I'll pearoast this
In 2005, I enrolled at my former 6th Form college to do a couple of A levels. I would be in classes with kids half my age and I wondered how I might be received. Fortunately I wasn't shunned as some weird outsider that would be on the watchlist of social services and pretty much got on with everybody.

The college broke up for Xmas and on my return in the new year, a good many of my classmates brandished iPods. I however didn't as I'm not keen on listening to music through earphones. In maths, the teacher would allow us to listen to music whilst working through an exercise book and I was pretty much the only one in the class that didn't have an iPod. This would not do.

The next lesson, we were working through a trigonometry exercise and people were plugging in their iPods so I fished out of my bag my answer to this ubiquitous over-hyped music device. A 20 year old Aiwa personal stereo, complete with battery cover held in place with red electricians tape. It drew considerable attention. Do kids nowadays have no knowledge of older technology? When I was their age, I knew what a Dansette record player was and that it played 78s, and TVs that could be fixed by your dad belting the side of it with his shoe and I could even have recognised a gramophone.

But no, this was like some weird alien device that they couldn't even comprehend. It played a format that they had no memories of and was obsolete before they even started nursery school. Surely their parents must own similar stuff. This was proved when one of them declared that their dad had something in the loft that played cassettes.

To complete the image, I dug out "Now That's What I call Music 10". The problem was that it needed rewinding and notwithstanding the technical wizardry of Aiwa's R&D department, my player had no rewind function as it used up batteries on a scale not seen since Big Trak. Rewinding the tape involved slotting the cassette spool onto a Bic biro and spinning it around and around and this actually drew gasps as if I had just levitated out of the window.

If only I still had the original headphones which were those strip of spring-steel affairs with a sponge headphone pad at each end; none of these uncomfortable ear-plug things for me.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 8 Jun 2012, 15:10, 3 replies)

I had an Aiwa personal stereo
I used to cycle to college with it on. One day while cycling up a pretty steep hill.It fell out of my pocket and bounced down the hill sending bits of plastic pinging off in all directions.

I went and retrieved the metal shell. Put my headphones back in pressed play and to my surprise and joy it still worked. I called it Arnie from there on in in deference to the fleshless terminator.

Couldn't do that to an iPod
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 8 Jun 2012, 15:35, closed)

You just should have listened to whichever side was ready to be played!

( SauronWibble I'll hold it, you lick it..., Fri 8 Jun 2012, 16:16, closed)

I was copying some old tapes to MP3
the other day, and had reason to manually rewind a tape. It occured to me that the fact that a bic biro pen is the perfect size and hexagonalness for this job is the kind of knowledge that will just be lost to the ages. Well done for keeping it alive.
(LemonMeringuePie is rubbish at thinking up user names, Sun 10 Jun 2012, 23:26, closed)