Far back into last year (far longer ago than it should have been) I wrote about an idea I had to cover the BBC Computer Literacy Project here on Xadara. It being a major part of computer history and one that, as the title implies, is very much British, I felt taking a look at […]
This is going to be a quick one, but I wanted to update readers who may be interested (all 3 of them) that I did become aware of a few links in my Bits and Bytes article series becoming broken. I had sourced links from 2 different YouTube accounts and one (Canadian Toast, I believe […]
Yesterday was a somewhat emotional day for those who follow current events in space exploration as NASA finally called an end of mission to the Opportunity rover on Mars. This little machine had been doing its thing on Mars for 15 years, roaming around doing science alongside its twin “Spirit” which reached its own end […]
You would be hard pressed to find someone who really cares about computer history, or that of Apple, who isn’t aware of the “1984” commercial announcing the Macintosh. Directed by Ridley Scott (of Alien fame) the commercial depicts a dystopian future where a “Big Brother” figure, displayed on a massive screen, talks to a mass […]
On January 24th 1984, Apple released the original Macintosh computer. That was 35 years ago today and, surprisingly, I’ve seen very little discussion about this online beyond where you would usually expect to see it – some hardcore fan discussion, a tweet from Apple CEO Tim Cook, and a few news pieces, certainly, but nothing […]
Being the age I am December 25th brings back fond memories of the Christmas days of my youth. This year was no different in that regard, but this year I noticed an odd pattern regarding those years and the “major” gift each year. Namely, the years 1993, 1998, and 2003. 25, 20, and 15 years […]
Anyone who has followed this site over the past few years will notice a few constants about what I write about – technology, gaming, social commentary, and space and rocketry. Given the depth of the articles I’ve written on the subject, my absolute love of that last category, space, and rocketry, is well documented. Even […]
The Great War. The War To End All Wars. World War I. Whatever name it goes by, the conflict which waged in Europe between 1914 and 1918 will go down forever as one of the most pivotal events in human history, rivaled only in magnitude by its successor, World War II. On November 11th, 1918 […]
The early days of the computer revolution were an incredible time for people who happened to have the right combination of skills, money, and just plain luck – a successful combination for anyone, sure, but especially so in the computer revolution of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Well known examples of this are people […]
Today, October 29th, 2018, marks 30 years since the release day of the Sega Mega Drive in Japan. This 16-bit beast, better known to us in the United States as the Genesis, would grow to become the first true threat to Nintendo’s dominance of the North American game market and would also grow to become […]
Let’s go back to October 29th, 1998. I was in 8th grade at the time. I don’t recall if I knew the launch of Glenn was happening that day – I want to think I was aware – but for whatever reason early in the afternoon that Thursday the students assembled in the school gym […]
On October 29th, 1998 the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center for a relatively typical 10-day mission in Earth orbit, save for one key element – onboard the vehicle was John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. To say this mission was a big deal at the time […]
The paralells between the American and Soviet space programs in 1967 to 1968 are quite strange. On January 27th 1967 America had the Apollo 1 Fire which resulted in the delay of the first manned flight of Apollo until October 1968 and the Apollo 7 Mission. The Soviet Union had a similarly bad situation with […]
Here we have a more “traditional” film regarding the flight of Apollo 7 – the typical official NASA Film covering the mission in concise detail, and what detail it is. The launch footage shown in this film is outstanding – an incredible close up of the Saturn IB booster as it lifts off of the […]
Here we have quite the interesting little bit of space history – the pilot of a series which was intended to follow every Apollo mission, but was cut short due to the perception of a “conflict of interests” between sponsors of the program itself and the television studio behinc it, KCET out of Los Angeles. […]