Greetings all, and welcome to Userlandia.

What’s all this, then?

Userlandia is a place for technology from today and yesterday. If you’re an enthusiast user with a curious nature, then you’ll be right at home. It’s also a very flowery way of saying “this is my new blog and podcast project to post about computing and tech.”

What’s the subject matter?

Long-form scripted podcasts. These will be either research or opinion pieces. One episode might be a critical look at an old computer company, the next one might be my thoughts on the current state of word processors. If you want an idea of what they’d be like, you could check out my previous long form series, Macinography, for a preview. There won’t be a set schedule—they’ll be done when they’re done. If you’d rather read than listen, full text versions will also be available.

Occasional live recordings with guests. I’m talking interviews or discussions about specific subjects. Again, no set schedule, but it’s the other prong of the podcast fork.

Written blog posts. Sometimes things aren’t meant for an auditory medium. Maybe it’s a brief subject that would only be a few minutes in a recording and doesn’t make sense as a podcast. So instead they’ll be written posts. An example might be how I resuscitated password-locked Toshiba laptops I found in a thrift store.

Mini-Series. Some episodes will be part of a themed series, and I’m starting with historical reviews of particular models of computers. I can also divide large, expansive topics into smaller chunks so that they don’t get stuck in development hell. The first such example would be a history of expansion slots and their architectures.

Chips and Bits. These are posts (or podcasts, maybe) that are a collection of small thoughts put together in one place. Like a list of my favorite utilities, or suggestions on fixing a piece of software. Maybe it’s the interesting retro things I found at the thrift store, or a possible jumping-off point for something more serious.

Link and Logs. Short posts that are just a link with a comment to something else.

Why Userlandia?

After sifting through a bunch of names, I settled on Userlandia. I originally wanted to call it Computerland as an homage to the old store. But because of domain names and other things, it would have been difficult. After bandying about a few other ideas, I had a thought. I was reading an article about the personification of cities and states. Britannia, Zealandia, Helvetia… even Uncle Sam. That struck me. In most operating systems, there’s a division between the kernel space—reserved for the OS—and the user space, usually referred to as userland. Userland is where all of the regular user services and applications operate.

Thus, I like to think of Userlandia as the personification of the space that users and creators reside in the larger world of technology.

Thank you for reading, and I hope to have more to share with you soon.