The most enduring passion in my life has been pyrotechnics.
I was into it before electronics, before
photography.
It's occasionally gotten me into trouble,
not to mention the occasional close call,
but it's enhanced my life considerably.
In March 1990, I started a
pyrotechnics mailing list.
It proved popular enough that eventually the newsgroup
rec.pyrotechnics
was created, with the volume of the mailing list used as justification.
In its early years (1990-1994), I archived rec.pyrotechnics.
You can retrieve compressed tarfiles of the messages from those years
here.
I've archived rec.pyrotechnics since it was created.
Unfortunately, our newsfeed was pretty flaky for the first few years,
so about a quarter of the articles were lost.
The rest (about 21,000 as of February 1995) are
publicly available on our news server.
If you're using a newsreader or a web browser that doesn't understand news URLs
that include a news server name, just set your NNTPSERVER environment variable
to news.armory.com before running your newsreader.
Note that rec.pyrotechnics is the only group that news.armory.com will allow
users outside of armory.com to read.
Be sure you specify it explicitly when running your newsreader or you'll
get reams of complaints about all the groups that you can't read.
Also, note that unless you take appropriate steps, this will confuse your
newsreader about which articles in rec.pyrotechnics you've read.
Note: the news server referred to above is currently not operating.
'76 Pyro Magazine -
This is a large-format glossy quarterly magazine, filled with informative
articles, both on general pyrotechnic topics and on people and places of
interest to those with a pyrotechnic bent.
It's backed up by some nice photography.
A high-quality magazine, not a back-room production.
Even the ads are interesting to pyrotechnic afficionados :)