Retro-time!

Sitting on the side off a building logging for general entertainment. I'm currently sittin inside a niche in the wall leachig net from the builing above me, sunglasses perched on my nose and a black leather-jacket on. Beside me are a gang of skaters doing flips down a staircase. In front of me an empty playground... I couldn't feel more like the 90's if I tried...

Speaking of the 90's I was talked into picking up an old laptop when I was at an antique-store the other day, more specifically a TRS-80 Model 100.  An amazing little gizmo I'm using for a prop in a few months, and right now I'm using it to revive my old BASIC skills, Highlights include a built-in 300baud Modem, but my favorite part about it is that it runs on 4 AA batteries. I've named it "Zigfried"

I was fiddling around on various sites dedicated to the M-100 (apparently it has quite a fan following, and I stumbled across an FAQ published by the japanese producers of the same machine (it was known as Kyocera in Japan). In it I found what must be the best question I've ever seen in a hardware FAQ, ever...
Wedged between the fairly innocent questions :

"Q. My Kyocera used to remember files when I turned it off. Now it doesn't. What can I do?"
and
"Q. What's the good of a print formatter if I can't hook up a printer?"

was the question:

"Q. How can I run my Kyocera for six weeks in the desert without all those AA batteries?"

...

In the desert... 

for 6 weeks...

Anyway, my favorite part of the answer is 

"For emergencies, take along a couple of wires with alligator clips and run it off the 6 volt battery in your camp lantern"

The things people used their computers for in the old days... Oh well, at least I know what I can do now, if I ever need to bring a laptop with a storage capacity of 11 pages of text with me for desert-blogging...
I'm still considering wether I should mod it, or keep it in vintage casing, I'll post pics if I do any interesting modding though.

Lastly I want to tell everyone to go see Dr. Horrible's Sing-along-Blog.
... Seriously, go, now. Blog is over, what are you waiting for? Also, buy the DVD when it comes out.