You Tubular Dude!

[pasithea]

I've been listing to this Retro Arcade Radio station again and it has a bunch of Commidore and Amiga commercials on it, as well as Atari, TRS80, etc, but I was thinking about how the computers I've owned influenced where I work now.

(If you're bored, this link will get you to a bunch of the Commidore commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=796KD4SNzwE&mode=related&search= )

So just for fun, (and because I'm doing a bunch of merging and have a little free time this morning) I typed 'Amiga' in on YouTube. Predictably, most of the videos are teen girls making some drivel about their friends.

Surprisingly, a lot of videos are idiots with camera phones showing their Amiga emulations running on various other machines. (Yes, you're a dork AND you don't know how to take decent video)

Then we got to the stuff I was actually looking for. Animations done by amiga fans.

Sorta vaguely in order of watchability with the more watchable ones nearer the top.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=glydlECUOZ0 (Truly the finest Amiga animation ever done)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=P4Y8hz-xbzQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=G26jkcNyBZg soooo stooooned
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSiYh1qX0A&NR
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sQrsvOPDUdw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8fjXC4HpG-w
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HEqWt7_4l6c
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nvGZinQR-KM&mode=related&search=
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zTtFFjw74H0&mode=related&search=

Bonus: Woo! I really like this 'drag the whole desktop off the screen' thing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kWmMSPJZprQ

I was always envious of Commidore/Amiga owners. We had a TRS-80 which could do... spreadsheets and text editing and dull stuff like that. It made me what I am but how I would have loved to have played with some of those graphics and sound tools. I wonder how my career might have gone different if I'd actually gotten one.

Anyhow... In later years I came to hate amiga fans because they touch that same nerve as the 'The South Will Rise Again!' sorts. It's dead.

For example: Here's are a bunch of the current Apple Ads with Amiga inserted into them. This is about the best of them as a commercial for OS-4, but it's still bad jump cuts and audio patches that really fail and look sad and pathetic.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xgObNfDhvBI&mode=related&search=
You can view the related ones if you want to see sadder fare.
I need some spare time and a few friends that look vaguely like these characters and a smelly old beardo with a Fedora with pins stuck in it to play the part of Amiga, chugging beer and shouting at them.

And for a hefty dose of the 80s, I bet Amiga fans still wank to this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=yckH20ngY4Y

Here's a video of someone touring the Commidore/Amiga plant on the last day before it was shut down. Kinda sad I suppose. They weren't bad machines, even if their commercials were aimed at paranoid yuppies and the people who evangelize them make me want to slap them upside the head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRI7hHwiRxk&NR

Comments

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

When the Amiga was still alive, having one had the same kind of effect owning a Mac does: you have something that works a hell of a lot better than the crap everyone else you know owns, and it's damn hard not to evangelize it.

Some people kinda got stuck on it. And still evangelize it. The way I look at it, it was ten years ahead of its time, but mismanagement meant it didn't stay ten years ahead - it sat in one place, and everything else caught up with it and surpassed most of its capabilities.

I'd go crazy trying to use one now.