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Category Archives: Show-and-Tell
Lighthearted fun with Minecraft Coder Pack
Back in the day, the only way to mod Minecraft was to open up the jar in WinRAR, delete META-INF, and then drag all the modded files into the jar.
Of course, this method has been obsolete for nearly a decade after the introduction of Forge (and now Fabric), but that’s what I grew up doing. Looking at all those seemingly gibberish .class files while trying to install the Aether mod for the umpteenth time made me wonder how I could make my own Minecraft mod.
I never figured it out, until now! Kinda. Continue reading
3-9-7-1-5: Exploring the Expanded Conet Project Boxset
Spring is here, my friends, and that means you’re all probably starting to leave your houses for sunny pastures. I have a bit of paranoia for you to take out there–obscured messages also sent out into the world, ones no one but the people they were meant for have been able to or will ever be able to crack. Who are those people? What do the numbers mean? Who are the Russian Man, the Spanish Lady, the Lincolnshire Poacher, Bulgarian Betty? What is Ciocirlia, the Buzzer, the Tyrolean Music Station? What the fuck does “snudering” mean?
Let me take you on a journey of circumstantial government intrigue. I’ll let the boxset explain before I do, run-ons preserved:
Almost every other piece of information on who is responsible for Numbers Stations comes from the part-time investigations of dedicated listeners. No government or person will admit to transmitting them, and only recently, due to the release of this CD set has GCHQ in the UK made its first ever public station on Numbers Station, saying that, “GCHQ are aware of the existence of Numbers Stations but cannot comment on operational matters”. Do “operational matters” include the ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’ which is believed to be of British origin? With direction finding equipment it is possible to track down the location of transmitting antennas, and in the case of Numbers Stations which uses extremely powerful transmitters ‘Dfing’ [sic] the more powerful stations has proved an easy task for investigators but what exactly does it mean when you find an antenna farm on US government property blasting numbers in Spanish? Where and who are the recipients?
Promptly Forgotten: Remembering MyGameBuilder.com
“Hi! Welcome to this quick demonstration of My Game Builder, a new tool to allow you to build games for yourself and for your friends, online, using just a web browser. The tool is free to use, and free to share with your friends.” Continue reading
First Draft: Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim
Rarely do albums come out right on the first shot. Labels reject them, bands disown them, and they get added onto after release. Here on First Draft, we take a look at albums that got cut down or remade and see what difference the changes made.
This review looks back on the Pixies’ debut EP Come On Pilgrim, the infamous purple tape it came from, and the re-records of the leftover material scattered throughout the rest of their initial run, and whether or not the EP would’ve been better served as a full album.
First Draft: Failure’s Magnified
Rarely do albums come out right on the first shot. Labels reject them, bands disown them, and they get added onto after release. Here on First Draft, we take a look at albums that got cut down or remade and see what difference the changes made.
This second edition examines the home demos that almost comprised Failure’s second album, 1994’s Magnified.
First Draft: Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Rarely do albums come out right on the first shot. Labels reject them, bands disown them, and they get added onto after release. Here on First Draft, we take a look at albums that got cut down or remade and see what difference the changes made.
This especially long-winded First Draft concerns the infinite permutations of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco’s 2002 art rock opus which streamed online officially for the first time 22 years ago today.
Bunch of random scans off the press plus bit of related rambling
As I’m getting rid of some part of my collection, the earliest one because I need money, I ended up scanning some which I’ll compile here. Some favorites from few mid 90s Dazed & Confused issues. It will be probably split in few installments I guess.
First Draft: …The Dandy Warhols Come Down
Rarely do albums come out right on the first shot. Labels reject them, bands disown them, and they get added onto after release. Here on First Draft, we take a look at albums that got cut down or remade and see what difference the changes made.
This first review concerns the first attempt at the second Dandy Warhols album, 1997’s …The Dandy Warhols Come Down, as given to us by the band seven years later.
Plushie Archaeology: Finding a New Old Friend
I’m pretty sure everyone in the group likes plushies. Stuffed animals, whatever you call ’em. There’s a plushie channel in the server, and it’s constantly busy with us linking to plushies we find online, posting pictures of our own, and just generally being obsessed like we’re so good at.
This post is gonna be for a plushie closer to my heart. This is the story of how a snowman boy I’ve had from the day I was born was loved to death, rediscovered online, and rebought without a clue as to a brand or even an origin. I normally have a policy of not posting to the blog twice in a row, but this one’s more important than that. I might get a little personal.
Cammy Revisits the PhotoCam
Longtime blog readers will remember a post I did in July 2019 called “Cammy vs. the PhotoCam”. It was a cute little lark into trying to score some retro tech on eBay and failing miserably. I didn’t have a job or a lot of money to spend on impractical hobby stuff back then, and the entire thing left a sour enough taste in my mouth that I didn’t bother looking for a working unit.
We’re in September 2022 now, I have a job now, and I figured it was time to go hunting again. I got a lot more than I bargained for. On offer today: storytelling! Burning hot batteries! A showdown between three similarly-spec’ed cameras! But first, we start with…