Beware, I Live

So I've had this Atari Major Havoc since 1995, when it was originally a Tempest. Everyone loves Tempest, but I eventually got tired of it and installed a factory Havoc conversion kit. MH is, after all, the best color vector game and one of the greatest classic video games of all time. Possessed of a rich gameplay unmatched by any other vectors (and few raster classics), it exemplifies all that was fantastic and special about the "golden age" (1977-84) games. It's fun, it's challenging and it clearly pointed to the way things could have gone if the video game industry hadn't unceremoniously crashed in '84.

Mine worked swimmingly until a few years ago, when it suddenly, catastrophically didn't anymore.

Stumped, I sent the board to my learned and esteemed friend Jeff, world-renowned expert on "the bideo games" who bafflingly determined that nothing was wrong with the board after all. I'd already tested the power supply, so this left only one other possible culprit: The actual wiring harness in the cabinet. This seemed highly unlikely, as a harness actually going bad is pretty much unheard of, but Jeff supplied me with a known good harness anyway as an experiment. And after an unreasonably long (> one year) interval, I finally installed it, and wouldn't you know, IT WORKS. There was much rejoicing.

Giant

Joe Zawinul died today. He was one of the most important and influential musicians of our time, and a huge inspiration to me and countless others. I possibly can't express how much Weather Report's music affected me during their heyday.
It's important to mention that I am not a jazz musician; The group's appeal was wide-ranging and their music transcended the artificial constructs of "style" and "genre". If you've never heard their music, or weren't fortunate enough to have seen them live in their prime, go get a copy of one (or all) of these:

SX-70

I am an SX-70 fanatic. They've always been dead cool as both an engineering marvel for their time and a snapshot (sorry) of quintessentially early-70s design aesthetics. Oh, and they take cool-looking photos that one could manipulate by hand during that brief period between taking the photo and before the emulsions fixed by exposure to the air. The thing that rekindled my interest, though, was their "SX-70" promotional film, which can be seen as part of this collection. Made by the legendary design couple Charles and Ray Eames (check the 'leet MySpace friends!) in 1972 to coincide with Polaroid's release of the SX-70, it is itself a work of considerable artistry. The good news is that SX-70s aren't hard to find in good shape these days, and that Polaroid has started making viable SX-70 film again after a disappointing lapse for awhile.