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Rambling - old memories and changing way of life
9 years ago
General
It's interesting how, in this day and age, I forget how much I take for granted. Like, I just took about five minutes to Google Image search something. I've had cable internet at my fingertips ever since I graduated high school, and Google has been a big thing for a while now (yeah I know, understatement).
And yet, there's been things I've fancied since my youth that I could have found very easily in the past years with the accessibility the internet provides. But I never did, and it struck me as odd.
When I was a young teen, one of the first novels I ever read was Dale Brown's "Flight of the Old Dog". I had always been an aviation enthusiast, and my mother bought me the novel because I was playing the hell out of the tie-in video game (back when video games fit on a 3.11 floppy I kid you not). And yes, I read it and loved it. I found the imagination of it inspiring, and there's something just infinitely badass about the titular plane. That all said, it is a work of fiction and something that cool doesn't exist.
At that time in my life (late 90's), I had some friends who were heavy into model building. While over at their house one day, they showed me a photo album of some model building convention sort of stuff their dad used to attend. And there, one photo, was a model someone built of the Old Dog! I totally geeked out over it. My friends didn't even know what it was, I had to explain it to them. I begged them to make a copy of the photo for me, but we lived in a small town with no business having a photo processing center, so I never got a copy of the photo. And that had always bummed me out.
So now, here I sit, 30 years old, in the new world the internet has created. People take and share photos over their cell phones, having printed photos is quaint and an ever-more-diminishing way of possessing and showing off photos, and everything is available at my fingertips. Not ten minutes prior to writing this, I saw something on twitter that reminded me about this aircraft. And on a whim, I google imaged searched and found a few dozen computer model renderings, several versions of model kits (probably custom modded) people have built, photo manips, and my inner teen is just squealing with delight.
I could have done that at any point in the past ten years, but never did. Guess when everything is just there, there's no urgency to seek it out. Young me would have been disappointed it took this long to do. Back then, I would have been ecstatic to have one such picture available to gawk at. Nowadays, if I really put effort into it, I can probably get a high-res image and take it somewhere to be made into a poster. Yet my walls are barren.
There's also this odd inner feeling I can't quite describe. Maybe nostalgia? But I see these pictures, especially the real physical models, and I'm taken back again to my first reading of the novel. Back then, reading the novel felt so engrossing and call me a nerd/geek all you want, but I really did get swept up into a story and I enjoyed every minute of it. I eventually went on to read many more of Dale Brown's novels, most of them involving the Megafortress. I admit, I completely fanboy over the aircraft.
I don't think it's healthy to live in the past, but I think it is perfectly healthy to revisit it. I should probably dig up the novel (I have at least two copies in my closet that I'm aware of), and experience it again. It'd be great to feel that sense of awe and excitement again that I felt when I was so much younger.
And oddly, yes, I still have the original box of the Megafortress game. Keeping in mind the time in which it was made; the game is smaller in size than the images of the box art I've downloaded.
And yet, there's been things I've fancied since my youth that I could have found very easily in the past years with the accessibility the internet provides. But I never did, and it struck me as odd.
When I was a young teen, one of the first novels I ever read was Dale Brown's "Flight of the Old Dog". I had always been an aviation enthusiast, and my mother bought me the novel because I was playing the hell out of the tie-in video game (back when video games fit on a 3.11 floppy I kid you not). And yes, I read it and loved it. I found the imagination of it inspiring, and there's something just infinitely badass about the titular plane. That all said, it is a work of fiction and something that cool doesn't exist.
At that time in my life (late 90's), I had some friends who were heavy into model building. While over at their house one day, they showed me a photo album of some model building convention sort of stuff their dad used to attend. And there, one photo, was a model someone built of the Old Dog! I totally geeked out over it. My friends didn't even know what it was, I had to explain it to them. I begged them to make a copy of the photo for me, but we lived in a small town with no business having a photo processing center, so I never got a copy of the photo. And that had always bummed me out.
So now, here I sit, 30 years old, in the new world the internet has created. People take and share photos over their cell phones, having printed photos is quaint and an ever-more-diminishing way of possessing and showing off photos, and everything is available at my fingertips. Not ten minutes prior to writing this, I saw something on twitter that reminded me about this aircraft. And on a whim, I google imaged searched and found a few dozen computer model renderings, several versions of model kits (probably custom modded) people have built, photo manips, and my inner teen is just squealing with delight.
I could have done that at any point in the past ten years, but never did. Guess when everything is just there, there's no urgency to seek it out. Young me would have been disappointed it took this long to do. Back then, I would have been ecstatic to have one such picture available to gawk at. Nowadays, if I really put effort into it, I can probably get a high-res image and take it somewhere to be made into a poster. Yet my walls are barren.
There's also this odd inner feeling I can't quite describe. Maybe nostalgia? But I see these pictures, especially the real physical models, and I'm taken back again to my first reading of the novel. Back then, reading the novel felt so engrossing and call me a nerd/geek all you want, but I really did get swept up into a story and I enjoyed every minute of it. I eventually went on to read many more of Dale Brown's novels, most of them involving the Megafortress. I admit, I completely fanboy over the aircraft.
I don't think it's healthy to live in the past, but I think it is perfectly healthy to revisit it. I should probably dig up the novel (I have at least two copies in my closet that I'm aware of), and experience it again. It'd be great to feel that sense of awe and excitement again that I felt when I was so much younger.
And oddly, yes, I still have the original box of the Megafortress game. Keeping in mind the time in which it was made; the game is smaller in size than the images of the box art I've downloaded.
I've discovered not to long for the past, it can easily make one depressed.
But learning from the past, and moving forward with the lessons learned, is a much better path.
Now I am beginning to feel a sense of urgency. There's fewer years in front of me than I have over my shoulder, and so much more I would like to do and see.