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What have you done for fun lately?

Walked on the beach a few times, enjoyed my shopping trip, I have a few minature cut sleeve lenghts shirts, also with extra fabric to my wrist kind of tee's as well, went out with my Mom to a new place called Yellow Diner here in Plymouth today, we just wrapped up watching one of my all time favorite shows Fringe on the free teevee app we have from xfinity :) Played a few rounds of chicken foot with her, I whipped her butt three out of four evenings, and we just enjoyed time away with one another :)
 
Living (well, trying) in the 50s-2009-era. I've had a ton of frustrations with most modern tech and modern life no longer appeals to me, unless I love eye strain and migraines. So I've recently begun thrifting, and browsing antique malls and 'downgrading' much of my life. I started by downgrading my 4K TVs (ads and all!) to non-4K LCD TVs from 2009-10, two great years for me, and since I never play 4K content (much of the shows I love are black and white!) anyway the 'new' stuff was wasted money. And being mostly chinese-made, wasted quality (there's two dead TVs less than a year old in my closet!).

I went farther, including replacing my 'smart' clock with an old Audition brand (Woolworth's) radio/alarm clock. So instead of waking to tones, and yelling at the Google Assistant over and over again to 'stop!' (she never understands me) I now wake up to 60s-70s music first thing in the morning.

I recently gave up on smartwatches (after my Galaxy Watch 4 mistook me using a hammer as a hard fall, gave me less than 3 seconds to stop it from dialing 911 and giving my mom a heart attack! failed of course, and having to explain to the 911 operator what happened was no fun, and my mom was extremely panicked. I couldn't stop the watch once it got in 'emergency SOS mode' so I took a hammer to it and destroyed it. I couldn't find any way to turn that 'feature' off)

So I found a 1960s Timex Darwin mechanical watch, which only needed the balance gear budged (it was stuck) and is now working happily on my wrist, and all for $6!

I figured why not go farther? I replaced my fancy schmancy 'crosley' turntables and bluetooth stereos with 1960s-70s HiFi, even one including a record auto-changer, that only needed basic service to get going again, and now I can enjoy that! Even better, the sound of an old stereo is so much better than the tinny stuff from a modern system. I also love how the radio dial and indicators have an incandescent backlight, so it's dark when off, and when on, it looks like a modern stereo display, only in analog. When I play an 8-track, I get the program number and a 'Play' indicator, and it's cool because it's like it's digital but it's just merely a bulb behind a symbol. It's so simple it's fun!

I've expanded my physical media collection as well, finding the entire Babylon 5 saga on DVD for less than $50. I'm planning another trip today to replace the 'Victrola' chinesium 'stereo' in my other room with a 1950s Zenith dual-speaker, one-tube amp record autochanger unit. I also found a Kirby vacuum for $30 (why are they so cheap secondhand!?) as well. I've even downgraded work, the computer is gone, in its place is an AM Tube radio, and vintage hand and power tools. As a result of me not dealing constantly with tools deciding to stop working when I need them most or breaking in half (why is a wrench made today out of metal-coated PLASTIC?) my productivity has increased ten-fold. I can actually DRILL now, instead of spinning bits and having drills shut down for 'protection' because my drills are older than me, all-metal, and have keyed chucks again. I've never been happier, and more confident. Let those futurists have their plastic garbage. I'm enjoying vintage life.

This PC runs Windows XP, made in 2003. The only modern anything in my life now is my smartphone and my wireless earbuds. I was going 'vintage' recently with a Galaxy SII and HTC Thunderbolt, but last month they both started running super hot, wouldn't message and phone anymore, despite having 4G LTE service, and only browsing the web worked. Curse you, Straight Talk! I loved those phones!
 
Real recently, what I did for fun was just within a spell ago, of going to see Dragon Ball Super: Super heroes on Labor day, my friend, wants to get together soonish..
 
Took another trip to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Three times so far this year. This time by bullet train rather than aeroplane.

Flight is 2 hours, but is often late. Bullet train is 10 hours, and always punctual.
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mikedt said:
Took another trip to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Three times so far this year. This time by bullet train rather than aeroplane.

Flight is 2 hours, but is often late. Bullet train is 10 hours, and always punctual.
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For some reason, I'm the opposite. I'd love to travel by steam locomotive with the Edwardian interiors over a more modern all-white brightly-lit-by-5000k-LEDs train. I sadly missed out on the whole trans-continental railroad era. I bet it was something neat.

Heck, I'd love to experience flying on a Boeing 707. By the time I was born, they were already out of service. Fun fact, all the modern aircraft with their computer automation tend to crash often (Boeing 737 MAX MCAS!!! among one) but only a mere handful (numbers in single-digits) of 707s crashed. Think about it.
 
My first flight was a round trip to Dallas from Wichita Ks on a 707. It cost a whopping $35 which took me nearly a year to save up for. I was in middle school at the time and the trip proved to be quite the adventure.
 
I've honestly never flew on an airline. By the time I grew quite fond of flying (since I was four and had my first flight in a Cessna 195) the DC-10 was the latest thing, but my family had their own airplane and we took all of our Spring Break and Summer trips by plane, never via car. It was neat to go from Owensboro, KY to Orlando, FL in four hours! I will never forget the sound of a Cessna 195 engine starting up.

I doubt I could handle road trips at that age. I've never flown on a jet or turboprop not even once. It's always been piston-props. Cessna 172, 195, various Piper Cherokees, our Trinidad TB-20 (the DeLorean of aircraft, gull-wing doors and all) and Piper Geronimo (a very spruced and upgraded Apache).

Went to Oshkosh AirVenture from '94-2004.
 
We still have steam engines on "heritage" railway lines. I've even driven one (under instruction and supervision!), and there's one line I use a few times a year. But not scheduled mainline services, of course: quite apart from the practicality (the infrastructure isn't there) the increasingly hot and dry summers human activity has produced make them too much of a fire hazard on many routes (not joking, I know heritage railways who only run diesel services on most of their route during the summer now, even though that's the peak tourist season, because sparks have caused wildfires. I saw an example myself not long ago).

I would prefer to travel to Genève by train - the TGV service from Paris is very nice, and obviously aviation is the least sustainable form of transport. But the UK's infrastructure is so London-focused that if you aren't starting from near there it's neither a practical nor an affordable option.
 
nickdalzell said:
For some reason, I'm the opposite. I'd love to travel by steam locomotive with the Edwardian interiors over a more modern all-white brightly-lit-by-5000k-LEDs train. I sadly missed out on the whole trans-continental railroad era. I bet it was something neat.
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You can still do that as a tourist experience: an Orient Express with a similar feel to the carriages exists (I doubt it's steam, but haven't checked). It's not cheap, but for most people I suspect it was not affordable back then either.
 
Oh, I've done it in tours (one in Pennsylvania after summer camp) but I'd love to experience a real trip in one, sleeping car, lunch coach and all, not just a 15 minute joyride in one passenger car behind the locomotive.

Sadly, there ain't any novelty flights in a classic airliner like the Boeing 707 or the Super Constellation. You can charter a flight in a Douglas DC-3, and IIRC there are still smaller airlines running those. I just think it'd be neat to have those who were not lucky enough to be around then to actually experience what it was like. Too many today are spoiled by 'modern' but there is a demand for vintage lovers such as myself to experience the past just as much.
 
I do not know what the model of the airplane we were at, we were really young, and it was our first time down to Disney land in Florida, we saved up for our flight and thought on what we should carry through, Just tonight went and saw some fireworks at my sister's place.. Really just got away from it.
 
These days an aircraft is a glorified bus with everything digital. Even the cockpits are digital. You can't even escape it in General Aviation because everything is digital. No more 'steam guages'. Thankfully my sister who's a pilot now loves steam guages and owns two aircraft with them. Modern aircraft just have no unique qualities. Nothing exists like the SkyMaster or the Cub or the Super Connie anymore. They all basically follow cars and have become crossovers with wings.

I think I was just 15 the last time I saw one of these at an airport:

cessna_337_guide_and_specs-950x650.png

Why must everything modern suck? I mean modern looked like something cool when seeing it from the late 1990s, but today it's all about revisiting the 80s GUI design era, hardly modern.
 
nickdalzell said:
Oh, I've done it in tours (one in Pennsylvania after summer camp) but I'd love to experience a real trip in one, sleeping car, lunch coach and all, not just a 15 minute joyride in one passenger car behind the locomotive.
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Come to China. I've had that experience many times, like 24 hours or more. Although I do suggest booking a soft sleeper rather than a hard sleeper.
 
nickdalzell said:
These days an aircraft is a glorified bus
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Fortunately I have VIP Gold Card with Shandong Airlines, which means I can always go first class with them, i.e. I get to sit in the big seats at the front of the plane, and board first.

nickdalzell said:
with everything digital. Even the cockpits are digital. You can't even escape it in General Aviation because everything is digital. No more 'steam guages'. Thankfully my sister who's a pilot now loves steam guages and owns two aircraft with them. Modern aircraft just have no unique qualities. Nothing exists like the SkyMaster or the Cub or the Super Connie anymore. They all basically follow cars and have become crossovers with wings.

I think I was just 15 the last time I saw one of these at an airport:

View attachment 167302

Why must everything modern suck? I mean modern looked like something cool when seeing it from the late 1990s, but today it's all about revisiting the 80s GUI design era, hardly modern.
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You mean analogue gauges and dials? Because a "steam gauge" is something you might find in the cab a steam locomotive, or other steam engine.

I do distinctly my first flights on planes, Blackpool to the isle of Man in a Douglas DC-3, and Bournmouth to Jersey in a Hawker Siddley HS748.
 
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the term 'steam guage' is being used for any aircraft that doesn't use a 'glass cockpit' (aka digital panels replacing instruments entirely) mainly because most aircraft instruments don't use electricity but vacuum pressure from outside sources (such as pitot tube for airspeed). It's become used in many aviation forums too. I never said it was factually accurate as a term. "Glass cockpit" also isn't accurate since the entire cockpit ain't made of glass, just the instruments being replaced by touchscreens.

I'd rather not try China because I highly doubt anything 'retro' even exists over there. Just from seeing some of your posts it's a 'modern' dystopia that scares me. Overpopulated, communist, futurist-obsessed.
 
I think the answer to "why must everything modern suck" is that aesthetics are, by definition, subjective. To me the "classic" American cars with long, flat hoods, fins at the back and all that stuff were always ugly rather than cool, even when I was a kid. That doesn't mean that they objectively were ugly or that they "sucked", just that the aesthetic never appealed to me.

But I do somewhat have the soul of an engineer. For tools (which includes vehicles, computers and the rest) aesthetics are secondary to function as far as I'm concerned, by which I mean by all means try to make something look nice as long as that doesn't get in the way of functionality. And that bleeds into my aesthetic as well: something that's visibly well-designed for its function will usually appeal to my aesthetic sense (as long as you don't paint it Barbie pink!). Conversely if someone adds flourishes to a vehicle's body to "look cool" but they degrade the aerodynamics the chances are that it won't actually look cool to me. So if someone wants to add nods to the art deco movement to the interior design of a train carriage I'm cool with that; if they want to include old-style and frankly dangerous slam doors for "authenticity" I am very much not.

So I can appreciate and admire a steam engine as an example of lovingly-crafted historical engineering, but that word "historical" is important. I don't actually have any nostalgia for old airliners, and would take an A320 over a 707 any day of the week. Something like a Supermarine Spitfire is different, but then the aesthetic appeal of that is largely from the really clear streamlining, which is another example functionality producing aesthetics.

I'm happy to criticise modern designs where they fail, especially where they put form over function (Tesla's approach to instrumentation and controls being an obvious example: it saves them money, since you don't need to move all of the instruments when you make a right-hand-drive version of a car, but requires taking your attention from the road for longer than a traditional layout, never mind a HUD). But while I find having instruments and information clearly laid out in front of me aesthetically as well as functionally preferable, I have no objection to those instruments being display panels rather than mechanical dials and needles - and if they let me choose what information they display and in what form then I'll actively prefer displays over traditional instruments. So again, for me it's not a case of "everything modern sucks" - there's careless, lowest-common denominator stuff out there, and stuff that's designed to be as cheap as possible, but there always was (indeed I can think of some items that I've seen described as "cool" now that we thought were "rubbish" back in the 70's ;)).
 
Ever watched the tv show Counts Kustoms ?

Yesterday they revamped a 1963 Avanti for Alice Cooper.

Very nice upgrade was done !


 
nickdalzell said:
I'd rather not try China because I highly doubt anything 'retro' even exists over there. Just from seeing some of your posts it's a 'modern' dystopia that scares me. Overpopulated, communist, futurist-obsessed.
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Actually a lot of "retro" does exist in China, despite my AF posts and what the CCP propaganda might try to tell you. Like this ancient moped I spotted in a cheap country BBQ restaurant last night. Which I'm sure is a clone of a Tomos moped from 1970s Yugoslavia. Note how the licence plate is tied on the luggage carrier with ribbons, now that's "retro" for you.
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