Dow Jones 50,000

Look at this relic I found up in the storage loft! (I’m doing some in-depth tidying.)

After the crash in 2008 (when the Dow Jones went from 13K to 8K) I bought these four books and mounted them into a frame and hung them on the wall. (I was the CTO of a small stock brokerage.)

Amazing times.

But the Dow Jones is at 50K now, so I guess it’s time to throw these out. That joke isn’t funny any more.

I got magazines about comics to scan

A month ago, I posted a request for people to send me their magazines about comics so that I can scan them and incorporate them into the kwakk.info search index. I got a response from Ben Hansom from the UK. And today the magazines arrived!

Thanks, Ben!

It’s like 12kg (approx 79 pounds according to ChatGPT 2.4)!

Non-epic unboxing sequence.

There’s a whole lot of Comics International issues…

And then a bunch of Comic World, and then a lot of things that can best be described as “misc”.

Thank you!

If somebody else wants to send me magazines about comics, I’ve got forwarding services in the US and the UK (and elsewhere, too). Read the original blog post for more details.

I’m going to get started on scanning tonight, I think, but I may not have time to do more in the coming days, so it may take some time to do them all. In addition to putting them on Mrs. Kwakk’s site, I’m also going to be uploading the scans to archive.org, so you can follow the progress there, I guess.

Cable Box Supremacy

I’ve been rooting around in The Cupboard Of Mystery this week and getting rid of stuff that’s not useful any more (giving away, selling or taking to the recycling).

But what do you do with gadgets like this?

OK, the MP3 Sony Walkman is probably not going to be useful… but… it’s small and inoffensive and well…

The Nokia E72 — OK, I can trash that, but I should probably get it powered up enough to wipe it, I guess? But who has connectors to these gadgets?

Mua-ha! I HAVE! Behold my organisational skills! In awe!

Found both!

And they even boot up. The Nokia doesn’t seem to hold a charge, though…

(By the way, I used the opportunity to do some typing on that keyboard — it’s still, by far, the best keyboard for a gadget like this that I’ve tried. Better than Blackberry, and much, much, much better than all of the revival keyboard phones that have been Kickstarterered over the years.)

Man, that Sony Walkman is a good-looking gadget…

Anyway. I guess the moral here is — don’t throw out strange-looking cables until you’ve thrown out the gadget they go with.