Agent Palmer

If you’re looking for the whole story of the personal computer or microcomputer industry, you have to read a few books. You owe it to yourself to at least cover the two diametrically opposed players in the game: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

I’ve read the Steve Jobs biography written by Walter Isaacson, so next up was a Bill Gates biography called Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews.

Chrono Trigger is one of those classic titles that generate nostalgia and a real sense of reverie amongst gamers. Released back in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System – it was a critical and commercial success.

I’m not exaggerating when I say few games released in the past 20 years measure up to this RPG masterpiece. Some younger gamers or those unfamiliar with gaming might not understand Chrono Trigger’s significance, but that’s okay.

I’m an old nerd whose wanted to write about this for a while.

Before I picked up What’s It All About? I knew that Michael Caine was a great actor of both the stage and screen. I knew him as Harry Palmer, Charlie Croker, and Alfie, among many others.

But in this, his first autobiography, you learn that there’s a lot more to the man. Maurice Joseph Micklewhite was born in England. He was not one who had success thrust upon him nor was he born into it. He worked his way up in a place where the class system existed and breaking out was no easy task.

I know, you’re not thinking, “Palmer was on another podcast,” but “what do Kiss, They Might Be Giants, and The Strokes have in common?”

Well, they all hail from New York, and that was the theme of Our Liner Notes Episode 6 “Agents of New York”, retroactively chosen by myself and hosts Chris and Paul Maier. And yes, all three bands hail from New York, but now you’re asking yourself, “what is Our Liner Notes?”

I’ve never been an Apple person, so you can’t call me a MacHead. That doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for Steve Jobs, which is why I picked up his biography by Walter Isaacson. Jobs was an innovative thinker and one of the creative minds that has led technology to where it is now.

Jobs is arguably, along with Steve Wozniak, one of the paramount forefathers of personal computing, as well as the modern mobile age. I, like many others, was interested in how this all came to be – how he was able to see the future before it was here.