Photos

We now have a Pong clone. It's a Unisonic Tournament 2000 and apparently it's a pretty obscure/unpopular one going by the lack of Youtube videos with > 100 views. Natalie found this beauty at the flea market complete with the gun, the manual and the original sale receipt from K-Mart in 1976. I don't think she even dusted it. It looks like it was opened, played with once and immediately put in the attic.

The gun is stamped Tiger Electronics, but it was sold before "The" Tiger Electronics is said to have formed. I'd be interested to see if that's how Tiger got started. I've seen guns from other Pong clone consoles that look pretty much identical to ours.

I need one of these antennas but I don't know exactly which size I should get. So rather than just buy 3 of them a month ago I've been waffling :-) If I could get it to make solid contact without opening the case on this otherwise totally pristine boombox I'd just use the wire I have there now.

It doesn't have to look great it just needs to receive FM from the other room. These are both favorites of mine among the dozen or more radios we have scattered around the house and barn. When I took this picture I hadn't even cleaned them after bringing them both home for five whole bucks.

***UPDATE 10-2024***
I only recently learned of the massive scam perpetrated by the former owner of TrippLite in which he "donated" the entire company to a brand new SuperPAC seemingly spun up by Leonard Leo for purposes of this exact transaction. Leo then went on to sell TrippLite to Eaton Power for 1.7bn. This is scum fuckery of the highest order and has no doubt contributed directly to the deaths and suffering of innocent people. For their part, Eaton has a policy against "political donations". I do not know how they square that policy with their purchase of TrippLite, which basically became a fascist slush fund for the purpose of installing a goddamn dictator. Use your judgment. These are still by far the highest quality power strips you can buy.

I did not buy any of these prior to the Eaton acquisition, though I probably did have my TrippLite UPS by that point. Likewise I don't hold Eaton blameless here either. They knew what they were part of, they didn't just want the shiny thing.

** update update... and Schneider has been ransomware'd. Neat.

On with the show...

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With the massive Retro Youtuber explosion going back even before Covid, I've been yelling to the void about "you need a real screwdriver". Thankfully a couple of rounds of iFixit & Linus sponsorships have gotten this point across :-) And now all those LTT screwdrivers have the delightful whiff of awkward about them. (Bias: I've had Snap-On since like 1997)

I think the next tool for home gamers should be power strips. No one ever thinks of power strips except maybe to mount a super long one over their bench.

I want to buy the world a TrippLite:

I've got these everywhere, but they're great on the bench. A lot of time you'll see Youtubers plugging a whole power strip in special just so they have a switch they can throw at a safe distance to turn on a machine (don't daisy-chain power strips kids!). I have test power cables spooled well away from the power strip just in case I want to cower at a safe distance when powering something up. The neon switches make it super obvious if the thing you're working on is powered or not at a glance:

Pair them with a bunch of 1' extensions and you can tidy up and add physical switches to all your awkward-sized wall warts or to move a plug closer to your work surface. I often have two velcro'd to my lamp:

We also have them in the living room so we can quickly power on & off a bunch of vintage computers and consoles and the LiteBrite and bling and stuff.

They're high quality and they're fast. Eaton/TrippLite has the same $25,000 damage warranty they put on their UPS products.

Next up: Desk Lamps!

*** *IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP* I don't use these on a bench through a UPS, they go straight into the wall. IMHO it's a super bad idea to have UPS power backing up something like a power supply you're testing on the bench! (there are stories here) ***

For the last year or so we've had a persistent stray cat that we've been kind of watching after, along with most of the rest of our neighborhood. As the weather gets cold we decided to try and see if he'd be willing to come in the house and maybe spend cold nights in the basement. Basement because this is a fully functional male cat and we prefer our stuff to be piss-free. Spoiler alert: It didn't work out so well. He hung out on the porch for a bit, but really wanted to get back outside. And he still managed to spray a pair of Natalie's boots even with us sitting right there with him. If we toss him in the basement I expect to hear him echoing through the heating ducts all night meowing and trapped and annoyed.

But now we have actual cold weather forecast for the first time this winter, with temps in the single digits during the next couple days and we want to make sure the little weirdo has somewhere to stay warm. So yesterday, Natalie banged out this little shelter. it's got fiberglass insulation with styrofoam inside with a decent amount of straw so the little guy should be able to burrow in and stay pretty warm. Now it's just a matter of getting him to use it. Today I started putting food in the far inside corner and he is getting more comfortable going in to get food. Hope he figures out that this is where you go when it's cold.

Yesterday we put the box out and introduced the cat to it:

"That's enough progress for one day"

Day 2 - Success?