Products and Projects of Nostalgia
There are few things in life I dread more than second-hand embarrassment and second-hand awkwardness. I mean, I don’t much care for the first-person variants either—and this is a privileged worry in a world rife with serious issues—but damn do I hate that feeling. The tortuous one that rushes up your spine, through your neck, and settles into your brain behind narrowed vision and raised eyebrows above a polite frown. You’ve been there before. And now you get to relive that once-thought-forgotten-but-somehow-all-too-familiar notion as it plays out for some other poor soul.
For me, these kinds of spontaneous reflections are particularly difficult because they bring me back to a very specific era, one that I don’t reflect on with any real fondness: that time spent navigating adolescence, innocently creating what’s simply labeled these days as “cringe.” That’s not to say self-reflection and vulnerability aren’t important, but I absolutely hate being casually reminded of that particular slice of my past—whether I’m waiting for the train, standing in line or coffee, sitting at the bar, or even watching it out play out on television. “Fuck me,” I’ll mutter under my breath as I stand up, fold my arms, and pace around while glaring at the TV. All while my girlfriend once again asks: “Really‽”
Reddit (in spite of its awful self) has a whole online forum dedicated to discussing these kinds of sophomoric memories. Aptly titled “The Blunder Years,” it’s a section of the internet that I can’t bare to look at for more than a few seconds lest the photos, screenshots, and recollections transport me back to some awkward situation in my youth that no one else remembers (but what if they do?). Granted, this type of nostalgia is relatively good-natured, but I resist it with full force. Hell, it’s happening to me at this moment. Here I am typing away at something I plan to post on the internet, immediately reminded of the online journals so many of us used to keep—and for some reason—make public.
I have a personal cutoff for where these types of memories seemingly end, though. 2007. That’s when I was free from high school and started this website. Yeah, there’s loads of earlier postings and stories that might feel a tad embarrassing from where I now stand (maybe this story itself will be one in a few years), but I can rationalize those. Accept them. They’re honest reflections of who I was at different periods in life, but they all came after I had a somewhat vague idea of myself. Most of the stuff before that, though? Yeah, I never wanted to revisit that.
Until now.
I think that shirt belonged to my mom, the hat belonged to my buddy Nick, and the shorts were uniform issue from the amusement park I worked at. Still have, and love, that guitar.
Personal nostalgia ebbs and flows based on our experience, age, background, and surroundings. Now at 35-years-old, it’s the first time I’ve ever embraced looking back at my own “blunder years.” Not for any particular moment, fashion choice, or music selection, though. For me, it’s technology. Recently, I’ve found this appreciation for an era that came during the death of dial-up and the rise of speeds that made sharing through the infantile roots of social media possible. All while using computers which were becoming powerful enough for things like multimedia. This era—the “early aughts” as they’re known—was when I first started using said technology to discover what it was I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, how I wanted to create art, express myself, and communicate. It was my first foray into digital cameras, video editing, and garnering an audience. A time rife with low-resolution images and Windows XP error screens. All of it set to the soundtrack of ska’s third wave.
For years now, my work has often coincided with looking back in time. That’s something I’ve been able to appreciate while also embracing the present. Still, there’s some “retro” stuff I do love. Take 35mm film cameras for instance. Many of my film cameras came from my late grandfather and I find 35mm so appealing because the image quality still holds up in the modern day while the look evokes a different time. Papa was kind enough to give me several of his older cameras, but there was a digital one I never bothered to take back home with me: a CASIO Exilim.
And why would I? My own digital cameras from that era are tucked away in sentimental storage, my modern cameras are far more powerful than anything that was on the market back then, and even the phone in my pocket is capable of better image quality. But then, I started watching “LGR.”
CASIO Exilim EX-S600.
Known formally as Lazy Game Reviews, I don’t think I’ve ever watched an actual video game review from this YouTube Channel. Rather, I’m obsessed with the host’s features on older technology—particularly the segments on products from those previously mentioned formative years of mine. What started as just something casual and fun to watch while making dinner quickly became an obsession. One that inspired me to grab that CASIO camera and also put together some of the projects seen here.
So, here are some things I’ve been working on and sentimental pieces of technology I’d like to eventually do something with.
• • •
“Here’s to the Night(s)” of Windows Movie Maker
This particular project started when my friend, Will, shared with me how he documented his buddy’s recent bachelor party. Looking to do something unique, he acquired a version of the now discontinued Windows Movie Maker software in an effort to replicate the digital aesthetic of the new millennium. Running the old video editing software on a modern computer, his end result turned out great, but the obsolete program struggled when trying to process photographs and video from a contemporary smartphone that produced files larger than anything it was ever designed for. As I sought to do a similar project, I didn’t want to try and run a virtual machine or dig up a computer that still ran Windows XP (more on that later). I am nostalgic, not patient, after all.
So this is the process I came up with:
Using Final Cut Pro, I replicated the iconic look of the Windows Movie Maker software in font and color choice. Unfortunately, using modern software had its drawbacks because everything is so damn powerful now that even when I tried to force the quality to be “bad,” the software still processed things unbelievably well—rendering the whole production with surprising clarity no matter what I threw at it. Eventually, after a lot of tinkering, I was able to downgrade things enough so that they matched the vibe I was looking for. The next step was getting a camera.
It’d be easy enough to shoot with a modern device and dumb the quality down, but I wanted something a bit more authentic—hence the previously mentioned CASIO Exilim EX-S600 digital camera. Released in 2005, my grandfather’s former camera was the perfect “relic,” if you will. The card inside even still had some pictures on it, including this great one of him with his then newly purchased Cadillac in 2009:
This camera had it all: poor focus, a flash that guaranteed red eye, a goofy digital sound in place of the “shutter.” It evoked the look and feel of its era perfectly. The last thing I needed was an event to document. That came in the form of an evening with “Tiki Trav,” my friend’s alter-ego when he’s slinging drinks at parties. The camera performed almost too well. In fact, the one “flaw” I wanted as a “feature” didn’t seem to exist.
Test images made with the CASIO.
A holdover from the days of simple film cameras, digital cameras were often programmed to permanently stamp a date and/or time of capture onto their images. This was a common visual cue of the early digital era and something you often couldn’t get around. Thus, you’d end up with good (but not great) resolution photos that displayed ugly text in the same corner, regardless of orientation, whether you wanted it or not. This particular CASIO, however, was apparently one of the manufacturer’s first models to not feature such an annoyance. In turn, the watermarking feature is only available as an option through some sort of proprietary printing software that exists on the camera itself. To get date and time stamps, users had/have to connect the camera to a physical dock, navigate the menu, activate the feature, and wait for the camera to export new files to a connected printer.
The CASIO on its dock.
That’s my best guess anyways. I eventually gave up on trying to figure out how this feature worked and locating a computer/printer to try it with was going to be too much of a time suck, so I used Photoshop.
Authentic? Not really.
Visually accurate and achieving the look I wanted? Absolutely.
Once I had all the images ready and the video template down, I needed a song. Using a good song wasn’t really an option. It had to be something not just of the era, but also an example that someone in the mid 2000’s would’ve chosen. Someone who would’ve had the tools, patience, and resources to not just make a slideshow like this, but also share it to places like MySpace and PutVideo, as well as, early versions of Facebook and YouTube.
After gathering lots of suggestions, nearly everyone recommended Eve 6’s “Here’s to the night.” Objectively, not a horrible song, but certainly a cheesy one that was incredibly popular in the era I was trying to mimic. After some detailing, I landed on the final product:
• • •
Windows XP
Like I mentioned with the slideshow project: using a virtual Windows XP machine, the original Windows Movie Maker software, or an old computer were options—but, not ones I wanted to pursue due to time and convenience. However, the whole process got me remembering Windows XP—the operating system of my youth and the last Windows OS I’ve ever used with any non-day job related regularity. After coming across an article on how to get the OS to run on an iPad via virtual emulation, I tried it out myself on a 2016 9.7 inch iPad Pro.
The connected keyboard, with its Waffle House-esque color scheme (that’s more for sight assistance than style), was also rescued from my late Grandfather’s office alongside the aforementioned CASIO camera.
It took a full night to properly install Windows XP and once it was done—the first thing I did was play SkiFree, Minesweeper, and 3D pinball. I’d love to show you all that, but I forgot the password.
Nothing I tried works
I could re-install it on the iPad, but the initial debacle took so long and it is a 20+ year old operating system after all, so it’s unlikely I’d use it for anything actually productive. If you’ve got a good idea for what to do with a weird Windows XP set up, though, I’d love to hear it.
• • •
Stuff I’d Like to Use in Some Way, At Some Point
I used the 9.7 inch iPad Pro for the XP project because it’s my old one with a bum battery. I kept the device because it had no trade-in value when I purchased a new model a few years back. Despite being completely wiped and not something I used anymore with regularity, I just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Same thing happened with my iPad Mini before it. I’ve tried to find other uses for these machines over the years (digital remotes, reading devices, multimedia interfaces), but they’re so slow that it became too tedious to even try and do anything productive with them. Still, I couldn’t let them go into the abyss. And there’s a few other things I’ve kept too:
Look, I’m pretty good about not holding onto things I don’t need, but there’s some stuff I just can’t say goodbye to and the above devices are a few examples. Maybe one day I’ll figure out something to do with them. They could be fun to display photographs on, for example, although the software of each item—and getting images there—then becomes a challenge (the Blackberry Playbook, for example, never worked well in the first place (and I’ve got a whole story about how I bought that off of a guy in the Waffle House parking lot)).
• • •
Game Boy Color
I’ll never forget the day that my sisters and I received Game Boys for Christmas. My parents were unequivocally not video game people and unwrapping these handheld devices came as a complete and total surprise. I’ll never part with my “atomic purple” Game Boy Color because of that. Its transparent, molded plastic is such a distinct style of the era. A visual aesthetic found all across late 90s/early 2000s technology whether it was made by Nintendo, Apple, or the godforsaken brand known as eMachines.
I’m honestly not sure how I even played this thing as a kid, though. Since these models lack a backlight, I can’t see the screen unless it’s perfectly situated beneath a strong light source. A far cry from when I used to stay up all night playing this thing in the dark with the only light being from the third-party LED lamp seen attached in the photo above. Maybe it’s how my eyesight has changed with age or an over reliance on well-lit, modern screens—but it’s hard to play the Game Boy Color these days for more than just a few minutes. I’d love to keep it in my bag or bring it when traveling as a way to distract myself without using the internet, but it’s just way too difficult to use regularly. There are folks out there who can install backlights into these, but I’m terrified of it getting lost in the mail.
Either way, I still love the thing and will occasionally play some Frogger when killing time. Too bad they never made more adult-oriented games, though. I have zero interest in Pokémon now, but I’d gladly play Sudoku and I’m very tempted to try out this “organization” cartridge which mimicked the functionality of PDAs/Palm Pilots (although, thirty dollars is pretty steep for something I won’t really be able to see or sync).
• • •
Polaroid Postcards
At some point in my former life as an Apple Store employee, I acquired this gimmicky Bluetooth printer made by Polaroid (not the original Polaroid company). The idea with this product was that you could wirelessly connect it to your phone and print small images onto sheets of paper that feature a removable, sticker back.
The test photograph seen here is an abandoned roller coaster from this story.
The whole process is agonizingly slow, produces poor results, and the Bluetooth connection rarely holds even if the battery somehow manages to stay charged for more than two photographs—so, the novelty wore off quickly and the device was relegated to deep storage for years. I wanted to try and find a more “productive” use for it, though. Something that could at least make use of what proprietary Polaroid printer paper I still had lying around.
What I ended up doing was picking out some of my favorite/best-known/most-read stories from over the years. The thought was to print off one photograph from each subject and pair it with a printed QR code that linked to the corresponding story. Small bits of sticker graffiti that I could slap up around town (probably the closest I’ll ever get to creating any kind of street art).
After printing out all of the needed images/graphics over the course of an evening, I slapped up the stickers around my neighborhood (I also had to use clear packaging tape because the actual sticker part of the paper isn’t that great at the one things it’s supposed to do).
Within a week, they were all ripped down:
Have another idea for this printer down the road, though.
• • •
“Turtle Pizza”
When I started putting this collection/post together, I shared the idea with my friend, Phil Armstrong—a solid dude and frequent collaborator who instantly “got” it (if you look in the slideshow above, he’s the guy using a VHS camcorder). That’s when he told me about this little setup of his:
Hooked up to some retro gaming systems, this old-school CRT television/VCR combo sits in the corner of his basement and perfectly evokes a past era of technology. To document it, we made this video featuring an era-appropriate commercial:
“Turtle Pizza",” by the way, is the term Phil and I use for really good pizza (like the slice seen in the media above) that looks like something the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would eat in the cartoon. To get the commercial to play (although we couldn’t get the aspect ratio spot on), the tv was actually hooked up as an “external monitor” to a MacBook Pro.
• • •
Roller Coaster Tycoon
The last subject to discuss here is the greatest game of all time: Roller Coaster Tycoon. I’ve got a whole thing about this game and that’s part of a larger story for an another day, but for now, here’s the gist:
I’ve been playing RCT since my tenth birthday when I immediately became obsessed with the game’s subject matter, strategy, and mechanics. I got away from it for a while because I started using Apple devices (back when the game was still Windows exclusive), but in 2013—after a lot of trial and error—I was able to get the original game tepidly running on a Mac. A few years later in 2016, I no longer had to worry about my fragile, bootleg arrangement because the game was released on iPad (and later: officially for Mac).
Screenshot of Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic on an iPad.
Since then, I’ve continued to play regularly, but there’s been several advancements made in the community surrounding the game. These days, OpenRCT2 exists as a modded version of the game that not only allows the player infinitely more creativity, but even comes with modern updates so users can create contemporary rides and parks. 25 years on, the game is still just as good.
The problem I encountered, however, was that much like the original game, OpenRCT2 was originally (and understandably) geared only towards computers running Windows. Lacking a PC, I just continued to play the iPad version, creating and designing within the game’s original limitations (which could be both frustrating and creatively rewarding). When a friend passed on a relatively modern (but well-used) Windows laptop that was initially bound for the landfill, I decided that I’d use it to do a full install of OpenRCT2 and turn that device into a dedicated Roller Coaster Tycoon machine. A piece of offline technology I could dedicate solely to one task, justified as mindfulness and intention. I even bought some RCT-inspired stickers for the computer whose sole purpose would now be allowing me to play an old video game free of distraction.
Should’ve checked the charger/battery before I bought those stickers, though, because I never could get the thing going. Years of TEAMS and Outlook had taken their toll and it simply wanted to be put out of its misery.
The good news, however, was that OpenRCT2 was now much easier to get running on a Mac. I could’ve used the original game cds (which I still have) for the installation, but I haven’t had a computer with a CD drive in over a decade. So, I bought a digital copy of the game during a Black Friday sale for a grand total of $2.68. After some finagling, I had OpenRCT2 up and running.
I’m stoked to play around with it, but the main reason I needed this setup was so that I could make screenshots for this post (the iPad version’s method of capturing screenshots is ridiculous).
Seen here are projects I initially built with the touch screen version of Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic for iPad:
The familiar tale of a modern shopping mall as told via RCT:
The RCT work I’m most proud of, however, is this custom-built park designed in the vein of larger regional/seasonal amusement parks that sprung up in the 1970s and grew over the decades. Everything is highly detailed from the block/storage systems of the rides to the general layout and even maintenance pathways, as well as, parking gates. All of it made while attempting to creatively use the game’s limitations as a benefit.
Ultimately, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with any of this. I’ve debated putting together something like a YouTube series (that would also cover the real work I do), but primarily: this game/activity is mostly just my favorite way to relieve stress and zone out. If you have any thoughts/ideas/suggestions or interest in such a series, though, let me know.
I’ve also started playing Parkitect, Roller Coaster Tycoon’s spiritual successor. In that game, however, I mainly just recreate defunct rides and old fast food restaurant designs:
Nothing beats the original Roller Coaster Tycoon, though. Even after all these years, it’s still a great game and one that I have a deep, personal connection to.
• • •
My friend Jake/Jonathan once said to me: “Ten years is a recollection, twenty years is a _______.” Neither of us remember what that last part was, but it came up over the course of a few beers one night while we reflected on how all the bands we once loved (and some we still love) are now doing these “album anniversary” tours. A lot of the stuff featured in this post could go into the blank space of that quote since it seems to center on a time from around two decades ago in my life. My experience of aging and reflecting isn’t unique, but the hallmarks of certain time periods are—and this whole notion is something I’ve really enjoyed exploring lately. Nostalgia can be mind altering and addictive, but if the subjects shared here and all of my work since 2007 has taught me anything: the past wasn’t always better, it was just personal. And still to this day, it can be a creative influence.
Or maybe that’s my way of justifying playing too much Roller Coaster Tycoon when I should’ve been doing something more productive.
Since 2007, the content of this website (and its former life as Queen City Discovery) has been a huge labor of love.
If you’ve enjoyed stories like The Ghost Ship, abandoned amusement parks, the Cincinnati Subway, Fading Ads, or others over the years—might you consider showing some support for future projects?
