Old-School Gazette: Your source for the "latest" in technology and entertainment.
Technology
An organization called Commodore Business Machines has begun shipping the Commodore 64 at a suggested retail price of $595. It's name reflects that it has 64 kilobytes of RAM. The Commodore 64 produces superior visuals and audio thanks to a custom chip for waveform generation and its ability to produce multicolor sprites. This impressive piece of hardware should be able to bring home computers to many American middle-class households, but it faces tougher competition in Japan and the UK.
Dr. Karel Marha of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety has warned that those who operate video-display terminals should have their workplace reorganized in order to move them further away from their own monitors as well as neighboring monitors, due to the amount of radiation produced via pulsed ELF (extremely low frequency) electric and magnetic fields.
Microsoft's "MultiPlan" has been released for IBM PCs. Though IBM has not been terribly enthusiastic about the software, focusing instead of marketing the PC version of VisiCalc, "Software Review" has praised the software on the Apple II, writing "Multiplan seems to have been designed with the sole objective of taking VisiCalc's place as market leader." Bill Gates has said that anyone able to use a calculator should also be able to use MultiPlan. The spreadsheet can handle 64 columns and 256 rows while only using 64K of memory.
Video Games
A brand-new Pac-Man game has been released, called "Super Pac-Man". This new version of the game involves new features, such as doors that are unlocked by keys or knocked down by Pac-Man in his "Super" form, in which he grows to ten times his size. This continues the mega-popular and highly-lucrative gaming franchise, which is making money hand-over-fist with merchandise such as bumper stickers, bycicles, breakfast cereals, and even a $20,000 choker, with Ms. Pac-Man formed out of 14-karat gold gobbling diamonds strung around the neck.
Film
Last Tuesday saw the release of a western called "Shadow Riders". The film stars Sam Elliott and Tom Selleck as two brothers returning from fighting in opposite sides in the Civil War to find that their sisters, one brother, and the girlfriend of one of the two brothers have been abducted by slave-traders. We then follow the adventure taken by the two main characters to rescue their loved ones.
A week ago today, "My Favorite Year" was released, a comedy starring Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker. The movie centers around the character "Benjy Stone", played by Linn-Baker, who meets his hero, an actor named Alan Swann, played by O'Toole, and the two begin working together on a variety show. Swann is no longer the man that he once was, and Stone must help to keep him sober so that he will be able to perform on the live television show.
Television
Last Thursday, a pilot television show was aired on NBC. The pilot stars Ted Danson as an ex-ballplayer and recovering alcoholic that also happens to be a bar owner and the plot involves his romantic interaction with the show's second star Shelly Long. The show is called "Cheers" named after the bar in which it takes place.
Diff'rent Strokes has lost castmember Nedra Volz, who played Adelaide Brubaker, and gained a new castmember in Adelaide Brubaker, who will play Mary Jo Catlett, the family's new housekeeper.
The players of the NFL have been on strike since the twenty-first of September. The players' union wants to rebalance how the wages are distributed. Meanwhile, CBS has begun broadcasting Division III football and re-airing previous games.
Sources, all of which are awesome and worth exploring independently:
http://kpolsson.com/comphist/comp1982jul.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
https://archive.org/details/MacWorld_9007_July_1990/page/n149/mode/2up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_video_games
https://archive.org/details/cashbox44unse_23/page/56/mode/2up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYpuKc86gT8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Riders_(film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRW44iGjMWg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Favorite_Year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5QCoUKWdU0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_American_television
(Cheers has no reference other than my own memory of the pilot episode.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff%27rent_Strokes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Players_Association#1982_strike
This was supposed to be out over a week ago, but things have been nuts for me lately!
This is a not-quite-official announcement of the Discord server I just created. Completely free. Don't need to be a supporter on Locals. Don't even need to be a member.
It's definitely not a secret that this community hasn't been active since Matt Hartley hasn't been involved. I think there are a few reasons why (one being that I had a lot less time to devote to it than I realized), and I think that making a completely free alternative would help, and I unfortunately don't think I can do that on Locals! You have to pay if you want to post. Discord should be free (unless I did it wrong).
Feel free to come join! It's still kind of experimental at this point, and I don't know how well I'll handle content moderation, which will probably be the biggest challenge.
