To market, to market
Jan. 23rd, 2005 08:36 pmI wandered down to the Spitalfields Market today. I was unable to locate the vintage spectacle frame retailer Cory Doctorow mentioned on bOING bOING a while ago, but did find a chap selling a line of Lomo cameras (including one that took stereograms, with a viewer provided). Mind you, I'm not likely to buy a Lomo, as digital pretty much trumps that for off-the-hip shooting anywhere. (Buying a super-k3wl hipster film camera when digitals do the job much better seems somewhat pretentious and fetishistic; discuss.) Having said that, were I to buy anything there, it'd probably be a Holga medium-format camera, just to play with medium format.
I also found a trendy homewares shop nearby which had, in its showroom, a Lizard Lounger, i.e., a tabletop arcade cabinet containing a modern PC running MAME (on Windows XP). Playing Gyruss and Wonder Boy with actual arcade controls is a completely different experience to playing them using a PC/PowerBook keyboard (or a PlayStation controller, for that matter). If I was obscenely wealthy (it costs £2,850) and had somewhere to put such a device, I'd buy one, as it would be a very cool thing to have around.
I also found a trendy homewares shop nearby which had, in its showroom, a Lizard Lounger, i.e., a tabletop arcade cabinet containing a modern PC running MAME (on Windows XP). Playing Gyruss and Wonder Boy with actual arcade controls is a completely different experience to playing them using a PC/PowerBook keyboard (or a PlayStation controller, for that matter). If I was obscenely wealthy (it costs £2,850) and had somewhere to put such a device, I'd buy one, as it would be a very cool thing to have around.