I had a Compukit U101 (a UK version of the OHIO Superboard) which used
a tv as a monitor, which was b&w.
I later had an IBM XT which had a green on black monitor.
Similar story here, tohugh we couldn’t afford a C64. First computer was a Sinclair ZX81, 1kB of memory and no hard disk. Plug in to the TV for a monitor, funny thing was my screen has black text on a white backgrounf while my friend’s was the other way round, (I think it was due to how you tuned the TV)
To be fair, no home computer at that time had support for hard drives. At best you could use a floppy drive, though more likely a slow cassette drive. Even the business-oriented IBM PC, released the same year as the ZX81, didn’t initially support hard drives.
IIRC, the IBM XT was the first PC with a hard drive. Ten whole megs.
I thought I was hot shit when I added a twenty meg hard drive to my PS/2 mod 25. (256 shades of grey!)
I was in marching Band in High School, yes we did parades.
My first real job was at Memorex writing test software for hard disk drives in 1979. The drive and platters were separate units. The drive was a big machine about the size of a dishwasher. The platters were a stack about 16 inches in diameter and 12 inches high. You’d open the lid of the drive and lower the platter stack into it, then close the lid and the platters would spin up. I don’t remember the capacity but I doubt it was more than 10 MB. Our development machine had a similar disk system, but with a single large platter that you’d insert into a slot, like an oversized floppy disk. If I recall correctly, that thing held a whopping 750 KB.
Me as well. We were extremely good so we were in several big ones. I also put down that I was in a vehicle because once a town near our armory requested a tank for their Memorial Day parade. I was in a HMMWV behind the tank.
Last year I got to march in one of those village pop up parades in the mountains of Norway on their Independence Day (May 17). I believe it was in the town of Førde but can’t be 100% certain.
Some people wear traditional outfits but anyone can join in the parade. I was with family from the area and we had purchased little hand held flags for just this purpose.
One of the sweetest memories from my visit to that country.
Who among us has not been a tambourine-shaking leopard in an island Independence Day parade, or a rag-festooned kazoo player at a downtown New Year’s Eve celebration?
Me.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a parade; though there’s a vague memory of a riding exhibition in high school which may have had some similarity.
I’ve seen quite a few in person, however, as small towns in this area commonly put them on, often involving both high school bands and fire departments from multiple places in the area. Fun to watch – the expressions on some of the kids in the bands showing simultaneously great pride and terror of doing something wrong.
– I have multiple cats plus often a dog at any given time; and, in addition to the variety of relationships, none of those options seem quite right for any of them. They and I are symbionts – not in the Marvel sense, but in the sense of organisms of different species who live together in a fashion that benefits both.
There wasn’t an option for riding on a float, which I did once in my high school’s homecoming parade, so I counted that as riding in a vehicle.
My Boy Scout troop used to participate in the town’s various holiday parades. Not really doing anything, just walking and waving.
So I have walked and ridden.
Re: parades
- I marched in a parade or two with my Boy Scout troop when I was a pre-teen. I don’t remember many details beyond that.
- When I was a senior in high school, I led our school’s Homecoming parade, which went from the school building to the football stadium. I was riding on my moped, which we’d decked out with colored streamers. (Yeah, it was the early '80s, and a really small school.
) - About 20 years ago, I drove my car (then a brand-new PT Cruiser) in our town’s Independence Day parade, in support of the small humane society which my sister-in-law ran. We had some placards on the side of the car, with the humane society’s name, and there were kids in the back seat, throwing candy out the windows to parade attendees.
My parents’ community has a strawberry festival which includes a parade. One year my Girl Scout troop joined in, including holding the American and state flags. I got to be color guard, which means I got to walk in the parade and make sure the flags didn’t fall on the ground. The girls holding the flags had flagpole carrying harnesses, so they weren’t likely to drop the flags.
The results of the poll on Canadian musical acts from the 1990s map strongly to which acts significantly broke through in the U.S. market. The top six all had multiple songs which made the top 40 in the U.S.; Barenaked Ladies probably had the least chart success of that group, but likely get bonus recognition in the U.S. for the theme song to the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
I also had selected Loreena McKennitt, as I became a fan of her album The Book of Secrets a few years back, Tom Cochrane (who is essentially a one-hit wonder in the U.S., with “Life is a Highway”), and The Tragically Hip (who really never charted in the U.S., but I listened to some of their albums a few years back, with suggestions from here on the SDMB, after Gord Downie passed away).
That might just be a coincidence. If only Canadian residents were allowed to answer the poll, the top-scoring artists would be mostly the same.
Perhaps so; i suspect that a few acts (The Tragically Hip, for one) would score higher in a Canadian-only poll.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
For the poll on famous dog actors, here are what are probably their best known roles:
- Brigitte: Stella from Modern Family
- Buddy: Air Bud
- Daisy: Blondie franchise
- Gidget: the Taco Bell mascot
- Higgins: Benji
- Jed: White Fang
- London: The Littlest Hobo
- Madison: Vincent from Lost
- Moose: Eddie from Frasier
- Pal: Lassie
- Peggy: Dogpool in Deadpool & Wolverine
- Spike: Old Yeller
- Terry: Toto in The Wizard of Oz
Parades:
My town is very horse-centric, and there’s a big Christmas parade every year where most of the parade is people on horses, followed by dog-walkers. I’ve ridden in it for 4 or 5 years now. When Covid restrictions were easing and everyone was twitching to get out and DO something, there were about 300 horses that year!
I notice the list of Canadian artists includes only one Francophone person: Celine Dion. And she sang many songs in English.