The Flaming Monitor

This monitor has been in my trash pile for several years now. I guess before I finally throw it away I should say a few words about it.

I bought this monitor back in the mid-1990s at one of those monthly roving computer flea markets. I originally bought this monitor for my BBS computer. I paid $50 for the monitor at a time when used 14″ monitors were selling for around $100. When I got the monitor home I discovered that it only displayed the color red. That repair cost me another $50, which put me right back at that $100 mark. So much for getting a good deal. :/

While Susan and I were living in Spokane, one of my friends (who was in a band) turned me on to the band Neurosis. Neurosis was known for their in-concert visuals and light shows, and so I decided to write a computer program that would display different pictures based on the keys you hit on your keyboard. Writing such a program would be trivial for me now, but back then I had essentially 0 programming experience, so the solution I came up with involved (a) converting .GIF and.JPG files into stand-alone .EXE files, and (b) writing an insanely long .BAT file using CHOICE.EXE to wait for keyboard input. Each picture matched up with a single letter, so one picture would be titled “A.EXE”, another one would be named “B.EXE”, and so on. In my batch file, when you hit “A”, “A.EXE” would load and display. Hitting any key after that would return you back to the menu, which used black text on a black screen to hide what it was doing. It was a very, very crude solution, but it worked.

But soon I realized, no heavy metal band was going to rock out next to a nerdy-looking computer on stage. At that time my computer tower was covered in bumper stickers so it already looked pretty cool, but to make the monitor match I decided to paint flames on it. In my naivety I used oil-based paints, which took something like 2 weeks to finally dry. If you look closely in person (you can’t see it in the photo), there’s a small thumb print smudge where I tested to see if the paint was dry yet or not. (It wasn’t.)

After I got my program finished I pitched the idea to my friend of having on stage visuals, and his response was … well I really can’t remember what his response was, but it must not have been very positive as we never did it. My idea for adding visuals to their performances stayed in my apartment, and all I got out of the deal was a shoddy monitor with flames painted on it.

I believe the highest resolution the monitor will display is 800×600, making it essentially worthless for anything except an old, retro computer setup at this point. I haven’t used the monitor in over a decade now, so I think it’s time to let this one go. So long, flaming monitor!