Camping indoors

This is right up my alley. All the fun of camping while indoors in vintage trailers. [Link]

Images of Base Camp Bonn Young Hostel, the world’s first camping trailer and Pullman coach hostel, in Bonn. The hostel which was opened in August of this year in a former storage facility, consists of 15 various vintage camping caravans, two former railway Pullman coaches and four used U.S. Airstream trailers all with shared washrooms. The prices of the 120 beds in the 1600 square meter indoor complex range from 22 to 69 euros per night. Each trailer was individually designed by film and TV outfitter Marion Seul.

The Once and Future Reagan

It's a mistake. [Link]

But what are we to do, you ask? What are we to do if no one will save us?

Do you hear yourselves? You’re Americans, not Europeans. You are the fruit of a nation constituted in liberty and based on the idea that the people can govern themselves. You should not wait for the king who sleeps beneath the hill.

Oh, I realize — I see — you look at 1980 and now, and you see the similarities and then you cry out “Romney is no Reagan.”

This is good, because Obama is no Carter. And our situation is in many ways far worse than it was.

But it is good, most of all, because Obama was bad enough that he woke the force that protects this country. It had been asleep for seventy years, sleeping beneath the dark hill of statism. It is now up, and roused and active. It is moving. The tea parties are proof of that, as is the massive swatting the Lords of Political Correctness got over the Chick-fil-A business.

Romney is a decent business manager. He’s a decent man. He likes America. He wants America to like him. He’s not going to actively dismantle our way of life, as will the one now in power. There will be no attacks on freedom of religion, no wild power grabs for the Internet, no executive orders that violate the laws of the land. He will not hanker for more “flexibility” so he can give more to Putin. And — this is petty but important for how the world sees us — he will neither apologize nor bow to foreign leaders.

Is he perfect? Oh, goodness, no. Is he exactly what we need? Probably not. Who is? Do you know the trouble we’ve got ourselves into by trusting presidents for this long? It’s a big hole. No one man can get us out of it. Only we can. And it will take time.

But that’s fine. He won’t be anointed by any gods. There will be no halos and no Greek columns. Instead, he’ll be the elected by the people and the people — the sovereign people of this free land — who are now awake will stand ready to make sure he knows it.

Perhaps we will once more save our democratic republic for another generation. Perhaps we’ll turn the tiller and start the long way back from deep blue statism.

In the end, as someone said, perhaps we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. No hero will ride to the rescue — we will.

We’re Americans. We don’t need emperors. (If that’s what you want, to quote Romney, “you must vote for the other guy.”) We don’t want lords and masters. We’re free and at last aware that we must work to stay that way.

Future Histories of our Pasts

Imagine the far off future of - the 1980's. [Link]

Today, as I write this, it’s December of 2011.

I know. Duh. But think about it for a moment in terms of pop culture.

That means we are thirty-six years past 1975… the date of the end of the world in The Omega Man.

We are thirty-two years past 1979… the date of the suspended-animation experiment that put Dylan Hunt to sleep for 154 years in Genesis II.

1982 was the first year of the Seaview‘s regular patrol of the Pacific Ocean, where Admiral Nelson, Captain Crane, and the rest of the crew averted any number of natural disasters, alien invasions, and supernatural menaces that threatened the existence of the human race.

It was back in 1983 that the sub-orbital passenger ship Spindrift was lost in a space anomaly somewhere in mid-flight between Los Angeles and London…

Speaking of space anomalies, 1987 is when Captain Anthony “Buck” Rogers disappeared into one while piloting the shuttle Ranger III.

It's 1978 again

Dallas coming back to TV; being rebooted on TNT with original cast members. [Link]

The original Dallas aired from 1978 to 1991 and centered on the Ewing family, a cattle and oil dynasty occupying the expansive Southfork Ranch in Texas. The new version will focus on the Ewing offspring — J.R. Ewing’s son John Ross (Josh Henderson of Desperate Housewives), and Christopher, the adopted son of Bobby and Pam Ewing (Jesse Metcalfe of Desperate Housewives) — as they clash over the family dynasty’s future. Jordana Brewster (Fast & Furious) stars as Elena, who is involved in a love triangle with Christopher and John Ross. Julie Gonzalo (Veronica Mars) stars as Christopher’s fiancée Rebecca. The updated Dallas will feature original series stars Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray. Hagman gained worldwide fame for his portrayal of oil baron J.R. Ewing. Gray played J.R.’s wife Sue Ellen Ewing, while Duffy portrayed J.R.’s younger brother Bobby.

Wait - they still made MiniDisc players?

That's so 20th century. [Link]

The MiniDisc, or MD, developed by Sony and Philips in 1991, never caught on in the U.S. But it did have its day in the late 1990s in Japan. Japanese people in their 30s and older may remember the excitement when they first saw the MD Walkman in 1992. Only about 2.8 inches wide, the MD was tiny, yet it could pack a whole CD album.

In Japan, where many people use portable music players while commuting on crowded trains, there was considerable demand to replace cassette or CD players with the smaller MD Walkman that could easily fit in pockets.

But the landscape changed again after 2001, with the arrival of Apple’s iPod. Instead of using CDs or MDs, the original 2001 iPod stored music on a hard disk drive, which was later replaced by flash memory. And more importantly, the iPod became a key hardware platform for the iTunes digital-music and video store. Sony’s current digital-music players sold under its Walkman brand also use flash memory for storing data, and carry an application similar to the iTunes.

The rapid change over the past decade in the way people listen to music on the go has made the MD Walkman a thing of the past. Sony said that its last remaining model, the MZ-RH1, will likely disappear in Europe next month, in Japan around September and in the rest of Asia around October. The company has already stopped selling the MD Walkman in the U.S. earlier this year.

Upgrading Windows from 1 to 7

Pretty amazing.

The return of the Commodore 64

As a modern PC with a built in C64 emulator so you can run your old programs. [Link]

It's back... and better than ever! The new Commodore 64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest Nvidia Ion2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow.