steem

Friday, July 31, 2020

Electronic Game Player (May/June)


Electronic Game Player (May/June)

Electronic Game Player is a pretty obscure video game magazine mostly because it was short lived. However, it was the immediate predecessor to Electronic Gaming Monthly which was not so obscure... The May/June 1988 issue includes:

Features

  • The Electronic Game Player Great Game Give-Away - Here's your chance to win over fifty cartridges for your Nintendo Entertainment System absolutely free! One lucky winner will get a slew of titles, including games that aren't even available in stores yet!

  • Behind the Scenes at the CES - Grab your V.I.P. pass and head for Las Vegas with Electronic Game Player for an advance look at all of the home games and computer software you'll be playing in the months to come.


In-Focus

  • Video Games Battle Back - With millions of game systems filtering into American living rooms and arcade receipts exceeding $5,000,000,000, the video game hobby appears to be healthier than ever. Some say the wonderful world of electronic gaming has returned from the dead. Others contend that it never had left us. Find out the real story and get an insight on where the major companies plan to go from here.

Also In This Issue...

  • Score! - Top champs give you their secrets to winning at Out Run, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and Alien Syndrome. Look for plenty of helpful tips in this new expanded section.

  • The Home Front - Get the complete scoop on over a dozen new releases for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System. Be sure to check out Ed Semrad's reviews of Victory Road and Zaxxon 3-D, as well as Wizards and Warrior and Freedom Force.

  • The U.S. National Video Game Team Endorses - A new column you'll find exclusively in Electronic Game Player! The U.S. Nation Video Game Team, the only internationally recognized group of professional game players, lend their special "Players Seal of Approval" to three of the hottest new carts! Read the team's endorsements of Double Dragon, Fighting Golf, and RBI Baseball in this regular feature that spotlights only the very best titles!

  • Logon - Todd Rodgers, Jim Gilliam, and John Styles review Accolade's Test Drive and Card Sharks, Mindscape's into the Eagle's Nest, Data East's Speed Buggy, Q*Bert, and TNK III.

Departments

  • Coming Soon
  • insert Coin
  • Interface
  • Press Start
  • Gaming Gossip
  • Next Wave
  • Behind the Screens
  • APA International Scoreboard

...and more!

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (757-760)


See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that we found after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

The second two photos were taken in the Triangle Lake area of Oregon. One features the lake itself and the other the Triangle Lake Church. The other two photos feature flowers. These are undated but likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s.







Leo at Triangle Lake between Eugene + Florence



Triangle Lake Church



Bunchberry




The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Monday, July 27, 2020

Commodore Format (February 1993)





Commodore Format (February 1993)



Commodore Format is a Commodore 64 magazine that was published in the U.K. from October 1990 until October 1995. It was the last commercial magazine published in the U.K. for an 8-bit computer. Contents of the February 1993 issue include:

Games

  • WWF European Rampage (Ocean)
  • Sceptre of Baghdad (Atlantis)
  • Playdays (Alternative)
  • Magic Rufus (Alternative)
  • Dalek Attack (Alternative)
  • Street Fighter 2 (US Gold)
  • Superstar Seymour (Codemasters)
  • Lethal Weapon (Ocean)
  • All-American Basketball (Zeppelin)
  • Wrestling Superstars (Codemasters)

CF Special

  • Let's Make a Monster - Aren't color splits the very bestest? What do you mean, what's a color split? They'll help make Mayhem in Monsterland one of the greatest looking games ever seen on the C64, that's what.
  • Face to Face - You've heard of the Darling Buds of May, well this month we talk to, uh, David Darling...
  • But I Wanted a Bike - Remember our Chrimbo compo, when we asked you to tell us what movies or TV shows you wanted to see on the C64?
  • Who Does He Think He Is? - With Dalek Attack in for review we tracked down Sylvester 'Seventh Doctor' McCoy for an expert analysis of the game, the series and some curious queries on Ferrets (?).
  • Power Pack Pages - The Power Pack unpacked!

Regulars

  • Charts - The best of the best
  • Gamebusters - If you want to get ahead get busted!
  • Inside Info - Our techie hit-man 'liquidates' your problems.
  • Letters - TMB does his funky correspondence thang!
  • Budget Games - Great games at knockdown prices.
  • Mail Order/Subs - A veritable Aladdin's cave of C64 stuff.
  • Next Month - Coming attractions - Commodore style!

...and more!

Friday, July 24, 2020

gfyuna23

Why Sweden Succeeded in “Flattening the Curve” and New York Failed

Coronavirus deaths have slowed to a crawl* in Sweden. 

But the debate over Sweden’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, which relied on individual responsibility instead of government coercion to maintain social distancing, is far from over.

Last week, The New York Times labeled Sweden’s approach to the pandemic a “cautionary tale” for the rest of the world, claiming it “yielded a surge of deaths without sparing its economy from damage.”

To be accurate, Sweden has outperformed many nations around the world with its “lighter touch” approach and was one of the few nations in Europe to see its economy grow in the first quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top infectious disease expert, continues to defend his nation’s approach to the pandemic.

“I’m looking forward to a more serious evaluation of our work than has been made so far,” Tegnell said in a recent podcast published by Swedish public radio before taking a scheduled vacation. “There is no way of knowing how this ends.”

Sweden’s Actual Pandemic Performance

Sweden has become a global lightning rod, but this has less to do with the results of its policies than the nature of its policies.

While Sweden’s death toll is indeed substantially higher than neighbors such as Finland, Norway, and Denmark, it’s also much lower than several other European neighbors such as Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain.

Indeed, a simple comparison between Belgium and Sweden—nations with rather similar populations—reveals that Belgium suffered far worse than Sweden from the coronavirus.

The reason Sweden is a “cautionary tale” and Belgium is not is because Belgium followed the script. Early in the pandemic, Belgian officials closed all non-essential business and enforced strict social distancing rules.

All non-emergency workers were told to stay home. Shopping was limited to a single family member. Individuals could leave for medical reasons or to walk a pet or get a brief bit of exercise—so long as social distancing was maintained.

These lockdown protocols, the BBC reported, were strictly enforced by Belgian police using “drones in parks and fines for anyone breaking social distancing rules.”

A More Suitable ‘Cautionary Tale’

Sweden clearly endured the pandemic better than Belgium, which had nearly twice as many COVID-19 deaths despite its economic lockdown.

Yet the Times chose Sweden as its “cautionary tale” because Sweden chose not to institute an economic lockdown. Sweden took such an approach for two reasons. First, as Tegnell has publicly stated, there is little to no scientific evidence that lockdowns work. Second, as evidence today shows, lockdowns come with widespread unintended consequences: mass unemployment, recession, social unrest, psychological deterioration, suicides, and drug overdoses.

Even if Sweden has seen its death toll rise more sharply than Scandinavian neighbors such as Finland and Norway, it’s strange that the Times would go thousands of miles across an ocean and continent to find a “cautionary tale.” A far better cautionary tale can be found right under the Grey Lady’s nose.

A simple comparison between New York and Sweden shows the Empire State has suffered far worse from COVID-19 than the Swedes. Yinon Weiss, an entrepreneur and founder of Rally Point, recently compared Sweden and New York using data from the COVID Tracking Project.

The first thing one notices about the comparison is that Sweden was able to “flatten the curve,” so to speak. Though the phrase is largely forgotten today, flattening the curve was originally the entire purpose of the lockdowns. To the extent that there was a scientific basis for lockdowns, it was in the idea that they were a temporary measure designed to help hospitals avoid being overwhelmed by sick patients.

Dr Robert Katz, founding director of the Yale‐Griffin Prevention Research Center, observed that by flattening the curve “you don't prevent deaths, you just change the dates.” But a temporary lockdown could at least prevent everyone from getting sick at once, which would be catastrophic.

If flattening the curve was the primary goal of policymakers, Sweden was largely a success. New York, on the other hand, was not, despite widespread closures and strict enforcement of social distancing policies.

The reason New York failed and Sweden succeeded probably has relatively little to do with the fact that bars and restaurants were open in Sweden. Or that New York’s schools were closed while Sweden’s were open. As Weiss explains, the difference probably isn’t related to lockdowns at all. It probably has much more to do with the fact that New York failed to protect the most at-risk populations: the elderly and infirm.

“Here’s the good news: You can shut down businesses or keep them open. Close schools or stay in session. Wear masks or not,” says Weiss, a graduate of Harvard Business School. “The virus will make its way through in either case, and if we protect the elderly then deaths will be spared.”

This is precisely the prescription Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford University epidemiologist and one of the most cited scientists in the world, has advocated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like Tegnell, Ioannidis early on expressed doubts about the effectiveness of lockdowns and warned they could produce wide-ranging unintended outcomes.

“One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health,” Ioannidis wrote in a STAT article in March. "Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.”

Sadly, many of the adverse consequences Ioannidis predicted have since come to pass, as he has acknowledged.

Is Sweden Truly a ‘Cautionary Tale’?

Tegnell and Swedish leaders have mostly stood by their lighter touch approach, although there is a recognition that they, too, could have more effectively protected at-risk populations.

“We must admit that the part that deals with elderly care, in terms of the spread of infection, has not worked. It is obvious. We have too many elderly people who have passed away,” Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said in June.

Yet it’s a mistake to label Sweden’s approach a failure. As noted above, Sweden is being criticized less because of the results of their public health policies and more because of the nature of them.

By embracing a much more market-based approach to the pandemic in lieu of a centrally planned one, Sweden is undermining the narrative that millions and millions of people would have died without lockdowns, as modelers predicted.

Without Sweden and a few similar outliers, it would be far easier for central planners to say, Sure, lockdowns were harsh and destructive. But we had no choice.

In the wake of the most destructive pandemic in a century, there will be considerable discussion as to whether the lockdowns, which stand to trigger a global depression in addition to other psychological and social costs, were truly necessary.

In a sense, the disagreement over the pandemic largely resembles a much larger friction in society: should individuals be left free to pursue their own interests and weigh risks themselves or should they be guided, coerced, and protected by planners who want to do all this for them.

As Ludwig Von Mises noted long ago, modern social conflict is largely a struggle over who gets to design the world, individuals or authorities. Mises saw few things more dangerous than central planners seeking to supplant the plans of individuals with plans of their own, which they see as a preeminent good.

It was partly for this reason Mises saw market economies as superior to command economies.

“Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning,” Mises wrote in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. “What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellow-men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of his own plan.”

When Mises speaks of the “pre-eminence of his own plan,” it’s hard not to think of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who in March sounded downright indignant when a reporter asked about nursing homes objecting to his plan of prohibiting them from screening for COVID-19.

“They don’t have the right to object,” Cuomo answered. “That is the rule, and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with it.”

Cuomo clearly saw his central plan as superior to that of individuals acting within the marketplace.

The policy of forcing nursing homes to take COVID carrying patients, which was adopted by numerous US states with high virus death tolls, is a stark contrast to Sweden’s market-based approach that trusted individuals to plan for themselves.

“Our measures are all based on individuals taking responsibility, and that is … an important part of the Swedish model,” Hakan Samuelsson, the CEO of Volvo Cars, observed in April.

Sweden’s approach of encouraging social distancing by giving responsibility to individuals may very well explain why the Swedes fared so much better than New York, where authorities disempowered individual actors and prevented nursing homes from taking sensible precautions.

It’s almost absurd to look at New York’s pandemic plan and declare it superior to Sweden’s, yet many in the intellectual class will continue to hammer away at Sweden while ignoring the catastrophic numbers in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and other states.

This likely would have been no surprise to Mises. As he pointed out, the central planner is primarily concerned with a single factor: the pre-eminence of his own plan.

Once this truth is understood, one can finally understand the drumbeat of criticism against Sweden.

*This article was updated to remove language specific to daily COVID death total in Sweden, since figures change daily. 

Jon Miltimore
Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (753-756)


See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that we found after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

The first photo is dated April 1957. An April snowstorm apparently. While the others are undated, they are probably also from the late 1950s. There is an aerial shot of some mountains, a shot along a coastline, and the most interesting, what looks to be a parade. In that shot you can also see a Jewelry store but I can't quite make out the name, A City 5 & 10, and a Food Center which sounds pretty generic. You can see a couple of prices including eggs for 73 cents/dozen and watermelon for $1.89 each...




April 1957





The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Atari Age (November 1983-February 1984)



Atari Age (November 1983-February 1984)



Atari Age was Atari's official publication in the early to mid 1980s. It didn't last terribly long because of the video game crash and Atari's declining popularity after the release of the NES. It was a quarterly publication and the November 1983-February 1984 issue includes:

  • Atari Club Videogame Masters Competition
  • Captain's Log
  • New Cartridge Report
    • Mario Bros.
    • Pigs in Space
    • Quadrun
    • Snoopy and the Red Baron
    • Big Bird's Egg Catch
  • How to Shoot Screen Photos
  • The Casebook of R. Cade
  • Game-Grams
  • Atari News
  • Sneek Peaks
  • Your Turn
  • Master Strategy Guide: Berzerk
  • Atari Club Calendar
  • Computerworks
  • The Clubhouse Store
  • Coin Video Corner
  • Limerick Contest

...and more!

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Commodore Microcomputers (September/October 1985)



Commodore Microcomputers (September/October 1985)



Commodore had it's own publications for most of the life of the life of the company (the computer years anyway). Early on, they had two bi-monthly publications. Commodore Microcomputers was the more serious/business oriented one. The October 1985 issue includes:

  • Letters
  • News

  • Software Reviews
    • Injured Engine
    • Forcast!
    • Dream House
    • Fast Loaders
    • SwiftCalc
    • Loadstar
    • S.A.T. Preparation Program
    • Vizastar
    • Build a Book About You
    • BASIC-64
    • Word Pro 64
    • Trio

  • Behind the Programs
    • The Man Behind the Muppets with a review of Welcome Aboard

  • Computer Wizard
    • Commodore 128 Sound

  • Programmer's Tips
    • Simple Window
    • Modem/300 File Translator
    • Getting SuperMon to Print

  • Book Reviews
    • Commodore 64 Family Helper
    • Getting the Most Out of CompuServe
    • Can I Play with the Computer, Too?

  • Commodore 64 Users Only
    • Fabulous Figure Maker
    • SID Plays Bach

  • Technical Tips
    • Random Thoughts
    • The Computer Scientist

    Features
    • Buyer's Guide to Voice Synthesis - Your Commodore 64 can talk - and listen - using relatively inexpensive speech devices.
    • Update Amiga - A first look at Commodore's revolutionary new 68000-based computer, with graphics and sound like you've never seen or heard from a micro before, windowing, icons - and speed.
    • Become Radio-Active With Your Commodore 64 - The Commodore 64 has helped advance the art of amateur radio.
    • The Electronic Cottage Controversy - Should computer work at home be banned? The AFL-CIO thinks so. Here, an electronic journalist offers his opinion on the controversy.
    • Ergonomic Accessories For Comfortabe Computing - Paying attention to the ergonomics (the relationship between man and his environment) of your equipment set-up will make your computer more enjoyable.

  • User Groups
  • How To Enter Programs In Commodore Microcomputers
  • Advertisers' Indes

Monday, July 13, 2020

gfyuna22

Joe Biden Supports 2 Regulations That Would Destroy Entire Industries

Right now, the attention of most Americans is, understandably, captured by the latest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national debate over criminal justice. But the 2020 presidential election continues to trod along in the background, and Wall Street is starting to worry about the outcome.

The New York Times reports that investors are growing alarmed over Joe Biden’s rise in the polls. Some worry that his promised massive tax hikes and sweeping regulations could spell doom for the stock market and hurt business more broadly. However, it’s not just stockbrokers on Wall Street and 401k holders relying on the market for retirement who should be worried.

Joe Biden’s regulatory platform would eliminate entire industries and therefore millions of jobs—including my own. Supposedly, the appeal of Biden’s presidential campaign is a return to stability. Yet his platform includes endorsements of radical regulations that would undermine the economy as we know it.

Consider Biden’s stated support for California’s AB 5, a crushing regulation that has killed too many jobs to count in the Golden State. The former vice president has endorsed similar regulation on the federal level.

The California bill was supposedly introduced to help the state’s roughly one million independent contractors by severely limiting the amount of work freelancers can do in an attempt to compel employers to add them onto payroll as full-time employees. The rule was supposed to stop “exploitation.” In reality, it stripped flexibility from thousands of Californians who didn’t want to be full-time employees while prompting companies to let contractors go, not hire them on.

From artists to musicians to freelance journalists to Uber drivers, thousands of California workers saw their livelihoods snuffed out by this bill. Even the original sponsor of the law, state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, admitted she was “wrong” in response to angry freelancers who lost work.

Under social media trends like #AB5Stories and in direct replies to Biden, countless Twitter users have spoken out—many of them left-leaning California residents—against the candidate’s position:

In the absence of any response from the presumptive Democratic nominee, we can only assume that Biden still supports this proposal, which would erase millions of American jobs, from Uber drivers to journalists, with the stroke of a pen.

This would affect me personally—making my current income and livelihood illegal.

After completing a one-year journalism fellowship in June, I entered the job market at perhaps the worst possible time due to the peak of COVID-19 and a looming recession. Frankly, I struggled to find full-time work. But I was soon able to cobble together a full-time income through regular freelance writing gigs with several outlets. Now, I get to wake up every morning and do the kind of writing I love, with near-complete flexibility in my schedule and a solid income.

Yet I could not do this under AB 5, which arbitrarily limits freelancers to 35 articles for any given publication per year. This bill would make even writing a weekly column for one publication as a freelancer illegal. A full-time freelance journalism career under this regulatory regime would, in most cases, be impossible.

These job-killing regulations would take livelihoods away from millions of Americans. But it’s not just us: The former senator also supports a regulatory change that would destroy social media and the technology sector.

Biden has backed repealing Section 230, the provision which gives social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook liability protections for the content that users post. It has been dubbed the law that “created the internet,” and only by holding users, not companies, liable for their posts can platforms even exist. Just imagine how much potentially defamatory content gets posted to social media every day, and you’ll quickly realize why repealing Section 230 would immediately put Silicon Valley out of business—and put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of a job.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more would all disappear in short order. Or, at the very least, they would radically transform, and be forced to delay user posts until they can undergo a vetting process that, given the number of posts each day, would quickly grow backlogged and overwhelmed. Yet the US technology sector couldn’t exist for long with these kinds of burdens thrust upon it by the long arm of the federal government, and its collapse would likely be inevitable.

Biden’s support for job-killing regulations extends beyond independent contracting and the tech industry to many other walks of American life. The candidate’s wrong-headed agenda reminds us of a stubborn lesson big government advocates rarely seem to learn: Unintended consequences will always plague sweeping mandates put together by politicians and bureaucrats huddled together in the nation’s capital hundreds of miles away from the on-the-ground realities of the jobs they’re regulating.

From accidentally worsening a city’s cobra infestation to car environmental regulations leading to a spike in taxi use and hence more pollution, history abounds with examples of well-intentioned regulators making things worse by overlooking the unintended consequences of their actions.

Here’s how FEE’s Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan summed up this key lesson:

Lawmakers should be keenly aware that every human action has both intended and unintended consequences. Human beings react to every rule, regulation, and order governments impose, and their reactions result in outcomes that can be quite different than the outcomes lawmakers intended. So while there is a place for legislation, that place should be one defined by both great caution and tremendous humility. Sadly, these are character traits not often found in those who become legislators.

The lesson is clear: pure intentions do not necessarily result in positive outcomes.

“It’s not enough... to endorse legislation that has a nice title and promises to do something good,” economist Robert P. Murphy also wrote for FEE. “People need to think through the full consequences of a policy, because often it will lead to a cure worse than the disease.”

And elections are no exception. If the American people let Joe Biden have his way with our economy, there will be unintended consequences—that could cost you your job.

Brad Polumbo
Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo is a libertarian-conservative journalist and the Eugene S. Thorpe Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Mega Play (January 1993)



Mega Play (January 1993)



The publishers of EGM didn't think EGM or even EGM^2 were enough so they published magazines for specific systems as well. Mega Play was Sega specific, mostly covering the Genesis. The January 1993 issue includes:

  • Editorial - The new Sega CD has hit the stores in the U.S.! Check out what Mega Play has to say about the next step in video gaming.
  • Mega Mail - Now is the time to speak your mind on many different subjects concerning the Sega world!
  • Hi-Tech Sega - Take a sneak peek at the forthcoming Sega Modem along with new Sega CD games and the new T2 Menacer game!
  • Coming Attractions - Test your skill with Road Blaster FX, the latest driving simulation to hit the CD! Mega Play has all the info on this new cart.

  • Mega Tricks
    • Predator 2
    • Alien 3
    • R.B.I. 4
    • Galahad
    • Smash T.V.
    • Lemmings
    • Streets of Rage
    • Dragon's Fury
    • Universal Soldier
    • NFL Sportstalk Football
    • The Terminator
    • King's Bounty

  • Coming Attractions
    • Road Blaster FX
    • Annet Again
    • Time Gal
    • Super H.Q.
    • Risky Woods
    • Wolf Child
    • The Great Waldo Search
    • Chiki Chiki Boys
    • Road Riot
    • Dolphin
    • Shinobi 3

  • Mega Files
    • TMNT Hyperstone Heist
    • Streets of Rage 2
    • Road Rash 2
    • Out of this World
    • Sunset Riders
    • John Madden '93
    • Double Dragon 3
    • Captain America and the Avengers
    • Night Trap
    • Sewer Shark
    • Bart vs. The Space Mutants
    • Prince of Persia

  • Review Crew
    • LHX Attack Chopper
    • John Madden '93
    • Sonic 2
    • Bio Hazard
    • James Pond 3: The Aquatic Games
    • Lightening Strike
    • Road Riot 4WD
    • Gadget Twins
    • Cobra Command
    • Black Hole Assault
    • Lemmings

  • Mega Files - We've got page after page on great games like Turtles Hyperstone, Streets of Rage 2, Out of this World, and Road Rash 2!
  • Sega CD - Mega Play has the latest in CD action from Sega. Take to the sewers in Sewer Shark or protect a house full of girls in Night Trap!
  • Game Gear - Bart Simpson takes on an army of space mutants in his wildest adventure yet! Also, rescue the fair maiden in Prince of Persia!

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (749-752)


See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that we found after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

The first photo is of a baby in a high chair and was processed in March 1958. The other three photos are unlabeled and undated but look like they may have been taken at the same pace. Two show a pond and the other shows part of a stone wall and pillar that is simply labled "SHRINE". These were also likely taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s.




Processed March 1958













The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Sierra Newsletter (Winter 1988)



Sierra Newsletter (Winter 1988)



It wasn't just console makers like Nintendo that had their own publications but a number of software makers as well. Sierra, a.k.a. Sierra On-Line, was once a hugely successful game company publishing such major franchises as King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. They published a newsletter that went through a few different names for several years. The Winter 1988 issue of the Sierra Newsletter includes:

  • King's Quest IV Arrives!
  • President's Corner
  • Solve the SierraGram
  • Sierra Mail Bag
  • Drawing/Cartoon Contest Winners
  • Sierra's Hot New Xmas Games
  • An Interview with Sierra's Roberta Williams!
  • Gold Rush! - A Look at Sierra's New Wild West Adventure
  • Meet the Murry's -- the Designers Behind Manhuhnter: New York
  • The Official Book of King's Quest -- A First Look!
  • Manhunter: New York -- Contemporary Chills and Thrills!

...and more!

gfyuna20

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Modelers Were ‘Astronomically Wrong’ in COVID-19 Predictions, Says Leading Epidemiologist—and the World Is Paying the Price

Dr. John Ioannidis became a world-leading scientist by exposing bad science. But the COVID-19 pandemic could prove to be his biggest challenge yet.

Ioannidis, the C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention at Stanford University, has come under fire in recent months for his opposition to state-ordered lockdowns, which he says could cause social harms well beyond their presumed benefits. But he doesn’t appear to be backing down.

In a wide-ranging interview with Greek Reporter published over the weekend, Ioannidis said emerging data support his prediction that lockdowns would have wide-ranging social consequences and that the mathematical models on which the lockdowns were based were horribly flawed.

Ioannidis also said a comprehensive review of the medical literature suggests that COVID-19 is far more widespread than most people realize.

“There are already more than 50 studies that have presented results on how many people in different countries and locations have developed antibodies to the virus,” Ioannidis, a Greek-American physician, told Greek Reporter. “Of course none of these studies are perfect, but cumulatively they provide useful composite evidence. A very crude estimate might suggest that about 150-300 million or more people have already been infected around the world, far more than the 10 million documented cases.”

Ioannidis said medical data suggest the fatality risk is far lower than earlier estimates had led policymakers to believe and “is almost 0%” for individuals under 45 years old. The median fatality rate is roughly 0.25 percent, however, because the risk “escalates substantially” for individuals over 85 and can be as high as 25 percent for debilitated people in nursing homes.

“The death rate in a given country depends a lot on the age-structure, who are the people infected, and how they are managed,” Ioannidis said. “For people younger than 45, the infection fatality rate is almost 0%. For 45 to 70, it is probably about 0.05-0.3%. For those above 70, it escalates substantially…”

Because of this, Ioannidis sees mass lockdowns of entire populations as a mistake, though he says they may have made sense when experts believed the fatality rate of COVID-19 was as high as 3-5 percent.

In March, in a widely read STAT article, Ioannidis said it was uncertain how long lockdowns could be maintained without serious consequences.

“One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health,” Ioannidis wrote. "Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.”

Nearly three months after that interview, the world has seen unemployment levels unseen since the Great Depression, mass business closures, spikes in suicide and drug overdose, and social unrest on a scale not seen in the US since the 1960s.

“I feel extremely sad that my predictions were verified,” Ioannidis said. He continued:

“Major consequences on the economy, society and mental health” have already occurred. I hope they are reversible, and this depends to a large extent on whether we can avoid prolonging the draconian lockdowns and manage to deal with COVID-19 in a smart, precision-risk targeted approach, rather than blindly shutting down everything. Similarly, we have already started to see the consequences of “financial crisis, unrest, and civil strife.” I hope it is not followed by “war and meltdown of the social fabric.” Globally, the lockdown measures have increased the number of people at risk of starvation to 1.1 billion, and they are putting at risk millions of lives, with the potential resurgence of tuberculosis, childhood diseases like measles where vaccination programs are disrupted, and malaria. I hope that policymakers look at the big picture of all the potential problems and not only on the very important, but relatively thin slice of evidence that is COVID-19.”

Ioannidis did not spare modelers who predicted as many as 40 million people would die, or those who claimed the US healthcare system would be overrun.

“The predictions of most mathematical models in terms of how many beds and how many ICU beds would be required were astronomically wrong,” Ioannidis said. “Indeed, the health system was not overrun in any location in the USA, although several hospitals were stressed.”

Conversely, he added, these actions had detrimental effects on the US health care system, which was “severely damaged” because of measures taken.

Only time will tell if Ioannidis is proven correct in his assessments. But if he’s even half right, it would suggest that the experts did indeed fail again.

There’s little question that the lockdowns have caused widespread economic, social, and emotional carnage. Evidence that US states that locked down fared better than states that did not is hard to find.

Though not yet certain, the COVID-19 pandemic may well turn out to be another example of central planning gone wrong.

As I previously noted, it’s a sad irony that many of the greatest disasters in modern history—from Stalin’s "kolkhoz" collective farming system to Mao’s Great Leap Forward and beyond—are the result of central planners trying to improve the lot of humanity through coercive action.

During the coronavirus pandemic, experts may have unintentionally brought about one of the most serious human disasters in modern history by removing choice from individuals with superior local knowledge.

“This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not,” Hayek wrote in The Use of Knowledge in Society. “It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.”

Jon Miltimore
Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (745-748)


See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that we found after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

The first photo is unlabeled and undated. It's a picture of a building in the winter (there's snow anyway) but I can't ID the building. The second photo is from a wedding on February 22nd, 1958. A number of photos from this wedding have been scattered throughout these posts. The last two photos are dated October 1957 and appear to be photos from an air show.







wedding party - 2/22/58




October 1957




October 1957




The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Electronic Gaming Monthly (November 1996)



Electronic Gaming Monthly (November 1996)



In the mid 1990s, EGM was the best gaming magazine around and it was at the height of its popularity. Weighing in at nearly 300 pages, the November 1996 issue includes:

Cover Story

  • Twisted Metal 2 - Find out the entire twisted story line behind the Twisted Metal 2 characters.

Departments

  • Insert Coin - Our editor expounds on his worldly travels for new gaming info.
  • Press Start - The news that's making headlines in the world of video games.
  • Gaming Gossip - THE inside source on the gaming industry from Q-Mann.
  • Next Wave Protos - Exclusive first-looks at games on the horizon.
  • Review Crew - A no-holds-barred critique of gaming's latest releases.
  • Tricks of the Trade - Want a power trip? Check out the hottest cheats here.
  • Special Features - An in-depth look at the newest of the new.
  • Next Wave - Get a sneak peek at upcoming titles for all systems!
  • Contests - Don't miss your chance to win BIG!
  • Team EGM - Previews and reviews for sports games.
  • Interface - An open forum for readers' questions and concerns.

Features

  • Saturn Has a Lot to Offer RPG Fanatics! - While PS owners have been complaining about the lack of role-playing games for their system, Saturn owners have been happily playing the genre on theirs. In this issue, check out what fantastic RPGs are coming out for the Sega Saturn!
  • EGM Travels Around the World for Gaming Info! - The EGM editors scoured the globe for international gaming news! First, they traveled to London to find out what was hot at the ECTS show. Then it was on to Japan for the Jamma show where Street Fighter III and Virtua 3 were making mouths drop.
  • Fighting Games Galore Spotlighted in This Issue! - With waves of fighters being released, picking out the top-notch game can be a touch choice. EGM explores roughly 20 fighters (such as Toshinden URA and X-Men Vs. Street Fighter), pointing out each one's strong points.

Next Wave

  • Nintendo 64 - The system's first killer fighting game comes home!
  • Saturn - You won't want to smash the bug in Bug Too!
  • PlayStation - It't the end...or is it...in Final Doom for the PS.
  • Genesis - Clean up the globe with VectorMan 2.

...and more!

gfyuna17

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

80-US (January 1979)



80-US (January 1979)



The TRS-80 was one of the first home computers available and therefore had some of the earliest computer publications dedicated to it. 80-US is one of those. The January 1979 issue includes:

  • Going First Class - Our experience with a new Selectra-Print
  • Text 80 - A text editor without frills, for those who can't remember all the sub-commands
  • Bowling Revisited - An authentic Level II version of the Computerized Bowling Alley
  • An Audio-Visual Demo - How to connect pictures with sound, using existing equipment
  • Notes on BASIC Programming - Keeping track of your Level I variables
  • Renew That Program - A sometimes successful way to bring a disk basic program back to life
  • Math Drill Ala King - A fun math program, with some Level I tutorial material included
  • Erode - For your mid-winter madness, try and break thru the barrier in the time allowed - 4 levels of expertise
  • View from the top of the Stack
  • Reviews
  • Hangups
  • Editorial
  • Random Access
  • Letters

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (741-744)


See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that we found after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

The first photo is the only one dated or labeled in this set and it is from Christmas 1958. The other photos are also likely from the late 1950s time frame. The second shows a neighborhood intersection, the third shows a dogwood? tree and the last one is of a beach somewhere.






Christmas '58










The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Monday, July 6, 2020

People Resent Businesses More In Highly-Regulated Industries

There is a positive relationship between the amount of governmental interference in an economic arena, and the abuse and invective heaped upon the businessmen serving that arena.

When I came across those words while reading Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable, I was struck by the power of that under-appreciated insight (not to mention his great introduction to libertarianism opening the book).

Block’s primary illustration was the rental housing market, where “the spillover effects of bureaucratic red tape and bungling” are blamed on landlords, rather than on the government policies and procedures that caused them. And he named rent control as a primary culprit, because it “changes the usual profit incentives, which put the entrepreneur in the service of his customers,” into incentives where “the landlord can earn the greatest return not by serving his tenants well.”

Block’s conclusion applies far beyond just rent control. It describes many government interventions, not just those in the housing market. It characterizes price ceilings and price floors. It applies to taxes, particularly hidden ones. It extends to regulations that act like taxes or barriers to entry and competition. It also typifies inflation. And in each case, it is because the adverse effects of such government interventions, particularly reduced outputs and higher costs for the goods in question, set up providers to be incorrectly scapegoated as the cause.

Rent control undermines landlords’ incentives to provide the services tenants want, because it denies landlords the ability to receive adequate compensation to make those efforts worthwhile. As a consequence, landlords not only get blamed for unwillingness to do what tenants want, but also for efforts to evade the controls, such as tying apartments to the simultaneous rental of furniture, parking or other goods, even though such evasions keep the available housing supply from falling as much as it would have otherwise. Other price ceilings follow the same script.

Price floors such as minimum wage laws and “prevailing wage” requirements push prices up instead of down. The consequent higher prices and reduced wealth result from the coerced overpayment for inputs, rather than the fault of producers. But producers often end up getting blamed.

Hidden taxes are another example. Government gets more resources and control, while those people directly deal with can be given the blame. The “employer half” of Social Security and Medicare is a prime example. Employers must pay 7.65 percent directly to the government, on top of the wages they pay employees. But since employers know they must bear those costs, they offer less pay for a given level of employee productivity. The consequence is fingering employers for not paying employees what they are worth, when that actually derives from government siphoning off compensation.

Similar effects are triggered by employer-paid unemployment premiums, worker’s compensation insurance, and other non-wage forms of compensation. The resulting government rake-off from employees’ total compensation leaves them less to take home, triggering resentment at employers. But government claims credit for spending those dollars indirectly pickpocketed from workers.

Even less hidden taxes, like sales and excise taxes (which can be better hidden as value-added taxes buried in the supply chain rather than added at the retail level, which is why so many politicians like a VAT), lead to scapegoating of suppliers. Those taxes place a wedge between what the customer pays including the tax and the smaller amount the seller receives net of taxes. But it is still all too easy for customers’ views of producers to reflect what they pay to their suppliers including taxes for services received, rather than the smaller amount sellers actually get net of taxes. To illustrate, when was the last time you actually looked at what your markets, gas stations, etc., actually received from you, apart from government’s take, even though that information is printed on your receipt?

Government mandates and regulations also produce misaimed blame. Many regulations act like taxes (e.g., a producer doesn’t care whether a $100,000 burden of dealing with government is called a tax or a regulation), raising costs and prices to others, for which suppliers will largely be blamed. Regulations that create barriers to entry, like a cornucopia of licensing regulations, restrict supply and competition, leading to higher prices and shoddier performance, because they undermine the competition that is buyers’ most important protection against maltreatment.

Inflation is another page from the same playbook of disguising the messenger as the cause. While it is caused by government expansion in the money supply, those in government can always point fingers at someone else: businessmen can be blamed for raising prices (and called monopolists or colluders in the process); workers and unions can be blamed for demanding higher wages; landlords can be blamed for raising rents; bankers can be blamed for charging higher interest rates, etc.

The positive correlation between government involvement and the abuse and invective aimed at producers that Walter Block lays out holds across a wide swath of the economy. And that misaimed blame game is particularly to recognize, given how often politicians promise to unify us, but turn to techniques—price floors and ceilings, taxes, regulatory and entry restrictions, inflation, etc.—which guarantee the opposite effect. Such cognitive dissonance is an important red flag, because logical contradictions do not make for good policy.

Gary M. Galles
Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. His recent books include Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014) and Apostle of Peace (2013). He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Super NES Buyers Guide (Winter 1991)



Super NES Buyers Guide (Winter 1991)



Super NES Buyer's Guide was a bi-monthly publication that was first included as an insert to Electronic Gaming Monthly much like Mega Play for the Sega Genesis. There really weren't very many pages and you were much better off just spending the extra $1 or $2 for EGM than getting this, even if the SNES was your only system. The premiere issue from Winter 1991 includes coverage of:

  • Zelda 3
  • Super Mario 4
  • Final Fight
  • Gradius 3
  • Super R-Type
  • Castlevania 4
  • Pilotwings
  • Actraiser

Plus:

  • Super Ghouls & Ghosts Maps and Tips
  • Loads of Tricks and Previews!!

...and more!

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Personal Software (Summer 1983)



Personal Software (Summer 1983)



Personal Software was one of a multitude of U.K. based computer magazines from the 1980s. From the few issues I've seen, this magazine typically features a different computer or computer family in each issue and offers a variety of type in content in addition to some editorial content. This issue from the Summer of 1983 features various Commodore computers and includes:

  • Getting Converted - Hints on how to convert programs from one Commodore machine to another.
  • Leapfrog - Our micro version of that old pub game played with coins.
  • Power Boat - Have all the fun of power boating without feeling seasick!
  • The Valley - Save the kingdom of the Valley by combating dragons, Balrogs, and Wraiths. Choose your character with magic or physical strengths and do battle in our epic game, The Valley.
  • Towers of Brahma - Moving rings from one pillar to another may sound easy but just try it!
  • Micro Examination - Test your friends and children with this multiple choice program.
  • Quiz Time - Assess your performance in terms of speed and accuracy with a multiple choice program.
  • Multipurpose Records - Set up your own filing system which enables you to store, search, edit and retrieve data.
  • VIC Editor - Take one VIC-20 and add this program and what do you have? A VIC-20 with an "enlarged" screen.
  • Commodore Communications - Get Commodores talking to each other using this application.
  • Address Book - Compile an address book, or any other similar list, and throw away those bits of paper.
  • Multicolumn Records - A multipurpose data base program for use at home or in the office.
  • Subroutine Library - A library of BASIC subroutines.
  • Toolkit Program - A simple toolkit program for the Commodore 64.
  • Tailoring VIC's Characters - Create your own characters on your VIC-20.
  • Maxi-Mander - Bomb-proofing your software against unskilled fingers.
  • VIC Blow Up - Find out how characters are made up and generate giant versions on the VIC-20.
  • Program Protection - Simple tips on how to protect your program from being easily copied.
  • Bibliography - A brief perusal of some of the multitude of books on Commodore computers.

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (737-740)


See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that we found after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

The first photo is undated but taken at Santiam Pass in Oregon. The next was processed in September 1961 and shows flowers on a window sill. The third is also undated but taken at a beach somewhere. The final photo shows an elderly couple next to a flag poll and was also processed in September 1961. Al of these were probably taken in the late 1950s/early 1960s time frame.








May 1965








The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.