‘Baby-Sitters Club’ Returns With Prequel I admit it: I’m ex-ci-ted! I was a total Claudia. If I remember correctly, she was kin of the Miranda of the bunch. Of course, some time has passed since the books first came out in 1986. I particularly like this quote from Motokio Rich’s article: “Editors at Scholastic updated some of the references to technology and outdated fashions in the reissued books. So a ‘cassette player’ has become ‘headphones’ and a ‘perm’ has become ‘an expensive hairstyle.’” (via NYTimes.com) posted on 12.30.09

‘Baby-Sitters Club’ Returns With Prequel

I admit it: I’m ex-ci-ted! I was a total Claudia. If I remember correctly, she was kin of the Miranda of the bunch.

Of course, some time has passed since the books first came out in 1986. I particularly like this quote from Motokio Rich’s article:

“Editors at Scholastic updated some of the references to technology and outdated fashions in the reissued books. So a ‘cassette player’ has become ‘headphones’ and a ‘perm’ has become ‘an expensive hairstyle.’”

(via NYTimes.com)


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Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaelology: These are my obsolete portable music players. A post-1985 cassette player, a 2000 minidisc player and a 2002 iPod whose sole means of communication with the outside world is a firewire socket. In the 90s I didn’t listen much to music while on the move. Since 2006 I use a smartphone as my mp3 player. (via Aardvarchaeology) posted on 12.14.09

Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaelology:

  • These are my obsolete portable music players. A post-1985 cassette player, a 2000 minidisc player and a 2002 iPod whose sole means of communication with the outside world is a firewire socket. In the 90s I didn’t listen much to music while on the move. Since 2006 I use a smartphone as my mp3 player.

(via Aardvarchaeology)


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posted on 11.14.09

Via Gizmodo: The Alunda Church Choir wanted to see what their giant earth phonograph, the terrafon, would sound like if they dragged it across the ground.

Tune in next week when they will be dragging a 400-pound Walkman across the sidewalk.

(NB: This video is 11 minutes long. I made it through quite a few of those minutes and then fast-forwarded. Unfortunately, there ISN’T a giant LP on the other side of the field. Unfortunately, there IS a screeching sound reverberating in my ear five minutes later. Now that I’ve told you what happens, you have no reason to watch the entire thing unless, like me, you are an inadvertent sucker for punishment, and recently agreed to go to two dozen 30-minute sets of avant guard jazz performed in the back of a Philadelphia Ethiopian restaurant on a warm day. Eleven minutes? That’s kid’s stuff.)


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posted on 08.27.09

A poem:

I found
My old Sony Sports Walkman.
On a high up shelf.
Dusty.
Yellow.
Beautiful.
Inside, a cassette.
There is no way I ever listened to Deepak Chopra.
Nor did I ever use a Sharpie to remind myself how to insert a tape.
Who has been messing with my Walkman!
Whoever you are, we need to have a talk, man.

Thank you.


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posted on 08.03.09 The iPod of its day

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the invention of the Sony Walkman. Happy birthday, friend! Sony publicists are milking this moment for all its worth. I imagine this is because they’re gambling that no one will remember the Walkman at all when its next big birthday rolls around. Good press is one way to move stock: The Sony SRF-59 Radio Walkman is currently the 183rd most popular electronics product on Amazon, ranking it well above both the Roomba and the Hitachi Magic Wand vibraror. Or so I’ve been told.

The BBC News Magazine honored this great occasion with an essay by an eloquent thirteen-year-old (a clever ploy for publications that can’t afford to pay adult journalists…and don’t have access to monkeys). It took young Scott Campbell three days to figure out that the tape he was given had two sides. This wasn’t the only thing that confused him. “I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette,” he writes. “I’m relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born.” Indeed. Had he been born in 1859, he’d now be dead. (These are the thoughts that pro journalists are paid to think.)

The BBC News Magazine also offers up an article on sturdy household objects that were made long before “planned obsolescence” was a familiar term. But really, the focus of the piece is Joan Archer, a 66-year-old from Pembrokeshire who has bravely used the the same Kenwood Chef food mixer since 1964. Long live print media.


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