I’m a HUGE nostalgia nut. I grew up in two of the greatest decades ever to be a kid: the 80s and the 90s. From video games to music to computers and the internet, the 80s and 90s were a huge turning point in technology and culture. I’ll always be an 80s kid!
After many many years of the train room more or less looking the same, it seems today 6/4/2019 the Franklin Institute announced it will be renovating the train room and making it a two story affair!
While it’s awesome to hear the place is finally getting some updates, I really hope they plan to include many actual hands-on exhibits like they’ve done in the past, and not limit them to touch screens. Kids need to feel the weight of a train part, or be able to handle and see perhaps modern technology in modern passenger and freight trains. They can play with touchscreens at home!
I actually started writing this a couple days ago, trying to put some thought into how I would approach the reality that I’ve owned this domain for -literally- the last 20 years. Up until this year I’ve always had some minor amount of content on the site, mostly arcade-related stuff, and it’s been through many iterations of design (or lack thereof). I finally realized the design of the site was holding me back; trying to deal with themes, getting the colors right, getting the look down, etc all held me back from simply just USING the site or trying to find a solid direction for it. After some hosting issues that led to it being taken down for a while in 2018, combined with ditching Facebook, I decided to take the opportunity to start from scratch, go with the stock “blogging” theme, and this time, forego the “look” for now, and just start using the site.
That first line…owning something for 20 years…wow. For a kid that grew up in the 80s and 90s, I’m pretty sure neither myself nor anyone else I knew ever thought we wouldn’t be a kid at some point. We grew up in the age of video games and arcades, malls, Nintendo, Kiddie City, Toys R Us, the Simpsons, Saturday morning cartoons, riding our bikes until our parents yelled for us (no cell phones needed!), summers at the Wildwood beaches and winters sledding in the park. While there were definitely things going on, and we didn’t have a lot of money, life was good as a kid then, it seemed to last forever and we didn’t want it to end!
Fast forward to having my first job at a local computer repair shop (which also had a side business as an ISP), I had my first “real” web page, which usually came as a freebie site included with your internet account. If you didn’t have one, you may have also used sites like Geocities to host your own as well. Since there wasn’t a lot of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors yet, or at least any good ones, most people coded their pages manually, which in some cases resulted in some “really interesting” pages (aka really interesting train wrecks lol). Mine was no exception!
I didn’t have a lot of money then, but figured I would make what was likely my first investment into my career, by buying an internet domain, and learning how the process worked. Learning how to register it, learning how to set up DNS, learning how to code a web site and bring it online. Back then we didn’t have many choices for registrars, and if I’m not mistaken, you had your choice of: Network Solutions. That was it. With a deal in place to host the site through a friend, I plopped down some cash and purchased junknet.net. The name was always a joke…before the internet I wanted to run a BBS (it never came to fruition), and always figured since it was running on “junk” hardware, I would call it JunkNet to reflect it’s…humble stature. Sadly the BBS never officially made it public as I never had the money to get my own phone line, but it was only natural to continue the idea that I’d probably be running my own web site on junk computers anyway, so I just stuck with it.
Junknet.Net – Circa 2001 Junknet Web Design Group – HAH! (One possible career avenue anyway)
I tried hard to make my site look professional. I probably used CorelDraw back then to create the graphics, and immediately themed the site to my interests, which still remain valid to this day. Sadly, I couldn’t come up with content. I was too busy doing other things, living life and switching jobs to take the time to sit down and actually code more pages up with some actual content. It wasn’t like today where I can do this from my phone during my lunch break; I generally telnetted directly into the web server and edited the site using Pico (no Vi for me). Graphics were a pain to deal with then!
My one source of content came from a car show I found on happenstance; I’ve always been into Turbo Buicks since I got my Buick Regal, and driving through the Phoenixville, PA area one day, I came across a sign for a Turbo Buick car show. Since work happened to have a digital camera I used a lot on weekends, I was able to attend the show and take what seemed like a bazillion photos. The pics were popular and got mentioned in “The Source – Turbo Buick Newsletter” amongst other sites. I attended the show 2 more years and took even more pictures until it finally died out. From what I understand, the original folks creating the Newsletter had health issues and eventually stopped hosting the show.
The site had minor updates and variations after that; I added a page to host my friend’s artwork in 2003, I put up various posts, then in 2006, I redesigned the site with a new “dark” look many would consider “goth” at the time. I really wasn’t goth, but looking back I think I wanted to be…maybe…ish. Whatever.
Unfortunately, yet again life got in the way and the site sat like this for a while. Around 2008, I started messing with and collecting arcade games, and I wanted to finally use the site to show off what I was doing with the games, so I redid the site again into my first content management system: Joomla. To give it a look, I used the Firenzie Theme from Rockettheme.
Joomla was finally providing me a way to quickly update the site, it looked good (albeit boring) and I finally started using it a lot more often by posting updates about fixing and restoring my various arcade games. It worked, but alas, over time the page wasn’t updated, the Joomla CMS needed constant updates and attention, and I gave up on the idea of updating it, but let it remain online for what little useful content there was. That iteration finally died in 2018 when a billing issue took the site down (it was my fault), and rather than restore the outdated Joomla install, I figured I’d try something different.
I’ll be honest, at one point the name JunkNet didn’t appeal to me anymore. While I have a reputation for always having some “junk” laying around, I wanted to lose that connotation and go with something new. I bought up some different domains, but I never found anything that had the same “fun” factor as JunkNet, so I decided to keep it, only this time having it represent the “junk” in my head, since I have so many hobbies, interests, and useless knowledge, there’s definitely plenty of junk to go around lol.
Outside of the site, its amazing how much change would happen over 20 years. Thankfully I’m still around, while many of my former classmates, teachers, and relatives have unfortunately passed on. I went from a 100 pound scrawny nerd, to a not-so 100 pound not-so-scrawny nerd LOL, but trying to keep things in check. I’m not so clean shaven anymore, and my hair is actually longer than 1/4″ (ok its down to my neck). Computers changed from 486s, to Cyrix 5×86’s, to Pentiums, to Pentium IIs, then Pentium IIIs, and now you can get a laptop only fractions of an inch thick. My electronics know-how went from rudimentary, to being able to troubleshoot digital electronics at the component-level. Relationships, cars, hobbies, friends, social media, and everything else just seems like a blur now. Days, months, and years FLY by faster than ever. Many places I enjoyed visiting over the years are gone or changed, some held on longer than others. Personal web sites are truly a lost art to behemoths like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and countless other social media networks all vying for our livelihood, yet many still remain online even if frozen in time.
Anyway, now that you wish you had that 10 minutes back, I’ll wrap this up by shouting out another “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” to my first domain, Junknet.Net, and hope it’s still online for another 20 years, and hoping I keep it going this time, as well as that the internet remains a neutral, open community for the world to enjoy.
PS – Big thanks to archive.org and their “wayback machine” for capturing and keeping snapshots of various web sites, including both of mine over the past 20 years. I also want to give a shout-out to Net-Thing Inc. (now SeoPhilly.com), Paul S., Russell J., and several others over the years that have graciously hosted Junknet.net for me and helped me get started in all of this.
Yes, Radio Shack may still be around in some minor form and via web site, most of the stores, including all the ones in the PA area, are gone. Walking around the mall a couple days ago, I was reminded of what was once my favorite store, likely the only store I would really “shop” at in the mall….Radio Shack!
While in recent times, Radio Shack struggled to keep up with my massive need for all things technology, I did still frequent the store just to see what they had that was new, and especially what was on clearance. While they were all around, the one I remember and likely visited the most was the store at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, in Plymouth Meeting PA. Every now and than I would manage to find a connector, a weird battery, or some other oddball item that I could use.
Radio Shack – Plymouth Meeting Mall, Plymouth Meeting, PA Feb 2015
That said, I remember fondly growing up where I was cutting my teeth playing with TVs, VCRs, boomboxes, and other stuff, where most of the time I needed batteries, or usually some “RCA to (some other plug) adapter”. We’d always mess around with the computers, and make sure we got our free battery from the free battery club! (While the club is long gone, Rat shack’s web site has t-shirts themed on it!)
The distinctly fond memories I have though, going back to the late 80s and early 90s, would be checking out the computers in the back of the store, and playing a game called Thexder on a TRS-80. I also remember the robotic arm called the Armatron they had at the counter that I’d play with while waiting in line. The one with the constantly-grinding gears that felt like it was going to break at any moment.
Lastly, I also remember the newer computers, one of which my parents finally bought me the family for Christmas, and the look of horror in my dads face when I told him we needed a “VGA” monitor, and when we went back, the $400 price tag that monitor had (after dumping over $2k into the actual computer). It was a Tandy 2500 SX 386, and I still have it!
Soon after I got the 386, a friend of mine also got a new computer, a Tandy Sensation 486, complete with the new MULTIMEDIA speaker sound system! Oooh! (Yes, still jealous!)
I’ve had lengthy discussions with friends over what Radio Shack could have done to save themselves, and honestly from what I heard, they sorta knew. In reality though, having quick access to nearly any kind of component within a couple days certainly put a hurting on them, and I think its ironic that they really died off at a time when the Maker movement was really starting to take off. I realize more and more that malls have become mostly havens for clothing and jewelry, with Sears gone (the “other” store I’d shop), its somewhat difficult to actually buy hard goods at a mall anymore, especially anything having to do with “repair”.
Oh well…I’m just glad that with the writing on the wall, I learned to take the initiative to take a pic of the store before it closed up. The pic above was taken by me in February 2015. I have a couple other pics and videos of the Plymouth Meeting mall dating back to the mid 90s, so stay tuned for more nostalgia posts!
If you’re a nostalgia nut like I am, there’s tons of Radio Shack media out on the internets, including commercials, catalogs, other blog posts, and more. One example I found was this web site that has tons of Radio Shack catalogs. Cool!
Recently came across this on Ebay and had to have it. Franklin Institute map and exhibit list from 1934 (going by the included Planetarium card with a 1934 schedule).
The crazy part of this map is the description of the basement, which has always been off limits as far as I remember. I would LOVE to see whats still down there!
This is actually based on a post I did on another blog eons ago. In doing a lot of cleaning lately, I’ve been coming across random, usually unmarked CDs and DVDs from my old computers and desks. Apparently I used to lose my sharpie often as many of them are literally unmarked, but I can tell there’s data on them.
I actually get excited when I find these, because there’s a small chance its an old backup of some photos or files from yesteryear.
This makes me often think what happens to all this digital media we collect over our lives. I’ve been on a push to re-organize everything and make sure its archived in multiple copies and media, but I’m sure a lot of other people have their life history on a single drive that’s merely a ticking time bomb.
Back in the day when people took photos with traditional cameras, there was a cost involved not only buying film but also developing it, so people often were very picky about what pictures they took, and took time to frame and align it to try to get the best shot in the first or only try. Now, with digital photos, its practically free or very low cost to take as many pictures or videos as you want, so many pics are often just garbage shots, with little regard to quality or setup. This also means the quantity of actual pics being stored is substantially higher than when people took traditional photos or even the old film videos.
I know very often I find tons of vintage and personal pics in junk shops, likely due to the lack of next of kin, or perhaps someone just not wanting or caring to go through them or store them anymore. What will happen to the vast hoards of digital photos, videos, and other media we’ve taken in our lifetime? Should we make sure we store them where others can find them? Are there pictures of importance, like important events, places, people, etc that may not be specific to a person or family? Should they be encrypted or protected somehow, less they end up on a 3.99 Hallmark card some day?
I recommend putting some thought into what you do with your pics, media, files, and other digital ephemera, and perhaps archiving them on multiple copies of long-term storage that could be passed down to further generations. Make sure that storage is both air-gapped (not online where a virus or malware can delete it), as well as environmentally sound and not stored in a musty basement or hot attic. Label things very clearly with dates and names if you can, and something I’ve started to do, is even putting plain note.txt files in photo folders with information about the subject of the pics. Talk to your kids or loved ones about what you have, where it is and how it should be handled once you’re gone. I feel the next generation may be the ones to skip this step, only to find that our era of media is gone forever with the trash. They’ll learn and use their digital media differently than we do, and will likely have a lot more of it!
Lastly….while taking pics can be an interesting way to save memories for later in life, remember to live in the moment and put the camera down sometimes. Watching thousands of screens take the same video at a concert, the same pics at an event, and so on makes me wonder how many will regret living out these events through a screen the size of an index card.
