In the beginning there was Windows 2.0 its screen, and it was either on or off, but never was it "saved." The developers at
Dynamic Karma said "let's make some pretty graphics while your computer is idle" or something of that sort, and lo, they made
Magic, and it was good. The people rejoiced, and asked, "why for are you giving this away, when we would happily pay for it?" And then they united with software engineers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and
they brought forth Flying Toasters, after figuring out how to build the screen saver structure on the Mac.
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posted by filthy light thief
on May 4, 2013 -
57 comments
Plenty of people collect
Disneyana, the toys, books, animation cels, and theme-park souvenirs. Then there are those fans who collect information and details on the Disney parks themselves,
collecting official park maps or
drawing up their own ride blueprints,
assembling the design history behind the attractions, and even
collecting vintage tickets and
ticket books.
Yesterland (previously:
1,
2,
3) is an ever-growing collection of Disneyland history, and has
an updated collection of links to similar fan sites and Imagineering blogs, which is a whole collection of rabbit holes of nostalgia and behind-the-scense information. So grab a
riding crop and
pretend like it's the 60s all over again!
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 15, 2012 -
9 comments
"
As a child, there was nothing to me more fantastic than than the M.U.S.C.L.E. toys. I don't know if it's just my love for the weird, or the fact that I like pro-wrestling that makes it so special to me, but there's something about a guy from outer space with a fin on his head who would fight against a walking, talking urinal.
That's right, a urinal." In the US, they were known as Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere, or
M.U.S.C.L.E., but they were
basically bendable plastic duplicates of
Kinkeshi, a line of
collectable erasers from Japan. More than peachy-salmon colored minifigs, they were based on the world of
Kinnikuman, which started as
manga in 1979, then
an anime series, and
more, and
more, and
more...
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posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 8, 2010 -
45 comments
Space: 1999 (1975-77) is a British sci-fi series, the last production of
Gerry and
Sylvia Anderson who were first recognized for their work in "
Supermarionation." This series saw the end of the couple, with Sylvia Anderson leaving the show at the end of the first season. She was replaced by
Fred Freiberger, who brought in some Star Trek sensibilities and attempted to cater the show more to the American action-adventure audience. A third season was planned but not produced, and left the series unfinished, ending on an episode that was "
like bad Shakespeare, or worse, bad Star Trek." Fans still support the show in many forms, even creating a semi-official fan-produced mini-episode entitled
Message from Moonbase Alpha to bring some completion to the series, which was shown on September 13, 1999 at the
Breakaway: 1999 convention. Another group of fans has recently taken to
updating the whole series, to
bring Space:1999 into the future.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 13, 2010 -
91 comments
Old-time radio (often abbreviated as "OTR," also known as the Golden Age of Radio) refers to a period of radio programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's replacement of radio as the dominant home entertainment medium in the 1950s, with
some programs continuing
into the early 1960s. The origin of radio dramas in the United States is hard to pin down, but
there is evidence of a remote broadcast of a play in 1914 at
Normal College (now California State University at San José), and the first serial radio drama was
an adaptation of a play by Eugene Walter, entitled "The Wolf," which aired in September 1922. Given the age of the programs and the fact that
home reel-to-reel recording started in the 1950s (followed by Philips "compact cassettes" in 1963), it might be surprising that quite a few of
these old shows have survived. Thanks in part to original radio station-sourced recordings made on
aluminum discs, acetates, and glass recordings and other unnamed sources, many radio dramas and newscasts from decades past are
available online, and more are being digitized and restored to this day.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 25, 2009 -
53 comments
