Nostalgia and Excess Time

We all tend to yearn for the "good old days" as we get older. The stuff I tend to miss as I get older are the toys. As I see what toys are like today I remember when I was younger and toys were fueled by kid power. There were no microchips and not much in they way of computer programs. We were limited only by our imaginations, which thankfully the batteries never ran down on.

While cruising around the web I found a few goodies that allow me to kill time and nurse my yen for the old toys that served me so well in the past.

My First stop was the Lite Brite. Come on now. Who didn't get to play with one of the more potentially lethal items in their past. A screaming hot light bulb in a plastic box and a mountain of very sharp plastic pegs. I usually used up the paper that came with the unit really fast and just ran patterns of my own creating with black construction paper. Some fun stuff to be sure (maybe I was just really bored, who really knows). I was delighted to see that I can still do this online when I feel the urge. And the best part, no pegs to beaten by the cat or hot bulb to keep away from the baby!

If Lite-Brite was a little too risky for you then let's take a wander over to the Etch-A-Sketch site. This was the most challenging way to draw anything that I could ever find. Although I will never reach the state of Etch-master, I can practice here online.

My favourite one so far is not an strictly an online thing and a little complicated to install but well worth the effort. Being a lego-head as a kid I always wanted to build Lego masterpieces that could fill a room but couldn't afford the blocks to make it happen? I had three pillowcases full but still couldn't create anything larger than a coffee table sized airplane. If you were like me, then you need to play around with a little program called ldraw. With this little beauty you can build things like this or much larger until your brain is devoid if ideas (or your computer runs out of memory). It's autocad meets lego-geek and the results are wonderful.

If I ever win the lottery I will have to use my Lego-cad for a pattern and construct a monstrous shrine of lego. Who knows, maybe I'll win enough money to actually make a real house out of lego. Imagine how easy renovation could be then!