Nah, it’s a grape drink I happened to have in the photo, and happened to be turned to show the French side. I didn’t even realize this until it was pointed out in the comments!

Almost - it’s grape. Grape in French is raisin. Products in Canada have both English and French on them.

This comment made my night! (I hope that doesn’t sound sarcastic - I don’t mean it to be! I genuinely loved it and thought it was funny!)

This is correct.

I actually started reading through it while I was waiting for the lava lamp to heat up. It’s a pretty good book! I can’t reference the name of the book at the moment because it’s just out of reach for now, but I found it at the thrift store a while back. I love these computery-type books, especially the ones that go into absolutely absurd detail about how things work. I think this one has a publication of 1998, so doesn’t quite fit the time period I was going for in this one, but it was the closest thing I had to relevant text book-like material for the story of this photo.

Can you believe that I still often use that PLOP floppy? Super handy - and so funny to see old machines boot from USB (if it works)! I also remember those old Texas Instruments calculators when I was in grade 1. That’s getting further and further away every day! I was obsessed with them as a small kid. They were brought into the class in these rather serious cases with slotted foam, so they felt like real James Bond gadgets to six-year old me! Naturally, when I saw one at the thrift store, I had to grab it even if I didn’t need it!

Oh god the swearing mudcrabs! How could I have forgotten about that? Oh, and the one that turns the spiders into Spider-Man! Those are positively… legendary!

lol that was a chair from 2003 when that style was popular. This was some time in 2012 when this kitty was just a baby. He’s a little old man now, who doesn’t like jumping anymore but still rips around the house at 3:00 AM.

I think it’s just a thing cats do! It’s especially the case when I come home! I heard how cats think we’re out hunting, and so when we come home they expect us to bring food back. So, this is usually when he bugs for food even if his feeder just dropped the next meal. Licky sticks are, of course, a treat. He gets excited when I get the scissors (that’s how I open them)!

This is the fuzzball 13 years ago.

Mods are fun. Half the time I start the game and I begin experiencing intermittent crashing, and now have to test each mod individually to find out which one is the culprit. Is it any of the Beyond Skyrim mods? No. Is it the archery rebalancing mod? Nope, not that one. Hmm… my high-res hair mod has caused problems before. Uh… not this time. Could it be the one that redoes the entire College of Winterhold? No, thank the gods.

Two hours later… it’s the mod that makes goats scream. Ffs. That was my favourite one!

That’s essentially it. I suspect this is probably a bigger problem when profit is what drives the development of the game rather than passion. I know it’s more nuanced than that because profit-driven developers can still be passionate and care about the quality of the product, but I personally suspect that profit-first development is where there’s less tolerance for bug reports. And, keep in mind that I’m still speculating, but I suspect that many of those profit-first devs are probably the same ones that rush releases… and we know what that generally does to the “final” product.

Bug reports really are a good thing. It’s as you said. One group needs to change, and I don’t think it’s the Linux users. Some developers consider it free Q/A and free testing, but like you said - if bonuses and rep are on the line, well it’s easier to see how this sort of thing happens where Linux versions of software get pulled because of the volume of bug reports. I think it’s dishonest, really. Many of the big names have the developer volume to make this less of an issue.

I just wanted to add to what you said by sharing this bit of information, because I do find it very interesting to see. I hope I don’t come off as argumentative, because that’s not my intent.

I recall this post on Reddit from an indie game developer of the game “ΔV: Rings of Saturn”. They said how 38% of the bug reports for their game came from Linux users, despite only making up 5.8% of the purchases for the game.

It does make it seem like the Linux version of their game was buggier, but of the some 400 bug reports they got, only three were specific to the Linux build. In this case, getting more bug reports from Linux users did not indicate the game was buggier on Linux.

I will not say this is the case for all cross-OS games because this is just one example, but it seems that Linux users are more inclined to provide bug reports than Windows users are, and that doesn’t necessarily mean Linux versions of software are buggier. In some (maybe even many, I don’t know) cases, the Linux version certainly is buggier or performs worse due to developers spending less time on it or other reasons I’m not aware of, but it’s not always the case. The higher volume of bug reports from Linux users may give the perception that the Linux version is buggier.

And, as the developer mentioned, those bugs exist whether or not they’re aware of them. I’d argue that the decision by some developers to remove Linux versions because of the higher volume of bug reports is short-sighted because many of those bugs are not going to be OS-dependent, and now there are fewer reports of them.

This reminds me so much of Pointless Sites. I’d spend hours on that site as a tween bored in computer class.

Ah, I see! No, but I can see what you mean! I often make paper notes about various computers that I have, especially if I want to make a video about them or run some kind of project on them. In that case, I was jotting down notes about an IBM ThinkPad I intend on making a video about. It just lists specifications, BIOS features, and ideas that I had.

If you’re referring to the floppy diskette, it’s actually a PLOP Bootloader disk.

They re-released those original Tamagotchi and then the Tamagotchi Connections fairly recently. Not sure of global availability, but I got my hands on one pretty easily in Canada. They use the shell of the Connection v3 and behave about the same, if I’m not mistaken. But, they’re not quite the same. They’re not as good. The battery life isn’t as good (it’s kind of short, actually), and there are certain quirks that make me think it’s running slightly faster than the original.

I’m glad they exist, but they’re definitely not the exact same thing. They’re kinda expensive now too. I remember them costing $20 back in the day (the Connection, in Canada), which is about $30 now. But to buy the rebooted Connection, they’re all over $60-$70. I got the translucent neon colour, the 90s design. I see a dark starry neon colour, that looks even more 90s.

I think the Tamagotchi Connection v3 (the one in the photo) was a 2006 release. The original Connection was 2004. I didn’t have any older Tamagotchis, so this is the one I chose. I’ve had that one since I was a kid!

Indeed there is - which also doubled as a climbing wall for this kitty when he was younger!

Ahhhhh that’s one thing I missed! I don’t have a standalone MP3 player or boombox, but I do have a Discman! We had tons of those iPod-wannabe MP3 players too, not sure where they all ran off to. Those ones we had ranged from 16MB to 128MB I wanna say. Probably had SD card expansion too. Tsk, just lamenting the fact that I forgot my Discman and a set of Koss headphones!

If I’m not mistaken, this particular model was introduced in the late 90s and has been a common fixture in schools since. I’ve had this one since sometime in the late 2000s. It’s a Texas Instruments TI-84 of some variety. I’m not certain, but I believe they can still be purchased brand new in most places. There are different, more capable models, but the basic ones are still very powerful and capable (and expensive) graphing calculators.

All things I wished I could have, but didn’t. Well, I did have one of those 2000s cheat booklets for PS2 games, but it was in bad shape and wouldn’t have been obvious, and I couldn’t bring my Phillips CRT with PS2 over here (it was a practical space/support issue), so I left it out, even though it would’ve really taken it that much further.

I don’t have vintage printers either, since I can’t justify them, and the printer I already do have usually works (though it is a haunted and vindictive HP, so that should say all).

All good things to have though. I’m sure I’ve got more neat goodies hiding in my basement, I just have to dig them out.