Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

After eking along my Tumblr side project of posting computer magazine covers for years, today the cover of the last issue of MacLife in my old subscription emerged from the now altogether depleted queue. I had been wondering for a while whether to just let that account sit, use it for occasional “reblogs” of the posts of others, or go back to a certain number of computer magazines I hadn’t quite managed to include in the lineup the first time around. One extra thought that came to me was that, in covering thirty-five years of computer magazines in less than that time, I’d more or less reached the fiftieth anniversary of the first issue of Creative Computing (even if that can leave me wondering how that magazine might have covered even the second half of the 1980s had it survived its corporate overlord a bit longer). Making “fifty years ago” reblogs would mean a lot of time in between them, though.

Still working at keeping the queue of computer magazine covers on my Tumblr side project full up, I’d been a bit detached from what’s actually emerging from it. I did become aware, though, that a certain point of synchronicity was approaching, and today it showed up with a magazine cover from March 2004, just twenty years back in the past.

It is something to think back and suppose that while Windows XP and the PowerPC and the BlackBerry were notable pieces of technology back then, some things did resemble today; for one thing, I’d been watching lengthy videos on my computer for a while already. At the same time, though, I’m aware I’m not going to be able to continue in this vein for much longer. The Macworld and MacAddict issues on the Internet Archive only reach the end of 2005 (although there are some 2007 Macworlds there, and I could at least scan the covers of my own remaining MacAddicts and what issues of its successor magazine I received before I let my subscription lapse, all too aware a certain number of bog-standard sneers at Star Wars had got me to the point where I no longer trusted to read them). Computer Gaming World ended in 2006 as I recall, and PC Magazine’s print edition only lasted a few years longer. It would be easy enough to just let the Tumblr lapse; at the same time, I’m aware of a few earlier computer magazines I didn’t get to including before. There is the thought of going back to them and seeing how things will fit together.

Although focused on typing and retyping my latest “quarterly review” to the point where I couldn’t toss off a different comment on the day a specific computer magazine cover emerged from the queue of my Tumblr side project, I was at least aware of coming to the end of one more magazine. Five years after Commodore went out of business, the Amiga magazine Amazing Computing reached its own end. I have to admit that, just as I once shocked a comments section with the impression I hadn’t known anyone who used a Commodore 64 (although I didn’t go over to a lot of friends’ houses), I hadn’t been that aware of the Amiga when its parent company had been operating. There was one relatively late issue of Amiga World in my family’s house (with an article about the latest iteration of the Macintosh emulator card for it, should you be capable of lowering yourself to the use of such an unsophisticated operating system for the sake of its productivity applications), and I did write a story (but not a good story) a little while later with a Commodore named “Parry Amiga” in it, but that was about it.
( But we could have been there too )

A few days after it happened, all of a sudden today I was thinking of the cover of BYTE’s twentieth anniversary issue having emerged from the queue on my Tumblr. Back in university I recall picking up a discarded copy of that particular month’s magazine. However, I have to admit that particular old computer magazine seems to have been pitched over my head for at least its first twenty years of publication (from soldering iron-handling hobbyists to an impression of corporate IT managers) for all that my skimming has turned up occasional intriguing tidbits its intensity could have accounted for. While more time has now elapsed since that anniversary issue than separated it from the magazine’s beginning, I’m aware I’ll run out of magazine covers to post well before I get to today. Whether I’ll then just comfortably lapse into reposting anime artwork (should those accounts keep posting themselves) or go back to a few additional computer magazines is an open question.

Keeping the queue of my Tumblr well-stocked with computer magazine covers means being reminded of what’s to come. In most cases this is a causal awareness, but being conscious I was coming to the end of one magazine as I worked into 1993 did have some impact.

Having stuck with the Radio Shack and Tandy Color Computer machines for a long time, my family had a subscription to that computer’s longest-lasting magazine The Rainbow to the bitter end. I’m more familiar with that magazine’s final devolution than its swift rise, and witnessing it again was a bit of a weight. Had the magazine’s publisher not been so devoted (and able to keep afloat with a second magazine devoted to Tandy’s MS-DOS machines), I suppose it wouldn’t have backtracked all the way down to sixteen pages of newsprint; even the Apple II type-in program periodical Nibble, also a more independent production, didn’t get quite that simple by the end (although the Commodore 64-focused Compute’s Gazette did wind up in its own peculiar position).

Aware of the problems of nostalgia in other settings, I can see a point to “a single good-enough standard really ought to outweigh supposing yourself ‘different’ just because of advertising.” There’s also the wrinkle of “really, you can only respect yourself when you go to the effort of using Linux.” At the same time, I did get to wondering about some of the casual claims of superiority and impact in Rainbow editorials (which could seem much readier to smirk at the Macintosh than take on whether the plethora of commercial packages for the Commodore 64 outweighed how limited its built-in BASIC was.)

I’ve alluded to before about “reading online feeds without being subscribed to the service they’re fed from,” and I suppose I have to admit to one of those services being Twitter. In the past little while, though, it’s been getting harder to look at “tweets and their responses” without running into demands to sign up. I did go over a number of years from “everything on the service feels ephemeral, and anyway I’m not good at ‘witty telegraphese’” (given the lengthy sentences I piece together here, merely hoping they’re not “run-on”) to “it’s a concentrator of awfulness; everyone I’ve really tried looking at there seems to agree.” One certain condition about that did change earlier this year, but I was still leery about signing up. In the end, though, I might have just decided to take a chance. Somebody signed up on Twitter over a decade ago taking the account name I use here (and left one single tweet in that account), but it did turn out the one-letter-longer account name I had to settle for on Tumblr was still available on Twitter as well: krjpalmer.

For the moment I’ve set no interests and followed no accounts, and I’m still looking at individual accounts that have caught my eye just the way I used to, although perhaps the experience is just a little smoother now. I know I could “like” things or even respond to them, although I can suppose “accounts that follow nobody” are considered suspicious. I did try linking to a post here, and was left thinking “it could very well be Dreamwidth is too high-class to have a ‘preview box’ show up.” Of course, if I figured everything out in a day it might be all too easy.

When a moment’s weakness gathering thoughts to post here nudged me to the point of starting a side project on a lighter-weight social media platform and I supposed I could find “content” there in the form of covers from old computer magazines, I began with a magazine then somewhat short of exactly forty-two years old. In the time since, Tumblr may well have slumped over onto “the long slope down,” but I’m still working through computer magazine covers. Today, the first cover from 1990 emerged from my queue, bringing me to somewhat more than exactly thirty years back.

The decade of covers ahead is already raising ambiguous thoughts, though, aware a good many of the magazines I’m now scraping up images for came to an end in those ten years as “standards” settled over the industry. Whether I grandstanded by not falling into exact step (or just didn’t put in the intellectual effort to get on the “correct” path less beaten) is a question, of course. Thoughts of “an accelerating pace” aren’t altogether depressing, however, and I know at least a few magazines in my sources continue some small distance into the millennium. What might happen when I run out of them at last, beyond perhaps just “reblogged” images in altogether different categories emerging to sudden prominence, is another question.

It wasn’t that long after I started a Tumblr weblog that a feeling of difficulty when it came to putting together posts for here faded, but by that point I was on my way through a project of putting up a selection of old computer magazine covers. That a little while is spent every day skimming a PDF and coming up with a few words of summary does get me wondering about “making best use of my time,” though, and knowing “running out of magazines from some years into the new millennium at last” is still a long way off has begun to raise a ghost of fatigue even as I got wondering what to post here next.

However, while there’s a bit of a disconnect between loading the covers into my queue and them becoming available for whoever else may see them, I did realise today one particular cover from 1986 had just become available, the September 1986 issue of The Rainbow where the Tandy Color Computer 3 burst onto the scene at last. There’s some personal nostalgia here in that my family used one, in fact held onto it for years after Radio Shack had stopped selling them and whatever third-party sources of interesting new programs and games there were were fading away, which I fear to admit led to some feelings of frustration at the time for all that holding out meant that when my father finally shelled out thousands of dollars for a complete new system where he’d been able to use existing disk drives with a new CPU and add an RGB monitor for less of an all-at-once layout six years before we took the jump to a Macintosh LC II and not a generic PC box (for all the games that would have meant). I suppose there were thoughts afterwards that the “CoCo 3” had had adequate word processing, colour paint programs, and basic telecommunications, and anything a newer computer could do was just elaborations... CD-ROM might have started seeming a bit different, though. At the same time, though, I can also reflect that as young as I was in 1986 I’d already been able to use two previous generations of microcomputer and home computer.

Loading my Tumblr's queue with old computer magazine covers on a regular schedule, I got around to Creative Computing again and headed off to the Internet Archive to save an image. On getting there, though, I found myself looking at a screenful of new files available. "Better scans" did get my attention, but I was aware my reactions were just a little more mixed than they could have been.
( A chase and a hobby project )

I got an email today reminding me it's been a year since I signed up on Tumblr. At the time, I'd been feeling just a bit fatigued at putting together a new post here every week "just to keep my streak running." After a few "crosspost" posts listing the old computer magazine covers I was putting up in order, though, the ideas for here did seem to start coming with a bit more ease, and I let the two streams flow in parallel (although I usually try to cross-promote posts here over there, just in case). Sometimes it's easier to just look at where my queue of covers is, but in any case I am beginning to round out 1981's computer magazines; I'm a bit conscious of plans to add more titles around 1983 or so, though, a while yet before the ebullient "8-bit boom" went bust.