🍓Vertical Strawberries, Retro Phone Exchanges, and The Analogue Pocket

Bougie strawberries near you

Nov 29, 2021

Greetings! How are you this fine week?

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving if you live stateside. We went to visit some family on the East Coast. I even got to see some friends too!

Steph Smith made an awesome Black Friday thread about some of the wild brand stunts from this year. Make sure you check it out.

vybes.eth (landofrandom) @land_ofrandom

Awesome Black Friday thread 🎉🎉

Steph Smith @stephsmithio

2/ Now let's move onto the best.... 👑 The king of Black Friday: Cards Against Humanity @CAH has a long history of crazy Black Friday stunts. 🎁 One year they held a 99% off sale for random stuff 🕳 Another year they funded a $100k hole 💩 Another year they literally sold sh** https://t.co/1kvwNJvIO5

Are you cashing in on any Cyber Monday deals today? I personally didn’t find anything too interesting this year . . . But I’m not really in the market for anything tech-related right now.

Unless you know some insane deals on an iPad Pro.

Speaking of insane, did you seeee that the PEOPLE token from the ConstitutionDAO is going to the moon? As I write this, it’s at 16 cents. How is my $10 dollar donation now worth over $340 . . .

if it hits 50 cents I’m cashing out - with whatever profit I can glean from the wretched gas fees of doom.

On a gamer note call me crazy, but I bought Outriders the other week. It was on sale for Google Stadia and I couldn’t resist!

If you’ve played it too - I just made it through that first trenches level. Absolutely wild first level imho.

Well, shall we hop on in?

🍓Vertical Strawberries

Would you pay $50 for 8 strawberries?

What if I told you these strawberries were raised by bees and AI robots using ancient Japanese vertical farming techniques?

Oishii is changing the vertical farming game, one hanging strawberry at a time!

The Omakase Berry® is a rare and exceptional variety, once only found seasonally in the fields of the Japanese Alps. Oishii set out to recreate those idyllic conditions with an indoor vertical farm. By replicating the light rain, cool breeze, and bright sun of a Japanese winter’s day, these berries can now flourish all year long. (source)

Hiroki Koga, founder of Oishii was upset by the taste and quality of American strawberries - even comparing them to cucumbers.1

Hiroki Koga, Oishii Founder and CEO, was dismayed when he visited America and found that the industry values quantity over quality. Inspired to share the Japanese strawberry experience with the world, he brought the Omakase Berry® seeds from Japan to New York to establish a first-of-its-kind indoor vertical strawberry farm in America. (source)

I had the joys of growing strawberries in my backyard as a kid - and I always thought they tasted better than the store ones. Truth be told, the birds got most of them before I did.

Of course - we just bought little strawberry plants at the store which I’m sure are from the same “industrial” type plants.

I’m deeply curious about these expensive berries. Do they really live up to the hype?

It would be fun to go in with some friends and try these! Go check em out at the link. Let me know if you decide to get any!

Oishii Strawberries

📞Retro Phone Exchanges

Though billboard phone numbers may feel old school, there’s still a great deal of advertising that uses them. You see numbers like “1-800-FLOWERS” and that sort of thing.

Did you know that back in the day you could call people this way too?

Apparently - you still can - if the phone number is old enough.

Telephone numbers used to begin with two letters, which were an abbreviation for a word. For example, there was a Glenn Miller song called PEnnsylvania 6-5000, and Liz Taylor made a movie called BUtterfield-8. I'm just barely old enough to remember that my phone number at home when I was 5 or so started with SYcamore 4, or SY4. These were telephone exchanges, and had exchange names -- PEnnsylvania, SYcamore, KLondike, etc. (source)

I had no idea this existed!

The website is absolutely ancient. The website started in 1996, and was last updated in 2014.

Some of the links are dead, unfortunately - so you really got to click around.

The database is still working though! There’s been ALOT of contributions over the years. This is an ancient treasure trove of data!

Here’s an example

This would have been the PERFECT random topic for the Thansgiving dinner table with the grandparents. Do they remember the old exchange names?

It would be cool if name-based phone numbers came back in style!

Go check it out at the link! You can head straight to the database at this link.

# EXchange

🎮The Analogue

Do you miss the ole Gameboy?

Well, there’s a new player coming to town, and its name is Analogue Pocket.

It’s not just any old game machine - this is built for enjoying ancient games like an archaeologist.

At its heart, Analogue OS is purpose built for exploring and celebrating all of video game history. Designed to be the definitive, scholarly operating system for playing and experiencing the entire medium. (source)

Analogue plays nice with all your old cartridges too! It will “initially launch with: GBA, GBC, GB, & GG. NGPC, NGP, TG16 & LYNX will be released alongside the cartridge adapter releases.”2 This is a very wise choice on their part - no company minds when a device adapts to play an old game - but if it’s a downloadable emulation file?

Nintendo is gonna go after you in no time.

It’s got a pretty sick LCD screen resolution - so no more squinting at your old game boy color.

Not only can the Analogue Pocket play games - it’s also a DAW called Nanoloop. You can play music with the built-in sequencer. How about some 8-bit tunes.

Personally, the part I’m most excited about is their partnership with GB studio - so you can make your own GB games - AND play them on the Pocket.

Check it out at the link!

Analogue Pocket

🐙The Land of Random

Random links for your perusal and wonder

Gif Gallery

Visit this aestheticc assortment of gifs just like an online art gallery. Very cool! Oh - did I mention it’s a Neocities site?

Gif Gallery

Is It Christmas

Now that we’re practically in December, it’s time to ask the important question . . .

Is it Christmas?

Vestaboard

Ever wanted to send messages to your home from afar via a SMS style board? This really nifty wall text board will let you send messages via a app. It’s really neat! Personally, it would be really co/9*+-ol if there was a version where you could live text with someone else.

Vestaboard