buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail-upgrade it.

the second, and last, of the kwan household vcrs has finally died.
after a good, long run of probably about 15 years, it has finally kicked the bucket.

our first one died awhile ago. but i guess no one really told any of the adults that this had happened, so it continued to sit in our dining room for many years to come until about yesterday, at which point it was asked what it was still doing in the living room when it failed to even so much as turn on.

the second one was found to also have ceased to function when jess and i planned our repeat of the long-time tradition of watching Home Alone at some point over the winter break. later, it was taken apart for examination/autopsy and it was found to have a random, loose piece that had been jiggling around inside it for quite some time and no one could actually identify where it came from or what it even was. suffice it to say, it was probably the safest bet for cause of death.

so ends the era of the vcr in the kwan home. with that being said, let it be mentioned that we still have a god-knows-how-old ld (laser disc) player sitting off to the corner waiting to be taken to the curb.

p.s. it's been sitting there for awhile.
p.p.s. awhile = approx. ten years.


what can i say? we're a family of packrats who still have about 20 lds, a cabinet full of vhs tapes,  boxes of cassette tapes, a stack of mds, and stacks of floppy discs all lying around somewhere in the house. all of these along with a typewriter, a fax machine or two, a few old radios, cd players, walkmen, an md player, other mp3 players, ancient "laptops" that would probably be able to crush a small child, generations of discarded cell phones (yes, beginning with the "turtle-style", as the chinese refer to it), and a wide variety of retired cameras (film and digital) are all part of the timeline of "technology: ancient to present". seriously. if i could take out all the crap that's lying around, no longer in use, and lay them out in the street in chronological order, i'm pretty sure my family alone would be able to create quite an extensive timeline demonstrating the development and progression of technology across all medias, from telecommunicative to audiovisual.

man, if i had the time, i absolutely would love to do it. document and display the transformation of various types of technology throughout time in the hong kong culture. with south east asia being the guinea pig region of portable technology, some transformed and progressed so fast, there wasn't even enough time for them to catch on and make their debuts in other countries. remember mds (mini discs) or lds (laser discs) or vcds (video cds)? chances are, if you're not from the area, your answer would be a big, fat 'no'. all of them actually worked fine, but like everything produced in this industry they had their flaws and disappeared to be replaced by newer, fancier, more portable products before you could even say the word 'upgrade'.

so is technology even worth investing in? its expensive when its new, and useless when its finally becomes cheap enough to afford because something newer and better, but again expensive, has come out and that old technology that was once "cool" is now a dying breed. granted, this might be more the case in places like hong kong and japan, and less so in the us and uk. but seriously, witnessing just how frequently local teenagers in hk change and upgrade their cell phones is quite ridiculous and by no means necessary. its just that the market changes so fast and teenagers here are just impressionable enough that said market is always going to have a target audience to count on to keep their businesses going.

damn kids. stupid technology.

now what are we going to do with the drawers of vhs tapes with quite possibly some of the best movies and tv shows ever recorded onto them??? i need my fill of Home Alones dammit! And not that lousy 3rd one with the kid, who's not a twelve-year-old Macauley Culkin and is really more lucky than street-smart! COME ON! IT'S TRADITION!

vocabulary:
ld = picture a cd, then scale it up until its about a foot in diameter. then imagine watching a movie halfway through and then having to get up and flip this 12-inch disc over because there was too much movie for memory of just the one side. you've got an ld.

md = take a floppy disc. scale it down until its about 2.5 x 2.5 inches. then approximately double its thickness. then imagine it in whatever crazy color or pattern you'd like. and put music on it, either from a cd, a cassette or even your own recording. you've got an md.

md player = imagine the size of an md. expand it by about 1/4 inch in every direction. then imagine it clicking open like a walkman to display a slot just the size of an md to slide into. you've got an md player. it plays music. whatever you chose to put on your crazily colored mds. or whatever you bought from your local music store.

vcd = the easiest of them all. imagine a cd. except it has a movie on it. well, half of a movie. again, too much movie for just one disc. so for a full movie, imagine two cds, each with half of a movie on them. boom. vcds. aka. predecessors to the dvd.

"turtle-style" = an old-fashioned flip phone, where there's a panel that flips off the bottom to form the mic part of the phone. in plan, it looks rectangular. but in profile, its somewhat trapezoidal, with the front of the phone being the long side and the back of the battery pack being the short. if you lay it on its back (on the battery side), it looks like a turtle on its back that's unable to flip itself back around to crawl away from your mischievous antics.