General

Computer ads (and stores) of yore

From the December 1997 issue of The Computer Paper, a free publication that was all over the place in Metro Vancouver way back when:

To me, a rotary phone is ancient tech, but I remember using them. And now we’ll have people who will remember ancient tech as having to buy software to get on the internet.

Actually, I guess that still includes me, because I actually did this myself (I went with iStar).

(BTW, netcom.ca is a broken link now, and www.netcom.ca has an expired certificate that has nothing to do with what the site was back in the days of parachute pants.)

While marvelling over having to install a browser just to get on the internet and then doing so at a maximum speed of 56 Kbps (I only ever have a 33.3 Kbps modem before going to broadband), I am mostly struck by the list of retailers at the bottom of the ad where this software (remember when software came in boxes?) was sold and how most are long-vanished, proof that even tech is not immune to getting steamrolled through evolving times:

  • Future Shop: Bought out by Best Buy, shuttered for good in 2015
  • RadioShack: Effectively killed in 2005 when it became The Source and turned into a kind of Best Buy Mini (it’s now owned by Bell, boo hiss)
  • London Drugs: Still going, but computers were only ever part of their business. Fun Fact: I worked in the computer department of LD from 1999 to 2001. I was there for the launch of Windows Me. We got free copies. I ran it on my home PC for two weeks before going back to Windows 2000.
  • Staples: Still going, will probably scrape by as long as the paperless office remains a fantasy
  • Doppler Computer Superstores: I had to check to see if they actually had more than one store (the one I know was in Vancouver, across from a Wendy’s that’s still there) and I think this was the only one. The building is long gone now, but you can see it in this reddit post. I bought my first two CD-ROM games there: Myst (of course) and a disc of shovelware games. I remember the spinning racks of shovelware. You might find a low budget gem if you looked long enough, but it was mostly junk. Still, CD-ROMs seemed very futuristic in the early 90s.
  • Computer City Canada: There were seven Computer city stores in Canada and more than 60 in the U.S. before the entire chain went kaput in 1998. Fun Fact: I worked at the brand-new Coquitlam store during the launch of Windows 95, which was a very big deal at the time. We had two Compaq PCs set up running Win95, one with 4 MB of ram and the other with 8 MB, to show how much better Windows 95 was with more memory (some things never change).

And while I’m waxing nostalgic, here are some of the other stores I used to haunt regularly when shopping for computers or software that are all gone now, and mostly forgotten:

  • CompuCentre: These were in malls, and they quietly vanished without me even noticing. I’d buy the odd game here.
  • ATIC Computers: Still around, actually! I bought multiple PCs from them in the 90s. They were cheap, which was the main appeal, as I was poor.
  • Wizard Computers: I mainly went here to get software for my Atari ST. I remember buying Dungeon Master at this store, which was on Fraser Street.
  • MicroConcept Systems: Like ATIC, but not as cheap. Ran huge, multipage ads, had a business division, then shuttered.
  • NCIX: Ho ho, the store that spawned Linus Tech Tips and is probably most famous (or infamous) for going bankrupt, then auctioning off a bunch of equipment that still contained user data. Oops. I bought stuff here for years and remember the early days of Linus making videos for them.
  • Egghead Software: I bought OS/2 at the Broadway store. I barely remember running OS/2. I was a Windows guy, ultimately.
  • Software Superstore: True to its name, this massive store in Richmond sold software for every major platform (this was when there were more than two). My biggest single-day haul was picking up both Populous and SimCity for my Amiga 500. At the time, this would have cost $100 and would be apparently about $180 today. Considering some games are now costing $90, it seems both weird that prices have pretty much stayed the same and also that $90 feels like way too much to pay for a single computer game (thank you, Steam sales and indie devs!)

On one hand, I miss picking up software from these stores, because there is something about getting something tangible, something physical, that can’t be replicated with downloads. But there’s no denying the way software works now is way better. Still, it would be fun to zap back in time for a day and be able to check all these places out circa 1992.

And so it goes

box with brain inscription on head of anonymous woman
I mean, is this not the best BRAIN photo or what? Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

Sometimes I think if we truly figured out the human brain, it would be the end of humanity.

That’s my deep thought for today.

A tale of too many plugins

Yesterday’s site shenanigans have now been resolved, and it made me realize I had way too many unused plugins hanging around, doing nothing except potentially causing problems (which one did, yesterday).

I’ve deleted a bunch and will delete a bunch more before I’m done. This will also help with the site redesign, so I will later claim it was part of the plan all along, somehow.

And now, another cat:

Lousy Smarch weather

The weather was nicer in January than it is now. And it snowed in January. April showers may bring May flowers, but no one will see them BECAUSE THEY WILL BE UNDER 2 METERS OF WATER.

And they’re still teasing this in the forecast:

Oh, I’ll be back in eight days to verify that it was actually 4C with snow showers on the 28th, believe me!

Baking AI banana bread

I had some too-ripe-to-eat bananas and in times past, I always swore I’d use them to make banana bread.

After vowing this approximately a million times, that day finally arrived today.

Being 2023, I did what any person with a connection to the web would do: I asked an AI chat program to give me a banana bread recipe. It did, but it was for a pan larger than the one we have, so I asked it to modify the recipe to account for this. It did.

The bread is now baking in the oven. Will it be good? Will it be a bananatastrophe?

Pics and the verdict later today!

In the meantime, enjoy this dancing banana:

UPDATE #1: The banana bread is baked! A photo:

It looks fine, but a little runty. How will it taste? The taste test is coming soon, in the exciting banana-flavoured UPDATE #2.

UPDATE #2: Despite being runty, AI banana bread was declared a yummy success. We’ll double the recipe next time and see what happens.

R.E.M.’s Murmur turns 40 today

The link below was stolen from Austin Kleon’s Friday newsletter (if you are in any way a creative type or just a voracious reader or lover of art, I highly recommend subscribing):

R.E.M. reflects on ‘Murmur’ on its 40th Anniversary

Guitarist Peter Buck nails the time span: “If, on the way to the first day of recording Murmur, we had chanced upon a radio rebroadcast from exactly forty years previous, we would have heard speeches from Franklin Roosevelt, news about World War II, and the swinging sounds of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Forty years is a looong time.”

Murmur is a rare(ish) example of a great debut album1On reflection, I realize a number of bands have great debut albums, then spend the rest of their career trying to live up to them, usually with mixed success, something that was not the case with R.E.M. . These guys were in their early 20s and delivered a terrific mix of songs on their first try, making Murmur a genuine classic (I still rank it as #3 on my list of R.E.M. albums). I came to R.E.M. late, with their fifth album, Document, after hearing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”–a song I later came to realize wasn’t really typical of them. Like any good-but-late fan, I went back and got their previous (four) albums, in chronological order because I’m a purist or something, so Murmur was the second R.E.M. album I dove into, and I liked it even more than Document. I was hooked!

And yes, I will be listening to Murmur today. It’ll make me feel old, sure, but more than that, it will make me feel good.

UPDATE: I listened to Murmur on my 5K run. The run ended partway through “Sitting Still” so I listened to the rest on the walk home. The album is so clean and uncluttered, shifting from ballad to bouncy and back without missing a beat (say that three times fast).

I was 18 when this album came out (and did not know R.E.M. even existed at the time). Obligatory list of things I could and could not do when Murmur debuted in 1983:

I could:

  • Legally drive
  • Vote in federal elections
  • Fight in wars and stuff
  • Tell people I was an adult

I could not:

  • Vote in provincial elections (you need to be 19)
  • Legally gamble (21)
  • Act like an adult. Come on, I was 18! I was a theatre student, on top of that.

Remembering that the news makes me feel bad

A few days ago I unsubscribed from two well-written, timely and informative newsletters.

Both focused on covering politics and the news, mostly in terms of how politics often is the news. Both were American-centric, but the U.S. does have a rather lot of influence on the world.

Over the past few days, I found myself starting to read the current edition of each newsletter, then stop. A few times I just straight up deleted them, unread. I thought about how I stopped checking the news on a daily basis and how every time I have checked the news since then, it reinforces what a wise decision that was.

These newsletters were making me feel pretty much the same way as ingesting the news on a daily basis had: bad.

If I want to feel bad, I can just step on the scale. It’s quicker, costs me nothing and fifteen minutes later I’ll have either forgotten about it or rationalized it in some way (“Focus on the long term, not daily fluctuations”). The bad feeling does not linger.

Reading bad or unpleasant news–especially political news–lingers. It burrows into my psyche. I don’t like that. Is it a me problem? Possibly.

But I have an easy me solution–just don’t read that stuff! I can still stay informed without soaking in it, as it were.

And so my email inbox grows slightly slimmer. Now if I can just do the same.

Haiku to April showers, 2023 edition

April Showers

A refreshing rain
Everything is lush and green
You are getting soaked

And the ChatGPT version:

AI-pril Showers

Raindrops on petals
April showers bring new life
Spring's rebirth begins

One of us perhaps appreciates the rain more.