Category: nostalgia

The team player

It’s a great feeling when you find yourself being part of a great team. Brought together for a common goal, working towards a target, an achievement. Day by day working alongside your comrades achieving each milestone, constantly learning and evolving, enjoying the work.

Time ticks along and friendships grow as you fight on in the trenches together, still delivering, often under tight deadlines with limited resources, yet you hit the targets and the client is pleased. They hired a great team.

But everything must come to an end. Projects complete. Budgets run out. Priorities change. The team is disbanded and everyone goes to the four winds. Temporary ronin until a new master calls, a new team, a new challenge.

Some of us keep in touch. The occasional comms. A brief how are you, where are you working these days? Not the same as when you were in the trenches together working on that fun project up against the clock, delivering, with a happy client.

Nothing remains forever.

Here’s to all those great teams out there. Enjoy the flow while it lasts. 

Mythos and Wraith

When I first started creating software for the Commodore Amiga demo scene many many moons ago I did so with two friends known as Mythos and Wraith.

Between us we wrote code, created graphical artwork and digital music, which we assembled into productions known as intros and demos. It lasted a few years then we went our separate ways. I continued for a few more years with other groups of individuals before hanging up my scener hat altogether.

I started wondering what they are up to today, how did their lives turn out? Did they end up with a career in technology as I did, or switch to something else? Are they married with kids? Are they even still alive?

I toyed with the idea of utilising OSINT to track them down so I could answer these questions and maybe even say hi. I can’t remember their real names, only their aliases, but I still have all my Amiga files and a copy of WinUAE, so digging out their names and addresses from back then shouldn’t be too difficult. From there I could use public info and social media to hopefully locate them today.

But why? To see if I could? To satisfy a passing nostalgic thought?

I’ve come to realise recently that people come and go. Throughout your life friends and acquaintances will come into your life, stay a while, then move on. And that’s ok. We are not meant to hold on to everyone we meet, forever, despite Facebook’s original business model. You as a person will change and develop and what connected you to someone at one point in time may no longer be a part of you and if you were to meet that person today you may find that you have nothing in common and would not be friends.

I decided to move on and not dwell on the past. To be thankful for the good times and the memories and to look to the future. Leaving the past in the past.

To Mythos and Wraith I wish you the best wherever you are.

You can’t take it with you

We acquire so much stuff. Items that are precious to us. Things that are necessary to support day-to-day living and to aid in our comfort. Nik naks and trinkets. Things that need polishing, dusting, caring for. Photographs, family albums, memories. Yet you can take none of it with you. We leave this world with what we brought into it.

This thought comes to mind as I visit the weekend auctions. Rooms full of other peoples stuff. Remnants of their estate, their ‘worldly possessions’. The stuff that their relations and friends didn’t want, but was still precious to the deceased.

When my Grandma’s estate was being sorted I was away. I was asked what I wanted beyond what was left to me in her will. I didn’t need for anything so mentioned a face-cast of a saracen mounted on the wall of the spare bedroom. It used to frighten me as a child during stay-overs. I always requested that it be taken down. It reminded me of my visits to Grandma’s house so for some reason I asked for it. Later I learned that others did something similar. They asked for something that meant something to them, or had monetary value. Everything else, clothing, furniture, kitchenware, nik naks, was left behind for the local council to dispose of.

It’s sad really. But the memory serves to remind me that it’s all just stuff.

You can’t take it with you.

Distances as a kid

When looking for work distance is something that we generally take into consideration. How far do we have to travel to get there each day? How much is it going to cost in time and money? We consider distance when we consider going shopping, collecting something or someone, holidays, and buying a home; how far is the nearest pub, shops, or public transport?

Yet when we were children distance was something to be conquered. The further the better. When I was twelve I cycled on my single-speed Raleigh Tomahawk all the way to my Grandma’s. Eight adventurous miles through dodgy housing estates, parks, open land, and beside busy roads. My folks thought I was still playing in our street until Grandma called to say I had arrived.

In my early teens I once cycled over thirty miles from a caravan site back home on my own after my mate, who had cycled there with me so we could spend the day with family, suffered a bike accident meaning he and his damaged bike had to be collected and returned home. There wasn’t space for me and my Raleigh Phantom so I decided I’d race them home. They gave me a ten minute head start and I got there twenty minutes after them but it was an exhilarating fast ride back! Not a thought entered my head about how far it was or that I’m having to cycle on my own with no one to talk to. Just the drive to get back as fast as possible, just me and my bike against the world.

Half the fun of travelling is the journey.

Don’t be in a rush to get somewhere.

Using OSINT to locate old friends

As you get better at OSINT you start to wonder what else you can do with these skills. Like maybe locating old friends.

I’m not talking about stalking here, to be clear. I’m talking about seeing if you can use OSINT to research an old friend to see what they are up to and if they are ok. Maybe you worked with someone day in and day out twenty years ago and you haven’t heard from them in decades. Are they ok, what are they up to these days? Not to say hi but just to know that they are ok and doing well.

I’ve worked with many people for many years and on occasion I often wonder what they are up to and if they are well. Using OSINT you may just obtain the answer. Hopefully a positive one.

OSINT, reconnecting people.

Emulators

I love emulators.

They allow me to take a nostalgic trip back in time running software and playing games from yesteryear without leaving the comfort of my current desktop. I can load up WinUAE for example and delve back into my Amiga days playing forgotten classics such as Cadaver, Dreamweb, or Alien Breed. Or fire up Directory Opus and play around with the Amiga OS.

In most cases I don’t even need to run an emulator on my OS as there are plenty of websites that will do that for you. Catering to the retro scene you can play just about any game on a myriad of bygone computer hardware or gaming consoles.

Maybe you are in the pub talking to your mates discussing the video games you played in your youth. You could pull up a YouTube video to show what it looked like, or you could fire up the game via emulation and actually play the game yourself in real time. The power of the internet!

I do love emulators!

Now for a quick game of Galaga..

Graphics adventure nostalgia

I grew up in the 80s and 90s, the era of the point-and-click graphics adventure games. Games like The Curse of Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Universe, and Dreamweb.

I have a large tome on my shelf dedicated to the graphics and storylines of these games. Simon the Sorcerer, Beneath a Steel Sky, and The Legend of Kyrandia to name but a few. I spent many hours of my youth immersed in the worlds conjured up by these games. Sailing the seven seas, exploring foreign lands, looking for treasure, saving fair maidens from dragons, or just hanging out in bars talking to the drunken natives in the hope of eliciting a clue in order to make further progress in my adventure.

People say that when they dream they can’t recall if it was in colour or black-and-white. When I dream I can recall not only the colour but the resolution! I recall many a happy hour spent exploring the world of Valhalla and the Lord of Infinity to many calls of “It’s a skull!”, or “It’s just a book”.

I’ve explored many a low-resolution pixelated world in my day. Minecraft players don’t know what they are missing!

So long and thanks for all the 8 and 16-bit memories!

Deluxe Paint

Watching the young ‘uns today playing games like Minecraft takes me back to the late 80s / early 90s when I used to create graphics for the Commodore Amiga using tools such as Deluxe paint and Photon paint. The resolutions we had back then plus the number of available colours were not as great as they are today. We had to learn techniques such as  anti-aliasing and cross-hatching to give the illusion of smooth graphics with less rigid edges.

Why people want games with blocky-looking graphics escapes me, but it does trigger memories of nostalgia for the days when I had to create such graphics every time I see such games. Memories of Beneath a Steel Sky, Universe, and Monkey Island. Or the Amiga scene demos.

Now where did I store those old floppies..

There’s nothing for you in the past

There’s nothing for you in the past. It’s worth repeating that to yourself once in a while. There’s nothing for you in the past.

Many of us spend way too much of our time thinking about things that happened in the past. How we could have done this or that. Maybe if we made this decision, or chose that job, or that friend. Or maybe we reminisce on the good old times. Ruminate on what it would be like to bring something back, or to revisit something again.

It can become self destructive and can hinder both your direction in life and your mental health. Stop living in the past and live in the present. The past is a lonely place full of memories where nothing can be changed. Move on with your life, focus on the present and the future.