Pandora's Briefcase: Insert Some Pun Related To Item-In-Question HERE.

The Pandorica opens once more!

I still remember the excitement when my sister brought home the first computer to live in our house. It was an Amstrad 464 with colour monitor and built-in tape-drive. What's more, my sister also bought a disk-drive peripheral! We were living in the future, and it would not be long before we would all have our own rocket-packs, and robots would be doing my homework for me...

*sigh*

I know not where that thing-of-beauty that created many an hour of "Elite" space-sim adventure now resides. I do, however, still retain a reminder of this once-mighty machine:

Testing a Mobile Blogger App

This test is two-fold; to see how usable this app is (who knows, it may mean I'll blog more frequently... pfft!), and to see if anyone is actually following this any longer- if you're out there, say "hi" in a comment!

The dust on Pandora 's Briefcase grows thick...

Testing multiple photo display.

I patted this kookaburra!

Well...let's see how it goes, shall we...

Elder Shaun

After a rather oblique exchange with a friend on Facebook ...

The whimsy set in, and after a little time Photoshopping I came up with this:

Please note that no Mormons, Zombies, or bike-pumps were harmed in the making of this work of "art", and no offence was intended towards any of the afore-mentioned parties!

Thanks must go to http://www.fanpop.com for the original image that I stole, and to dafont.com for their free-for-personal-use Shaun of the Dead font. And for those concerned about my spiritual welfare after the apocalypse, I have not exposed my delicate self to the horrors of the Shaun of the Dead movie, although I do know the plot. OK?

Pandora's Briefcase: You've got to be CED-ing me!

My eldest son was peering over my shoulder as I was looking back at my posts here, and noted that my last post was on the 21st of October, 2011. "That's a long time!", he said. "It is quiet here... too quiet!" And so once again I blow the cobwebs off the briefcase, and reach with my hazmat-gloved hand into its cavernous bowels to retrieve... Well, I thought seeing as I referred to this format when talking to a friend on facebook, how about one of these:

Pandora's Briefcase: Sucker Punch!

Yeah, you thought the briefcase had died, or disappeared, or burned in the fire (oh... I haven't told mum and dad about the fire... just keep it to yourselves...) but SURPRISE!

Today's little entry may remind you a bit of a previous posting (big non-prize for the first person to guess which previous item from Pandora's Briefcase!)

Let me present you with a box:

The crossed out writing says: Run 6/2    Swan Code

No; it does not contain a sheep, not even a small one. (Extra Non-Prize for identifying obscure reference)

The contents revealed.

And revealed a little more-so.

Let me introduce you to a roll of eight-hole punched paper tape- the name is somewhat confusing as, if you look at it closely, it isn't:

Eight Hole Punched Tape with ninth "mysterious" row of smaller holes.

As is usually the case with my Pandora's Briefcase entries, I shan't bore you with the history of this technology (this example was bought on ebay from the UK for less than AUD$10). You can knock yourself out visiting Wikipedia's entry, which will also explain why the official hole counter is actually right. And if you happen to have any 5, 6, or 7 hole tape lying around looking for a home, please drop me a line!

Lameness to the Power of Lame!

OK, so I'm a bit slow, as we have recently moved and all, and I had to rediscover were I'd put them... but this is a response to a post made by the most excellent Lee Sargent on his Blog here .

This is what I came up with after the exhaustive search, and confusion and delays:

Back in 2002 (it seems so long ago... oh... hang on... it is!) Paramount decided to release the entire series of Star Trek: The Next Generation season by season in fancy-schmancy plastic boxes for an inordinately large amount of money. So much so that I couldn't bring myself to part with said spondoolies.  (This was fortunate because they re-released it years later in a more traditional cardboard slipcase at a much more reasonable price!)


However, at the time of the original release I was able to grab some of the promotional material; namely some cardboard counter-top cut-outs! There was Riker, seen left in all his Riker-ish glory!

Standing at about the height of a DVD, I saw their collect-ability immediately!

I also grabbed myself some Worf-omeness!

But the Pièce de résistance is this piece of utter.... um... aweso... no, can't say it.... 


LAMENESS!!!

I'm so glad the design department did their research, as did the person who did final sign-off!

Then again, maybe Tom "Maverick" Cruise was at the helm when this photo was taken...

Pandora's Briefcase: It's a bit late to decide now which was Beta, Max!

Two episodes ago, on the famous podcast  The Midnight Movie Club Podcast (Ep 5, S2), "The 'Burbs", Dan makes mention of a particular recording format, already so obsolete that at least one of their younger listeners had only a vague recollection of the thing! At the time I thought, "Well, here's a chance to open up the ol' briefcase again!" But forgive me, I've been a little slow!

But finally now, for your nostalgic pleasure, I present the Betamax (also commonly called Beta) videocassette tape:

From the front

From back.

Size comparison to its arch-rival, The VHS videocassette at top.

Side-on size comparison to its arch-rival, The VHS videocassette at top (Thickness-wise, not much difference because...

... they used the same diameter (1/2 inch) magnetic tape! Beta at right. (Pen lids used to keep open the tape-protection covers)

Dodgy close-up of exposed tape.

And for a more contemporary size comparison, a "standard" (such an ephemeral word where recording media is concerned!) CD next to a Betamax tape.

Again, I'm not going to go into the details of the format, but it makes an interesting read; a case where Sony lost an epic war! You can knock yourself out understanding the post name by reading Wikipedia's excellent article on this wee little beastie! Secretly, I'm quite fond of this guy!