Category: Computers/Tech/Games

My Retro is Retro!

People occasionally ask me how long I’ve been into “retro” gaming and I never have a good answer for them because I’ve been playing a lot of these retro games since before they were retro. Here’s an interesting thing I ran across today that reminded me of that fact. I was interviewed for an article titled “Classic Video Games Make Comeback” by a reported from the Associated Press. The interview took place over the phone and a day or two after that, they sent a photographer out to the house to take pictures of me with some of my gaming… (read more)

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The Case of the Changing Blog

I rarely re-read or revisit old blog posts on this site. Generally speaking I write them, give them a quick once over, and send them on their way. The only time I look up old posts is to either verify a date or find a link to send to someone. That’s what I was doing over the weekend when I dug up a blog post from four years ago and was surprised to find spam links embedded throughout the post — links I did not put there. The game, as they say, was afoot. Discovering your website’s been hacked in… (read more)

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Breathing New Life into an Old Laptop with ChromeOS Flex

I have a hard time parting with old laptops, especially when there’s nothing wrong with them other than the fact that Microsoft Windows has expanded past their capabilities. The typical response you’ll get from nerds like me when this happens is “install Linux on it,” which is not a one-size-fits-all solution and, at a minimum, requires familiarizing oneself with a completely new and often confusing operating system. Recently I found another solution: Installing ChromeOS Flex. ChromeOS is an operating system developed by Google that runs on Chromebooks. It is a very lightweight operating system that relies heavily on having access… (read more)

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Kevin Mitnick (1963-2023)

Earlier this week I was informed that Kevin Mitnick, the “world’s most infamous hacker,” had passed away. I was asked to sit on the news until the family had time to release a statement, but word travels fast and this morning it appeared on the front page of the New York Post. For those who haven’t heard or read the story, back in the mid-2000s my wife, who was in charge of putting together a training class at work, hired Kevin Mitnick to travel to Oklahoma and teach a course on social engineering. Susan knew how into computers and security… (read more)

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Boatfest 2023 Recap

Last weekend I attended the second annual Boatfest gathering, which again took place in Hurricane, West Virginia. Despite its name, the event has nothing to do with boats — it’s a gathering of retrocomputing and retrogaming enthusiasts named after the organizer, John “Boat of Car” Shawler. Boatfest is difficult to summarize because it’s different things to different people. Some people go to Boatfest to show off their vintage computers and gaming systems, while others go just to see them. It’s an event where old friends reconnect, and new friendships are made. There are tournaments, there are presentations, there are people… (read more)

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An Up-Down Experience at the Up-Down Arcade

Last weekend my buddy Jeff and I visited Oklahoma City’s Up-Down Arcade. Up-Down is a barcade (21 to enter) with a full bar, a kitchen that sells pizza by the slice, and sixty(ish) arcade games. Jeff and I were hanging out in arcades together years before either of us were old enough to drive, and nearly 40 years later we’re still doing the same thing. There are seven Up-Down Arcade locations; the other six are in Des Moines, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Nashville. This was my second time to visit our local Up-Down, and Jeff’s first. Up-Down… (read more)

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When Expensive Things Become Worthless: My Sony DVD Burner

Recently while digging through a pile of old electronics in my workshop I stumbled across this, my old Sony DVD/CD burner. I began purchasing audio CDs in the early 90s, and bought completely into the format in 1993 when my car was broken into and all of my favorite cassettes were stolen. I never thought people would be able to burn CDs on their home computers; if such devices were ever produced, I reasoned, they would be much to expensive for the average person to afford. We got our first CD-ROM burner at work in 1995, a clunky external device… (read more)

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Boatfest 2022

I met John “Boatofcar” Shawler online twenty years ago on the Digital Press forums. Although “Boat” is nearly a decade younger than I am, the two of us share a a common love of old computers, games, and arcade machines. Boat has been a fan and supporter of my podcasts from the very beginning, and several years ago he, along with his pal Amigo Aaron, started their own show about Amiga computers, titled “Amigos”. Boat has expanded their show to a small network which includes, among other shows, a couple of my podcasts including Sprite Castle and Like a DOS.… (read more)

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Pixoo-64: A Pixel-Pushing Art Display for Retro Fanatics

Pixoo-64 displaying a Biker Scout from Star Wars

I’m a fan of old school digital artwork. For the past five years I’ve enjoyed viewing ANSI artwork (created in the 1990s for BBSes) in my office on a dedicated Raspberry Pi running PyAns. Another style of vintage art I really enjoy is pixel artwork. Pixel graphics are images drawn on a grid, one pixel at a time. These pictures can be very small, like characters from an old video game, or very large. The sprites that make up characters in most Commodore 64 games are only 24×21 pixels in size. Other pictures, like the backgrounds from those games or… (read more)

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The Art of Selling Nintendo Games

It’s a little difficult to explain how I ended up with more than 200 Nintendo cartridges — a system I never cared that much for in the first place. For those who know me, it may be even more difficult to believe that I’ve decided to part with them. The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, was released in North America the fall of 1985 just in time for Christmas. Several of my friends ended up owning a Nintendo, and while I enjoyed playing their games when I visited, I never wanted a Nintendo of my own. By the time the… (read more)

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