Archives

All posts for the month August, 2011

Princess Diana

Posted by ksquaredno15 on August 31, 2011
Posted in: Current Events, Info. Tagged: , . 2 comments

The date was August 31, 1997. It was 14 years ago today, that Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris, France. The only reason I am writing about this today is because 16 years ago, I received one of my magazine subscriptions in the mail and it had a picture of Lady Di on the cover. I doubt very much that she gave her permission to be photographed or have her likeness composited into this spacesuit, but I kept this issue because it had her picture on it and I knew one day, I could put it into my blog–yah right. :)

Princess Diana-Lady Di

Little did I know, that 2 years later, she would be in a horrific car accident that would take her life. If you’d like to read more about Princess Diana and the events that took place that day, check out this link to wikipedia.com: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Diana,_Princess_of_Wales

Earth Shoes

Posted by ksquaredno15 on August 26, 2011
Posted in: Clothes & Shoes, Health. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 8 comments

My parents always use to tell us kids, that clothes styles always come around again, and they were right. Back in the early 1970′s kids in my high school and even college, use to wear overalls and they probably thought that they were wearing the hottest ‘NEW’ fashion trend. I remember my mom saying that she use to hate wearing overalls as a kid, because it reminded her that they use to wear them as work clothes.

Bell bottoms came and went, and then came back again. Same with platform shoes, which brings me to the topic of this post–the Earth Shoes. The Earth Shoes were invented in the 1970′s in Scandinavia and were the brainchild of Danish shoe designer Anna Kalso. She got the idea for the ‘negative heel’ shoes by watching indigenous Brazilians, and the impressions left by their bare footprints as they walked through the beach sand.

original kalso earth shoes

Actually, before writing this post, I thought the Earth Shoes were a thing of the past, but I was only partially right. Back in the ’80s, the Kalso Earth Shoes in their first incarnation had become so popular, they couldn’t keep up with demand, so they were no longer able to sell at retail in the United States. But it was in the 1990′s that the company was revitalized under a new name, Earth, Inc. and in 2001, the Kalso Earth Shoe was officially relaunched.

I had one of the original pairs of the Kalso Earth Shoes, like those shown in the picture above. I never really liked the look of the shoe, I thought they looked like duck feet, but they were comfortable to wear.

kalso earth shoes with box

And as it goes, that Earth Shoe style sole seems to be coming around again in the form of another shoe, Shape Ups by Sketcher. The curved sole is reminiscent of the old Earth Shoes, don’t you think?

Check out the Kalso Earth Shoe website, they have a great story on how they got started and a historical timeline:
http://www.earthbrands.com/kalsoearthshoe

New Comment Form

Posted by ksquaredno15 on August 24, 2011
Posted in: Info. Leave a Comment

Hello, in an effort to reduce the amount of spam that this blog receives, I have installed a new comment form that requires anyone leaving a comment to copy and paste or type a password into the appropriate field. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds on your part to do this and I hope it doesn’t sway you from leaving a comment on any particular post.

If I find that it’s not working to my satisfaction or I get complaints about it, then I will go back to the old system, until I find a satisfactory solution.

Thanks for your understanding!
The YesteryearRemembered Blog.

The IBM Personal Computer (PC)

Posted by ksquaredno15 on August 21, 2011
Posted in: Lifestyle, Technology. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 2 comments

IBM_Personal_Computer_PC

It was on August 12, 1981, that IBM launched what we know of today, as the ‘personal computer’. That was over 30 years ago–we’ve come a long way since that time. Check out these technical specifications on that 30 year old computer:

The model 5150 featured a 4.77 MHz 8 to 16 bit Intel 8088 processor. It had a whopping 16 kb of RAM (yes, that’s ‘kb’), oh but wait, it was expandable to 256 kb and your choice of either one or two 160 kb floppy drives for your storage and for the visuals, a monochrome monitor. By the way, this PC did not come with an internal hard drive, that component wasn’t included in the IBM PC until March 1983, in the XT model.

Now compare this to say a current model Dell computer which has a multi-core processor running at upwards of 3.0 GHz and with a base memory of 6 gb of RAM, expandable to 16 gb. Includes an internal hard drive standard. There is one thing that the early PC had that the now generation PC does not have…a floppy drive! No great loss, in today’s world, files are just too big for these outdated devices.

It’s hard to imagine that we used these PC’s on a daily basis. A simple Word document of today would just about fill one floppy disk up. And you couldn’t even think about running any of our memory hungry and processor intensive software programs of today on one of these. As I recall, because the original PC did not have a hard drive, each time you wanted to use a certain software package, you had to load it from the floppy disks. Depending on the size of the program, this could take multiple times of switching floppies in and out of the floppy drive.

Today, our iPods, iPads, game consoles and calculators have more memory and processor power than these early desktop computers. But you know what, we loved them back then and they worked, given the software programs of the time.

According to wired.com, depending on how you configured your new PC, it could run you anywhere from $1,565 to $6,000, that’s $4,000 to $15,000 in today’s dollars. Yikes!

Leading_Edge_Computer

I couldn’t afford an original IBM PC, so I opted to get get an IBM PC ‘clone’ as they were called. It was from a company by the name of Leading Edge and it served me well for several years. The configuration I purchased did not come with an internal hard drive, so I purchased a 20 mb hardcard which fit into a slot inside the computer, just like a peripheral card would. Back then, I thought I would never come close to using that much hard drive capacity, boy was I wrong!

Some interesting reading from wired.com and thinq.co.uk
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/gallery-ibm-5150turns-30/
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/8/12/ibm-celebrates-pcs-30th-birthday/

More details on the IBM PC at wikipedia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Ironrite Ironer

Posted by ksquaredno15 on August 12, 2011
Posted in: Household, Lifestyle, Low Tech, Stuff. Tagged: , , , . 1 comment

The word Ironrite in this case, is a noun. The Ironrite was a behemoth ironing machine, that dwarfs any conventional iron.

ironrite_handle

ironrite_ironer

Back in the ’60s, my mom had one of these contraptions and it was stored away in her bedroom. To a curious kid it was a gold mine. “What was this big white, metal box with a metal chair sitting in front of it”. Well I found out one day when my mom sat down to use it on a load of clothes. She opened up the metal cover which was essentially a big metal box that was hinged at the back. She flipped down a black plastic shelf that sat in front of a big white roller. She flipped on a couple switches and you could hear a humming noise coming from the beast.

One of the main working parts of the Ironrite was a big cloth covered roller which spins round and round and moves up and down. When the roller was in the full down position, it spun against a metal platen that spanned the length of the roller and provided the heat source for pressing your clothes.

To operate the Ironrite, you needed to be a bit coordinated, because there were two levers attached to the bottom of the Ironrite that you actuated with your knees. You hit one lever to raise and lower the roller and the other lever to start the roller spinning. And if you held one of the levers, it made the roller go up and down.

Once you put your clothes in between the roller and the heating platen, and you lower the roller, and start the roller spinning, it will pull in whatever fabric you feed it. It will also pull in small fingers too, that’s probably why they have a manual release lever to lift the roller in emergencies.

Many, many years later as an adult, my wife and I took a vacation to Washington D.C. and we visited the Smithsonian Institution. As we were walking around we came across a good old Ironrite Automatic Ironer, it brought an immediate smile to my face and memories of burned and pinched fingers. :)

The link below is a YouTube video that I found, that shows how to use the Ironrite Ironer, check it out if you’re interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Mzkphi7lA&feature=related

Datsun 510

Posted by ksquaredno15 on August 5, 2011
Posted in: Automotive. 2 comments

If you didn’t guess the model of my car from my teaser post, or from the title of this post, the car I had was a Five-Ten, Datsun 510. Back around the mid ’70s, my friend and I were on a mission to find a Datsun 510 sedan. Actually, I was on a mission, my friend was just helping me out. I was scouring the local newspaper and searching on Google and Craig’s List…ha, just checking to see if you’re paying attention! Unfortunately there was no Google, Craig’s List, eBay Motors, or even an internet like we know it today. It was terrible, we had to look through dirty old newspapers and get black ink smudges all over our hands, and heaven forbid, we had to call the person about the car instead of sending an email or posting on Facebook. Anyway, it’s beginning to sound like a post about the internet, so here begins my tale of my first car.

I really wanted a 2-door, Datsun 510 with a 4-speed manual transmission. I saw a race car that was built from this model and it looked really cool, to me. It was boxy looking, and not streamlined at all, they weren’t the prettiest of cars around, but that’s what I liked.

One of the cars that my friend and I went to look at was a full race rally car, although it was super fast and handled great (the owner gave me a the ride of my life), it wasn’t really street legal or practical. The car had a roll cage, it was raised up for ground clearance, had no back seat, no rug, and the list goes on.

After weeks and weeks of searching, I came across a car that fit my specifications, we were off to talk with the owner and see the car. The car was close to perfect, it was bone stock, with skinny tires, it had a red interior which I was not crazy about, but not a deal breaker. After kicking the tires (just kidding), checking under the hood, looking at the body and a test drive, I was the proud owner of a gently used 510, similar to the one in the photo below.

Stock_1971_Datsun_510

I wanted to fashion my car after the Brock Racing Enterprises (BRE) full race, Datsun 510, so I installed fender flares, a front spoiler, lowered the car and installed high performance shocks and front and rear anti-sway bars. I also installed Libre aluminum alloy wheels and fat tires. I even put on black vinyl diagonal stripes similar to the BRE car. Because my car was white and it had these black stripes, my aunt used to call my car ‘The Skunk’–how dare she. :)

The Brock Racing Enterprise’s Datsun 510 is shown below. This number 46 car, was the one John Morton drove.

BRE-Datsun-510

Here’s a video of the BRE 510 in a race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb8QN7ayCWo

There was even a short movie called “Against All Odds”, featuring the BRE 510:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5XAP4pCRps

Visit wikipedia.com to read more about the Datsun 510:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsun_510