An Affectionate Look Back at the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

DISCLAIMER: This is an old post from my previous geeky technology blog. It is reposted here for hysterical raisins (it was popular at the time).

People from about Generation X or so today cut their milk teeth on these classic platforms, and today they’ll be all too ready to shake their cane at you and tell you about how it was in the good old days. Their memories of their first BASIC program or first addictive game are tied in with their first love and first beer. Amiga, Apple ][, NeXTSTEP, and the ZX Sinclair still have their cult following going strong today. But it is the ZX Sinclair Spectrum that is particularly remarkable, and foreign to the rest of the English-speaking world.

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New at GeekyDomain: Geek Nostalgia

Had a heck of a week over at my GeekyDomain gig.

First there was 80s action figures. All the top action figure franchises launched with their own cartoon, back when toys were cool. I dunno what happened to toys now. Tell me something named “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” would have made it if they came out in the 2010s. Most people never even know that they were originally done as a parody of comic book franchises. To see more of the action figure 80s including the really arcane stuff, see my IMGUR gallery.

But then, as if that weren’t enough geek nostalgia, I noticed that Radio Shack / Tandy post-mortems were all over the web… but they only told half the story. As a Generation Xer, I have a duty to document my unique observation point of view in history, so I made the most definitive retrospective on Radio Shack’s rise and fall you’ll ever see online. With a gallery of Tandy handheld electronic games!

I got around to ramblin’ about the legendary Trash-80 as part of that, so for those of you looking for a broader gallery of computer nostalgia, I also did an IMGUR dump of computing history focusing on the home desktop revolution.

You see, we Gen-Xers are a sparse lot, wedged in between the teeming masses of the Boomers on one end and the Mills on the other. Gen X is the only generation with a point of view bridging the period in between. Historians decades from now are going to be pawing through records trying to find Gen-Xers, who aren’t always marked by their appreciation of prosperity.

 

GeekyDomain Round-Up: The Witcher, Green Gifts 4 Geeks, and Sci-Fi Novels That Need An Adaptation

It’s come to this: I’m so busy working for other people’s sites that I can’t get the chance to blog on my own, so I have to do digests. Probably for the best. I’m on three posts per week at Geeky Domain now, so the pace is getting spunky.

If You Liked The Witcher, You Might Also Like…” explores the genre of the occult detective. Revisit Kolchak, The X-Files, and a cameo from Vincent Price because I’ll take any opportunity to insert him.

You see in the banner on that image that for a goof, I compared the “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” song to “Bravely Bold Sir Robin…” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Right after that, we lost Terry Jones, who co-directed same for the Python troupe. Sad loss, and another Python down.

Gifts for Green Geeks” is a gift list for responsible geeks who want to carry on their geekery while adhering to a new standard of reducing their carbon footprint. Gives me a chance to continue my contrarian climate-advocacy views from old classics like “If Anybody Cared About Climate Change, We Could Have Solved It By Now.”

Five Sci-Fi Novels Just Waiting To Be Adapted To Film” is a nerdrage rant about how Hollywood isn’t adapting anything quality anymore, get off ma’ lawn and all. But each of those five sci-fi classics I picked are all works with a strong argument for being potential box-office champions. We can do that or we can try to retread Spider-Man for another Uncle Ben death scene. Your call, Hollywood!

“Time is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans!” — John Lennon

 

New at Geeky Domain: Collectible Guides For Marvel Figures and Star Wars Funko Pops

You get a 2-parter here because I’m too busy to break it up into individual posts and God knows when I get back in here. Two recent product lists to announce:

  • An Infinity of Collectible Marvel Figures – Come see Ant-Man swipe the Incredible Hulk’s can of Coke, then browse our selection for the best current Marvel universe figurines. We went with aesthetic appeal over most popular character, plus I get to pour my heart out for underrated B-list Marvel characters.
  • These Are The Star Wars Funko Pops You’re Looking For! – What could be more self-explanatory than “Star Wars Funko Pops”? But my twist is that I delve into the background on these characters, the actors who play them, their position in the ‘verse, and why they’re the definitive characters to collect for any Star Wars fan.

What else? I didn’t even mention it back during Christmas, but my first post at Geeky Domain we ginned up a quick and sloppy Christmas gift guide for Yoda fans based off The Mandalorian! Since most Baby Yoda merch doesn;t even ship until spring and is available for pre-order only, I figure it will be more useful next year than this year.

Is there anybody who has blogged more about Star Wars at this point than I have? I mean I can’t prove it – Half the stuff I’ve ever written for the web is now found only on the Internet Archive, if that. I was nattering about Star Wars back on the BBS era, before the World Wide Web, before Google, before AOL. I suppose people who write for Wookiepedia and the like can claim more Star Wars blogging than I, but that’s the people who specialize. And I don’t even count myself as a big fan of the series!

I figure these two posts go together because they’re the only choice left in geek cinema fandom now. You’re either a Marvel fan or a Star Wars fan. All the other franchises are extinct in American cinema. And they’re both owned by Disney, the mouse that frikkin’ roared, God help us all!

 

Christmas Gift Shopping With Penguin Pete

So it’s the holiday season and I’ve actually taken a break from my usual Scroogy behavior to go Black Friday shopping last week. This is the first time I’ve ever done that! Normally I stay in, safe from getting trampled. But the kids were in town to visit this last Thanksgiving weekend, and we don’t get to see them that often these days, so I suggested we stampede Historic Valley Junction. And man did we have a blast! Black Friday isn’t as crowded as it used to be.

Of course, I turned it into a client post too. Everybody else runs around Valley Junction taking selfies with everything, so why not join in and be able to monetize it too? That link you will find is also an eccentric gift idea guide.

What didn’t make it into that post: We ate lunch at Heavenly, an Asian restaurant where they know what a bowl of hot ‘n’ sour soup is and set the table with chopsticks in mind first. They have this awesome mural behind the bar there:

mural at Heavenly cuisine in Valley Junction

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New at 123ish: Unique Desktop Toys For Office Fun

I don’t miss much about the corporate 9-to-5 (cubicle slave #X197532), but one thing I do get nostalgic for is all the dumb things people would do to amuse themselves to alleviate office tedium. I did a whole review of unique recommendations for office desktop toys. These are all non-electronic diversions too, so you can rest your bloodshot eyes from glowing screens too.

The pic is, of course, from Terry Gilliam’s epic 1985 film Brazil. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) twiddles with this decision toy with ‘yes’ on one side and ‘no’ on the other, with a weight that drops onto a wedge to randomly fall on either side. It’s a perfect metaphor for the movie’s dystopian universe, where everybody endures only having the illusion of free will. It’s where, for all the good anything does you, you might as well go through life making random decisions.

Always wanted to find this toy in real life, but probably not looking in the right place. In the meantime, check out my recommended list, you’ll find many surprises!

 

New at 123ish: The Biggest and Best Lego Sets Ever

Hey, I never did get around to writing about Legos! I loved them, my kids loved them, and there’s a nice wholesome culture of Lego hobbyists and collectors out there. So I thought I’d round up the most impressive sets released in Lego history and blog about them. Good luck tracking them down, some of these are highly sought-after collector’s items!

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A Magic: The Gathering shopper’s guide

Conventional wisdom among spike tournament players is that you NEVER, ever ever buy boxed MTG products or even booster packs. Yeah, but like all absolutes, isn’t that not always true? Here, I define some of the typical boxed products that at least come close to a decent value for the money, pointing out the “Best Magic! the Gathering Sealed Products.”

And I’m of course speaking as a collector and player myself. Strategic MTG investment has worked almost like a second career with me over the years. Keeping an eye out for good value purchases I can break up and sell for individual value helps me stay in the game, even on my pauper-level freelancer budget!

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IMGUR posts: 1980s Action Figures and Vintage Pulp Novel Cover Art

So you all might be noticing by now, I’ve been tinkering around with IMGUR a lot lately. I can’t help getting hold of a social media platform and eventually experimenting with it to see what kinds of nifty posts I can make in that medium. The IMGUR format is underappreciated; it’s more like a super-Tumblr since you can post any amount of text appended to images and chain images together into albums. Not bad for a site that originally started as a side-feature for Reddit.

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