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Question Happy birthday to me!!

6 years 6 months ago #1 by CrazyMinh
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    • Tomorrow is my 29th birthday!!!

    God...29 years on planet earth. 29 bloody years. I bet I'll be saying the same damm thing another 29 years from now, and be croaking it out 29 years after that.

    I've seen the transition from floppy disks to hard drives to SSD's...

    I've seen the internet develop from what was essentially a bunch of message boards with no such thing as YouTube or Google to the thing it is today...

    I've seen VHS be replaced by DVD which is currently being replaced by streaming...

    I've seen man build a permanent habitat in space...

    I've seen gaming consoles go from the primitive PS1's and Xbox's to the level achieved by the current generation of Playstation 4's and Xbox 1X's....

    ...I've seen Star Trek get terrible...

    ...I've seen Star Wars get terrible...

    ...I've seen Doctor Who get terrible...

    ...I've seen politics get terrible...wait no, it was always like that...

    ...I've seen a world change from one century to another in what now seems like a blink of a eye.

    ...fuck, I just realised how much can happen in 2.9 decades.

    ...damm.
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    6 years 6 months ago #2 by Bek D Corbin
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    • That's nothing.

    Just wait until your metabolism starts slowing down
    6 years 6 months ago #3 by Sir Lee
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    • Hey, at least you just escaped having your young mind scarred by 80's fashions.
    Don't call me "Shirley." You will surely make me surly.
    6 years 6 months ago #4 by CrazyMinh
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    • Sir Lee wrote: Hey, at least you just escaped having your young mind scarred by 80's fashions.


    Oh no...

    ...I got plenty of that from my parents...

    ...tie die shirts and neon green track-pants cannot be unseen...

    ...ever.

    admittedly, they were trying to be immensely funny on my 16th birthday...by dressing in what the called "80's clothes"...

    ...Why the f**k did I get such awful parents??? (Just kidding, they're great, if a little aged now)
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    6 years 6 months ago #5 by Kettlekorn
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    • CrazyMinh wrote: I've seen gaming consoles go from the primitive PS1's and Xbox's to the level achieved by the current generation of Playstation 4's and Xbox 1X's....

    I wouldn't call the PS1 primitive; in fact, I'd call that generation the first of the modern consoles. A typical PS1 game has more in common with a PS4 game than an SNES or Genesis game.
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    6 years 6 months ago #6 by marie7342231
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    • happy birthday! It's still 9/22 US pacific time but in Australia it's probably Tuesday by now right?
    6 years 6 months ago #7 by Kristin Darken
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    • Are you telling me I share a birthyday with this young-un? Sept 22, 1970... 48 as of today... let's see... to expand on your 'from - to' transitions:

    floppy disks to hard drives to SSD's...

    before that, we used rca connections to record data on audio cassettes... technically, there were a number of removable data media being used in the 70's, but given that most computers were facility installations; its safe to say that there weren't many prior options for 'personal computers' that predate floppies or cassettes. The question I have for you is 'which size' floppy are you referring to? :P

    the internet develop... message boards ... to the thing it is today...

    BBS's and the few mainframe/servers that predated those were mostly one person login at a time. shared data depending on access level, but not much simultaneous usage (running a BBS that allowed multiple users at the same time required multiple phone lines with a modem on each one.

    VHS be replaced by DVD which is currently being replaced by streaming...

    live television... or go to the drive in / cinema to see a film.

    man build a permanent habitat in space...

    I'm not quite old enough to say 'in space at all' but I can remember Viking 1 landing on Mars... and the Voyager launches. And being in history class when the Challenger exploded and we believed, with good reason, that it might end our efforts to explore space for good.

    gaming consoles go from the primitive ... the current generation of Playstation 4's and Xbox 1X's....

    if you wanted to play pong, you could get a home machine... but for anything as complex as space invaders? you had to go to an arcade. and earlier on, even then you'd only find pinball and billiards.

    Star Trek get terrible...

    Star Trek was a couple movies... I didn't see the original series until well into adulthood because it wasn't available... most of my 'first contact' with Star Trek was TNG.

    Star Wars get terrible...

    I saw the first movie in the drive in. and the second one in a sit down theatre, dropped off by my grandma who didn't stay to watch that space nonsense.

    Doctor Who get terrible...

    didn't hear about him until well into adulthood. simply wasn't available.

    Most of my early sci-fi encounters were books... for television and film it was Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, Close Encounters....

    politics get terrible...wait no, it was always like that...

    probably always,

    a world change from one century to another

    I remember the build up to y 2k ... people spent most of the year or two before that thinking all sorts of apocalyptic things.
    Fate guard you and grant you a Light to brighten your Way.
    6 years 6 months ago #8 by CrazyMinh
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    • marie7342231 wrote: happy birthday! It's still 9/22 US pacific time but in Australia it's probably Tuesday by now right?


    It's 23/09/18 8:54 PM
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    6 years 6 months ago #9 by CrazyMinh
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    • Or 09/23/18 for you Americans.
    You can find my stories at Fanfiction.net here .

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    6 years 6 months ago #10 by Astrodragon
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    • Sir Lee wrote: Hey, at least you just escaped having your young mind scarred by 80's fashions.


    Indeed. I still have PTSD flashbacks over disco balls and bell-bottoms.

    Although we did have Pan's People to compensate
    I love watching their innocent little faces smiling happily as they trip gaily down the garden path, before finding the pit with the rusty spikes.
    6 years 6 months ago #11 by sam105
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    • Staying up to watch Apollo head for the moon.
    6 years 6 months ago #12 by lighttech
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    • Kettlekorn wrote:

    CrazyMinh wrote: I've seen gaming consoles go from the primitive PS1's and Xbox's to the level achieved by the current generation of Playstation 4's and Xbox 1X's....

    I wouldn't call the PS1 primitive; in fact, I'd call that generation the first of the modern consoles. A typical PS1 game has more in common with a PS4 game than an SNES or Genesis game.


    Laughs hard---try growing up with only pong, then praying to the GODS when Atari 2600 finally came out! It had 'colors' and more than one game!

    and the first 'portable game' Vectrex!
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex
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    6 years 6 months ago #13 by null0trooper
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    • Kristin Darken wrote:

    the internet develop... message boards ... to the thing it is today...

    BBS's and the few mainframe/servers that predated those were mostly one person login at a time. shared data depending on access level, but not much simultaneous usage (running a BBS that allowed multiple users at the same time required multiple phone lines with a modem on each one.


    The PDPs that USNA was running c. 1980 were set up with multiple user access, albeit through dedicated terminals.

    Kristin Darken wrote:

    man build a permanent habitat in space...

    I'm not quite old enough to say 'in space at all' but I can remember Viking 1 landing on Mars... and the Voyager launches. And being in history class when the Challenger exploded and we believed, with good reason, that it might end our efforts to explore space for good.


    Apollo 11 launch and landing, here. Read about the Challenger from a Reuters release while on watch.
    Forum-posted ideas are freely adoptable.

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    6 years 6 months ago #14 by Astrodragon
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    • Playing the original MUD on a trip to Essex uni...
    I love watching their innocent little faces smiling happily as they trip gaily down the garden path, before finding the pit with the rusty spikes.
    6 years 6 months ago #15 by elrodw
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    • I am slightly aware of the day Kennedy was assassinated (I remember something BIG had mom and dad upset but I didn't associate the two until later in life).
    Watched Gemini. Watched Apollo..
    Suffered through Disco (still permanently scarred by that!). Remember hearing all about hippies and free love and drugs.
    Remember B&W TV in huge furniture-sized consoles, and the shift to color TV.
    Built my first 8088-clone computer, after working with the Z-80 and Motorola 68K. Remember when 16K memory was rare and expensive as hell.
    Movies - 0.35C. Gas wars - 19.9 C per gallon. Gas shortage and lines in the early 70's.
    Huge cars - grossing over 2.5 tons. Pinto and Vega. AMC Pacer (AKA the Terrarium!), Matador, Gremlin. Studebaker, IHC pickups (International Harvestor Corp - a tractor manufacturer mostly).
    VHS and Beta wars, and they were wonders at the time.
    AT&T vs BSD Unix holy war.
    Yeah, I've been around a bit.
    Never give up, Never surrender! Captain Peter Quincy Taggert
    6 years 6 months ago #16 by Bek D Corbin
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    • I remember when Dungeons & Dragons was this weird set of three books you had to send away to Lake Geneva Wisconsin for
    6 years 6 months ago #17 by Astrodragon
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    • Bek D Corbin wrote: I remember when Dungeons & Dragons was this weird set of three books you had to send away to Lake Geneva Wisconsin for


    In a cute little cardboard box with room for your dice...
    I love watching their innocent little faces smiling happily as they trip gaily down the garden path, before finding the pit with the rusty spikes.
    6 years 6 months ago #18 by CrazyMinh
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    • Astrodragon wrote:

    Bek D Corbin wrote: I remember when Dungeons & Dragons was this weird set of three books you had to send away to Lake Geneva Wisconsin for


    In a cute little cardboard box with room for your dice...


    I really only started playing D&D in my last three years at high school. I've kept on since, but I really came into that side of things a bit later than some.

    Sci fi however...one of my earliest memories is watching reruns of TOS and watching TNG when it in it's 4th or 5th season when I was five, and one of my fondest memories from when left high school was getting a boxset of Firefly for my 17th birthday. Another thing from the early 2000's I remember fondly is the revival of Doctor Who, which I watched religiously from 2005 onwards. I'm still peeved that people keep saying the no. 9 was 'the best'. He was actually pretty unlikable...Now, if you're talking about 11, then I'm SO onboard. 4 was pretty good too, but he was before my time. 5-7 were pretty shit, 8 only appeared in a movie, and recently a short teaser for the 50th anniversary back in 2013, I've already talked about 9, 10 was decent, but not as good as 11, war was played by John Hurt- so that's something-, 12 was f**king terrible, and I have SUCH low hopes for 13. Probably going the way of female ghostbusters. So there's something to mull over.

    As for BSG, only got into that recently; HHG2tG is one of my favourite radio shows, books and TV shows (though the movie was shit), Star Wars was good till Lucas decided to introduce the furry animals, Babylon 5 <cough> DS9 ripoff <cough>, 2001 ASO- best sci fi film ever...

    ...I could go on.,..

    But it would take forever.
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    6 years 6 months ago #19 by Kristin Darken
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    • I'm sorry if you think Babylon 5 was a DS 9 ripoff but... no. The first episode of DS9 aired in January of '93. The pilot MOVIE for Babylon 5 aired in February of '93. Most of the five year storyline was written for B5 up front.

    Very little of B5 can be compared to Star Trek. It is more a Star Wars style space opera, with better science (ie traditional heroes journey with a classical battle between epic forces of good and evil) than ongoing journals of life on an exploration starship (or in DS9's case - on a captured Romulan space station).
    Fate guard you and grant you a Light to brighten your Way.
    6 years 6 months ago #20 by Sir Lee
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    • Babylon 5, a DS9 ripoff? Sorry, but you are misinformed, dude. The only thing they have in common is that the main setting is a space station located near a hyperspace access point. (And, funnily enough, JMS had been shopping the B5 concept around Hollywood for years... INCLUDING to Paramount, who passed on it. Then, he finally finds support in Warner. And then, Paramount comes up with a Trek series based on a space station... with a hyperspace gate nearby...) ...except Paramount didn't know quite what to do with the concept at first.

    Oh, there were good character-driven plots in the first year of DS9, I'll grant you that; but it took them a while to find an overall arc story to tell. B5 had it all set up from Day 1 -- although, I'll grant you this also, this is not obvious in the first few episodes (but on rewatches, you realize how much was already being setting up there). That was by itself sorta revolutionary: I don't think anybody had dared to plan a five-year plot before. Every previous series was either episodic or was limited to short arcs. Nowadays, longer arcs are the norm, but few dare to plan longer than season-long arcs. Worse, some series that claim to have planned arcs turn out to have asspulls by the ton -- I'm looking at you, 24 and Lost.

    And the story arcs are HUGELY different. The nature of the conflict is very different. DS9 is rather straightforward: Federation are the good guys, Bajorans and Klingons are allies, Cardassians and Dominion are enemies. B5 is much more ambiguous. You THINK you know who the allies and the enemies are, but alliances change all the time.

    Unfortunately, calling B5 a Trek ripoff is a common misconception propagated by the more fanboyish contingent among Trekkies, who were unwilling to give another franchise a chance. It's like calling Scrubs a M.A.S.H. ripoff because both are somewhat-humorous series with doctors as protagonists. But the settings are very different, the tone is different, the things the characters struggle with are different. Give it a chance
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    6 years 6 months ago #21 by CrazyMinh
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    • Kristin Darken wrote: (or in DS9's case - on a captured Romulan space station).


    I'm sorry? I think you mean Cardassian space station. I distinctly heard Romulan...

    All's fair and fair people. I meant the BB5 thing as a joke. It was a reference to the rivalry between DS9 fans and BB5 fans, due to the accusations of BB5's creator at Paramount that they stole the concept he approached them with which was the original story bible of BB5. Due to this, many fans of both shows took up arms and many a convention would have the same tired argument for years to come. At least until both sides forgot and forgave. I think. My Dad still remembers getting into a argument with a BB5 fanboy when I was five when he was wearing a DS9 uniform to a convention. I had to stand there and watch two grown men (one wearing a outfit that bore close resemblance to a blue NASA flight-suit crossed with a Thunderbirds sash; and the other wearing a rather unflattering, skintight, grey and blue jumpsuit with a gold delta pin. Yeah. I am SO glad I haven't reached that point in my life where I'm dragging my children along to conventions and arguing about whether two disparate shows were ripped off each other. I'll argue, but I'm not wearing the uniform WHILE arguing yet...
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    6 years 6 months ago - 6 years 6 months ago #22 by Sir Lee
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    • On more fun news: This has to be the nerdiest computer ever to come from a major PC maker...

    www.digitaltrends.com/computing/lenovo-u...-trek-enterprise-pc/
    Don't call me "Shirley." You will surely make me surly.
    Last Edit: 6 years 6 months ago by Sir Lee.
    6 years 6 months ago #23 by Kristin Darken
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    • Oh, right. Cardassians... the other romulans. If it hasn't been obvious already, I'm not a Trek fanatic. I was just a few years too young to have caught the bug from the original series... and just the right age to get caught up in Star Wars as it released. B5, though, came at just the right point to really make an impression on me... I'd been in the Navy for several years and was actively getting into game design and writing, with an eye towards what I'd be doing post-military.

    But ya... as Sir Lee pointed out, as writers we should be giving a LOT more credit to B5 as one of the big milestones in television series. I used the Buffy the VS format when coaching the Gen 2 authors in their long term planning (they hate me for it, don't mention it to them)... as a means of looking at the difference between planning out single stories, spin offs, internal and long arcs, and integrating critical 'season' and 'series' level plot elements into things even if that story itself doesn't have any real context outside of its own couple of days of involvement. But while I used Buffy, for familiarity, B5 did it earlier. If you've never really given it any attention, go back and watch it for the Psi Corp threads. Or reincarnation of souls thread. They practically beat you over the head with it right at the beginning with the Soul Thief episode... and then they let it simmer for years before you eventually learn what it really means and why it ended the Earth-Mbari war.

    Lot of good lessens to be learned for writers.
    Fate guard you and grant you a Light to brighten your Way.
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