vhs sucks, don't do it
I recently watched one-and-a-half YouTube videos of some guy who decided hey, wouldn't it be cool if I put out some videos using nothing but broadcast quality video equipment of the '90s. Being I actually have a college degree in Video and Radio Production, I thought okay, sure, I'll watch this.
I got through the first video. Then I started watching another, got about halfway through it and... no. I had to stop.
I'll explain why I had to stop in a bit.
At the time I was going to college, television industry broadcast standards weren't exactly standards but rather a weird mix. Whatever you could afford dictated what you used.
There was a period when four video editing standards were being used all at the same time. The old-and-crusty (even back in the '90s) U-matic, S-VHS (Super VHS), Betacam, and non-linear digital editing with Avid.
When I got my degree, a cuts-only non-linear Avid video editing system was $30,000. If you wanted digital video effects a.k.a. DVE, that was $60,000. Not an exaggeration. A cuts-only system was at the college I attended that was brand new then, and students were VERY FORBIDDEN from touching it because staff was still learning how to use the damned thing.
my insane way of dealing with email spam
I've pretty much been through all the standard ways of filtering spam. After a lot of research, I found a way that works for me that I'll detail in a moment.
Everybody's spam experience is different based on which companies are selling off account data and absolutely not giving a shit otherwise, where an email address has been leaked, how many of the email address owner's dopey friends had their email accounts compromised (in which the contact list is harvested and put into a spam database), and so on.
I can tell that the lion's share of spam I'm receiving right now is all coming from one botnet and most likely being sent from infected office PCs. How do I know? I get blasted with the same type of spam over and over with only minor variations, and like clockwork, the spam slows significantly on weekends and major holidays.
The fortunate part is that I was able to nail a pattern the spammer was using since all the spam was done in a specific way. After some experimentation, I found a pattern I could match, and now 100% of whatever that asshole sends goes straight to the spam folder.
retro things that aren't anachronisms
A lot of stuff being sold as "retro" ends up being a pile of suck because it's nothing more than an anachronism. An example of that is this thing, a CD player made to look like a record player with fake wood grain, fake tone arm and all. Yes, really. That audio player misses the mark so badly that it's living on a different planet.
Retro things that aren't anachronisms are the best kind. "True to original", if you will. And if it's cheap, that's even better.
I did find a few.
gamers have been screwed for years
I recently talked about deleting accounts to get rid of digital clutter in my life. I've made progress, but out of curiosity, I wanted to know the answer to a question:
Who has it the worst when it comes to having too many online accounts?
Answer: Gamers.
I thought my total number of accounts was pretty bad before I started my deleting. Nope. Gamers have it far worse.
It's so bad for gamers that a video game library manager exists in an attempt to handle it all.
dumping digital clutter
I wasn't intending on deleting a bunch of internet accounts to be my New Year's Resolution, but that's just how things ended up happening.
While going through the account list in my password manager, I found some seriously old and crusty stuff there, and it was long overdue to do some jettisoning.
True, I could have just left those old crusty accounts as-is and nothing bad would have happened... probably. But that lingering doubt is something I couldn't shake, so I started deleting the old stuff.