Wolmania - Friday, February 18, 2022
This is the 52nd issue of Wolmania. This is a weekly newsletter so by my calculations that means some of you have been subscribed for an entire year. However long you've been subscribed, I thank you for gracing me with your attention or your benign neglect. I will do my best to keep providing you with interesting and/or infuriating things to check out for the foreseeable future. Let's get on with it:
Item 1: a link
Sony VAIO: a visual history
I've been feeling some nostalgia for the CRT era and I am still disappointed that I never managed to get my hands on a single desktop computer system with built-in MiniDisc drive and a frickin' remote control. This is what peak performance looks like!
Innumerable examples of Sony's willingness to get extremely weird may be found in this slideshow. Sony spun off VAIO in 2014, alas, and their current portfolio is pretty standard stuff. Nothing gold can stay.
Item 2: a list
Top Ten Numbers
David Letterman has a new YouTube channel with a ton of old clips from his late night shows and I noticed that in 1993 he shameless stole my bit from 2016 by ranking the number from one to ten. Click through to compare how he and Casey Kasem did it with the following authoritative annotated ranking, originally posted for my Facebook friends in August of 2016:
Single digit non-negative integers, ranked:
- Zero (the rebel of the group)
- One (the original and still - almost - the best)
- Five (c'mon. it's five!)
- Nine (first odd non-prime number)
- Two (there's just something sultry and mysterious about two...)
- Seven (every child's go-to "random" digit)
- Eight (sideways infinity, 2^3... lotta good stuff about eight)
- Three (just kinda forgettable... but there's something there if you stop and really look)
- Four (history may absolve four)
- Six (boring)
Notes: I didn't rank ten but if I had I think I'd have to rank it 10th. Sorry, six!
Item 3: a media recommendation
Item 4: a photograph
See ya!
Thanks for reading - have a great weekend. See you next week!
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