eBay listing, November 4, 2214:

 

Vintage Laptop Hard Disk 500GB

 

That’s the likely listing heading, when it goes up for sale online for lovers of old techknowldgy in 2214. What the buyer will find on it, will likely be of interest to a historian of culture and technology. There’s a few things that might stand out from the mundane data that most disks contain. Examples:

 

  • A folder for an old massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, which was released 210 years ago and was very successful for its era.
  • transcripts from text-based chat software. A relic of pre-telepathic communications.
  • A relatively small Music folder. Unsurprising, as the era of storing personal media files locally was on the decline with increasing cloud-based storage gaining popularity.
  • The remaining used space (the drive is 75% full) is taken up by the other application software, mostly prouctivity and software development applications, and a few otheer notable games such as the sandbox of Minecraft, and even the first popular game library managers (Steam, and Battle.net).
  • Last, but not least is the operating system itself (Mac OS X, a flavor of the ancient UNIX family of software which was popular with not just academics, but this one had many creatives using it as well).

This drive is in surprisingly good condition, considering drives of its kind had a useful operating lifetime of roughly 10-20 years, depending on usage and environment. This one sems to have seen light usage before being taken out, likely to use a much higher capacity drive, or even one with no moving parts. The drive was only powered on after being recovered from a “time capsule” to check its usability and contents. A real collector’s item, but there’s still no reserve because it’s value speaks for itself. Thanks for checking this listing out!

—END LISTING-

 

I’m participating in Blogging 101. Here’s today’s prompt:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/buyers-beware/

Hello there! I’m glad you stopped by to find out a bit more about me. I’m Ryan, and I’m a bit of an introvert. I totally feel more comfortable in front of a keyboard than publicly speaking, which is part of why I’ve got this blog.

If you’re here, it would be good to know that I am a fan of sci-fi and fantasy, I love Star Wars and Star Trek, although I do happen to costume and perform as a Jedi as a member of Saberguild. I’m also a big geek when it comes to video games, anime, music, reading, and generally consuming stories in a few of the ways they can be experienced (movies, some TV, and online video.) Yes, I also attend conventions (mostly comic-cons, for now).

I’d first wondered what I’d focus on when I fist created this blog, years ago, but I don’t think I have narrowed it much, which kind of de-motivated me. Now, I think I’m a bit more focused, but  am open to ideas. You’ll likely see me bouncing around the above topics, as they are of great interest to me, but, occasionally, I’ll dip into some new territory.

Mostly, I’m hoping to just explore my interests, while also hopefully connecting with those that share one or more of the same interests. I’m not new to blogging, but want to really hone the basic writing skills involved, because, even though a large chunk of my paid work involves written communication, I’m not a professional writer. Hopefully, a month of really flexing these writing muscles will be the motivation to put more thoughts into words, more often.