Tag: nostalgia
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WordArt is still supported... in Microsoft Outlook!
25 years ago, WordArt was everywhere. Nowadays, it's been quietly expunged from Microsoft Office. Except... Outlook, via a series of complicated hacks, can still render WordArt to this day! And I'm pretty curious exactly how it does so...
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Vanity Nameservers (White-Label DNS) in 2026
Back in 2006, adding vanity nameservers to my personal domains was just something I did as a matter of course, but - like most of the Internet - I don't bother any more. Until today, when I switched danq.me's nameservers to four subdomains of danq.me. For the sake of nostalgia!
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I bought a Sony Walkman
Andreas bought and restored an old Sony Walkman and the entire journey is a wonderfully-written journey down memory lane, coupled with some learnings about the inner workings of these once-ubiquitous devices. Beautiful.
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What Was Matt Thinking?
Ernie Smith from Tedium wrote about Matt's Script Archive, which back in the 1990s was a big part of how and why I learned to code in Perl. Let's take a trip down memory lane...
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The Lost Art of the Amusing WiFi Hotspot Name
Long ago, you could move to a new area, scan for local WiFi networks, and fully expect to see a wonderful diversity of different network names. Some named for their locations, sure, but others named for people, or fandoms, or just "fun" ones.
Has this art form died? Most residential SSIDs nowadays seem to just be the default one that comes with the basic router supplied by the ISP. Most commercial ones are just the name of the business. Sometimes you'll spot a phone configured for tethering but even that's usually just "Alice's iPhone" or similar.
I can't remember the last time I saw a "Chicken Crossed the Road to Steal Our Wifi" or a "Russian Hackers" or a "Routy McRouterface" or a "All Your Bandwidth Belong to Us" (okay, that last one's a bit dated). Has the art form died? -
Letting Games Die
Inspired by Mike Cook's argument that old video games should be allowed to die, I was inspired to jot down some of my own thoughts and experiences in the area of video game preservation.
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Questionnaire - Plain Text
Over on my other (even sillier) blog, I answered Ellane's questionnaire about how and why I use plain text. In plain text, of course.
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You don’t have to disconnect
Derek Slivers' post about being online only for an hour or two, every few days, inspired a lot of people. But I'd like to share Rishi Dass's rebuttal, and add my own thoughts about the importance of finding your own solution to some of the distractions and stresses of the always-online world.
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How an RM Nimbus Taught Me a Hacker Mentality
Thirty to thirty-five years ago, as a young and curious hacker, I broke out of the restrictions on my secondary school's computer lab and briefly achieved rockstar popularity amongst peers who, through my tools, could now play videogames instead of doing their coursework. But their interest in the results of my exploits were incompatible with my interest in the sheet joy of discovery... and, inevitably, this meant trouble.
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The internet’s hidden creative renaissance (and how to find it)
This article is good and touches on many sites, people, and topics that I care about... but it's painfully ironic that the author has written a post praising the independent Web... using Substack as their platform.
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Inspired by a conversation with Elle (@e11e@mastodon.social), I expanded my FreshRSS-to-blogroll generator to support injecting 88×31 buttons (where I have them) for folks I follow.
There's still a way to go, but my blogroll's looking a little prettier as a result.
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Nostalgia, Music, and Computers
It turns out that I get nostalgic about technology in the same way as I get nostalgic about music. Here's some things that take me right back to being nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen years old.
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![Image representing post: Why I Am So Tired [Video]](https://bcdn.danq.me/_q26u/2026/01/why-i-am-so-tired-title-card-978x480.jpg#27897)
Why I Am So Tired [Video]
A video version of my recent joke about why I'm so tired, which was also made available in article and podcast formats.
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Why I Am So Tired
After dusting off and modernising a joke I first read in a chain email from 1996, I can tell you conclusively that the reason that I'm tired is because I'm overworked.
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DOCTYPE
I received my copy of DOCTYPE magazine, a genuine 'type this program in and run it'-style programming magazine but for a modern world, and enjoyed writing, debugging, playing, and then considering refining Stuart Langridge's puzzle The Nine Pyramids.