In the 1990s well before social networking drained our will to leave our desks the game minesweeper was the perfect way to waste hours performing a useless task. While Minesweeper may no longer be the “it” game of wasted time (thanks Farmville), it’s still a game most PC users understand and remember their addiction to.

The classic Windows game is now available as scratch and play cards which can only be used once but allow for the same type of game play many of us grew up enjoying.

The game cards are not cheap, being sold by Connected Design at a cost of $2 per card. Buyers can choose between 80 or 120 minute and they even ship with stickers that allow players to place flags and question marks where they believe suspected minutes might be placed, just like the original PC version.

The biggest problem with the game is the simple fact that you could lose on your first scratch which means your game is over and $2 was just wasted. On the other hand the Minesweeper scratch and play cards double as a postcard which means you can send some nostalgic fun to your friends without any additional added costs.

Connected Design is not just about the Windows-based games, they also offer iOS sticky notes and a cool iPhone case with an integrated USB drive.

Sure it is a waste of money but it’s a fun waste of money.

How many minesweeper scratch and play cards will you be picking up?

Minesweeper Scratch And Play Cards Are A Bit Of Nostalgic Fun is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Memories come flooding back of a different time…

Childhood Memories is a post from: The Inquisitr

Like many girls in my age group scattered across America, Sassy magazine was a massive influence on my pre-teenage years.

My 25-year-old friends are too young to really remember Sassy. My 40-year-old friends were old enough that they didn’t need Sassy. But for me, Sassy was a lifeline featuing girls who dressed like me, listened to the music I liked, skewering teen-queen of the time Tiffani Amber-Theissen during an interview- it was kind of like the “It Gets Better” campaign for awkward young teenage girls in the late 80s and early 90s.

One day, Sassy stopped coming. No one knew what happened. There was no internet on which fangirls could discuss the sudden, catastrophic absence of Sassy from our mailboxes. No more tutorials on how a large onesie could make an awesome small t-shirt. No amazing short stories introducing us to better young adult lit. No more inspired fashion spreads and Kurt/Courtney interviews and music reviews and staff we knew by their first names. We know the sad tale now, but at the time, it was like losing a beloved friend suddenly and without explanation.

Then it returned. But it was like one of those movies where the protagonist is fighting an insidious invasion and she goes to school one day and her super-cool best friend is one of them. Some horrible magazine overlords took our bible and turned it into YM. It was the worst kind of betrayal, and the new, soulless Sassy thankfully folded after a few painful issues.

The legacy of Sassy lived on in the minds of girls of a certain age, though- among my friends, we still refer to people uncomfortably fixated on an unwilling love interest as “reznored”- and there was even a book, in later years. When I saw someone had written How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, it was exciting to see that other women felt the same way about Sassy.

So it is with some measure of trepidation I absorbed the tidbit that Sassy is being brought back in a form that may finally work. Jane gave Sassy readers hope, but it didn’t scratch the same itch its predecessor did. Lucky recalled a bit of Sassy nostalgia with its awesome curation of items, but it isn’t nor does it try to be Sassy. Teen fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson, who is well-known in fashion circles and amazingly wise beyond her 14 years, posted on her own blog yesterday that she’s been talking to Jane Pratt and they’re starting a Sassy-esque project.

If anyone can pull off a modern version of this magazine, it’s this kid. Reading her post (linked in the announcement post) after she received a stack of old Sassys in the mail literally brought tears to my eyes, and I don’t think one ex-Sassy reader has read Tavi’s blog and not been reminded of the late, great, best teen magazine ever. Gevinson says she doesn’t expect to replicate the magazine exactly, and with her characteristic old-soulness, states an intention that gives me hope for a similar resource for my daughter:

Of course, it won’t be Sassy (or the rebirth of Sassy, or Sassy 2.0) and nor do we want it to be. For one, you can’t try to recreate something that good. For another, while I can read old issues of Sassy and relate, the world has changed a bit in the past 15 or so years, and that whole Internet thing happened, and this world calls for something different. Something that will use Sassy as a point of reference for the whole teen-magazine-that-doesn’t-suck thing, and something in which Jane Pratt will take part, but something that is not trying to recreate the other something a bunch of us love and don’t want to see copied.

They say you can never go home again, but reading Tavi’s posts on Sassy definitely let me feel like I could visit. It’s a big undertaking, but Gevinson seems like the obvious choice to take the torch if it has to go to anyone. This could really be totally awesome.

Were you a Sassy reader? Are you excited about this new development?

Jane Pratt taps blogger Tavi Gevinson to revive ‘Sassy’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

Luddites, hipsters and ironic techie types rejoice: Polaroid isn’t dead after all!

The brand went the way of betamax on February 8th, 2008, and fans have been making do with remaining stock, memories and Polaroid emulators. Production stopped for good in June of 2008, but all the while, a group called “The Impossible Project” has been toiling to bring the insta-film back to market. Not even the Polaroid film of your youth- a better version, with yet-to-be disclosed concessions for digital types and “optimized” features. The news came not a moment too soon- the last batch of existing film expired on October 9th.

Licensee Summit Global Group, partnered with The Impossible Project, plans to revive Polaroid products including 600 Color Instant Film, the One-Step and the i-Zone in 2010. The Impossible Project released the following statement on their website:

We are pleased to herewith announce a history making cooperation between Polaroid and The Impossible Project:

As we have created quite some buzz about Analog Instant Photography over the past 12 months, the Polaroid licensee – The Summit Global Group – now can’t resist any longer and announced at a press conference on October 13th in Hongkong that they will re-launch some of the most famous Polaroid Instant Cameras.

Therefore they are commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.

The Impossible Project is proud and excited that its ambitions and all the relentless work that has already been invested are now becoming the foundation for Polaroid’s comeback as a producer of Instant Cameras.

Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project’s new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 – with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first colour films to follow in the course of the year.

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Zombie Polaroid back from the dead is a post from: The Inquisitr

Wired has an interesting list up today of all the things your children will probably never know about or understand.

It’s likely familiar ground for those of us that came of age with technology of a different sort- those of us who were bowled over by the technological wizardry that was the original Lemonade Stand or Oregon Trail. Or those who sometimes get nostalgic for video games that were the size of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The list is full of things that will definitely bring you back to the days when new gadgets and advances were fewer and further between, and much harder to come by. (I never had a Commodore 64, and I only got to play Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics at a friend’s house. And I liked it! I was happy to get it at three week intervals.)

Making the list are universally loved memories such as “blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.” “swimming pools with diving boards,” roller skates and just plain “privacy.” Also making the list are some “don’t let the door hit you” items such as writing checks, posting letters with a stamp and waiting for the hour and a half a week when the bank was actually open to get money.

Either way, you’re old, dude.

[100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About, Wired]

100 things your kids will never know about, old man is a post from: The Inquisitr