore (213,000 units sold), BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7 (210,000) and Be (187,000), Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour (195,000), and others. 2021 marked the first year that CD sales saw a gain since 2004, when revenue from the format was exponentially higher than it is today. Last month, vinyl saw its biggest sales week since at least 1991, with roughly 2.11…

Thundercats Redrawn

Classic animation gets a modern take over on YouTube where user Xtremee_Ghost has done a phenomenal job with Thundercats. This person has hand drawn each frame of the original opening of the 80’s cartoon. It has a modern style and it’s super-crisp, which I suspect is due to modern tools that exceed what could be done in the 80’s. Thundercats Redrawn captures the essence of the original show while also showcasing how a modern take on drawing can revitalize a television show’s look. Xtremee_Ghost has really knocked it out of the park. You can watch Thundercats Redrawn directly on YouTube…

And We’re Calling it iPhone

It’s been fifteen years since Steve Jobs spoke those words. A lot of grand claims were made at MacWorld 2007 at the iPhone’s unveiling. Some were seen as laughable. Some were seen as revolutionary. Nearly all of it came true. I (among many others) believe this was Jobs’ pinnacle performance on stage. I remember watching it and being floored over and over with the (LIVE!!) demo. Something as simple as the Slide to Unlock feature garnered amazed reactions. If you didn’t experience the event, even remotely, at the time it is hard to put into words how important it felt.…

Embracing The Ring

Sometimes a company has a monumental screwup so big that they simply want to move on. Never look back and never talk about it again. For Microsoft, that is certainly the 2007 “Red ring of death” debacle during the days of the Xbox 360. That video game console had a green ring surrounding the power button. However, if it turned red and remained that way, the console was dead. This “red ring of death” was immensely infuriating to gamers. The system would brick due to a design flaw and it would come out of nowhere. The system was basically overheating…

Pocketing the Games

Console manufacturer Analogue is a well-known player in the retro-gaming scene. They make high-end gaming consoles that can play retro games. The machines emulate original hardware via fancy chips called FPGAs and they are pixel-perfect recreations of what Nintendo and Sega put out in the 80’s & 90’s. Hot on the heels of their TurboGrafx system comes the long-awaited release of their portable console, the Analogue Pocket. At a glance, the Pocket looks like production on the Game Boy never stopped and Nintendo kept revising it over the past three decades. It has basically the same form factor as the…

Atari XP Publishing New Atari 2600 Games

If you’re a fan of the Atari 2600 and second generation console gaming, then you’re in for a treat. A company called AtariXP is gearing up to sell brand new 2600 games that will work on the original Atari hardware. Three games are up for pre-order: Yars’ Return, Saboteur, and Aquaventure. The games they plan to release are games who’s code was completed but never released or games that are rare and they believe should have more copies available in the marketplace. Each game is offered in a standard and collectable version. I had a bit of sticker shock with…

The Paid Social Network Nobody Wanted

In the early 2010s there were two mighty giants in the social media landscape: Facebook and Twitter. One behemoth was scrapping its way in an attempt to be a third. This company was backed by lots of money, a thoughtful design, and a single focus to topple the others. It wanted to be king. But this is not about Google with their Plus endeavor or even the weirdly-limited Path wherein you were only allowed 50 friends. This is the story of a scrappy startup that set its sights on Twitter. A company that felt that enough people were willing to…

The Verge’s Worst of the Worst

It’s hard to believe, but The Verge is celebrating 10 years this week. They’re posting a bunch of retrospectives that are great reads. One of them takes the cake. In “The Worst Gadgets We’ve Ever Touched” they lambast tech that should’ve been great but fell short in the worst ways. Notable entries include the awful Red Hydrogen phone, Ouya, and Apple’s butterfly keyboard debacle. Apple inflicted the butterfly keyboard on millions of customers for years, giving it the dubious distinction of causing the most tangible badness of anything we’ve ever reviewed. Some products on the Verge’s list are obvious while…

It’s a Sock for Your AirPods

One of the silliest accessories Apple ever released were the iPod Socks. For $29 you could get a set of six socks for your iPod. It was weird but a fun accessory. I bought and still own my set (minus my green one which went missing) that came out in 2004. In today’s modern time, NativeUnion has gone ahead and released “beanies” for your AirPods. Our latest product is a tribute to one of the creations that’ve inspired our teams and the 10th anniversary of the visionary Steve Jobs’ passing. But more so, it’s just a fun way for us…

Nokia 6310 Steps Out of the Time Machine

If there was a perfect example of news that hit the TimeMachiner trifecta (Tech, Culture, and Nostalgia) it’s this. Last week Nokia announced they’re bringing back one of their most iconic cell phones: the 6310. This candy bar style phone was one you saw everywhere in the early aughts. It was durable as hell, had great battery life, polyphonic ringtones!!, and was a great size to fit in a pocket. More from the DailyMail: There will be ‘subtle changes’ to mark the passing of 20 years of technological evolution, including bigger buttons and a zoomed in menu for ease of…

Dial I for Information

It’s the top of the 5th inning and the NY Mets have a runner on first. I’m sitting with three of my closest friends at Yankee Stadium, enjoying a crisp summer evening when suddenly it hits me: I didn’t check the price of a single stock I owned. Did it close higher today? Did it sink a few points and I should consider buying more? There’s only one thing to do. I pull out my Nokia 3310 and dial the number for TellMe. A computerized system picks up, I ask for the stock quote and get the answer seconds later.…

Grand Theft Auto: On The Go

It seems Rockstar is busy remastering some of their best work. They’re focusing on a pinnacle of early-aughts gaming: Grand Theft Auto III and the immediate follow-ups Vice City and San Andreas. Rockstar took a weird game most didn’t know about (GTA I & II) and mixed it up into one of the biggest games of 2001. Now, these three games are heading to Nintendo Switch among other platforms. Rockstar Games has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas are each getting HD remasters. They’ll be released in a package called Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy…

Twenty One Years and Waiting: The Fans Keeping Sliders Alive

“What do we do now?” Those were the final words uttered by a character in the final scene of the final episode, The Seer, of the final season of the 90’s sci-fi adventure show Sliders. The fate of humanity was in another character’s hands. He’d leaped through an interdimensional vortex and left his friends behind. The Seer’s cliffhanger would never be resolved. Those people, called “sliders”, would remain on their version of Earth forever. This ending was the result of a risky gambit by the producers to force a sixth season. They had failed, leaving fans disappointed. However, all was…

Back in the Day, Video Games Were Hard

Video games should always be fun (it’s my only rule when playing) but oh man, old NES games could be brutal. Weird ways to make them more difficult or lack of a good instruction manual always took a game from ‘fun’ to ‘frustrating’ quite fast. Streamer camillestreamss posted this video to Reddit last week wherein a ‘door’ is not what it seems to be. It’s a fun, short clip and one where we can all chuckle about the outcome. Camille laughs about it as well and let’s face it: we all did something like this when we played video games…

The PC Game That Stalked You

You log on and check your inbox. A new message has been sitting for a few hours and you anxiously click on it. It begins: Due to a fire at our Anim-X studios, we at Electronic Arts are forced to suspend the online game MAJESTIC until further notice. The message goes on to say they’re working to get power back quick. At the end is a link to the Portland Chronicle where you can watch a news report about this disaster. But there is no disaster. There is no Anim-X nor is there a Portland Chronicle. A moment later your…

Netflix’s DeLorean Documentary Series

Leave it to Netflix to get in on the action with a plethora of new DeLorean movies / documentaries recently coming out. There were no less than three DeLorean Movies out from 2018 until last year. Each one focused on John DeLorean himself. I don’t know how this was not on my radar. There may be demerits applied to my Nerd Card for this infraction. I learned only this past weekend that Netflix has released a new series titled Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean. This three episode series covers the rise and fall of John DeLorean. You may know him…