Re: Retro Tech Confession

A relatable blog post by Dom talking about how actually dealing with retro hardware is not that fun for him.

Retro Tech Confession

I know many wonderful people who love retro tech and I love to watch those people be passionate about it. However, I discovered recently it is just not for me.

Read the Full Post by Dom Corriveau on his website

This was an interesting post to discover! It was the first one I found on my FreshRSS instance once I got home from work. In short, Dom talks about his experience not having fun while setting up an old laptop.

Honestly, I can relate! Although in a bit of a different way. I don’t really care that much about old computers, their speed or features, I already had a Windows XP desktop with 512MB of RAM in 2014 for some reason. I don’t particularly want to go even more backwards when that was already a pretty mediocre experience.

I definitely respect just enjoying the idea or the aesthetics of something, without necessarily wanting to get even deeper into the rabbit hole, or other aspects of the hobby. Like going from liking Warhammer 40K books, to buying figurines, or from collecting music vinyls to getting into high quality music players and audio equipment.

I think it is perfectly fine to stay in the surface, avoid going deeper, and enjoy what you do, because even if you don’t go down, you can still go sideways!

Dom mentioned retro-gaming briefly, for example. Readers know I am a complete fanboy of retro handhelds and with devices like the Anbernic RG35XX SP and stuff like its even more retro looking younger brother, the RG34XX, I think that’s a lot of retro for the money, and of course, this is not ancient hardware that takes a minute to boot, it is light, quick to boot, and tiny.

You can play around with it, games all the way up to the PSP and Dreamcast, Ports of light PC games with stuff like PortMaster, install custom firmware for it, run a Linux desktop on it or plenty of other stuff, and it will look as retro as it gets!

YES! This is secretly yet another post of mine trying ot coerce my readers into buying a retro gaming console, just do it already! DO IT.

Ok, sorry for that. Trying to go into a more serious tone again.

Going sideways, right. There is a lot of surface area, a lot of “beginner” stuff that you can do and be happy with, avoiding hiccups and feeling that you “don’t belong.”

It’s not even about things being “for beginners” or that you’re not a “true enthusiast” until you do X or Y, you just got to pick your battles and choose what you really want to get invested in.

Like, I have never even touched a sheet of double-sided tissue foil origami paper in my life, and I’ve enjoyed doing origami for half the time I’ve been alive already! and look at me! perfectly fine and dandy.

I pretty much already covered this topic about how being a “fake fan” isn’t really a thing, so feel free to check that post as well!

Just enjoy what you want to enjoy I guess, you can like retro tech without actually wanting to use it, or set it up, or buy it, if you are into it just because of the looks, so be it!

This is day 55 of #100DaysToOffload

https://fosstodon.org/@joel/114396928314784356