Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Apple Hacking

I recently saved another lot of computers from the big bad computer 'recycling' depot. As you may recall, they just take whatever they want out of the computers and then toss them in the dumpster.

Anyway, I got an Apple Power PC in this lot. When I got it home, I noticed that some of it was missing. Instead of a motherboard, the previous owner stuffed in a little note:



Unfortunately, they left the hard drive inside!

Since the motherboard is gone, I have no way of browsing this hard drive on the original machine. So, I took out the hard drive (which in this case was an IDE drive) and tossed it into a PC. I fired up a Linux live CD, mounted the drive, and I'm now able to see all the goodies included on it!



So far, it doesn't look like there's anything worth taking. Oh well, one of the other PCs was quite fruitful with data, so I'll be posting some goodies off that once I'm finished with the Kacey Beach PC.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Candid Pics 08/09/26

With Halloween just around the corner, pumpkins are coming into season...





And my Toyota 4runner may have been rusty, but I never tried to patch it up like this guy did...

Monday, September 22, 2008

Old Married Couple



I picked up this microcassette recorder at a Church yard sale a couple weeks ago for $3. I was finally able to listen to the tape that was in it. Most of it is background noise and talk radio. However, there was a brief interaction of the couple who owned this tape recorder before it got donated to the church.

I'm wondering if this was somewhat recorded intentionally, since the couple seems to be talking about making a donation.

It's amazing how these two old clowns sound identical to my parents when they're yelling at each other over stupid shit.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

The Mini Pops

This weekend, I picked up some old video tapes from the 1980s for ten cents each. Two of them were of particular interest to me. The first was Rubik: The Amazing Cube. It was an animated series that ran for about a year in the Saturday Morning Cartoon timeslot in the mid-80s.

The second video was The Mini Pops, volume one of two that K-Tel released. Most people who grew up in the 80s will remember the Mini Pops, and perhaps due to where you lived will depend on your memories of it. Here in Canada, it was all about the music, mainly Video Killed The Radio Star and the Abba Medley.

In Europe however, it was all about the music videos that were shown on television. Us here in Canada didn't get to see the videos unless we bought the video tapes, such as the one that I found. Because the videos were not as popular as the records in Canada probably contributed to the success of the Mini Pops as opposed to their demise and controversy.

So, I have put some of the videos on Youtube: The cheesy, the classic, and the controversial (all in that order.) I may post more when I get some time.


I Love Rock n' Roll

Spin the camera! Around and around she goes, where it stops..... a bad impression of guitar playing by a pre-teen girl decked out in leather.





Video Killed The Radio Star

The one that made the song popular. After the Mini Pops success with this one, it's really a shame that they didn't make a better video for it. The TV ad for the first Mini Pops album follows the video.




Morning Train (9 to 5)

I couldn't fully grasp why the Mini Pops were so controversial in Europe until I saw this video. Now I get it, and I probably would have been mortified (as an adult) to see this on TV as well.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

New Trend: Modified Garfield Comics

I'm enjoying the hell out of modified Garfield comics, and I figured I'd share some with you. Clicking on the comics will take you to where they're hosted.

There's a few different types of these strips. First of all, there's the ones with the speech bubbles modified:



Ones with Garfield's speech bubbles removed:



Ones with Garfield replaced with a real cat:



Ones with Garfield removed completely:

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Pentium 75 MHz: Thoughts of a Teenager

  

Here's a nice computer I dragged home. It was destined for recycling as someone had dumped it off behind a computer recycling depot. The thing about this 'recycling' depot is all they do is disassemble it, take whatever they want out of the unit (usually nothing if it's too old) and throw it in the dumpster. Hardly recycling if you ask me.

Anyway, I powered it up and was delighted by a badly color-coordinated copy of Windows 3.1! Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Windows 3.1. There really was no other interface like it, and it sat on top of my favorite Microsoft operating system: MS-DOS. (In case you're wondering, my second favorite is Windows 2000.)

From what I can gather from the documents and files on this PC, it was used by a teenager. The documents (and pictures) are really quite interesting and amusing, so I created a new blog to store them in.

The contents of this blog will be more upbeat and positive in contrast to the journals that I've previously posted.

So now, I am pleased to bring you ....
From the PC of Kacey Beach!

Friday, September 5, 2008

The Corporate Laugh

Many of us have heard it... it's that boisterous, hardy, PHONY fucking bellering, piss-poor excuse for genuine laughter. It is commonly used in business settings, meetings, and wherever the hell else these guys manage to find anything remotely humourous. It's annoying as hell to every employee in the company when there's a tour going through the building.

...Luckily I had a tape recorder that day!

There was a pack of businessmen (about six of them - seven if you include my boss) touring, making that loud HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH sound which echoed throughout the whole goddam building.

If these guys like to laugh, I should have gone up to them and started telling a nice string of "why did the chicken" jokes. Maybe I'll do that after I put in my two-weeks notice.

If you've never heard the corporate laugh, CLICK HERE to listen to it in all of it's sickening glory.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Canadian Opening Exercises



I have absolutely no clue where I got this reel 2 reel tape from. It probably came in a lot of tapes that I picked up about 10 (or more) years ago when I was still actively doing my Canned Peaches project. Solely because of the obscurity of an 'official' recording of the opening exercises used in a school, I had to keep it.

Here we have, of course, O Canada. This recording is old enough to still include the Lord's Prayer, which was removed from the Opening Exercises in the mid-90s.

I don't have a clue where the third song came from. It sounds as if it were an anthem written to represent the province of Manitoba. It also may have been written by someone in the school to use as a 'school song'. I also have no clue what school this recording came from.

What's really amazing about this recording is how clean and clear it sounds (with the exception of the tape wear from repeated playings). These recordings usually sounded like shit playing over the school's PA system.

Prepare to have the memories come flooding back from when you were young and in school (unless you showed up late everyday).

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Google Chrome Browser Review

In Celebration of my 100th blog post, I have resurrected this entry which was originally posted for about one hour before I took it down.

============================================

Wow, what a piece of shit. If you're thinking of running this thing on 1.2GHz PC with 256 M of RAM, running WinXP, then you'd better think about sticking with Internet Explorer 5.5. The crashes from IE are tolerable solely because Microsoft's browser runs faster on shit computers like this one I'm using at work. Chrome is a resource-hoggy browser when you've got dick all for RAM and system resources.

...at least that's my experience with my work computer. I'll be trying it out on my 2GHz PC with 2G RAM running Windows 2000 when I get home. It'll probably rule, except for the inevitable blue screens from the OS.

WHERE'S MY LINUX VERSION???


Google Chrome Logo

Oh yeah, and if you think that I did this solely as a publicity stunt, you're probably right.

Coming soon to Classical Gas Emissions...
The recovery of the mysteries of a high school student's computer. That's right, more personal goodies from other people's computers! If you look at my list of Blogs, you'll see it's already been started (although entries are still in draft mode). I hope to have the first couple available for your joyful reading sometime this week.