Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV
We’ve always had satellite TV as, over the air, we can only pick up PBS, and then only in B&W except on very clear days. With the switch to digital, I suspect we’ll get nothing. At any rate, I haven’t tried in a couple years, but I’m sure I could break out the old portable TV and finagle the antenna to watch This Old House.
Adjusting a television’s color and hue adjustments
This is still rather useful to know now, I’m not sure what makes it obsolete.
Adjusting the tracking on a VCR
The VCR I’ve got in the projection booth is auto-tracking, but the one attached to the computer is manual. When digitizing tapes, I find you can get a steadier transfer with manual tracking.
Adjusting a clock’s pendulum
Either you figure it out, or the clock runs too fast or too slow. Two of my clocks are mechanical–the one in the library and the one in the upstairs hall. Neither are terribly accurate, they’ll wander a minute or more every week, but they make a very satisfying tick-tock.
Autoexec.bat editing
Same as any other batch file, it just runs automatically when the computer starts up. I haven’t done it since Windows 3.1 days, but I can.
BASIC
I have done QBasic and VisualBasic in the past. I’ve got VisualStudio now, so I could learn VB.NET, but I have little interest in doing so. I’ve also got PowerBasic, which I was once very good at and have recently been picking back up on. It’s a compiled language, great for when I want to pretend its 1988 and bang out ludicrous DOS-based games with EGA graphics.
Booting off a floppy disk
I’m pretty sure you can do that now. And there’s really not much to it, just stick in the disk and turn on the computer.
Buy a roll of film
This list is getting pretty ridiculous. Ordinary 400 ISO color negative film can still be bought anywhere. The sight of it is hardly a mind-blowing trip to the past. The last film I bought, though, was 100 ISO B&W film, which isn’t something you tend to see in the checkout line, but is readily available on the internet. This was a couple weeks ago.
Calculating sales tax
Take the price, divide by ten, then divide by two. Not hard.
Carbon Copy Paper
I don’t use it for typewriting, but it is useful for tracing stuff. Can still be bought in the stationary department of Wal-Mart.
Changing the ribbon on a typewriter
Coincidentally enough, I did this just last night. My Royal portable gets a great deal of use. I use it for making lists and reminders and for taking notes while researching (it’s home is the desk in the library).
Clicking on the up and down arrows of a vertical scrollbar
Hardly a “skill”, now, is it?
Common sense
Yuk, yuk.
Compiling source code by hand
You mean, like translating assembly into machine code? I’ve done it, as a lesson, back in school (2006, I think), but never seriously.
Cranking a telephone
I’ve got a generator that came out of an old telephone. If you crank it fast enough, that thing can put out a fair amount of power. We also played with one back in middle school, holding the leads while turning the crank slowly to feel the electricity tingling.
Cursive handwriting
It’s time consuming and I don’t remember all the upper-case letters, but otherwise, sure. I can do it in Cyrillic, I learned that much more recently and it’s still fresh in my mind.
Darkroom photography skills
Yes. Well, I suppose on which “skills” you’re talking about, but I can process film, negative and reversal, and make contact prints and enlargements.
Degaussing a CRT monitor
I’ve still got a CRT monitor (not as the primary monitor anymore, but it hasn’t ceased to exist). LCDs are no fun what with their no use for degaussing.
Developing photographic film
Hasn’t this already been covered?
Dialing a rotary phone
I, personally, have never done so, but I think it would take an idiot of remarkable proportions not to be able to figure it out. Has no one ever seen old movies or TV show, or read old books, or seen an old phone?
DOS
MS-DOS, sure. Still use it occasionally. LDOS (for the TRS-80), sure. My only use for it is to load games from disks, but that counts.
Extending The Antenna On The Cellphone
My cell phone still has an antenna. It’s not old, either. Maybe those tiny-computer-phones no longer have antennae, but phone-phones certainly do.
Focusing a camera
This is not an obsolete skill. Anyone who is completely dependent on autofocus has made things very difficult for themselves. As for different focusing aids, I can use a split-screen, microprism, ground glass, and rangefinder. I can also pretty accurately guess how far away something is and set the distance on the lens using the feet markings.
Formatting a floppy
Most come pre-formated, but yeah, I can right-click the floppy disk icon.
Gopher
Works just like HTTP or FTP in Firefox, so there’s really nothing special to know. There’s just not much content on Gopher anymore.
Handwriting
What, is Charlemagne supposed to be responding to this list? Yes, I can grasp a stick and use it to form letters.
Having your gas pumped for you and your oil checked at a full-service gas station
Full-service stations do still exist, you know.
HyperCard and HyperTalk
I haven’t thought of HyperCard in years. We used to make tremendous point-and-click adventure games in 5th grade in HyperCard.
Lighting a kerosene lamp
Well, you put in the oil, raise the wick, light the wick, then lower it until it’s burning at the brightness you want. Not too complex. I take it whoever added this lives somewhere with reliable power?
Loading data from a cassette tape
I have done so, yes. I’ve got a small collection of old computers. The C64, Atari, and CoCo all have tape drives (in the CoCos case, the tape drive is all it has).
Loading film into a 35 mm camera
Still and motion picture, yes. I shot some 35mm movie footage just last month, loading the film myself (100’ Eyemo daylight spool in a 1926 movie camera).
Long division
I have no use for it, but it’s a skill that sticks with you.
Making a home movie with a cine camera
Sure. 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, I’ve done all of them. In fact, almost all my home movies are Super 8. The few that aren’t are 8mm. I detest video. 35mm is too expensive to throw away–I tend to only use it for projects I expect to sell.
Map Reading
It’s a picture. You look at it. About the only thing you have to know is which way you’re pointing. How can anyone not read a map?
Operating an Overhead Projector
Push the big button to turn on the lamp, then adjust the focus with the knob on the pole. An overhead projector is not a complicated machine. They’ve most been supplanted by PowerPoint and video projectors, but slides and transparencies haven’t vanished just yet.
Operating a 35mm movie projector and setting the carbons
My 35mm projectors at home use incandescent bulbs, but I do have a carbon arc lamphouse from a 1909 Cameragraph. I don’t think I’d like to try it plugged in, but just playing around with the controls, it doesn’t seem too challenging.
PASCAL-TurboPASCAL
Learned it in the 10th or 11th grade, don’t recall which. That was 2000 and 2001. Admittedly, though, it was well obsolete by that point and everyone knew it (as were the PS/1s we learned it on). That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun.
Peering through a keyhole
You can do that at any door in this house, as well, I’m sure, at 95% of the others houses around here. New construction is the exception, not the rule. Even when I have put in new doors, I’ve still used mortise locks with keys, both so they blend in with the others, and also because I like them.
Programming a VCR to record a show
Can do, and do do. Recordings I intend to keep I record on DVD-R. Those I plan to watch once and never again, VHS.
Programming in Java
What an utterly bizarre thing to list as an obsolete skill. I wonder what skills they think are current?
Putting a needle on a vinyl record
I put needles on shellac records, but for vinyl, I think I’d want something with a point a bit finer.
QBASIC
Already covered. Many items on this list are repeats.
Reading a Sundial
Wha-what? It… it… what?
Recording television with a VCR
This is getting tiresome. Yes. Any further permutations of this same question I will ignore.
Respooling a chewed-up VCR tape or audio cassette
Never done it with a cassette tape, but then I’ve never really used one. With VHS, I’ve cut out chewed segments, spliced the tape together, and rewound it before.
Rewinding VCR tapes
I prefer the more “around the world” approach of fast-forwarding until I’m back at the start. 
Splicing out damaged portions of a VHS Cassette tape
Once again…
Super 8 Film cutting and editing
Yes. I do tape splices, they look better on the screen, but can do cement as well.
Switching from TV mode to Game mode on the box behind the tv
Yes. Most of the computers in my old computer collection are attached to TVs using these Game/TV boxes.
Telling the time by a sundial
Seriously? I mean, it was awe-inspiringly stupid the first time around, but to list it again…
Threading a 8mm or 16mm film projector
My primary 8mm projector is auto-loading and my 16mm is slot loading, but I do have others in my collection that require manual threading. It’s not hard to do, just follow the arrows and use a bit of common sense.
Understanding Roman Numbers
They’re generally called Roman numerals, and yes. I also understand that real Romans never used them in the modern fashion.
Using a 16 mm film projector
Yes. Its last use was on Sunday. I watched the 1911 Thanhauser version of Romeo and Juliet, fresh from eBay.
Using a filmstrip projector
I once got to operate the filmstrip projector in the 6th grade. Don’t remember what it was about. I always thought the white text on the blue background seemed to jump off the screen and float in mid air and wondered what optical illusion was behind that.
Using a Typewriter?
See “Changing the ribbon on a typewriter”. Last night was its last use, taking notes from Albert E. Smith’s autobiography, and I’m sure it will get further use today on that same subject.
Using carbon paper to make copies
I’d just like to point out that this is mentioned no less than four times and, using this exact wording, no less than twice.
Watching a slide show with a slide projector
How is “watching a slide show” a skill? Not loading the carousel, or operating the projector, or focusing the lens–no, watching a slide show. Do some people get confused and sit in the wrong direction? Forget to open their eyes? Become disoriented thinking the pictures are real and that they’ve been teleported to Florida?
Winding a watch or clock
Hall clock is wound by raising the weight. Library clock is wound with a key.
