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Characters like Jeffrey at Slipperyskip Computers have started cramming tiny motherboards into some very cool cases.
The Stylophone Beatbox has just been released, 40 years after the original Stylophone took the world by storm.
Paul Schweizer's sailplane designs have introduced thousands of pilots to soaring. My favorite is the 1-26 single-seat glider.
October 30, 2009
September 28, 2009
Taking A Break
Hey everyone. I'm taking the week off. I tore my calf muscle while running sprints in my son's Karate class last Thursday night, and it is slowly dawning on me that the damage is worse than I initially thought.
We'll feature a series of classic posts on the front page to keep you amused throughout the week and Bohus might drop by with a new post or two if his hectic schedule permits. In the meantime, I'm going to limp around the house muttering to myself.
August 13, 2009
The Real Story Of The "New" Radio Shack
It's always dangerous to generalize, but I would imagine that a large percentage of Retro Thing readers have relied on Radio Shack for some crucial adapter, AC power supply, or spool of silver solder to make some cherished old thing work. For many of us Radio Shack was where our fascination with electronics and computers started. The internet is dotted with many such fans, so you can understand the furore heaved up over the recent news that the store is changing its name.
The story out there is that Radio Shack is renaming its stores "The Shack", and fans of the old brand were furious. I had a hard time believing the reports I was getting - no way would a firm with such hardwon name recognition dispose of it casually. After reading through many angry & confusing posts, I went to the source. That's right, I called Fort Worth, Texas, where all the TRS-80's & those spring-loaded electronics kits came from.
So put aside anything you've heard up until now. What I learned directly from their marketing people is that Radio Shack is not changing the name of their stores to "The Shack", as many panicked bloggers would have you believe. The truth is that Radio Shack noticed that folks have nicknamed them "The Shack," so they are taking on the moniker to use in marketing.
When a brand has been around long enough to become almost like a friend, nicknames are an inevitable mark of fondness. You can probably think of other brands that have taken on these affectionate nicknames. Coca-Cola became "Coke", Federal Express is commonly "FedEx", McDonald's even call themselves "Mickey D's" in ads (let's ignore nicknames like "Monkey Wards", Little Seizures", and "Arf & Barf", okay?).
So here's the message from Radio Shack and Retro Thing. Attention all you gadget hounds, geeks, experimenters, even people looking for an adapter to go from an X-10 home automation system to an apricot popover... no need to fret. Your neighborhood Radio Shack is still "Radio Shack", and if you're one of those electronics fans who has always referred to the store as "The Shack," you're about to be joined by many more people.
related:
Radio Shack Executive Decision Maker
Pong system with alarmingly Realistic™ gun
How TRS-80 enthusiasts helped spark the PC revolution
July 20, 2009
My Hong Kong Addiction
I know this has nothing to do with vintage technology, but I'm obsessed with a little mail-order technology shop in Hong Kong called Deal Extreme.
They offer an amazing array of gadgetry ranging from sensible things like batteries and electronic parts to kooky stuff like Neodymium magnetic spheres and magic supplies. Shipping is free, although you'll have to wait a few weeks for packages to reach North America or Europe by air mail.
I couldn't resist picking up the OneStation handheld game console (above). It emulates a variety of classic NES and SEGA Genesis titles and sells for under $30. The company also offers solid deals on flash memory cards. I picked up a Kensington MicroSD card for peanuts recently. It seems to be the genuine article and works perfectly in my camera.
All in all, I'm impressed. I've placed half a dozen orders with the company over the past year and always received what I expected within a reasonable time.
July 14, 2009
The Emergence of Tool Libraries
Despite the best efforts of kindergarten teachers everywhere, we're conditioned not to share. Nowhere is this more obvious than the garden shed. Most of us own dozens of tools, even though they spend 99.95% of the time sitting alone in the dark.
Every once in a while we get brave and lend a grubby old hammer to the neighbor in exchange for some time alone with her wheelbarrow, but mostly we keep our stuff padlocked and forgotten. Of course, the helpful folks who run home improvement stores love our deranged selfishness, since it helps them sell boatloads of expensive stuff.
The Northeast Portland (Oregon) Tool Library is a clever solution to the problem. They offer an ever-increasing assortment of household tools. Membership is free for local residents and you're allowed to check out up to seven tools per week during the library's Saturday open hours. Tools are due back by 10:00 a.m. the following Saturday. It's a simple, cheap return to the past that should be emulated by grown-up kindergartners everywhere.
July 10, 2009
Weekend Retro Roundup
Let's start the weekend off right with a couple of vintage crash tests -- an old VW Beetle and classic Golf. Sadly, neither fared particularly well. Thank goodness for modern computer-designed crumple zones and airbags.
- Hack-A-Day recently featured a USB-equipped Commodore 64 modded to work as a standard PC keyboard. Given the nightmarish ergonomics of the C-64, I'm not sure this is a good idea. There's also a writeup on an insanely complicated Intel 8008-based clock.
- Rob Beschizza seems to be re-targeting Boing Boing Gadgets at the arts & crafts crowd with a completely daft felt netbook sleeve reminiscent of an old NES controller. Inexplicably, I find myself drawn to its fuzzy retro cuteness.
- Ace Fairlight technician Peter Wielk is selling a fully expanded Fairlight Series III Computer Music Instrument on eBay, currently at $7,900. It's equipped with 32 MB of sample memory, a 4 GB hard drive and 16 voices. Shipping to the USA from Oz is a whopping $630 extra.
- Chiron Bramberger tells us, "A while back I wanted to see if I could turn e-waste into something fun, so I designed an effects pedal from the guts of an old modem." The result is the tremendously cool Dragonfly, an all-analog effects pedal that combines recycled components with demented chrome-plated skull knobs.
Oh, and I just discovered that my Essential Retro gadget book is now 10% off at Amazon. Only $17.95, with free shipping on orders over $25. If you love this site, please support us by buying a copy. We're also considering a run of Retro Thing t-shirts. Anyone interested?
July 03, 2009
ACME Whistles
My 7-year-old would love an ACME whistle. However, it would only be a matter of minutes before one of his loving parents discovered him terrorizing the hamster with shrill 100 dB blasts.
Evil Parent would then accidentally flatten the bloody thing under the nearest passing bus. The disarmed kid would count to ten before wailing inconsolably (with a mischievous glint in his eye) until we promised to buy an even louder model.
Luckily, most of ACME's wares are dirt cheap. For example, the famous Metropolitan Police Whistle weighs in at a quite reasonable £8.55.
If you're eager to spend more, the Thunderer Titanic - finished in sterling silver - could be yours for £82.71. It's billed as the "Authentic whistle as used on the famous ocean liner." The site includes dozens of piercing audio samples in mp3 format for hours of torture listening pleasure.
June 30, 2009
Visit The Retro Thing Forums And Win My Book
Have you visited the RT forums lately? They're the place to discuss vintage gadgets, sell or trade your retro gear and get to know retronauts from around the world. Register and join the conversation -- we look forward to meeting you.
As added incentive, one lucky forum member will be chosen at random on Saturday July 4th to receive a signed copy of my Essential Retro book.
PS - If you're a graphic designer and would like to design a button/banner/graphic for the main site that will make the forums stand out, please drop us a note.
June 23, 2009
RetroBytes: Soviet Arcade Games, Wooden Music Players And More
A few random things that caught my attention today...
Open Emu - An open source video game emulation system for the Mac that lets you play six games at once, dramatically increasing your productivity. Just don't apply the same technique to romance.
Twitterized Typewriter - The lowly intern at oomlout gets to feed endless reams of A4 paper into their snazzy new Twitter typewriter. She secretly wishes she'd trained to become a hairstylist instead.Fifteen Kopeks of fun - The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines now has a stunningly beautiful website, so it's time to pretend you speak Russian while admiring the pretty pictures.
Wooden iPod - Josh created a decidedly steampunk wood and brass case for his aging iPod Nano. Then he posted it on flickr to humiliate those of us who think that crafting dinky little Lego spaceships is an earth-shattering achievement.
Moon Bomb - NASA plans to blast a 5 mile wide crater into the surface of the moon. What could possibly go wrong?
May 15, 2009
This Week On The RT Forums...
Over on the RT forums, JayP concludes that the Knight Rider remake was a train wreck, Komissar shows off some pics of militarized VW Beetles (Herbie The Scud Bug??!), and nineteenineteen announces the upcoming Commie Camera Day.
May 06, 2009
Announcing The Retro Thing Forums
Yes, the RT forums are finally open. Discuss vintage gadgets, sell or trade your retro gear and get to know fellow retronauts from around the world. Register and join the conversation -- we look forward to meeting you.
April 29, 2009
A Ghoulish Hollywood Wax Museum Auction
The Hollywood Wax Museum is auctioning off a collection of life-sized wax figures. That's right, for $3,000 you could be the proud owner of Mel Gibson as William Wallace from Braveheart, though the figure looks more like a bedraggled street person than the ill-fated Scotsman. Other highlights include John Travolta & Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek, and Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice and Batman (I guess his star is waning).
I'm prepping my credit card to create a brilliant Halloween diorama featuring an ominously creepy Alien replica dismembering hanging out with Nicole Kidman and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.
Hollywood Wax Museum Auction [via Nerdcore]
April 07, 2009
Nationwide Hunt For George Washington
I got another "Where's George" dollar bill back in change the other day. If you haven't seen one, it's a dollar bill that has a rubber stamp or other marking on it encouraging you to log in at wheresgeorge.com. Once there you enter your bill's serial number and your location, and then you pop the money back into circulation to see where it turns up next. In many ways it reminds me of classic hobbies like sending messages tied to a balloon, or chess by mail. Something simple, interesting, and free that only takes a few moments to be part of.
It's interesting to see how far a bill can go - a researcher even used the Where's George stats to demonstrate how quickly diseases can travel through first-person contact. Eww. Still, it sounds like a great starting place for a school project, or just a few moments of diversion tracking bills that you've entered.
Of course it relies on people knowing there's a place to enter their serial numbers, so how best to get the word out? Rubber stamps like on my dollar? The practice of using the bills themselves as viral marketing is a definite U.S. Treasury Department no-no. But don't worry if you've already started marking up all the bills in your wallet. A spokesman for the Secret Service was quoted in The Seattle Times, "Quite frankly, we wouldn't spend too much looking into this."
related:
Steel Penny from 1943
Elongated pennies
Tinplate ten dollar dime bank
April 02, 2009
Painfully Beautiful Vintage Tech
Expensive technology is usually knock-dead gorgeous or absurdly ridiculous, and it's been that way for decades. Dark Roasted Blend has pulled together an eclectic collection of mouth watering tech photos spanning the better part of the 20th century. Read and weep for the future that might have been....
March 01, 2009
My Newspaper Doesn't Want Me
My subscription to the National Post expired last week. Instead of automatically renewing as they've done for the past three years, the company sent a polite letter stating that the cost of my subscription would increase by more than 400%. They indicated that the new price still doesn't cover the full cost of printing and distribution.
After four years, I had become strangely addicted to my daily hands-on dose of news and commentary. However, I couldn't justify the increased expense in an increasingly electronic world and made the reluctant decision to cancel. I suspect many others received similar letters and reacted the same way.
Ironically, I penned a brief editorial in December 2007 that pondered the resurgence of print news. Here's an excerpt.
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