Still Better Off with Image Editors

Years ago, I tried to clean up this damaged photo. My efforts were unsuccessful, but I think I'd do better if I tried again today. But I thought using Gemini to fix it might yield interesting results. 

 

The photo is a lot sharper now, but holy hallucinations, Batman. The Atari 400 has been replaced by an Atari 2600, and the Atari 400 games have been replaced by Atari 2600 games. And a stack of audio cassettes has replaced the CX40 joystick atop the Atari 410 program recorder. 

Further prompting fixed some of the issues. But not all. 

That's enough fiddling for now. The Atari 400 is there, but its yellow buttons are from the Atari 800 model. I also find it amusing Gemini put an audio cassette into the 8-Track player. 

8-Track Mind

Mom and Dad had a modest collection of 8-track cartridges. A common way to listen to music in vehicles from the late 60s to the early 80s, 8-tracks weren't the greatest in terms of durability or sound quality, but they were portable and affordable. The family crew cab had a player mounted underneath the dashboard, and the tapes seen above, along with many others, enjoyed heavy rotation on long Woods road trips across the northern and southern prairie provinces. 

Sean and I took these last remnants of the family 8-track collection to the Leduc eco station yesterday. Neither of us has an 8-track player anymore, and these cartridges are so old they probably wouldn't survive more than a few plays, anyway. 

Sean and I spent a lot of time trying to hunt down a more convenient way than the 8-track seen on the lower right, above, for Mom to listen to Russ Gurr, a fellow Manitoban and farmer who enjoyed some local fame as a performer. As far as we can tell, though, Gurr never made the leap to any form of digital media. 

Well, look at that. Before writing this, I'd never thought to look for Russ Gurr on YouTube, and there he is. I'm sorry, Mom. This one's for you. 

I kept the case seen above. Sean realized it would make a great storage space for my external hard drives. I'm going to drill a few holes in the back for cable management.