Q: Why do people study dead languages?

A: To experience what it was like to live in the past.

Same thing with programming C-64 games, they’re like archaeologist engineers working with sticks, stones and mud.

Creating Guitar Hero for the Commodore is quite impressive:

(source: Toni Westbrook via Fark)

Could this be the future new Lego video game from Traveler’s Tales?

Image source: Flickr

Dug up from The Book of Lists 2:

In his book The Shadow Presidents, author Michael Medved relates the extreme disappointment of H. R. Haldeman over his failure to implement his plan to link up all the homes in America by coaxial cable.  In Haldeman’s words, “There would be two-way communication.  Through computer, you could use your television set to order up whatever you wanted.  The morning paper, entertainment services, shopping services, coverage of sporting events and public events… just as Eisenhower linked up the nation’s cities by highways so that you could get there, the Nixon legacy would have linked them by cable communications, so you wouldn’t have to go there.”  One can almost see the dreamy eyes of Nixon and Haldeman as they sat around discussing a plan that would eliminate the need for newspapers, seemingly oblivious to its Big Brother aspects.  Fortunately the Watergate scandal inteverened, and Nixon was forced to resign before “The Wired Nation” could be hooked up.

***

A very prescient article, because it seems like Haldeman’s plan to wire up the nation has come to fruition.

It comes from author David Wallechinsky’s list 6 OUTRAGEOUS PLANS THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN.  And while Wallechinsky laments the “Big Brother aspects” of such a technology, he couldn’t foresee the ability of users to be able to communicate freely with one another while the rest of the media becomes consolidated into a huge corporatocracy.

To think we could have had something like Fark 20 years earlier.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune, Friday, January 7, 2000:

This was an actual ad clipped from the 1983 edition of Street and Smith’s Pro Football Yearbook:

What a tagline… “THE CLUB THAT BEATS THE STREETS.”

I wonder how many people O.J. has beaten on the street with a club.

#1
Only in Minnesota…

Imagine, calling your business insurance company, and having to explain the basis of your claim:

… can a rampaging deer cause thousands of dollars in damage to an office building.

Source:  Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sunday June 7, 2009

Okay, does this actually work?

***

The Verndale, Minnesota Police Department has an interesting report to “blotter”:

Source: Brainerd Dispatch, Sunday June 7, 2009.

What is the difference between an artist and an entertainer?

The entertainer is a capitalist – plays for his bread – like a busker at a bus station, filling his hat to the brim with quarters.  He lives on his work with the pressure to please and to put time – most of his time – into his magnum opera.

The artist knows eventually no one or others may reap financial benefit from his work.  He toils in part-time labor he detests, or he must be supported by the government or a patron.  There is no deadline or pressure, except for time passing into oblivion.

All performers are some ratio of the two, but most are mainly artists, as the horde of “art” collects in the corner of a room while the artisan is away, using his hands, not his head, to maintain a living wage.

Ben Heck is at it again:

I am always amazed at other people’s modding skills.  Wow.  I can’t even put together a kid’s model of a Ford Thunderbird.

Great attention to detail, including the color scheme of the early 80s C-64.  I also love that it uses SD cards.

(via Fark and Make Online)

Maybe I shouldn’t look at the stats to Dan Touchette’s Timebox:

I don’t think you can accuse me of keyboard spamming, because this was the passage that probably brought this search term to my dashboard:

Honestly, Troy and Andrew were most excited about this. They were the ones who networked their computers together and played Doom all weekend. Troy was practically fondling the Timebox to suppress his excitement. Andrew told him to knock it off and give to me.

So I had the Timebox in my hands, which were attached to arms around a cute red-headed girl who was, for all intents and purposes, jailbait. The only thing I needed was a day off tomorrow to enjoy this a little bit longer…

Maybe this contraption would make her boyfriend disappear.

I think you can see here that I’m only commenting on the romantic age difference of 20 to 17, which does carry some sort of guilt and delicacy.  There really isn’t anything sexual about this scene other than the fun and innocent flirting I remember from 14 years ago.

So if people are scouring WordPress pages, in search of underage girls,

well, I hereby apologize you had to read my little sci-fi story and left unsatisfied.