Be Excellent To Each Other

In a week or so Terminator 2 would have been out for 20 years!

Malc

I think XKCD put it better

http://xkcd.com/891/

Meh, so I'm in the 'older people' category

Me and Mrs AE have recently embarked on our odyssey of watching the complete X-Files boxset, tonight's episode was a not very good one about a killer sentient computer.

(HOW CAN SCULLY BE TALKING ON THE SAME PHONE LINE THAT HER COMPUTER IS BEING HACKED ON BY A SCARY EVIL MODEM AT THE SAME TIME THAT THE FBI IS TRACING THE CALL ON THE SAME LINE TOO? I HAD COMPUTERS AND MODEMS IN 1993 AND THAT SHIT JUST ISN'T POSSIBLE.)

Even Mrs AE, who isn't very 'computery' detected a certain high cheese factor about the episode, so I had to remind her that it was nearly twenty years old and computers were still a bit terrifying back then - and indeed are to be referred to as 'the computer' as if there might just be one of them.

Point being, X-Files is twenty years old and we both clearly remember it being a new and really exciting telly programme.

Overall though, Gillian Anderson is fifty million types of gorgeous and I hope I have some 'special dreams' about her soon.

See that baby? 20 years old now.

He never did catch that tenner, either.

I was talking to a guy who had just graduated the other day about top TV show Interceptor and how he'd been enjoying it on Challenge. It suddenly hit me that he wasn't born until 1990 and therefore wasn't even around when the show was being transmitted, which I can still remember so vividly.

Not to mention that the Pertwee era of Doctor Who was now 40 years ago! 40!

Urgh. I'm really not doin well at getting older.

Appetite for Destruction. That came out almost a quarter of a century ago.

I've been watching these on Sky Atlantic (with a few extra downloads for the ones too gory to show at 06:00) currently aprocaching the end of season 5, but yeah, there are a few things in there to make you feel old, I mean look at the size of the "mobile" phones!

Also I remember loads of stuff in the 90s being Widescreen, and having to watch in letterbox format on my crappy 14" TV, but everything from back then that's repeated now seems to have black borders on the sides! is this TV channels being crap, or my bad memory?

Malc

There is a bit of a trade off though. I'm 36 and that's all rubbish and whatever but, closer death aside, I wouldn't want to be growing up now. Things were either better in the 80s and 90s or were bad enough that you appreciate what's out now a bit more.

I enjoy gardening.

I prefer drinking in quiet pubs.

I can buy as many sweets as I want.

I have underpants older than Jedward.

Quoth New Model army:

"This golden age of communication means everyone talks at the same time"

Now, imagine being 14 - Facebook and mobiles mean all your actions are documented and distributed, and everyone shares their thoughts with meta-impunity... I watch the NEETs in my current job wrangling Facebook sometimes, my heart really goes out to them. When I was their age my stupid behaviour and all the shit I said was confined to whoever was there at the time. You'd think the ability to spaff all this teen crap online would enable people to be more balanced at that age in real life but no, if anything they seem more confused and attention spans have finally reduced to what TV always threatened to make them.

The really mental thing is they are all lightning fast on anything that approximates MSN messenger or a mobile device, but if tech deviates from that in any way it's 'shit' and there's little IT intuition there to solve problems. Compared to my generation who were new and uncomplicated when home IT was, I've friends who like me don't really understand much detail on what we're doing but have a feel for the underlying way of computing as opposed to it just always having been there in quite complex and disposable form.

/edit and we were watching something the other night with pretty girls in it and every time the camera was on one I was thinking "I'll bet she's really boring to talk to after a while" where five years ago I'd have been trying to imagine her perineum.

At 35 I'm really grateful that I got to grow up with our "industrial revolution" and have seen it in all its glory from pretty much the start. I can appreciate the advances, but i'm not overwhelmed by the change.

In other words, we all got old and boring and should kill ourselves now.

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Nah, it's just different generations have to find one another boring or we'd never grow up.

I heard someone describe the PS2 as "retro". They can GTFF.

Poor eyesight - I need specs

And of course NMA were MUCH MUCH better in the 80s as well. I lost interest in them when the first bassist (Stuart Morrow) left the band.



Yeah but like Stanhope says, everything's getting a bit lamer. I mean I grew up listening to punk music. Punk these days can mean Avril Lefuckingvigne. And metal music... fucking hell... is it mandatory to have a commercial-as-fuck singalong chorus these days?

When you start saying stuff like that is when you really know you're getting old. You'll be using the term "proper music" before long.

When I were a lad there was no such thing as bad music.

When I was a lad, Doug Stanhope was called Bill Hicks.

And was funny.

It was just two rocks being banged together, right?

DISAGREE!

I'm glad that I was around when the arcades had great games in them, and to see how the micro computer (showing my age here) evolved.

Yeah, the arcades were great but the dream was always to be able to play games like that at home. And now we have that and games beyond our wildest dreams all we do is moan. That's getting old.

Yeah, but playing them at home cannot compete with actually standing around playing them with your friends, and 1CCing them, and going out for trips to that there London or the seaside to play the latest games, etc.

The arcades were quite a social hub for me and my friends. Probably sounds sad, I know.

No, my balls slapping against your Mums arse.

Such a sweet melody.

Never mind.

I explained this to a 10 year old a few weeks back by showing CPC Space Harrier and then the full arcade version on MAME.

They seemed interested but it may have been out of pity for me.

Yes. I dreamt of having a computer powerful enough to play Paperboy and Gauntlet just like I did in the arcade.

I just visited "The Arcade Toyshop" where I used to go when I was a kid to buy toys. Happily its pretty much the same. The same friendly staff (one guy reminds me of Matthew Corbett) and the same massive choice of everything from video game figures to playmobil.

It made me feel young again so I bought a Duke Nukem figure and had a nice little chat.

That reminds me, there was never a home version of Planet Harriers.

"Why did you have a CPC instead of a C64 like all the cool uncles?"

About the only reason I'd look forward to going away on holiday was to play in the arcades and seeing if the machines I played last year were still there. With it being the likes of Rhyl, of course they were still there.

Seems odd to play something like Star Wars, Spy Hunter or Phoenix once a year. Now I can play them any time I want and don't play them at all.

I guess we were a bit spoiled living near Blackpool, it's just row upon row of utter mongs feeding fruit machines now

Yous is well old innit. piss off grand-dad. Haaaa peedo. lolz

O tempora o mores.

The eternal no score draw.

Haven't you got homework to do, young lady?

There was a C64 and a Speccy right there. The CPC was running on an emulator as I can't be bothered having the original hardware when CPC emulation has always been so good.

Seriously dude, stop with the funnies. With this and the Black Tie joke, you are putting us all to shame!

The surest sign that I am getting old is that back in my twenties I was in a Quake 2 clan and was a decent player killing people on the sight of the merest pixel. These days if I play CoD online I come up against someone like Nikachu who hurls a paperclip at me and kills me instantly before I can even bring my iron sights up.

I haven't got the patience of the general persistence levels required to get any good at the online stuff so I have turned into an offline curmudgeon taking solace in the odd Friends leaderboard placement instead.

to the max.

Since my early 20s I have to 'click' my left knee every morning, in the same way you would crack your knuckles.

Ha. When I walk down stairs my knees click so much it sounds like someone is playing the spoons.

I really need to get that sorted.

I know my limits. When it comes to amusing body based acts, I simply couldn't compete with the likes of Mr Methane.

Agreed. I love this forum.

My ankles sometimes click when I walk, loud enough to have woken up the baby on more than one occasion.

Every joint in my body cracks, from my toes to my neck. I can even crack my sternum on occasion.
I would say another sign of getting old is having a hang over at work. At least when I was a student I could stay in bed all day.