Year: 2015

A very kine Christmas

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While watching Christmas specials from the 1960s on GetTV, it struck me that, while they would originally have been videotaped, the versions bring shown looked to be from a really bad film transfer process. I assumed it was some favor of kinescope (the process that allowed live black and white shows to be recorded on film for later rebroadcast in the 1950s, before videotape).

I knew videotape was still quite pricey even in the 1960s and was reused often, which is why so much TV from that era (particularly game shows, soap operas, and talk shows) just doesn’t exist anymore. But when I dived into the interwebz looking for stuff on “color kinescope” I was surprised to discover how common it had been to preserve videotaped shows this way, even in the 1960s and beyond.

None of this probably matters much to most of you, but after an hour or so passed, it occurred to me that this is why I never seem to get anything much done on Sunday afternoons.

Along with my habit of never finishing and old movie or TV show because I’m too busy trying to decipher where the location shots were done and finding contemporary views on Google Street View, this is probably why I will die alone and unloved. And I’m pretty much OK with that.

It was twenty years ago today…

…that I bought my first computer: a Macintosh 6300CD, with a 100 MHz processor, 16 MB of RAM, a 1 GB internal hard drive, and a 15-inch CRT monitor.

Talk about your life-changing moments. I built the first version of this website a month later (at a time when most people were still a little fuzzy on the concept of just what a website was) and i was building them for pay within a couple of years. Twenty years later, I’m a librarian working in the IT department who generates historical web content for a living.

Let’s just say it beats the fuck out of managing a Kinko’s.

I’m on my fifth primary Mac now: a 27-inch iMac with a 3.4 GHz processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB internal drive. I’ve also owned three other secondary ones, three iPhones, two iPads, and an AppleTV…all of which makes me little more than a third-rate fanboy.

And for the record, that twenty-year-old Mac still works.

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So I have this aunt…

She’s 87 years old and sharp as a tack.

She’s been a widow for twenty years, but has usually had a boyfriend since her husband died.

She lives alone next door. She’s always been like a second mother to me, but we both value our privacy and stay out of each other’s hair most of the time.

She drives (well) and uses a computer. She rarely asks for help with the latter.

She works in the yard and keeps a spotless house.

And now, after probably 70 years with the habit, she has quit smoking.

I fully expect her to be the first one in our family to make it to (and past) the age of 100. Hell, she’ll probably outlive me. And I fully approve.