Hypercard/HyperTalk: I could do anything with Hypercard. I miss it.
Remembering patch settings for your analog synthesizer: technically, I never had an analog synthesizer, but I remember remembering patches for my Ensoniq
Swapping floppy disks: Lord, yes, on that first Mac, when the system was on one disk and PageMaker 1.0 was on another. I finally made the county buy me an external floppy. What bliss that was!
Using a 16mm film projector: Learned how at Elm Street, and it always made me look like a genius when I went in to rescue teachers, back in the days of the State Film Library. It helped that we had an 8mm projector at home.
Using the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature: The bane of my existence as a librarian. I at least had an auxiliary sheet which showed the students at a glance which periodicals we actually possessed and for which years.
Watching a slide show with a slide projector: Not just watching, but making a slide show. This used to be the majority of my job at GHP in media, helping students produce antique PowerPoint presentations.
Tweaking your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files: Not me, of course, but aren’t you W. people still doing that?
Dovetail notching.
Mike says he can’t post here. Is anyone else having issues? Email me directly.
Going directly to Karnevil 3 (9?) on an eight-track tape of Brain Salad Surgery.
Operating a 3/4-inch videotape editor.
Editing the Period Dance performance tapes on reel-to-reel, with paper trailers.
Pretty much everything I taught at GHP. Tee Hee
Alternately, there are often rewards in cultivating obsolete knowledge, i.e., making paper or your own books, etc. My interest in certain pen and ink approaches has that feel, too. Certain issues of grammar and syntax. Attempting a few complete sentences when I post on blogs, etc.
Playing guitar with standard tuning. Existential guilt. Formalist criticism. Liberal Arts wherewithal. Changing typewriter ribbon. Classical psychoanalytic technique. Modified Lacanian technique. Relaxed, plain talk about imponderables.
Forming quasi-arcane philosophical societies.
Converting 5.25″ disks from single to double sided via a hole-punch.
Hacking Commodore 64 video games.
I totally forgot about the hole punch thing! Classic!
How about this one. Taking old VHS tapes you don’t really care for like “Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise! ’87” and putting a piece of tape over a hole on the side. Voila! You can record over it! Same with audio tapes.
I’m thinking back to some of the stuff I learned at the Henry W. Grady J School, too. Like splicing tape reels together by hand. How to operate a VDT, and learning all those obscure code commands. Actually, just about everything I learned at journalism school is now obsolete. Even the whole idea of “objectivity” has been jettisoned.
Something else comes to mind from childhood. Blowing the dust off the inside of an Atari 2600 game cartridge.
How about how to unlock the Easter Egg on the Atari Adventure game (that was the name of the one with the dragons, castles and keys, right?). I always hated the bat, and how it would steal the bridge right as you crossed into some otherwise inaccessible area.
How about the right combination of moves in the Zork labyrinth to find the treasure room without being eaten by a grue?
W, S, U, SW, E, S, SE
But as long as you had the lantern lit, grues were not an issue. It was the thief who was the bugger.
Cool! I haven’t played HHGTTG since high school! But I have always kept my towel close by.
Zork, too! Whoopee!
I forgot about the “Secret hidden room” thing in Adventure. I wasted months of my life playing that thing. Adventure was my favorite, by far. I also liked Combat. E.T. was the worst game ever. I heard they buried millions of unsold E.T. cartridges out in the desert. How appropriate.
Hypercard/HyperTalk: I could do anything with Hypercard. I miss it.
Remembering patch settings for your analog synthesizer: technically, I never had an analog synthesizer, but I remember remembering patches for my Ensoniq
Swapping floppy disks: Lord, yes, on that first Mac, when the system was on one disk and PageMaker 1.0 was on another. I finally made the county buy me an external floppy. What bliss that was!
Using a 16mm film projector: Learned how at Elm Street, and it always made me look like a genius when I went in to rescue teachers, back in the days of the State Film Library. It helped that we had an 8mm projector at home.
Using the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature: The bane of my existence as a librarian. I at least had an auxiliary sheet which showed the students at a glance which periodicals we actually possessed and for which years.
Watching a slide show with a slide projector: Not just watching, but making a slide show. This used to be the majority of my job at GHP in media, helping students produce antique PowerPoint presentations.
Tweaking your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files: Not me, of course, but aren’t you W. people still doing that?
Dovetail notching.
Mike says he can’t post here. Is anyone else having issues? Email me directly.
Going directly to Karnevil 3 (9?) on an eight-track tape of Brain Salad Surgery.
Operating a 3/4-inch videotape editor.
Editing the Period Dance performance tapes on reel-to-reel, with paper trailers.
Pretty much everything I taught at GHP. Tee Hee
Alternately, there are often rewards in cultivating obsolete knowledge, i.e., making paper or your own books, etc. My interest in certain pen and ink approaches has that feel, too. Certain issues of grammar and syntax. Attempting a few complete sentences when I post on blogs, etc.
Playing guitar with standard tuning. Existential guilt. Formalist criticism. Liberal Arts wherewithal. Changing typewriter ribbon. Classical psychoanalytic technique. Modified Lacanian technique. Relaxed, plain talk about imponderables.
Forming quasi-arcane philosophical societies.
Converting 5.25″ disks from single to double sided via a hole-punch.
Hacking Commodore 64 video games.
I totally forgot about the hole punch thing! Classic!
How about this one. Taking old VHS tapes you don’t really care for like “Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise! ’87” and putting a piece of tape over a hole on the side. Voila! You can record over it! Same with audio tapes.
I’m thinking back to some of the stuff I learned at the Henry W. Grady J School, too. Like splicing tape reels together by hand. How to operate a VDT, and learning all those obscure code commands. Actually, just about everything I learned at journalism school is now obsolete. Even the whole idea of “objectivity” has been jettisoned.
Something else comes to mind from childhood. Blowing the dust off the inside of an Atari 2600 game cartridge.
How about how to unlock the Easter Egg on the Atari Adventure game (that was the name of the one with the dragons, castles and keys, right?). I always hated the bat, and how it would steal the bridge right as you crossed into some otherwise inaccessible area.
How about the right combination of moves in the Zork labyrinth to find the treasure room without being eaten by a grue?
W, S, U, SW, E, S, SE
But as long as you had the lantern lit, grues were not an issue. It was the thief who was the bugger.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/, btw.
Or here.
Cool! I haven’t played HHGTTG since high school! But I have always kept my towel close by.
Zork, too! Whoopee!
I forgot about the “Secret hidden room” thing in Adventure. I wasted months of my life playing that thing. Adventure was my favorite, by far. I also liked Combat. E.T. was the worst game ever. I heard they buried millions of unsold E.T. cartridges out in the desert. How appropriate.
Writing symphonies.