The Ben Cooper Pac Man Halloween Costume (1982)

One kid in a mask like this is alarming.

An army of kids in masks like this is nightmare fuel.

Pluto TV

Imagine a digital cable/satellite type TV service with channels and shows you’ve never seen before with a great selection of movies that you can take with you and watch anywhere you have an internet connection. And (the sweet part), it’s actually free.

Welcome to Pluto TV. Available on your computer at Pluto TV and on Roku, Android and iOS apps. As well as your Playstation/XBox

Pluto TV is a cord-cutter’s dream. Hundreds of channels, some with programming you’ve never seen before, or haven’t seen in years or even decades. There’s dozens of movie channels in every genre, from documentaries to horror. Sports channels, news channels, and music channels, including digital audio-only channels in genres from Jazz (Cool Ch. 982.) Classic R&B (Pure Soul, Ch, 978) Adult Standards (Ratpack Ch. 974) Hair Metal (The Strip, Ch. 971), etc.

But Pluto isn’t like Comcast (there are caveats.) First, Pluto doesn’t offer your local TV channels. Second, some of the news programming, such as the CNN and the NBC News Pluto channels aren’t live. This won’t do for a hardcore breaking news junkie like me. But if you’re just a casual news watcher, it should be fine. The stories and shows are usually from earlier in the day on the CNN and NBC feeds. There are live feeds of Cheddar and the suspicious RT America. The other thing is a strong high-speed internet connection is vital to the Pluto experience.

The movie channels are mostly 2nd tier films, but still entertaining. (I watched What’s Eating Gilbert Grape for the first time since 1993.) The thing here is most Pluto channel programming - including the on demand movies, have commercials.

There’s food channels, home improvement channels, some religious and a wide selection of sports channels (I’m not a huge sports fan, so I’m guessing the boxing matches at 3am aren’t live either.) Several all comedy, geek, Latinx and children’s programming channels are offered as well.

But if it’s HBO, Showtime and Cinemax you’re looking for, that’s not here. But the Pluto movie channels are acceptable, but the commercial break transitions are a tad jarring. However, the film returns to the last few seconds of the last scene prior to the break. So that helps as you’re running to the kitchen for the bag of chips.

The channels are laid out on a standard digital grid with current/upcoming programming listed. On Roku at first glance, you couldn’t distinguish this from your average cable/satellite grid.

Some of Pluto’s more unique channels:

Ch. 007 Pluto 007 - All classic James Bond films in random order.

Ch. 591 THC (The High Channel) - If you’re into the cannabis lifestyle, THC is your TV. It’s programmed for today’s modern stoner.

Ch. 597 SLOW TV - If you ever fantasized being a Norwegian train engineer, this channel is heaven. 24 hours a day, it’s the cab view of a Norwegian locomotive along the rails of Norway. And that’s it. 24/7.

It’s a nifty sub-cable system if you already have cable. And a decent alternative if you’re off the cord. But the fact you can take Pluto anywhere on your smartphone, tablet, gaming or PC computer makes it a must have in periods of boredom. Just surfing around Pluto is fun. Enjoy!

The 1972 Xerox Alto: The Worlds First Internet PC

Photo: Michael Hick/Flickr

The year was 1972 and everything was perfectly normal. People sent text messages through snail mail, watched 3-5 local channels on broadcast TV. Movies on demand were viewed in theaters, mostly paid for things in cash at places called "retail stores" you had to physically get to, listened to music on tiny AM pocket radios with earphones and "downloaded" the latest pop singles from something called a "record store" on 7" polystyrene discs. Social media was done over the telephone. Perfectly normal.

Or was it? (I can't tell anymore. 47 years of change can do that.)

Computers as we know them today were mostly things you saw on science fiction TV shows and movies. And endless "World of Tomorrow" promotional films and magazine/newspaper articles.


But in reality, most computers back then were giant, cumbersome mainframe things that took up a very sizable portion of a very large room.

"GET OFF THE INTERNET!! I NEED TO USE THE PHONE!!" Photo: neweggbusiness.com

But at Xerox laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, a revolution was happening. It was our second major step in what would become the modern PC of today. The first was the development of ARPANET by the US government for the military in 1969, the genesis of the modern internet.

The second was the Xerox Alto.

It boasted the first e-mail, ethernet, local networking with printer and outside networks to other Alto computers via dial-up and even radio networking. Even ARPANET. It had the very first graphical user interface (GUI) and even the first mouse. Years before Apple even existed. It ran using a 5.8 MHz CPU, 128kb of RAM memory and 14" 2.5 MB removable cartridge hard drives

The software selection included:

- The first word processing programs.
- The first e-mail clients
- The first bitmap (photo) editors and paint/drawing programs
- FTP and chat (This was the earliest internet, so it was nearly all text. Graphics were few, in black and white and highly primitive and low quality. There was little audio support. Or anything really resembling social media outside a circle of super rich geeks.)  
- Games including Pinball, Chess, Othello and even the first network based, multi-person video game, Alto Trek
- OfficeTalk, the first computer generated office forms system.
- Support for many early computer programming languages.

Oddly, there were no spreadsheet programs. The first, VisiCalc, wasn't invented until 1979.

The Xerox Alto was destined to revolutionize the world. Or at least the 1974 TV commercial for it looked good.

You were probably thinking looking at the first photo "Where's the big beige tower for this thing?". Here it is, the size of a mini-refrigerator, it took 14" 2.5 MB "disk" cartridges a little bigger than the size of an LP record. Photo: history-computer.com

It first went on sale in 1973.

So why didn't the Xerox Alto launch us into the internet age in the 1970s?

Mouse for the Xerox Alto.

First, it was far from perfected for average commercial home consumer use. So it never really left experimental status.

Second, the price of one of these units was $100,000 in 1973 money. That works out to about $570,000 in 2019 money. The average 3 bedroom family home costed roughly around $25,000 in 1973.

Third, only about 2,000 were made.

And finally, only high end computer labs, corporations and government were able to get an Alto. Or afford one.

But it left an impression on Apple's Steve Jobs, who visited Xerox in 1979 and quickly began to design a system that would first be called the Apple Lisa, then the Macintosh (or Mac) which was the first home computer to incorporate a GUI interface and mouse. Jobs also hired away several key Xerox employees to help design his system.

Xerox also got into the home computing game in 1981. But their lowest price home computer, the Xerox 820 lacked the GUI interface and mouse of the Alto. It was a major opportunity squandered in favor of a lower consumer price and manufacturing cost.

But home computing was still a comparatively rare (and very expensive) thing. And would be throughout most of the 1980s. And by the time Xerox got into the home computing market, several competitors were already established, including Apple. Xerox soon realized how late they were and eventually abandoned the home computing market to focus on other products.

How To Get The Alto Experience in 2019


The easiest way is through the online ContrAlto emulator. Bear in mind this takes 20-30 seconds to boot and load programs (it really is an emulator, right down to original speed.) It is buggy on Firefox 66.02, although I haven't tried it on Chrome.

This was about as far as I got.

You can find a Windows emulator program for Alto here. The site also has the C# source code. Another, SALTO, looks more promising to Linux users.

Go 'n Joy Stores

Outside of Vancouver, WA Go 'n Joy store, circa 1981. Image: WSU Libraries Digital Collection

From the outside of it, Go 'n Joy convenience stores looked like your typical early 1980s convenience store chain.
 

As well as the inside of it. They made fresh deli sandwiches, had a full selection of potato chips, beer, candy and soda. As well as various other quick must-buys like milk, bread and eggs. They had a cold soda/Icee fountain. There were a couple of arcade video games in the front of the store. Pretty average stuff for a convenience store chain in 1981.

Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary. Except that this chain literally went from idea to 17 locations that sprang up within a period of a few months in western Washington State in early 1981 (something even your most ambitious retail chain doesn't do.) They had further plans of expansion of up to 30 stores at this time.

What are these places?, people began to ask. And how did they get so big, so fast? It seemed pretty strange. But nothing to be concerned over really, just odd.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board wanted to know too, as they were licensing each store for beer and wine sales (Hard liquor was still sold in state-run liquor stores at that time.) Their concern was knowing who actually owned the chain.

But after wandering through a maze of various shell companies and people who seemed to change positions within the company on a dime, the investigations revealed one common link; the various operatives of Go 'n Joy, from distributors to several franchise operators revealed ties to Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church.

The Unification Church is a religion with a large worldwide membership (known as "Moonies"), but is still considered a cult by many. But this was a cult with a difference. While most cults were considered dirty Commie free-love hippies who are against capitalism by most people in post 1960s America, the Unification Church not only embraced capitalism, but made it front and center in it's various operations. They hated Communism. Members were clean and upstanding people.

One of my neighbours was a Moonie. He drove a nice car and owned a restaurant. At no time during my first two months of knowing him had I ever suspected he was a Moonie. But one day, religion snuck into our conversation and he casually mentioned he was a member of the Unification church. I wasn't upset or nervous about it. He didn't try to convert me. It was his thing, not mine.

But alternative religions were not looked upon kindly in 1981. We were a nation still in shock over the 1978 People's Temple mass suicide and anti-cult groups sprang up for families to "deprogram" other family members who were inducted into them.

The revelation of this chain being owned by the Moonies led to assorted accusations of the true intent of Go 'n Joy stores. Some parents believed the Unification Church was actively using the store chain as a front to lure young people into the religion.

While many young people (including myself at that time) occasionally stopped at a Go 'n Joy for a burrito and a soda, maybe played a video game, no one there ever gave me any leaflets. Nor do I remember seeing any. No one there ever asked me if I heard of Reverend Moon, that kind of thing. They wouldn't have lasted ten minutes if they did in that more religiously partisan time.

Unable to control the negative publicity, the Go 'n Joy chain was quietly sold. Some locations were sold to 7-Eleven, which used some locations as expansion outlets for their then recent acquired Hoagy's Corner chain of deli/convenience stores. Others to independent operators. In 1982, Rev. Moon was convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

The Unification Church still owns lots of businesses. But today, the same outrage there was in 1981 doesn't exist now as people today are less concerned with the religion of a business operator and more eager for a good deal.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon passed away in 2012.

GREAT News For Fans of Classic Home Video Games Of The '80s!

Miss your Atari 2600 or 7800? Your Colecovision, Odyessy or Astrocade?

Guess what? Internet Archive now has hundreds of playable ROMs on their web site. Note: There currently is no sound for them. But IA is going to add it soon.

You can find them here.

Christmas Tinner

 If you just can't put down the game controller of the PS4 or X-Box One Santa (may) bring you for Christmas, I have GREAT news.

Layer one – Scrambled egg and bacon
Layer two – Two mince pies
Layer three – Turkey and potatoes
Layer four – Gravy
Layer five – Bread sauce
Layer six – Cranberry sauce
Layer seven – Brussel sprouts with stuffing – or broccoli with stuffing
Layer eight – Roast carrots and parsnips
Layer nine – Christmas pudding

No need to break out the "good" dishes, just eat it right out of the can! (But then again, when your idea of interior decorating include fake bookshelf wallpaper, who needs formality?)

 Sadly for the rest of us, it's only available in the UK.... And completely SOLD OUT this year.....

http://www.game.co.uk/en/game-christmas-tinner-181968?pageSize=20&categoryIdentifier=10210

The Thompson Twins Vinyl Video Game

 The Thompson Twins were a 1980's pop group, best known for their hits "In The Name Of Love", "Lies", "Doctor Doctor" and "King For A Day"

(....and just for the record, none of them are twins and neither of them are named or surnamed Thompson....)

They were among a handful of '80s pop groups (including Journey, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and The Stranglers) that had their own video games. In the case of The Thompson Twins, their game came on a vinyl flexi-disc in Quicksilva magazine for the ZX Spectrum computer in the UK (and the Timex Sinclair ccomputer in the USA) Both were short lived home computers (as most were in the '80s.)

You had to play this record on your turntable and record it onto a cassette tape. Then play it on the external cassette drive of the computer (sold seperately) and wait for it to load up. Which took a good 10 minutes.

And when you were done, you had a playable game.

The graphics were horrible (but this was also 1984.) and it was pretty much a very lousy text-based video game. But in 1984, this was state of the art.

Conquer The Video (Game) Craze - 1982

If you STILL love those classic '80s arcade games (and WHO doesn't?) There was a very special vinyl LP they made back in 1982 for you that you probably need to know about.

Surprisingly, even in the age of the Walkman, this NEVER got released to CASSETTE. When it mattered. It was on vinyl only...

It is an album filled with video game tips on how to defeat anything from Dig-Dug to Defender....Centipede to Pac-Man (for the arcade classics, but may work just as well for your more accurate home video games versions.)

Good luck figuring how all that translates out on a typical PS/X-Box/Wii controller.

Halloween Hits: "Butcher Pete (Parts 1 & 2)" Roy Brown (1950)

You might know Roy Brown better as the original singer (and writer) of the classic "Good Rockin' At Midnight" (famously covered by The Honeydrippers in the '80s, who's version became a New Year's Eve party classic.) But in 1950, he released this disturbing little ditty (you can also heard it in the soundtrack of the video game Fallout 3.)