h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Perhaps they know what darkness there is, and that's why they're showing you every sign of respect as they don't want to awaken the monster?

In the Good Old Days towns had banks. My hometown of Sandown had a NatWest, Midlands, Lloyds, Barclays and a Halifax Building Society and now all but Lloyds has closed, with the Lloyds shutting their doors for good in the new year. And when you went into the bank to pay in your cheque you were allowed to queue up unhindered, without someone trying to fob you off to a machine at ankle height whose buttons have all been worn away. Instead you were allowed to queue and there'd be lots of windows – each containing someone serving you – and once you paid your cheque in, your book would be stamped. STAMP! STAMP! None of this lousy receipt printed in near-invisible ink on toilet paper rejects rubbish.

And you used to get stamps in books taken out the library too.

There were definitely more stamps in the good old days… As well as more little, quirky shops.

<BB<

Oh, and in the Gold Old Days there were more dials and fewer buttons. Phones had dials. Microwaves had dials. Your watch not telling the right time? Set it by twiddling the dial. (Mind you, changing telly channels using the dial was annoying…)

<BB<

We had Green Shield stamps too - remember those?

I'm not convinced it was really worth licking a couple of square miles of gummed paper to exchange for some plastic tat at Littlewoods, but, hey, they were the good old days

Littlewoods was another one of those shops that didn't exist except on the Mainland.

<BB<

Just remembered, in the good old days fire engines were white.

<BB<

Don't tell me - no red paint on the island?

"I'm not convinced it was really worth licking a couple of square miles of gummed paper to exchange for some plastic tat at Littlewoods, but, hey, they were the good old days" [Icy North]

Would Tweety Bird tee a plastic tat?

I must be getting lazy in my old age. I have self-adhering stamps on self-adhering envelopes. No more licking. Just pull off the little strip of paper, and you're good to go.

As rfor trading stamps, there were some rather ridiculous colors toward the end of that era. A&P had plaid stamps. Pogo satirized the whole thing with puce stamps
http://www.biblio.com/book/pogo-puce-stamp-catalog-kelly-walt/d/467634662?aid=frg&utm_source=google&utm_medium=product&utm_campaign=feed-details&gclid=CP2yvqK99tACFZmIswodEsIMWA

That's old-fashioned now there are envelope in batches of 6 with the stamp printed on.

I wouldn't bet that that wold be commonplace everywhere, though.

In the good old days, we had videos and you could buy or record almost anything. The picture quality wasn't perfect and they had to be rewound, but you could easily fastforward the trailers at the start.
Nowadays you can watch things online. The sound is always out of sync with the picture, the picture quality is often abysmal and pixelating, the film pauses and buffers at the good bits, you have to watch the adverts at the start and half the time the whole thing crashes and you have to restart everything and then watch the film again from the beginning.

<BB<

It does take some effort to get the video and audio in-sync . . . I went through several software packages to get a decent one to convert my old VHS to DVD stuff.

The secret of 'kids of today' is just to continue treating them, as if it were still the 'good old days', most youth respond correctly to being hit in the head... I find...

shops!; yes! we used to have shops in the good old days I'd forgotten that! - now we only have cafes and food outlets in the city, you can't actually buy 'stuff' in shops no more - hence the continueual stream of delivery people bringing Amazon packages to teh door

DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAMN IT!




I just lost yet another long, detailed post about how and why US broadband sucks compared to that of the rest of the industrialized world tapped out by thumb on my tablet.

I'm getting really tired of this crap and don't see anything being done to fix it...

til I cool off.

Btw.... the broadband part was just the subject of my post, the problem is legacy problems of this site.

Well, if you are getting on about broadband limitations . . .

Who remembers the days of Commodore C=64 and Apple IIC - and 300 baud modems? Jumping to 1200 baud was like WOW ! And then 2400?

Nothing will ever scream the data along so fast.

(I am content with my ADSL at an average of 6, maybe 7 Mbps)

"Nowadays you can watch things online. The sound is always out of sync with the picture, the picture quality is often abysmal and pixelating, the film pauses and buffers at the good bits, you have to watch the adverts at the start and half the time the whole thing crashes and you have to restart everything and then watch the film again from the beginning" [Bluebottle]

Yes, that sounds frustrating. The convenience of not getting into your car, driving to a theater, and shelling out ten or twelve bucks for a movie on a large screen with surround sound had to be balanced by some problems encountered in your own home. The universe needs to be balanced.

I like to see movies when they first come out, so I'm sharing an event with millions of other people who are doing the same. The actors are going on talk shows to advertise their movies the awards-ceremony mavens are buzzing about this performance or that, and you have a feeling of being part of something happening right now.

I watch DVDs or online versions when I've missed something that never came ot my local theaters, or I want a classic that was made before I was born.

I feel your pain BB! Digital replay of audio and video (separately or together) is absolutely wonderful when it works well. But even with the best, most stable internet connection, there will be times of outage, reduced speed or a local issue with your router or your device is doing updates, crashes or something else random.

And of course this usually happens when you're totally in the mood for nothing else except a binge of netflix/internet radio/whatever.

Trouble is, with this method of replay, your entertainment fix is in the hands of others and there are so many links in the chain that can go wrong.

At least with an old VHS machine or analogue/ non-streamed music replay, you were pretty much guaranteed it would work unless 2 things went wrong; a power cut or the device failed. I could live with just these 2 rare possibilities interrupting my audio-visual entertainment, rather than the multitude of things that can and do go wrong now

I'm going to a theater to see "Manchester by the sea" with a friend tonight.

That reminds me - in the good old days there were more cinemas. In my home town of Sandown there were two, there was one in Shanklin and one in Lake. They've all gone (they were all single screen). There was a cinema in Ryde that closed in the mid-80s and the Island's largest cinema was a 3-screen one in Newport. That's gone now too. The Newport and Lake cinemas closed when a 12-screen cinema opened in Newport just before 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' film came out (the first film I saw there) although they're currently doing road improvements along St George's Way so the cinema is currently all-but impossible to get to.

Before we had kids my wife and I would go to the cinema about twice a week. Nowadays it is more like twice a year - Christmas and Easter. Mind you, it is cheaper to buy a DVD than a single cinema ticket.

<BB<

Where I grew up (Newmarket in Suffolk) there were two cinemas. One (The Odean) closed - I think it had already closed when I left in 1976 - and eventually became a night club with a very bad reputation. (All those stable lads)

The other one, the Kingsway, the only one I ever went to, is now a building materials outlet.

We are lucky in having an independent cinema 20 minutes in the one direction, and another, bigger one which shows films in the original English, 40 minutes by car in the other direction - also accessible by tram practically from door to door. Neither shows ads.

I get most of my film watching done on DVD, as it's cheaper and you get all the DVD extras, but some films just have to be seen in the cinema (Gravity, for example)