I am a meat popsicle.
This is Andrew Brandt's non-work profile, where I may discuss information security topics as well as non-infosec things that are on my mind.
I'm a malware researcher and writer about security topics for an infosec vendor, and a volunteer docent at the Media Archaeology Lab retrocomputing lab (@mediaarchaeologylab) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I hack old stuff and also, occasionally, fix it. Drinker of beer, player of videogames, and nerdcore enthusiast.
Earlier in my career I was a journalist, but always a technologist. I worked for PC World and MacUser magazines as an editor. I was also a staff writer for the UC Berkeley student-run newspaper, the Daily Californian. In the mid-90s I worked for KRON-TV in San Francisco on a tech magazine show called Next Step that was syndicated internationally on Discovery networks.
For purely malware- and security-related toots, please follow @threatresearch
| Meat popsicle? | YES! |
| State of residence | Colorado |
| State of my office | disarray |
| Pets | none |
| Favorite form of archaeology | media |
More BSOD should include music.
I was fooling around with a "new" Windows 98 machine at @mediaarchaeologylab and started up a Simpsons game. It played fine for a while but the system isn't perfectly stable, so it eventually crashed...with the Simpsons theme continuing playing in the background.
Seems super accurate TBH. Has their ever been a Simpsons opener where they flip on the TV and it bluescreens? Might be a missed opportunity.
Someone visited the @mediaarchaeologylab yesterday who happened to have a photo on their phone of their ancestors who literally rode the Oregon Trail in covered wagons in the 19th century, and I asked to photograph the picture in front of the startup screen for Oregon Trail. Honestly looks like a great 8-bit rendering of the scene on the monochrome Apple IIc.
#retrogaming #retrocomputing #oregontrail #history #HistoryColorado #appleii #apple #MediaArchaeology
Hey my #retrocomputer and #retrogaming fam. The Media Archaeology Lab @mediaarchaeologylab is doing its spring T-shirt order.
You can get this rad exploded diagram of...a sort of Lovecraftian retro-mutant hardware Frankenstein, but only if you put in your request by February 28.
Don't delay! This is a one-and-done shirt and you don't want the FOMO.
This form will walk you through the process of donating to the MAL to pre-order a t-shirt - thank you so much for donating to the MAL! Shipping costs are included in the donation. We are currently only able to process shipment to the U.S., sorry about that. If you are located overseas, please contact us via email and we will see if we can coordinate something. If you have questions, please contact [email protected] - and make sure to hit submit when you complete this form so we know what to send & where to send it!
Preparation for #Marchintosh nbd just a #SteamDeck booting Mac System 7 on the #Basilisk #emulator. Works pretty sprightly, despite my fumbling with mouse controls.
Possibly the greatest tease in the history of email marketing.
But at least I finally know Wheatley's entire name.
Harlen.
Figures.
A media archaeologist a couple of years back stumbled upon an older Macintosh running a prototype operating system that never saw commercial release: System 7.7 was subsumed by MacOS 8 a few months later. But the early-alpha version of 7.7 still exists, and thank goodness someone with the appropriate skill set found and archived this precious and rare slice of computing history.
I love that the Special menu was renamed "Speedy" but in all other ways, this feels very much like one of the older Mac System 7 setups...with a few interesting internal testing tools and some unexpected hints about who was using the device in the artefacts left behind on the drive image.
I plan to install this on real Mac hardware soon, but it does work great right now using SheepShaver, the emulator.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-77-pre-release
#MediaArchaeology #MediaArchaeologyLab #Mac #ClassicMac #RetroMac #RetroComputing
