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2019: The Decay Went Digital

This year in Tedium we spent a lot of time diving into old tech and thinking about how those old gadgets will survive in a new world. Also, we wrote a lot of things about weird music, video games, and history. We also reminded people that Penn Jillette once was a major technology magazine columnist.

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December 2019

Hindsight Is 2020

The decade’s over, and Tedium is another year older. Here’s some thoughts on the past, future, and preservation amid our fifth anniversary.

Pure Polycarbonate

Nintendo copied Apple, while Apple copied Braun. Why are there so many electronics made of white polycarbonate, no matter the decade?

Four Things A-Weirdin’

The roots of a whole bunch of holiday-season things we do without even bothering to question their origins. Use this knowledge to sound smart this year.

Four Songs A-Listenin’

Celebrating weird, wonderful, and somewhat less heralded holiday music as we continue our yuletide celebration. Bring headphones with a built-in Santa hat.

Four Things A-Watchin’

Tedium starts a holiday series by recommending a bunch of holiday things that might have fallen off your watch lists … if they were ever there.

Gifts From People Who Don’t Try

It’s that time of year, when Tedium publishes an annual gift guide intended for people your indifferent towards. The goal, of course, is alienation.

Tesla For Tots

It took a while for Power Wheels to get the right branding, but the tiny motorized cars eventually took the toy aisles by storm—despite recall-worthy flaws.

Know Who’s Calling?

Over the past 35 years, our views on privacy and Caller ID technology have totally flipped. The concern used to be about the caller. Now, it’s the recipient.

When a Brand Ruins Your Faves

For the last couple of months, Facebook has leaned on The Muppets to help salvage its damaged reputation on privacy issues. Hey Facebook, could you please not?
November 2019

Not Toying Around

What gives hit toys such a strong gravitational pull? Lots of marketing helps, as a hit Netflix series shows, but our own relationship with toys matters most.

A Parade Of Ragamuffins

Before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade became a New York City icon, another holiday event once took place at the same time. The department store won.

Paper That You Bake

What the heck is parchment paper, where did it come from, and why is it such a prominent baking aid these days? So many questions—here’s my attempt to answer.

Pac-Man Pattern Fever

Pac-Man’s fun and addictive nature captured public imagination and kicked off an entire culture of video game mastery that’s still going strong today.

Text By Procedure

A short history of procedurally generated text, which both humans and computers have had a hand in making throughout history.

Write Everything Down

What makes someone obsessively journal every moment of their life? In some cases, it might actually be hypergraphia, a condition tied to a neurological trait.

Just The Fax, Ma’am

Newspapers once saw fax machines as an opportunity to distribute breaking news to the masses—then they saw it as a way to reach the niches. Neither worked out.

Internet Synthesis Protocol

How the professional-minded MIDI format, for an incredibly short but memorable period of time, became the primary way music was shared on the internet.
October 2019

Lint, Filtered

Like lint? This article is for you. Learn why dryers produce lint, and how the lint roller came into existence. It's the lintiest article you'll ever read.

Shear Moonlight

Deep into Queens, there's a business operating 24 hours a day that most wouldn't expect. But in the city that never sleeps, should you expect anything else?

Pumpkin-Spice Pop Culture

The spooky, symbiotic relationship between Halloween and pop culture. We’ll be right back, after these messages.

Historic Digital Places

Corporate motivation isn’t enough when it comes to digital preservation. Here’s a case for creating a National Register of Historic Places for websites.

After After Hours

Nearly a decade after one of the most popular commercials of all time, the body wash Old Spice once hawked to millions of YouTube users is pretty hard to find.

Taboola Before Taboola

Taboola and Outbrain have changed the game for advertising on the internet with ads driven by weird images. This novelty company had the idea first.

The Remote Part

Two years ago, a tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean got its first airport—perhaps the world’s most obscure airport. It was expensive, but can St. Helena thrive?
September 2019

All Penn, No Teller

Pondering the success that Penn Jillette, the loud half of Penn & Teller, found as a sometimes-rebellious big-name computer magazine columnist in the ’90s.

Doing Things The Wrong Way

Pondering the way that the creative process is often directed by rules which, in many cases, stifle creativity. Sometimes, you just have to throw the rules out.

Compact Disc Duality

The DualDisc format, which combined CDs with DVDs, led a fleeting and ephemeral existence, despite a heavy push from the music industry. What happened?

Record Refresh

Is it a good thing when new types of statistics allow sports fans to see old players in a whole new way? Because that’s what’s happening with sports stats.

The Free Ride’s Over

For decades, ad-supported free daily newspapers defined commuting. But the Washington Post Express’ demise shows the model is headed towards the history books.

The Wires Barely Reach

It took a while for the internet to turn into a major global force, but it wasn't for lack of trying. (Peter Gabriel deserves at least some of the credit.)

Jumping-Off Point

What the heck is a jumpstation, and why did it fade from internet nomenclature? It’s complicated, but the web’s first search engine is in there somewhere.

Innovation Versus Preservation

How we keep screwing over yesterday’s technology due to an intent focus on what we’re doing today. The problem of planned obsolescence is getting worse.
August 2019

Pressure-Fried Patents

Pondering the role that patents and trade secrets play in fast food, particularly the ones that helped enable the rise of the fried chicken sandwich wars.

Marketing in Ernest

For two decades, Ernest P. Worrell was basically the perfect regionally franchised TV advertising mascot—and showed Jim Varney’s sheer brilliance. Knowhutimean?

Social Reunion Tour

Thoughts on returning to an old social haunt after half a decade away—and whether you should go back to an old social network you stopped using a few years ago.

No Nunchucks

How the quirks of a conservative British censor led one of the most popular cartoons in history to appear in censored form during the height of its success.

Risk, Reassessed

A recent paramotoring tragedy involving a well-known YouTuber highlights the complex relationship we have with risk—even when the stakes are clear to us.

Smartphones, Except Landlocked

Before the smartphone fit in your pocket, it sat on your desk—and sometimes, it was even called an iPhone. Let’s check out a few landline smartphones.

Virtual Crate Digging

Being a collector of physical media (mostly vinyl) in the digital age changes the experience to some degree. Much of it comes down to the all-knowing algorithm.

Rental Self-Own

How the music industry let the perfect solution to file-sharing fall through its fingers in the ’80s—or how record rentals bolstered Japan’s music industry.

Gateway Country

Thinking about the globalization of the computer industry through a tech company so American it prominently promoted its birth on an Iowa farm on its packaging.
July 2019

Is This A Light That Never Goes Out?

What are the odds that a newfangled LED light bulb will make it past the century mark like a couple lucky incandescent bulbs have? Well, it’s too soon to know.

Channel None

For nearly 30 years, many schools aired a daily news show in exchange for free AV equipment. Channel One was a hit—but the ads drove seemingly everyone crazy.

Pressing Forward

Mechanical keyboards have become hip again, despite near-complete disinterest in the form by mainstream computer-makers. The little guy is picking up the slack.

Eat Them Up, Yum!

How Barnes & Barnes’ oddball hit “Fish Heads,” complete with music video directed by Bill Paxton (really), became an unlikely breakout star of novelty music.

Driver Disaster

Why USB ports changed the world for the better, or what I learned from a futile month of trying to get a 25-year-old webcam working on a modern PC.

You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get

An inside look at one of the strangest restaurant chains in recent history in honor of the 25th anniversary of the movie that inspired its existence.

The Air of Superiority

For more than 100 years, the cool breezes of air conditioning have taken hold around the world. It took us about as long to even consider the side effects.

Simulated Fireworks

How computers have helped to reinvent fireworks displays through timing and elaborate simulation techniques. It’s kinda like a mix of old and new technology.

Piggyback Journalism

The history of the backpack, and why misinformed people seem to assume that they’re for kids. Here’s a story worth keeping in your knapsack.
June 2019

Adventures In Interactivity

Interactive text adventures were a big part of the early days of gaming—and still lots of fun today. Who needs fancy graphics when you have your imagination?

New Emails, Old Tech

How HTML helped, then hindered, the evolution of email, or why all those fancy marketing emails you get in your inbox still rely on HTML tables in 2019.

The Other Windows

Before Windows became a fact of life for most computer users, a scrappy upstart named GeoWorks tried taking Microsoft on. It failed, but it gave us AOL.

Holding Patterns

The unusual state of hold music, which works pretty much the opposite way that every other kind of music does, for reasons both technical and psychological.

It’s Just A Swipe Away

Vintage technology has powered the innards of the NYC subway system for decades—and sometimes, it surfaces in interesting ways. This one’s for you, OS/2 fans.

Not iPod, iPAQ

There was a time when the iPAQ was ubiquitous part of the handheld market. But before that, the forgotten Compaq-borne brand surfaced in many bizarre contexts.

Upgrade Arbitrage

The charm of buying old workstation hardware on the cheap to support your modern computing needs. If it doesn’t work for them, it might just work for you.
May 2019

The World’s Most Pawsome Mascot

The story of the world’s greatest video game mascot, as it’s never been told before! Let’s discuss how great Bubsy T. Bobcat is … according to Bubsy T. Bobcat!

Michael Wolff’s Internet Book Empire

The Trump administration tell-all scribe has a history with digital publishing that goes way back. In fact, he edited one of the first guides to the internet.

Learning At 300 Baud

The story of the world’s first Electronic University, which came to life a lot earlier than you might expect given that moniker. Modems were involved.

The Great Novelty Songwriting Contest

The enduring role of the contests in the novelty songwriting world—a phenomenon that started with Dr. Demento and today reflects one of its late, great icons.

Photon Phailure

Microsoft’s late-era Windows Phone 7 did away with a decade of evolution. Its Photon project tried to do the same—while keeping the Windows Mobile legacy alive.

Total Edutainment Forever

The problem with edutainment in the 1990s was that, while it covered the education, it didn't do enough to entertain the kids. Sorry, Math Blaster.

Old Computers, New Inspiration

Some of the best highlights from the 2019 edition of VCF East, the long-running retro computing event that puts vintage machines in a modern context.

Wiki-Fail

Looking with fresh eyes at the Wikitorial, the Los Angeles Times’ extremely misguided attempt to bring the wiki concept to the newspaper editorial page.
April 2019

The Imperfect Perfect

In 2012, pitcher Justin Verlander did something unprecedented for a sport that had seen nearly everything—and a new breed of baseball stat nerds noticed.

Enter The Matrox

Is there a more misunderstood technology company than Matrox? Let’s ponder the second life of the graphics card maker, long considered a 3D graphics also-ran.

Meet Weird Paul

The musical journey of Weird Paul Petroskey, a guy who's been making albums and vlogs since the ’80s—and on the latter count, you should see his receipts.

Broken Bells

The evolution of the doorbell, and some spare thoughts inspired by a doorbell malfunction in the middle of the night on a weekend.

Our Annoying National Upgrade

The benefits of digital television conversion were clear, but convincing everyone to upgrade their sets? For the U.S. government, that was the hard part.

The Ghosts of Windows 3.1

The weird places that Windows 3.1 showed up throughout the ’90s, including a hated CD-i competitor and an unusual update of the Commodore 64.

It’s 10 O’Clock Somewhere

Pondering the power of the public service announcement, including one PSA in particular that has maintained an unusual cult following.

Eat More, They’re Healthy

The ’90s defining treat might have been SnackWell’s, a low-fat cookie brand that sold itself as healthy, but really just exposed public health policy failures.
March 2019

Moondog’s Long Howl

The deep influence of Louis “Moondog” Hardin, a cult musician known for dressing like a viking, making his own instruments, and composing without limits.

The Sound Of Nostalgia

The iconic tones of the Sega Genesis have proven tough to recreate in the modern day—but the Analogue Mega Sg might be the solution for that. Here’s our review.

Playing Around Throughout History

Educational toys are preferred by ambitious parents looking for an edge. Their recent history is marked by upheaval, mimicry, and bloodthirsty competition.

Let’s Break Up Adobe

Why the creative software giant Adobe deserves a place in the broader discussion of breaking up tech giants like Facebook and Google. It's not just Photoshop.

The Internet of Food

Online food delivery was probably secretly essential to the internet’s success, but it took a while for us to get a food option as good as Grubhub.

The Golden Comedo

Why acne medication, from Clearasil to Oxy Pads to Proactiv, is pure marketing gold, and has been for generations of blemished faces. Just ask Dick Clark.
February 2019

A Kernel Of Failure

How IBM bet big on the microkernel being the next big thing in operating systems back in the ’90s—and spent billions with little to show for it.

The Ice King Cometh

Why are ice cubes seemingly as American as unnecessary medical debt? Perhaps it’s all the hard work we used to put into acquiring all that ice back in the day.

Saved, But Not Forgotten

The evolution of saving in video games, from the password to the cloud, and nearly every obscure memory card format in-between.

Sent From My $10 Mac

Pondering the lessons on user experience to be gained from using a 14-year-old Mac Mini as a daily driver. Can it be done, honestly?

The Reese’s Piece

How a series of creative ads helped Reese’s peanut butter cups—and later, candy-coated peanut butter candies—conquer the world.

I Hack Because I Love

The Hackintosh has become a phenomenon in recent years, despite knotty ethical questions, because Apple’s neglected superfans won’t stop thinking different.

In Total Control

From the arcades to the living room, how the controller has evolved—and why one tech historian, Benj Edwards, started building his own.

Songs In The Key Of Baby

Pondering the unusual association serious electronic composers had with children’s music in the 1960s—especially Raymond Scott.
January 2019

The Platform Microsoft Forgot

The MSX computer standard was big in both Japan and Brazil. But despite a sizable cult, it may be the most obscure part of Microsoft’s history. Here’s why.

Having Fun On Stage

Pondering why, despite the fact that bands and musicians have to do it every single night, many suck at stage banter—particularly, but not limited to, Elvis.

It’s An Illusion, Michael

The important—and sometimes controversial—role that toy magic kits have played for magicians. (Never reveal a magician's secrets, right?)

Mean, Green Marketing Machine

During the early 1950s, you could not get away from chlorophyll at the grocery store—all thanks to a thinly sourced belief that the plant pigment fought odors.

Make Every Piece Count

For years, the beef industry has leaned on universities to discover new cuts of steak. Don't laugh: Meat science is behind at least one breakout hit.

The Barleycorn Measurement Scheme

How the Brannock Device—a measuring tool you’ve definitely seen but didn’t know the name of—made it a lot easier to figure out our shoe size.

Public Domain Disney

Disney is no friend of the public domain, but in honor of the public domain finally expanding, we wanted to appreciate Walt Disney’s contributions to it.

Blogging Bandwagon Jumpers

Are you starting a blog in 2019? Here's a list of some sites that I know are getting off the ground this year. Have one of your own? Let us know.

Let’s Save Blogging

The independent blog has been in decline for years. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s why you should start a blog in 2019—and host it yourself.

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