Tech meme type stuff

First computer memories (there's several of these)

I remember at some point at primary school, we had a computer to investigate. I remember moving the mouse around, and being impressed at how it 'knew' if you picked it up (apparently I hadn't quite realised how it actually worked yet), and being amazed at moving windows around the GUI. I remember being enthralled and needing to be dragged away from experimenting. I can't remember if that was before we got the C64 or not.

Mum and Dad got me a Commodore 64 for one Christmas, which changed everything. I can't remember the initial excitement well, but I remember that afterwards, it absorbed an awful lot of my energy. I did a lot of programming -- for most things I'm ashamed how little initiative I ever had, but for writing new programs, I always had ideas I wanted to try out and did an awful lot of that. Somehow struggling through saving everything on tape! :)

And at some point later we got a PC. I remember mum arranging it, and then telling me, and us literally dancing in the kitchen in excitement. And I think we got the internet soon after, but I remember having email and not having anyone to email. And she got me visual studio, which was in some ways more of a turning point than getting the PC itself. I don't quite remember when I transitioned from visual basic to C.

Everything else

I was just the age that quite a lot of things coincided with my starting university. Prior to that I'd had a mobile phone, and an internet connection, but they hadn't been primary modes of communication. When I arrived at university, email was the main method of communication, and reaching people by mobile phone was common.

I resisted having a computer in my room for a year or so, on the grounds that going to the computer room was easy and I didn't want to make it easy to just hide in my room full time, but I eventually changed my mind.

At home we had terrestrial TV and didn't bother to get more till after I'd left home, not even a VCR, and then I watched tv barely at all when I was busy with university, and then I got the free cable channels along with an internet connection when I first moved into a house after university. So I skipped over quite a lot of steps (I remember grandparents recording one of the season finales of Babylon 5 when it clashed with something we were doing, and watching it a season later and saying KOSH WAS WHAT? :))

I feel like I'm naturally built for streaming media, I appreciate "everyone watching the same thing at the same time" and "just putting the TV on and seeing what's on" occasionally, but my main conception was how inconvenient it was, I like watching exactly what I want.

Specifics

I had a mobile phone as a teenager, but it only became a thing at university.

I didn't listen to music much at all. Cassette tapes where what I remember people listening to music on. I've no idea what an '8 track tape' is specifically.

I don't remember when I got a DVD player, probably about the time I got a TV, i.e. when I left university.

Just by using computers I got good enough at two-fingers-plus-a-couple-of-others typing that I can effectively touch type with them [that half sentence done with my eyes shut with no errors], but I never learned proper ten fingered touch typing despite a couple of half-hearted attempts. I could get a not-embarrassing speed when I tried, but not as fast as mum who did learn, but I've almost never needed to type fast so I've never gained any stamina, I can only really do short bursts of high wpm.

I've *seen* typewriters, but I can't remember if I've ever seen a typewriter which was used as the most convenient method of typing.

Most people started using facebook at university, but it didn't have a wall yet, it was more like an address book than a social site. I started using livejournal towards the end of university because lots of my friends did (my resolution to only blog things I thought people would want to read was futile). I bought a dreamwidth permanent account when it came out, as I wanted to support it's development. And I didn't get into twitter for a while as I wasn't sure what I wanted to tweet (I remember muddling through the 'send a text message' thing) until one eastercon when it was very useful and then I just started tweeting stuff after that.

Lying loot-divvying game (Dolores)

More games crate! This time the little game was Dolores, a game with a ridiculously rich flavour and really nice art about being wreckers divvying up the loot from a ship with a traditional method.

Each turn, two players turn up two cards each, and then do a simultaneously-reveal-hand-gestures thing to decide who gets what. You can agree to split it so you each get the loot you turned up (handshake gesture). But someone can easily subvert that by submitting a closed-fist gesture and taking all the loot! Or you can submit a one-thumb-up gesture which means "pick one card", which leaves the other with one or two cards (if they chose peace) or three (if they chose war). If you both choose war, all the loot is lost. If you both choose pick, all the loot is lost AND you each lose all of a single type of loot of your choice (which the scoring system makes either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on circumstance).

It works out that you *usually* want loot, but you sometimes particularly want specific pieces, and occasionally have pieces you don't want.

It doesn't actually make sense with the flavour, but it's the *sort* of complicated negotiation you imagine happening.

It's lovely but strange playing it with Liv because we both don't come very naturally to lying. And with two players you can't just always divvy it up as fairly as possible, because you have to get ahead at some point. There's enough variation in what you want and whether you can agree a split that's best for both of you that it's not exactly an iterated prisoner's dilemma -- most rounds you don't have a strong incentive to talk up one compromise and then change your mind. But you have to decide when it *is* worth agreeing to a proposal and reneging, or refusing to agree anything in advance, or when you expect your opponent to be sneaky and when that changes your throw.

We kept reassuring each other that it was ok and we didn't take it personally.