I write about the past, present, and future of technology across three sites. imapenguin.com explores retro computing and programming fundamentals, milkcrunch.com covers modern software development and engineering culture, and evadot.com examines commercial spaceflight and the new space movement.
Posts
- A grid drawing rabbit hole · imapenguin
- Error checking type in data entry is all the rage these days. Happy Friday!
- Just another random stretch of my daily walk. This is the only flat part. I’ve been doing more or less the same 3.5 mile walk 3-5 times a week for 10 years. It wasn’t until I took out the headphones and stopped tracking my health stats that it became really transformative.
- I don't think Forth is some closet technology waiting for its moment. But it makes me think about problems differently, so I continue studying it.
- The back of the Super Expander manual has some fun listings. Here's the first one.
- Many asked about making the grid with the stock BASIC. It can be done, and is even fairly straightforward, but it's awfully slow (40 minutes). Still fun though.
- French Broad was low today. Julie led most of the way for about 6 miles as we picked our way through the rocks.
- It's rumored that @elonmusk's first computer was a VIC-20. I thought doing the logo would be easier than it turned out to be, but it's still just 10 lines of code, thanks to Super Expander. #commodore #vic20
- I’ll probably get good money for these deck boards if I call them vintage.
- :%s/A.I./Master Control/g
- I saw this in a grocery store in Ely Minnesota. I wish I had bought it.
- At Commodore in 1982, someone was like "let's make a knockoff, but should we at least make it look and sound like it's not at knockoff?" Nahhh, ship it!
- These are nutritionally interesting but texturally challenging.
- I'm sitting here realizing that I don't actually know how to send a high res screen on the VIC-20 to a printer. Hmmm.
- Can't leave out the VIC-20. Happy Friday
- More than one person called me out for using Python to make my Commodore screen grid. Assembly is easy enough, but I already had my SuperExpander out for another project. I had both it and SIMON's BASIC in the 80s, so I'm calling it "fair to use" as it's authentic to my childhood
- I’m jaded with 2023 technology at work today. Time to revisit the 80s.
- Visualizing the season's progressing, nerd style.
- So I'm to understand that everyone doesn't write Python programs to generate 40x25 sheets to lay out vintage computer screen ideas on Tuesday nights. Apparently just me. Okay then. ;-)
- Hi res 10 Print style render inspired by @8BitShowAndTell this morning. Takes a lot of Mississippi’s to finish the whole screen.