currybetdotnet Nostalgia archive

Music from Slab!'s iron lung
This is one of those weird freaky Internet inspired co-incidence stories. In the mid-to-late eighties I was really into a pretty obscure band called "Slab!". Their first single "Mars On Ice" is still one of my favourite ever debuts, and I met the singer Stephen Dray a couple of times when seeing them at gigs. A few years back I wrote a piece about them for the BBC's Collective site, and a couple of the band got in touch with...

Read the full post - Published August 28, 2008 in Music, Nostalgia, Web

30 years of email spam
"What Samuel Morse was to the telegraph, what Thomas Edison was to the light bulb, Gary Thuerk is to the unsolicited e-mail advertisements popularly reviled as spam." - David Streitfeld, LA Times, May 11 2003 If you woke up this morning to an in-box deluged with unwanted email, you'll be delighted to know that today is the thirtieth anniversary of the first unsolicited mass email or, as we've come to know it, the 30th birthday of 'spam'. Well, sort of....

Read the full post - Published May 1, 2008 in Nostalgia

Yuri Gagarin: March 9, 1934 - March 27, 1968
It is forty years today since Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was killed in a plane crash. He was just 34, and died before the cold war space race reached its climax. He never saw a man walk on the moon. Over the years there have been various theories about what caused Gagarin's death during a MiG-15UTI training flight, and even as recently as a couple of years ago there were moves in Russia to re-open the files...

Read the full post - Published March 27, 2008 in Nostalgia

Promoting bands online in 1995 - Telwhat Mutelibtech to where?
I love stumbling across little bits of nostalgia about the way computers used to be - whether it is an old guide to getting online, or a basic instruction book for programming micro-computers. I spotted another one the other week. I was going through and ripping some CDs to iTunes - a process which I'm guessing, like the UK, may technically be illegal in Greece - when I came across a Freepost mailing slip card in Nitzer Ebb's dismal final...

Read the full post - Published March 9, 2008 in Music, Nostalgia, Web

Watching Swatch 25 years later
It is twenty-five years today since 80s style icon the Swatch entered the market. As a tweenager in the early eighties, naturally I had a Swatch. However, as a fledgling moody indie kid I had the least colourful design available - mostly grey with a hint of black. They didn't do a 'goth' edition at the time, so it looked a bit like an earlier version of this model. The trick that Swatch successfully pulled off was to sell a...

Read the full post - Published March 1, 2008 in Nostalgia

What happens when computers get the Leap Year wrong
It is only once every 4 years I get to blog on February 29th, and fortunately, thanks to the modern miracles of Bytemark, Debian and Movable Type, the machine that publishes currybetdotnet knows that 2008 has an extra day. Getting a computer to realise that a year is a leap year is the kind of test often set to people studying programming, as it makes you think hard about catching all the exceptions. Professionals don't always get it right, of...

Read the full post - Published February 29, 2008 in Nostalgia

The Buffy guide to the Internet - 1997 style
Back in 1997, in an episode called "I, Robot...You, Jane", Joss Whedon pitched Buffy The Vampire Slayer against a demon that had invaded the Internet. This article looks at all of the computer and technology in the episode. Was Sunnydale High was a Mac or Windows school? What does demon possessed computer software look like? And how can techno-pagans build 'circles of protection' using chat room software alone... Ms. Calendar: Oh, I know, our ways are strange to you,...

Read the full post - Published February 24, 2008 in Nostalgia, Popular, Television, Web

All your flame wars are belong to us - BBS systems are 30 years old
I love stories about the history of online computing, not least because of the seeming serendipity of it all. In 1978 a man gets trapped in a blizzard in Chicago, and thirty years later, I'm happily earning a living as a consultant helping people with the internet from a Greek island. Well, if you've ever wanted someone to blame for the incessant fanboy flame-wars on Digg, the necessity of Godwin's Law, and for the reason that the mainstream media keeps...

Read the full post - Published February 16, 2008 in Nostalgia, Web

Computer love in the 1960s - the origins of online dating
With it being Valentine's Day today, I thought I'd take a look at the history of 'computer dating'. It is actually one of those topics that illustrates the shortcomings of our current internet search tools. Whilst researching it I seemed to find an awful lot more about getting a mail order bride sent to me from Russia than I found out about the origins of computer assisted love. The whole computer dating dream was begun in 1965 by Jeff Tarr...

Read the full post - Published February 14, 2008 in Nostalgia

British television sci-fi is seventy today
It is a genre that has been a big influence and source of entertainment for me ever since I first saw Tom Baker's boggle-eyes staring out at me from the opening credits of Doctor Who when I was 4 or 5, and today is the seventieth anniversary of what is generally attributed to be the first piece of sci-fi television. On the 11th February, 1938, the BBC broadcast a thirty-five minute segment adapted from Czech playwright Karel Čapek's play "Rossum's...

Read the full post - Published February 11, 2008 in BBC, Nostalgia, Television

Never mind the MacBook Air hype - it's happy 25th birthday to the Apple Lisa

Published January 19, 2008 in Apple, Nostalgia

Audiophile pressings - where the maufacturing process is more important than the music

Published January 4, 2008 in Music, Nostalgia

Dynaflex - RCA's 1970s ultra-thin vinyl

Published January 3, 2008 in Music, Nostalgia

Quadraphonic: The forgotten surround sound of the 70s

Published January 2, 2008 in Music, Nostalgia

Copy-protection for vinyl in the 1970s

Published January 1, 2008 in DRM, Music, Nostalgia

Ten years of BBC Online

Published December 22, 2007 in Articles, BBC, Blogging, Nostalgia, Web

10 years of BBC.co.uk on the BBC Internet Blog

Published November 28, 2007 in BBC, Blogging, Nostalgia

Nostalgia for Airfix ain't what it used to be

Published November 11, 2006 in Children and Teenagers, Media, Nostalgia

The Beginner's Computer Handbook - Understanding & Programming The Micro

Published June 27, 2004 in Games, Nostalgia