Team Mesalanius is a duo of retro tech enthusiasts, Sidney Rutledge (hs_doubbing) and Michael Crowell (SamuraiCatz).
I suppose it could be said that, at one point, we had lofty dreams of a successful content creation career, but ultimately we, like many others who grew up watching gaming YouTubers, realized those dreams were just that - the dreams of naive teens. There's really nothing wrong with having dreams, of course, but eventually you wake up and realize you've spent the last decade throwing around a goofy brand name you came up with in a long-winded Google Hangouts call on some summer afternoon in 2014 without ever making anything to back it up.
That said, you know what? It's never too late to start. We aren't accomplished content creators, and we almost certainly never will be. However, we believe we have something worth sharing with the world, even if only a few people watch. If you're here reading this, we appreciate you, and we hope you enjoy your stay.
Thank you, and have a very safe and productive day.
—hs_doubbing
YouTube: @hs_doubbing
Twitter: @hs_doubbing
Steam: hs_doubbing
Discord: @hs_doubbing
I started making videos for fun when I was very little, and I've been interested in retro tech for nearly as long. The video-making likely came from my early childhood fascination with our family's Video8 Handycam. The retro tech interest probably started with my dad's Commodore 64. By the time I was a preteen, I had started uploading videos to YouTube, starting with some DOSBox stuff and eventually made my somewhat successful Windows 95 virtual machine tutorials. As I went further down the retro tech YouTube rabbit hole, my love for the hobby grew, and I began documenting my own personal projects just for the heck of it.
Aside from the obvious hours spent watching Minecraft videos (World of Mianite, anyone?), some of my early YouTube memories include The 8-Bit Guy when he was instead The iBook Guy, BBISHOPPCM discovering the horrors of lithium barrel batteries, UXWBill's many, many misadventures in computers and electronics, danooct1's demos of many cool viruses (and many that are not), and finally, VWestlife introduced me to old hard drives and Tandy computers. Notably, VWestlife also made (and still makes) videos of rather silly things, including the video from which I derived my online handle.
Twitter: @SamuraiCatz
Discord: y2krecall
I'm a Systems Admin by day, a programmer by night, and obsessed with all things tech—especially the weird, the old, and the niche.
I work as a Systems Admin for a K-12 district, and I'm in a special little spot where my knowledge of the arcane arts of old comes in handy more than I'd like to admit. The last time my district went through a major upgrade, I was five. Now, in my 20s, I'm bringing it into the 2020s—one piece at a time.
My main hobby is anything computers, but I'm also a connoisseur of vintage video games and audio equipment. I love MiniDisc in particular, my favorite gender is Mac OS, and I have a wire shelf full of junk I need to get rid of.
I also am a big fan of networking and I operate a pretty sophisticated home lab where me and the missus keep all our favorite TV, my terabytes of hoarded junk, my many dev projects, and we have Wi-Fi so good I can stream my PC to my living room TV no sweat.
While not the main thing I do I grew up in a musical family, and I played Saxophone a good chunk of my life. Now I mostly play guitar when I feel like it. I have an affinity for Squires, I own a Telecaster and a Jazzmaster. I love them both!