(as I commented)

Dude this video gave me so much in so little time, it’s stupid.

• I grew up on a farm until I was 14 where fiddling with small engines (which I never got tired of and realized I’ve missed quite a lot thanks to this experience) and interacting with centrifugal clutches (one of those things that sounds really neat in theory but just leaves you wanting for - and suffering without - basically any of the other options lol)
• Adjacent to go karts but somehow still haven’t got the opportunity to actually figure out to Do The Thing - always wondered. Kinda same thing with pouring concrete. Watching you poke your way through both for the first time felt like a real luxury haha.
• Been watching Sarah’s build videos for a year or so now, always absolutely flabbergasted at the diligence… the persistence… the intelligence… all the while doing like 5 full time people’s jobs in video production, with much reverence but zero resonance with my own bumpkin ass behavior in similar pursuits. Curious because getting to capital R Relate with her and y’all’s troubleshooting here does have value, turns out.

What today’s tech journalism must learn again from the legendary computer publication.

This is a very much unfinished bit I began writing in November 2020 and just found in my Dropbox Paper archive.

Long-dead BYTE Magazine gained some exposure this time last year when some of its gorgeous retro-futurist cover art - of Robert Tinney’s hand - circulated about Tumblr and Pinterest. It is fucking beautiful, yes, but I was then quite disappointed to find little in the way of the publication’s actual content available on the web.

Last week, I was elated to find this exceptional archive on archive.org with its exceptionally-scanned, ultra-high res PDFs of every issue, created by the archivist Jason Scott. The notables of its legacy are fairly well-documented - and it’s still occasionally cited by the likes of Wired and TIME, but its story and mission have been ashamedly disregarded as infeasible relics; the naivete of the originator.

In Vol. 1, Issue 1 for September 1975, Carl Helmers’ first editorial - “What is BYTE?” - is a charming introduction, full of techno-idealism and the quaint jargon of the then-obscure computing niche. The Home Brew Computing Triology is an ingenius summation of the technological conversation: HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, and APPLICATIONS - the “interrelated themes.” Helmers notes that the publication was founded to bridge the divide between the respective hardware and software cultures and get them talking about applications. Later in the issue, publisher Wayne Green explains how his encounters with the community amidst a journey to modernize 73 - his amateur radio magazine - led to this prompt.

“I discovered an interesting thing - few of the hardware chaps could talk software - and vice versa.”

A sensical and exciting pitch, to be sure, but disappointing when one considers the remaining vastness of this gulf over 40 years later. The successors to BYTE - when compared to any of its trade magazine contemporaries - aren’t technology news at all. Mastheads like The Verge, Engadget, and CNET have become something else, entirely in the pursuit of the end user click, and a good lot of them simply look like shit. Reading up on tech hasn’t been a respectful or aesthetically-pleasant endeavor for as long as I’ve been literate, and BYTE’s experience would suggest that it’s been without much worthy cause, whatsoever.

Typographically, its pages are a bit dense, but it’s in an otherworldy mysticism regarding the pioneers of digital that one longs to reanimate, somehow.

As much as I genuinely enjoyed my free trial + then some paid time using Glass, I’m just not able/interested in image capture right now to continue paying $6.99 a month for it. I was pretty excited, then, to discover that micro.blog’s macOS app offers support for importing the .zip profile export files Glass creates, and to report that I have imported 18 images from my profile to this blog successfully.

Here’s an example.

The Tangerine Knight

...some men just want a tangerine.

Slick’s 2009 Airventure Comp

Some time in late Summer 2021, I stumbled into another of the handful of nigh-inconceivable conversation opportunities which Twitter Spaces would offer me.

Marquis Trill - someone I’m still not 100% convinced I actually remembered from the ~2012 Twitter Epoch - decided to just fuckin go on Spaces one day for the first time. And - as per the nature of Spaces - I guess I just hopped in the mf too.

Eventually in this recording, you’ll hear me pipe in… and continue to intermittently throughout its duration. I remember being genuinely fascinated with the experience in the moment, but it’s not exactly easy listening (shame) in retrospect lol.

Here’s the metadata from the Space I retained, though I doubt it will ever be actionable again:

• Title: “Financial Freedom and Success! Let’s talk about it. Come ready”
• Original Spaces URL - [https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OdKrVzWDvlKXAnnouncement](https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OdKrVzWDvlKXAnnouncement)
• Original Tweet URL - [https://twitter.com/6BillionPeople/status/1422696022220886016](https://twitter.com/6BillionPeople/status/1422696022220886016)
• Original Patreon Post

I’ve been trying GameTrack's premium tier for the past month and thought I should at least have one go at the review function… This isn’t actually substantial or useful in any way. You’re welcome.

SO you want me to review Champion’s Online, virtually unprompted, in 2024, eh?

Well, I loved and was very invested in Cryptic Studios at the time (see: Star Trek Online and Champions was already regarded - in a very misty-eyed, not very practical sense - reverently as very much their baby by the time I arrived in 2009.

I think it was 2011 or so that I decided to commit to Champions - despite how thoroughly uninteresting and unintelligible I found the whole idea of comic book superheroes. In contemporary language, yes it was absolutely super cringe, but I remember admiring how well-established (in a very practical sense) the identity of this title was compared to the product they were building on the same platform with identical tooling that was Star Trek Online at the time.

Last known capture of the Drywall Media/Extratone whiteboard, December 14 (Titanic Day,) 2016.

He Carries His
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DIE
ANTWOORD
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ORSTERENCE
ADSENSE
BoxeR Children
Ding
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what cao s
NELLY -GRILLZ=arl.
1,ong9
Brave Litte
Tuaste i
Pimp my Ride
- Весоте
cultured
MONSANTO
Auplicitous