Call me a dinosaur all you want, I prefer the original over this $15 "modern" update, faults and all. This thing makes everything so easy and carefree. How boring.

On a related note, 3D Etch-A-Sketches? You're cool. [Etch A Sketch Freestyle via OhGizmo]

If you're like me, you may be surprised to hear that GeoCities still existed in any form—but it does, apparently, hosting flat HTML pages and dithered GIFs for free just like it's been doing since '94, before anyone knew anything about the word blog, or Google, or much of anything. Yahoo just quietly pulled the plug; no new accounts can be registered, and those with pages still being hosted will receive further instructions on how to save them from the fire this summer.

I was debating on whether or not to show you my original Geocities page, but it's kind of late, so what the fuck. Here it is. Like my first phone number I still remember its awkward, faux-geography-based URL by heart.

Yes, revel in my hilariously precious high school writings on Magnolia, seeing REM and other bands I worshipped play around the Midwest, and trading concert tapes. Yeah, concert tapes. You kids today may not remember, but back in the old days it took like 45 minutes to download a single 96kbps MP3 on a 28.8 modem over Napster. And Lord knows I couldn't tie up the phone lines that long. Also note my overuse of the semi-colon; I love it to this day! I must say though I was kind of way ahead of the curve in terms of the mixed-typography-size, minimalist-web-design tip. And boy was I funny.

I'll miss you GeoCities, you were my first. Now that I've shown mine, commenters, show me yours! This will be the first and last time I ever ask anything resembling that question ever. [TechCrunch]

In addition to its obvious simplicity, the Kotaska replica boasts strange retro features like "paper" and a rare Shinshu Seiki Model-102 drum printer. The firmware is old school too, having been extracted from the original Busicom ROM. Be sure to read the narrative about this classic gadget of yesteryear in the link for more on its history. You might learn something.

Curious about building your own? Have a nostalgic itch for the days when you couldn't hit the widget button on your laptop and have a calculator pop up instantaneously on screen? Kotaska has you covered, my friends, with the schematics for this rare recreation, as well as the original source code.

There's a few more schematics where that came from, if that's your sort of thing. [4004 via Slashdot]

CBS Paramount cleaned out the Star Trek garage and is putting its finds up for sale at Christie's New York this October, putting 4,000 lots of over 1,000 items on the block in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Star Trek original series tv show. Captain Kirk's leisure suit (photo above—and no, we don't know if Shatner's girdle is included) is expected to go for five to seven thousand dollars, which puts it in the middle range for costumes but still in the low range overall, but if you're broke, not to despair:

Fans with more modest budgets can train their sights on a host of Trekkie ephemera like the 10-inch Resikkan nonplaying prop brass flute used by Patrick Stewart as Picard in the episode "The Inner Light" in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which carries a low estimate of just $300.

Cathy Elkies, director of special collections at Christie's, said the value of the objects was difficult to gauge because "we don't factor in that emotional fury generated around this kind of material.

P.S. Anyone know if Forrest J. Ackerman's still alive and kicking?

40 Years of STAR TREK: The Collection [Christie's]
Christie's to hold 'Star Trek' garage sale [Yahoo! News, thanks Andrew!]

Ed Farias wrote in to tell us about his product, Arcade in a Box, an all-in-one arcade console with computer guts built directly in the controller that can be plugged directly into external video sources. It's a great idea if you like the feel of proper controllers but you want to utilize your big new plasma or fancy projector as the display, or if you don't want or have room for an arcade cabinet.

If you decide later on that you'd like one after all, Arcade in a Box fits right into Mameroom's Ultimate Arcade II Cabinet; it's 100% MAME compatible so you can play every game out there, and it should also work with PC games that let you reconfigure their controls.

You insane DIY people can buy the PDF plans for building their own Arcade in A Box for just $12.50, while lazy bones like us who want to play not build can purchase a complete working system for $1,199. IIf you'd like to build some but not all of it, there's the AIAB Kit, which comes with computer parts for $399 or without for $250.

Arcade in A Box

If you've got a DeLorean and a few extra hundred bucks lying around, get your bad self over to eBay and bid on this gorgeous flux capacitor. The seller/builder used real glass tubes, accurate to the one that appeared in Back to the Future and long out of production (i.e. rare), and the gold bases were machined out of aluminum to match the movie prop. It plugs into any car battery and is guaranteed to fit into a DeLorean. Oh, and there are no nasty strobe lights in this baby, only white LEDs that chase to the center.

The highest bid out of 46 so far is $450.00, with two days and twelve hours to go. If you're broke or just cheap, you can always just make your own, but we doubt it'll be this pretty.

Back to the Future Delorean Flux Capacitor [eBay, via productdose]
Flux Capacitor [Wikipedia]

Those of you born in the 80s—or the 90s! You zygotes!—should probably feel free to just skip this post, but everyone else, if you had a Creative Labs Soundblaster card in the early 90s you probably spent more than a few hours in conversation with Dr Sbaitso, a program meant to show off the sound card's then-impressive range of digitized voices. Matt of X-Entertainment remembers the good doctor:

Doctor Sbaitso was meant to be the player's "psychiatrist," able to converse to-and-fro both with onscreen text and a horrendously off-kilter voice coming through the speakers. Though some would consider the game to have included some degree of artificial intelligence, it really didn't: Doctor Sbaitso couldn't understand a thing, and all of his responses were essentially rephrasings of whatever you said, mixed with a few key phrases that would illicit more surprising answers. This didn't keep my gawky nearly-teenage self from considering Doctor Sbaitso my best friend and only social outlet, and God, I used to sit up all night long trying to get this 10KB computer game to solve all of life's problems.

Did you get Dr Sbaitso to help you with your existential crises, or did you spend your time trying to get him to pronounce fantastically obscene things and give you the overly dramatic Parity Error? Is LiveJournal the new Dr Sbaitso? Are there any good answers to these questions?

Dr Sbaitso Was My Only Friend [X-Entertainment]

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you took a 1967 Moog Modular Series III and rehoused all the modules in backlit plexiglass, now you know! The groovy gentleman in the photo above is Don Preston, and his plexiglass Moog was previously owned and custom-built by Pat Gleeson. The Moog was used on the synth-heavy soundtrack of Apocalypse Now in 1979.

Synths used on the soundtrack to "Apocalypse Now" [Vintage Synth Explorer, via Music Thing]

If we could have a crush on a podcast, we would be totally crushing out right now all over the recently launched ReFrederator, which puts out a classic cartoon every single day. Some of them star the likes of Bugs Bunny, Mighty Mouse, Daffy Duck, Betty Boop, Porky Pig, Donald Duck and Felix the Cat—ah, the beauty of things returning to the public domain—and others feature fairy tales and musicals.

Each week of cartoons will have a theme, and this first week's is Mother Goose. If ReFrederator takes requests, we here at Gizmodo are selfishly hoping for a best of Fritz Freleng week sometime soon!

ReFrederator [via Pocket-Lint]
ReFrederator on the iTunes Store

Apple purchased every last bit of advertising space in Newsweek's November/December 1984 special election issue and used all 39 pages to promote the Macintosh; GUIdebook not only scanned in every single page but went and transcribed all the text, a great read if you're in the grip of Mac nostalgia as we always are. This bit from page 14 cracked us up:

At Apple, we only have one rule:

Rules are made to be broken.

Take "Thou shalt be compatible with IBM?" for instance.

We decided there was something more important than building a computer that's compatible with another computer.

Namely, building a computer that's compatible with people.

Only 22 years later, Apple decides they've gotten the compatible with people thing down pat and it's time to get compatible with another computer working—et voila, they give us Boot Camp!

Macintosh advertisement [GUIdebook via swissmiss]

If, as a young impressionable child, you always wanted to grow up to be just like Michael Knight, only to find years later that fate had dealt you a cruel hand and you were unable to croon in German or grow luxurious chest hair, perhaps you will find some solace in the fact that while you may never be half the man the Hoff was in the 80s, you can totally still have his car.

All you've got to do is purchase a car from Pontiac's third generation series of Firebirds, track down every single part in the Knight Replicas catalog and then follow their conversion guide. No sweat, right? Not for a cool cat like you. Hell, play your cards right and maybe you'll have your sweet, sweet ride ready in time for the 2006 Knight Nationals & Convention in Dayton this August. Don't forget to send us a postcard from Ohio!

Guide to KITT and KARR [Knight Replicas, thanks Scott!]

Too lazy to build yourself an Enigma machine from a DIY kit? If you've got enough money, say, fifteen thousand dollars or so, why not just buy this original Enigma 3 machine off of eBay? The seller is in Germany and the auction ends on April 3rd. Frankly, we don't know how anyone is expected to resist this item when the owner makes sweet, sweet promises like: "ORIGINAL!!! KEIN NACHBAU!!! VOLL FUNKTIONSTUCHTIG!!!!".

Enigma 3 Walzen Chiffriermaschine Chiper Weltkrieg 1941 [eBay, via Boing Boing]

Did you know yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the Pilot, Palm's very first device?

Hard to believe it's only been a decade since humanity's nerdiest members were instantly divided into three distinct clans:

1. those who must alway upgrade to the newest Palm at the first opportunity
2. those who will use anything but a Palm—the Hipster PDA being the latest in a long line of alternatives, both technological and analog
3. and those of us who steadfastly refuse to organize ourselves, even today in the face of growing Getting Things Done hysteria.

Whichever group you belong to, show Palm some love today by planting a wet slurpy kiss on the first Treo you see.

Palm Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary of the Pilot, the Mobile Computer That Changed the Way People Work and Live [palmOne Press Room, via gizmag]

Alcatel's new OT-C850 Music Phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera, a 65K color 176 220 screen, plays MP3s (256 MB of memory onboard, plus a MicroSD slot) and EDGE, blah blah blah. Let's be honest now: the most interesting thing about this phone that it looks like it was designed by Knight Industries.

Would you use this phone? Should you buy it? Before you come to a decision, first ask yourself: WWDHD?

Alcatel mobile music phone, looks like a space invader [MobileMentalism.com]

British company Dualit are famous for making gorgeously-styled appliances, most notably their Vario line of toasters, and their new DAB digital radio is no exception to tradition. Pricey at £200 and only for use in the UK, its retro chrome good looks make that Sony radio we cooed over just the other day look like a chump.

Dualit brings out a DAB Digital Radio [Shiny Shiny]