Wanderlust Obscura

Sleep's been scarce lately.

Not because I want it that way, but because I'm keeping an eye on my month-old kiddo.

So I'm up when most folks are hours deep in sleep.

Killing time, eating ramen, digging up old stuff from my childhood, and sharing mostly forgotten bits about PlayStation before 2010, occasionally after.

There's something oddly satisfying about hunting down forgotten media at the devil's hour and then sharing it with others.

Upload...

Ping... Ping... Ping....

Those further west are typically the first to reply, as they're still awake, with replies from nearby locales coming in more gradually - an admission of insomnia for some no doubt.

"Oh, wow, I remember this."

"When PlayStation had games!"

"I miss the '90s..."

And so it goes on.

Then one night, I struck gold. My usual ritual of ambient '90s jungle played softly, pulsating in the background, just loud enough to vibe with but quiet enough to lull the baby (and the dog) off to a rhythmic slumber.

My face lit up with a smile, illuminated only by my phone.

Life with PlayStation.

Seeing it immediately flooded my brain with sleepy feel-good nostalgia vibes. Neurons crackled and fired up forgotten connections, reminding me of an apartment, two cats and my girlfriend asleep as the new-age guitar twangs act as a lullaby.

Questions of what the hell did we do before we had kids were answered with Call of Duty, nights out and long lazy evenings watching trash on TV.

She's facing away from me, one leg in and one leg out of the duvet as the summer promises to be the hottest yet, even before the sun has bothered to manifest.

"At least it's not as hot as Kuwait City," I'd say under my breath as I rolled the globe around aimlessly.

Memories of stroking one of the cats. I yawn deeply and turn to face my other half. I'm reminded of warmth. A luxurious feeling of desolation and safety before night turns to day.

It's pretty amazing how our memories stay tucked away until our curiosity brings them out.

Keep Me Company

Life with PlayStation was unassuming.

A companion of sorts to keep you company when others couldn't. It felt like a connection to strangers, a glimpse into distant means of living.

It provided weather updates, news headlines, and most intriguingly, glimpses into communities from far-flung corners of the globe - places I may never have the chance to visit in person.

Innaarsuit in Greenland. Tiksi is Russia. Palikir is Micronesia.

It was perfect for a quiet night, exploring the earth and uncovering towns you didn't know were there.

But oddly, there was just something cosmic about it. Something that tapped into an existential curiosity on my part that we're all just minuscule on this giant ball of rock floating through the vastness of space.

Here's everything you know and love rendered in 3D via the PlayStation 3's CELL technology. Rad.

We Are Not Alone

I posted about this relatively obscure Life with PlayStation app.

It was an oft-overlooked piece of software, or at least I thought that was the case as folks started responding with memories of their own.

For those who recall, it also featured the "Folding@home" project.

Folding@Home for PlayStation 3 was a distributed computing project that let users donate their console's idle processing power to help scientists study protein folding and related diseases.

It was part of Stanford University's research initiative, turning PS3s into a massive supercomputer network when they weren't being used for gaming.

It proved quite a popular way to contribute to distributed computing, though whether or not any significant findings came as a result of it I'm not sure.

At the time, I guess Life with PlayStation was regarded by most as pretty unremarkable. I guess it was regarded in that way even by me.

An app that I never told anyone about. An app that I'd say I probably didn't use very much when asked. Yet in reality, I used it every night. And while my then girlfriend now wife lay asleep, I'd spin the globe one more time, looking for the most obscure places that humanity settled.

It's an unassuming piece of software mostly forgotten now, but little did I know just how important it was to me looking back after all these years.

Little did I know, that in 2024, I'd be listening to the gentle sounds of Life With PlayStation as I try to help my youngest drift off on a cloud of peace and tranquillity.

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