Nostr notes by vga256

i had never heard of SF Net until now, and I absolutely applaud ...

2026-10-19T15:21:49Z

i had never heard of SF Net until now, and I absolutely applaud its mission.

RIP.

#bbs #internet #1990s #sfbay

i can't believe it. today's thrifting find: a ...

2026-10-18T21:06:30Z

i can't believe it. today's thrifting find: a PS2-backwards compatible PS3 for $12.50

whenever i find this kind of stuff in thrift stores, it's a thrashed xbox 360 missing its door covers for $100. i have never once come across a PS3-Fat quite like this.

these Backwards Compatible (BC) PS3's are capable of playing PS2 games - something both the PS3-Fat-non-BC and PS3 Slim are not capable of. these were a big deal at launch. they were viciously expensive in canada. $800 was the starting price for one here, and they quickly skyrocketed into $1200+ territory.

i fell in love with them the moment i saw one with its grand piano black finish. i was a student at the time, and there was absolutely no way i could afford one.

there are several versions of backwards-compatible PS3s, but all of them share the same physical features, so they're easy to spot in the wild:

- (pic 2) a mirrored finish on the drive bezel. the later PS3-Fats have an unpolished finish.
- (pic 3) four USB ports. all of the non-BC PS3's have only two.
- (pic 4) on the rear of the machine is the serial number tag. look to the far right for the model number. CECH-A, CECH-B, CECH-C, and CECH-E are all backwards compatible. nothing else is.

there are variations in compatibility between models. this particular machine is a CECH-E01, which means it has an 80GB drive and uses a blend of on-chip hardware and software to emulate PS2 games.

edit: i thought for sure this would turn out to be broken in some way - a bad blu-ray drive, corrupted hard drive, or no hdmi output. i just tested it out with a copy of Gran Turismo 3, and it runs perfectly 😻

#ps3 #sony #playstation #retrogaming

REQ: the origins of these floral victorian style dropcaps. ...

2026-10-18T18:12:26Z

REQ: the origins of these floral victorian style dropcaps.

i've been fascinated with this one particular set for decades, and I've never been able to figure out where exactly they came from.

a few things i do know about them:
1. they existed in 1985 because they were used on the cover of Ultima IV (US Gold edition/Commodore 64/UK/Europe) https://www.mobygames.com/game/884/ultima-iv-quest-of-the-avatar/cover/group-39244/cover-20321/

2. they were used as a complete set of alphabetic decorative stamps by Anita's Stamps in 1995. the *entire* alphabet exists as a stamp.

3. searches of all the popular image sites have yielded only a few letters like the ones attached. I've found six of 26 letters.

given that the entire alphabet was created, it *seems* like this would have been something sold commercially to typesetting shops as a complete set of movable type, but it is equally possible it existed only in hand-inked form in a book of some kind.

image source: centurylibrary.com

#typography

kiki’s favourite days are in the autumn when the sun is low ...

2026-10-18T17:00:38Z

kiki’s favourite days are in the autumn when the sun is low enough to beam through the kitchen window.

#caturday #CatsOfMastodon

it took only 25 years, but i finally have my own personal copy of ...

2026-10-18T01:29:55Z

it took only 25 years, but i finally have my own personal copy of bleem!

if you've never heard of bleem!, that's probably because it was such a brief, but bright, blip in the emulation world back in the late 90s.

it did what most people thought impossible in 1999: playing PS1 games on your PC (or DreamCast using bleemCast), at a decent speed.

you could download the demo/shareware edition of bleem for free, but in order to unlock the full version, you needed the physical cd-rom which acted as a software dongle or key.

it was infamously difficult to copy the disc at the time. instead of using "bad sectors" to fool cd burners into aborting a cd copy, the disc used actual physical rings pressed into the surface.

#psx #playstation #retrogaming

ohhhh haha i was wondering why they had wandered so far south! ...

2026-10-13T15:29:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…nh8s
_________________________

ohhhh haha i was wondering why they had wandered so far south! 😆

that is awesome. fully support reindeer (here: 'caribou') petting zoo. they're ridiculously relaxed animals compared to every other ungulate i know of

oh that is wonderful - what a rare sight. in canada, they do not ...

2026-10-13T15:18:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…ju8p
_________________________

oh that is wonderful - what a rare sight. in canada, they do not venture very far south and instead to migrate east <-> west. you have to live above the arctic circle to really see them. i'm envious!

amazing. are they on their migration route?

2026-10-13T13:06:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…cpda
_________________________

amazing. are they on their migration route?

buried in the boxes of Nibble, MacUser, MacAddict and MacUser ...

2026-10-11T01:45:41Z

buried in the boxes of Nibble, MacUser, MacAddict and MacUser mags were these gems.

i'm beyond excited to finally read a Sierra InterAction mag after decades of wishing i had been able to subscribe as a kid 🙏

#sierra #adventureGames #retrogaming

it’s all designed to overwhelm the senses 😻 it just needs ...

2026-10-10T19:26:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…g6ej
_________________________

it’s all designed to overwhelm the senses 😻

it just needs that monster truck ad guy to yell blowout blowout blowwwwouttttt

#macintosh #vintageApple #retrocomputing

the boxes also contain a random assortment of glorious 90s analog ...

2026-10-10T19:19:07Z

the boxes also contain a random assortment of glorious 90s analog adware

#macintosh #retrocomputing

fellow waybackmachine users of a certain vintage: for those who ...

2026-10-08T22:10:02Z

fellow waybackmachine users of a certain vintage:

for those who remember, xoom.com of the 90s and 2000s was a free webspace provider among other things. hundreds of thousands of xoom members created their own homepages there. myself included.

paypal recently bought the xoom.com domain. they presumably put in a "do not archive" exclusion request to IA, who granted it.

the purpose of the exclusion request is to exclude URLs for the owners of the original *webspace*, NOT the new owners of a *domain name*.

the unfortunate consequence of this is that wbm has now excluded every single *.xoom.com/user/ homepage from existence. hundreds of thousands of homepages.

paypal does not own your childhood homepage just by virtue of buying a domain name. i assume this was an error made in haste at IA. anyone working at IA care to chime in - or better yet, correct this oversight?

#digiPres

i'm genuinely surprised at how well the authors of this ...

2026-10-08T19:44:20Z

i'm genuinely surprised at how well the authors of this history of the ARPAnet strike a balance between careful technical descriptions of hardware and software, useful metaphors for understanding how they work, and the personalities behind them.

every few pages, i learn something genuinely important about computing history which had direct consequences for how i work and live today.

in the computer game history world, most people recognize Will Crowther as 'that guy who created ADVENTURE' (which directly led to the entire text adventure genre).

what no one ever talks about is that before Adventure, Crowther was a chief programmer on the ARPAnet project, and designed the dynamic routing system for packet delivery. the routing software was written entirely in incredibly tight Honeywell 516 assembly, to make intelligent decisions about how to get packets from origin to destination without using a static (deterministic) routing table

a variation of this concept went into BGP, which is the very foundation of internet routing.

it's very telling that the wikipedia entry for Crowther is almost entirely about Adventure, and has almost nothing about his major contributions to the ARPAnet.

#books #bookstodon #worldWideWeb #wikipedia

i've had this irresistible piece of 90s msdos trashware on my ...

2026-10-07T21:15:54Z

i've had this irresistible piece of 90s msdos trashware on my shelf for 10 years. softkey international was a shovelware company that you'd find at your local grocery store - i think it began its life as a shareware distributor, before it began selling big box copies of low quality games and applications

i couldn't bear to throw out this boxed copy of Key 3-D Design over the years, and never once thought it had any archival value until today

after a bunch of searches, i couldn't find any copies of SoftKey 3-D Design for DOS online. it's a verrrrrry stripped down CAD program that runs in 640x480 and 16 colours. (there are win16 versions archived online, but not the DOS version)

the rendering algorithm reminds me of Sierra AGI games, painting one face at a time slowwwllyyy 😆

am i the only person that seriously wishes low-res, shit-shaded VRML made a comeback?

i've archived the box covers and diskette here. have fun building the hacienda of your dreams:
https://archive.org/details/key-3d-design/

#digiPres #archival #softwarePreservation #msdos

and paid some 13 year old kid to sit in front of Win95 running ...

2026-10-06T14:47:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…6cdd
_________________________

and paid some 13 year old kid to sit in front of Win95 running adaptec EZ-CD Creator to churn out disc art all day 🤣

on rare occasions i still come across dos games at thrift stores. ...

2026-10-06T14:28:06Z

on rare occasions i still come across dos games at thrift stores.

and then, once every 20 years, i find a hong kong pirate release:

lucasatrs full thronie is one of my favourite cd-orms

#adventuregames #retrogaming #dosgaming

it arrived 😻 despite being 35+ years old, the HP 48G series ...

2026-10-05T21:34:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…lvqd
_________________________

it arrived 😻

despite being 35+ years old, the HP 48G series are still surprisingly expensive to buy used ($150+ CAD), so when i found this "broken" machine on ebay for $25, i went for it.

all of the 48G's suffer from the same design problem: after several years, a piece of internal foam which presses down on the keyboard ribbon cable loses its elasticity over time. the foam strip no longer presses down on the keyboard cable, and the keyboard stops functioning.

people find that their beloved machine no longer turns on, and assume that they're deaders.

the temporary fix is easy: press down on the display bezel as shown, which compresses the foam strip internally, and reconnects the keyboard

the permanent fix will involve opening up the case and replacing the foam strip. i plan to do that soon.

i can't wait to learn RPN and RPL on this little beast!

#calculator #hp #retrocomputing

aaaaaaaaa i can't believe it five years ago i picked up this ...

2026-10-03T01:58:17Z

aaaaaaaaa i can't believe it

five years ago i picked up this tiny NEC MobilePro palmtop locally. when i brought it home, it booted once, complained about the battery, and then went completely dead. no lights, no response to electrical stimuli. nothing.

i was heartbroken, and it went into my repair closet of doom.

tonight i pulled it out, completely forgetting that it was dead. i plugged it in, and was disappointed to remember that it was a deader.

on a hunch, i pulled out a multimeter and poked around the ac adapter plug. it was outputting 0.2v. it's supposed to output 9v (!)

i found an adapter with matching polarity and voltage (which turns out to be a Sega Game Gear ac adapter), and plugged it in - and to my delight, the machine instantly booted and started charging.

i've never used windows 2000 PocketPC before, and i'm surprised at how delightfully straightforward it is.

it runs in 640x240 in 16-bit colour, which is surprisingly spacious on an 8-inch screen. best of all, it has an *excellent* keyboard and an internal 56k v.90 modem (!!)

i popped open the CF slot, and found a nice 6GB compactflash drive inside. not a CF card, but actual 1-inch spinning seagate rust (the same thing as an IBM microdrive you'd find in an ipod).

excited to get this thing online via the internal modem soon. does anyone else have one of these?

#pocketpc #handheld #retrocomputing

when i was in high school, graphing calculators were the hot new ...

2026-09-28T20:57:29Z

when i was in high school, graphing calculators were the hot new thing in mathematics. we weren't required to own one, but our math teacher sent a letter home recommending them to parents

there were a few different brands and models out there, and with that, came an implicit pecking order:

the TI-8x calculators were unquestionably great. I spent months grinding my parents into buying a jet black TI-85 (of which i paid half), so i could have the extra memory, link port, TI-BASIC, and a lowercase alphabet bitfont. us ti-85 owners fancied ourselves the tremere clan of the kindred. i learned how to program on it for the next year, instead of learning polynomials

the less discerning kids ended up with the TI-81 - no link port, scant RAM, and no lowercase font. clanless thin-bloods!

at the absolute bottom of the slush pile were the Casio kids. while the FX-7700x machines had a kickass interface and built-in solvers, the teacher had no idea how to use them, and the casio kids were relegated to nosferatu status

one day, out of nowhere, two kids showed up with Hewlett Packard 48G calcs. the case designs were slick, had fonts of different sizes, used crazy reverse polish notation, and did infrared calc-to-calc file transfers. they were incredibly powerful and fast. i was instantly jealous.

but they were also incredibly expensive - $250+ at the time. i gritted my teeth and lived with my inferior TI-85 for the rest of my high school years.

today i found out that the HP 48G calculators had their own stack-based programming language based on LISP called RPL, and could even assemble native ASM code (with a miniassembler installed) written in-calculator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_48_series#Programming

you don't need to tell me twice. i just ordered a cheap broken 48G that, hopefully, i'll be able to repair and turn into goofy programming machine :D

#1990s #calculators #programming #lisp

holy shit. after 5+ years of asking for these, i just realized ...

2026-09-26T01:38:56Z

holy shit. after 5+ years of asking for these, i just realized jason uploaded the missing BBS documentary interview tapes to IA last september

among the new uploads, i am beyond thankful that tom jennings (npub1h7a…m2up)'s interview is *finally* there!

https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary?sort=-publicdate

#bbs #retroComputing

wonderful geese migrating south overhead. this was a previously ...

2026-09-25T16:03:31Z

wonderful geese migrating south overhead. this was a previously unidentified species for me - i’ve seen them pass overhead for many years, but was never able to figure out what they were until now, thanks to Merlin Bird ID: Greater White-Fronted Goose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_white-fronted_goose

listen carefully for the high pitched, squeaky calls - very different from the bassy honks of the canada goose.

#canada #geese #yeg #birds

🫠 give it a brief hug before you release it back into ...

2026-09-20T01:25:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…q59y
_________________________

🫠 give it a brief hug before you release it back into KLM's hands so it arrives home in another 10 days

it took 25+ years of searches, but i finally struck paydirt this ...

2026-09-17T16:28:39Z

it took 25+ years of searches, but i finally struck paydirt this morning: a legit, retail copy of FirstClass BBS for the macintosh

the backstory: in 1995, my redneck farm school managed to get an entire lab of twenty Mac LC's, and one of the machines was tucked off in a corner to run "FirstClass" for the entire school using an external 14.4k Global Village Teleport modem.

i was already a bbs kid by this point, but i had never heard of FC. all of the boards i visited were PC/ANSI boards running software like Oblivion/2, Iniquity, PCBoard or Wildcat. i had never even *heard* of a macintosh bbs. our computer teacher managed to get a landline number for the modem, and encouraged me to call it from home.

when i connected from home, i was nonplussed - the board was black/white ASCII with some of the worst menus i had ever seen. i browsed a few of the conferences and logged out. a "lamer board" if i had ever seen one.

the next day, i made my opinion unswervingly clear to my computer teacher: "Your board sucks Mr. M!"

He chuckled, "What? First Class is great! It's you DOS guys that suck."

he motioned to a nearby LC and opened a program called FirstClass Client. it showed a login dialog; he hammered in his u/p and a few seconds later, he was logged in to the BBS over the LAN.

...... except, it was all graphical! the entire board was a rich mac OS gui. navigation between file areas and message conferences was by opening and closing windows, and clicking on buttons. no ascii/ANSI characters. downloading a file was just plain drag and drop from the server's folder to your desktop.

i had never seen anything like it: a bbs that functioned more like an operating system and windowing environment. it was a *decade* ahead of anything i had seen in ms-dos

that experience left a huge impression on me. i never found any bbs that felt as good as FC before or afterward, and spent years trying to find a legit copy of it. because it was insanely expensive ($800+) it was mostly sold to educational and corporate institutions, and very few copies ever showed up on ebay. until today. i can't wait to receive this in a few weeks, and begin documenting
and archiving the contents.

fwiw - i wrote a much longer version of this story, and many others about the 90s bbs era, in my book Mages & Modems: A Childhood Well-Wasted in the Golden Age of Personal Computers, Games, and Internet Piracy:
https://tomotama.com/books

#bbs #retroComputing #macintosh #vintageApple #books

for most of my adult life i've lived in envy of those in ...

2026-09-10T23:17:16Z

for most of my adult life i've lived in envy of those in eur/jp who grew up with the absolutely superb aesthetics of the super famicom, compared to the sadly uninspired purple super nintendo we got in north america

today i found a local person selling their sfc for $130 CAD, packed with a bunch of great first party titles. can't wait to play these!

#nintendo #superNintendo #sfc #superfamicom #japan

similar to that. the OLPC XO-1's apparently use an ...

2026-09-09T13:30:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…2w0p
_________________________

similar to that. the OLPC XO-1's apparently use an "Activation Lease" system which checks for an activation key, cryptographically signed to that particular laptop. if the laptop isn't activated, it won't boot. the bug in the firmware is that if the system clock isn't set past a specific date, it won't set the activation flag, and won't boot.

i finally found an explanation of why they used this Activation Lease system here: it was apparently an anti-theft device, to prevent people from stealing the laptop. (section 5: Activation and Anti-Theft)

https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2007/proceedings/p132_krstic.pdf

yiiiikes. this is the first time i've run into a "dead ...

2026-09-09T02:36:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…hycc
_________________________

yiiiikes. this is the first time i've run into a "dead even after you've replaced the battery" type snafu. thankfully the olpc team wrote a firmware patch a few years later that corrects the problem.

i have never screamed a more satisfying fuck-youuuu to a computer ...

2026-09-09T00:58:26Z

i have never screamed a more satisfying fuck-youuuu to a computer than 5 minutes ago, when i finally fixed a dead OLPC XO-1 that i've been trying to fix, unsuccessfully, for FIVE YEARS

the XO-1's, especially the early models, all suffer from a showstopper firmware bug: if the internal clock battery dies, the laptop cannot boot. it won't even make it to POST. changing the battery makes no difference, because the PROM has the wrong clock date burned into it.

the workaround is reprogramming the internal clock with the correct date via an onboard serial port which *does* function when the laptop is powered on. unfortunately, it uses an incredibly frustratingly tiny 3mm blade-type socket that isn't easy to find.

my solution was to solder tiny wires directly to the board. take a look at the picture and decide for yourself if you ever want me near your electronics. (the plastic connector melted when i tried to desolder it using a hot air rework gun)

the worst part of the process, aside from soldering 0.2mm pins, was figuring out which-pins-did-what on the motherboard's J4 connector. experimentation taught me that:

Pin 1 (bottom): +3.3v. Do not connect this to the USB-TTL.
Pin 2: Transmit (TX). Connect to RX on the USB-TTL.
Pin 3: Receive (RX). Connect to TX on the USB-TTL.
Pin 4 (top): Ground. Connect to GND on the USB-TTL.

now let your terminal session capture output from the USB-TTL. on macOS, the terminal command for my particular usb-ttl stick is:
> screen /dev/tty.usbserial-1410 115200

once you've connected those wires to the USB-TTL, plug in the laptop and power it on. You'll immediately see text flow into the terminal session.

once you've got a prompt, type in:
> select /rtc decimal 57 34 21 21 08 2026 set-time
> bye

and you're done. the laptop will reboot, and suddenly it will POST with a chime and boot into the operating system.

sources:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191031213812/http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Fix_Clock#If_the_screen_does_not_turn_on

#olpc #diyRepair #permaComputing

use a brand new official hp toner cart that has been sitting in ...

2026-09-01T21:08:35Z

use a brand new official hp toner cart that has been sitting in storage for 26 years

what could possibly go wrong

#retrocomputing

🤣 amazing customer service. the living embodiment of youtube ...

2026-08-21T14:34:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…3hqa
_________________________

🤣 amazing customer service. the living embodiment of youtube commenters

this book so much fun. i first heard of this classic macintosh ...

2026-08-05T14:45:54Z

this book so much fun. i first heard of this classic macintosh modding book years ago when i was looking for a way of running my color classic in 640x480. the homepage was roughly translated japanese which briefly mentioned its source: Doping Mac. if you've heard the words "takky" or "mystic" before in the mac world, this is where they got published.

i’m delighted to learn that the book is almost like the annals of the mac mod club - true devotees of the architecture who wanted to push their machines as aesthetically and electronically as far as they could go, and have fun doing it. the book’s presentation is gorgeous.

(side note: this was my first experience using Buyee. because this was a $5 “junk” book (probably due to a mild mildewy smell), i had nothing to lose. it took about a month to arrive, and had some corner damage from improper packing - but i couldn’t be happier with it.)

#macintosh #vintageApple #retrocomputing #books #japan

often when i buy someone’s box of computer games, it comes with ...

2026-08-01T22:09:29Z

often when i buy someone’s box of computer games, it comes with a pile of caseless cd-roms - usually kids games - rolling around in the bottom of the box. they all get stashed together in a misc spindle that i rarely ever look at.

today when i was grasping for cd-rom safari podcast ideas, i pulled out the spindle and flipped through the pile of shovelware. i found this disc, which had previously escaped my notice because it appeared to be an encyclopedia. upon closer inspection, encyclopedia it most certainly is not. 😅

this adventure game - The Lost Island of Alanna - bears a familar trademark: Cherry Coke. yes, that coca cola company (!).

per the wikipedia entry, “The Lost Island of Alanna represents an early example of integrated, digital, viral and social marketing using the internet. Alanna included a distributed CD-ROM game, integrated social chat rooms, under-the-cap codes, special product packaging, advertising, outdoor, and two promotional websites.”

this is a graphical adventure game. and you can’t make this stuff up:

“In the game, the player explores an island where an ancient civilization was concerned about passing on its wisdom but was wiped out by a volcano before it was able to share its precious knowledge. This civilization used clay bowls and a mixture of sparkling water and cherries in a tribal ceremony. The game cross-references this with bottles of Cherry Coke, on the labels of which are clues in the form of cuneiform characters, and then the player is encouraged to begin solving the mystery”

i can almost guarantee this is going to be a janky macromedia director game, and i can’t WAIT to play it so i can finally learn the ancient recipe of crystal pepsi

#cdrom #multimedia #retrocomputing #win95 #macintosh

haha yeah, in the end i found it better to just break my back and ...

2026-07-27T20:51:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…rn43
_________________________

haha yeah, in the end i found it better to just break my back and haul it in the truck bed. the trailers were nice for loading/unloading, but way too unstable

fantastic. i rented an aluminum u-haul once for moving a ...

2026-07-27T20:27:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…ldlj
_________________________

fantastic. i rented an aluminum u-haul once for moving a Dragon's Lair, and it bounced around the highway like a toy at 110 km/h 😹 😭

that is just fantastic. it looks like galvanized steel. a tank ...

2026-07-27T20:03:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…jdu5
_________________________

that is just fantastic. it looks like galvanized steel. a tank indeed.

that made my night. your satellite pro is good, but not ...

2026-07-25T02:30:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…ws2x
_________________________

that made my night. your satellite pro is good, but not Frasier-good

🤔 it might not be the best $10 i'll ever spend but it ...

2026-07-24T17:04:11Z

🤔 it might not be the best $10 i'll ever spend but it won't be the worst i guess?

#multimedia #cdrom #retrogaming #win31 #1990s

i mean, if someone here has been following you for more than a ...

2026-07-21T09:30:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…xfe3
_________________________

i mean, if someone here has been following you for more than a day, and has read more than one of your posts - they'd already know you're an accomplished photographer and printer. rather than worry about how to respond to that kind of AI-gen accusation in general (which is a real problem), this one specifically gets dumped into the "poster is an idiot" bin for me.

just discovered a treasure trove of new classic macintosh game ...

2026-07-21T01:36:30Z

just discovered a treasure trove of *new* classic macintosh game reviews

neocities user MSX_POCKY (npub15yg…45kr) posts their classic mac system 7/os x, windows xp, amiga and sega 8-bit game reviews. the writing is insightful, friendly, and fair.

exceptionally chosen games - some obscure, some popular - but always interesting and unique.

https://overclockworked.neocities.org/reviews

the review of The Fool's Errand includes some wonderful eclectic 1-bit artwork by Cliff Johnson:
https://overclockworked.neocities.org/macos/fool/

update: they're now on masto! thank you to the wonderful person who extended an invite to our warm mac community.

#macintosh #sega #amiga #winxp #retrocomputing #retrogaming #vintageApple #1bit

“He went up to look at the house, see how things were going, ...

2026-07-18T13:53:36Z

“He went up to look at the house, see how things were going, and somewhere along the line he learned that the house number was going to be number 19," he said.

Cooper’s grandfather was flabbergasted.

“I can’t have my house to be number 19!” he said. “That’s a shithouse number.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/no-19-st-johns-street-9.7269329

#canada #newfoundland #nfld

one of my little side hobbies is rescuing dead graphing ...

2026-07-16T19:52:40Z

one of my little side hobbies is rescuing dead graphing calculators at thrift shops

i found this TI-83 completely dead with 25+ year old leaking batteries inside of the bay, and brought it home for $8.

after a little cleanup of the battery bay and contacts with a weak acid, it sprung back to life for the first time in decades. amazingly, the original owner's programs were still intact, thanks to the backup battery.

per every canadian math teacher's instruction, the original owner - Fraser D. - had his name engraved into the shell. 😀

this calculator is destined to go back into use as soon as i can find a local math teacher who wants it in their classroom. given that a TI-84 calculator is still $190 in canada - a truly disgusting price for a computer running a 40-year-old Zilog Z80 processor (!), a free TI-83 will sound good to some kid out there.

(whom, i hope, will spend all of their Math 10 time learning how to program TI-BASIC instead of solving polynomials)

#permacomputing #calculators #retrocomputing #yeg

yearly saskatoon update for anyone who picks, or wants to start ...

2026-07-16T17:09:02Z

yearly saskatoon update for anyone who picks, or wants to start picking.

- generally small this year due to the long cold spring
- firm and plump thanks to all the rain
- generally are about 50-75% ready for picking. could use another week of growth in the NE for size and ease of picking
- giving them another week will sweeten/darken/grow many of the berries. they’re ready to pick when they almost fall into your hand without having to pull much.

if it’s your first time, go for the dark purple ones (ripest). if they don’t pop off with a light pull, don’t force it or you’ll get a handful of mush for your trouble :)

you will generally have about two weeks to pick these before they dehydrate and shrink with the sun and heat.

#yeg #bloomscrolling

#silentsunday #photography #yeg ...

2026-07-12T14:46:11Z

#silentsunday #photography #yeg

found this hidden gem on the garden. it's a japanese ...

2026-07-04T04:06:36Z

found this hidden gem on the garden. it's a japanese hypercard game called Summer Vacation - Search for the Golden Beetle (夏休み・黄金のかぶと虫を探して, Natsuyasumi - kogane no kabutomushi o sagashite)

the pixel art is just insane - such a careful balance of positive and negative space in each rendering.

it plays very much like early Cyan games like The Manhole - pure exploration. thank you macgarden archivist baku for finding, buying, and preserving this incredible gem.

https://macintoshgarden.org/games/natsuyasumi

#1bit #hypercard #macintosh #vintageApple #art #japan

if you were in (east) edmonton last night, you got to watch world ...

2026-06-30T13:58:38Z

if you were in (east) edmonton last night, you got to watch world war iii the imax experience for free overhead

at my house, lightning strikes were 25/minute at its peak. we got 18mm of rain and dime-sized hail in the space of 5 minutes.

#yegwx #yeg

thank you @npub1khk…krmh for introducing me to artist Trici ...

2026-06-30T02:10:02Z

thank you 1Bit (npub1khk…krmh) for introducing me to artist Trici Venola, one of the earliest macintosh b+w painters. it's been a long time since i was excited about finding new (old!) pixel art to learn from, and Trici's work sets such a high bar 🙏

her personal site showcases a little bit of her pixel art. but what stood out to me is her little story, "The Tiger in the Mac". it's near the bottom of the page:
https://www.tricivenola.com/about-the-digital-art/

“But where’s the tiger coming from?” the boy asked in genuine bewilderment, “isn’t there a program for drawing the tiger? That you just tell and it draws one?”

#1bit #digitalArt #painting #vintageApple #macintosh

if you grew up in canada (or in some parts of the US which got ...

2026-06-28T20:58:08Z

if you grew up in canada (or in some parts of the US which got the show via PBS) in the 80s/90s, you might remember Owl/TV

i can't think of a more wholesome, future-positive, environment conscious and upbeat kids science education show. it embraced exactly what it meant to be canadian: the excitement of living your life as a cooperative steward, and the world as a place to be explored instead of exploited

their animated intro on CBC expressed the exact mood and posture of the show. voice actor Cree Summer: you deserve honorary citizenship here for nailing the intro song 😎

(edit: turns out cree summer already has dual citizenship!)

source: retrontario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ILhv6N-Bk

#canada #cbc #retro #animation #science #education

haha i lasted a whole 8 seconds in the grass. i moved to a spot ...

2026-06-25T22:43:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…5wqv
_________________________

haha i lasted a whole 8 seconds in the grass. i moved to a spot with concrete and fountains. they hate direct sun 😎

with our intense yet curtailed summers one must enjoy high ...

2026-06-25T21:49:09Z

with our intense yet curtailed summers one must enjoy high literary art at the park between rainstorms.

#yeg #books #bookstodon

one prairie weirdism is our 1950s “stucco” house walls. ...

2026-06-24T15:39:28Z

one prairie weirdism is our 1950s “stucco” house walls. you’ll see these everywhere in edmonton, especially on small bungalows built in the postwar era

they’re composed of quartz and cement mortar, with broken pop/beer bottles strewn throughout for colour and razor sharp texture. go ahead, run your finger along a wall and find out!

poor people got 7up green and beer bottle brown walls. the less poor got azure blue walls. and the ultra elite got the rarest of them all: ruby red.

zero guesses which wall we have 😅

today i noticed some lettering left on one of the green bottle shards (bottom left): CA’ which probably said CANADA DRY - the ginger ale of champions.

#yeg #alberta #canada

our backyard hare soaking wet from a night in the rain having her ...

2026-06-18T14:40:43Z

our backyard hare soaking wet from a night in the rain having her dandelion breakfast. she loves to vacuum up the stems like spaghetti noodles.

#urbanWildlife #yeg #rabbitsofmastodon #rabbits

til that in the late 90s, the boy scouts redesigned its badge ...

2026-06-17T04:33:31Z

til that in the late 90s, the boy scouts redesigned its badge books in fulltilt utopian scholastic style. i heartily approve 👏

what is utopian scholastic? link: https://cari.institute/aesthetics/utopian-scholastic

#design #art #utopianScholastic

today’s thrifting find: a Canon Selphy ES30 dye sublimation ...

2026-06-16T19:32:09Z

today’s thrifting find: a Canon Selphy ES30 dye sublimation photo printer. i fell instantly in love with the unapologetic early 2000s Japanese design: an integrated carry handle, sunflower jog wheel, and soft pastel greens and yellows on a dental white case. it could have just as easily been a rice cooker.

i bought this for its aesthetic value, but it turns out to be a great little printer. on the usability side, i’m impressed by the support for a half dozen memory card types, and bluetooth printing. i’m blown away that it auto-rotates the paper internally for portrait/landscape photos.

the dye-sublimation method it uses is kind of neat. the printer has no ink cartridge of its own. instead, the ink is integrated into the photopaper cartridge. this makes the cart frustratingly disposable - but let’s face it: printing was never about conserving anything.

#retrocomputing #photography #design

poor old man. IV antibiotics?

2026-06-11T14:11:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…ss70
_________________________

poor old man. IV antibiotics?

okay i’m not sure what i was expecting when i put 6 AA ...

2026-06-03T03:51:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…d95w
_________________________

okay i’m not sure what i was expecting when i put 6 AA batteries into the cdrom, but it was not anything this awesome 😻

#retrocomputing

today’s retro rescue: the external scsi cdrom drive my junior ...

2026-06-03T02:43:28Z

today’s retro rescue: the external scsi cdrom drive my junior high school’s macintosh lab had in 1995. the built-in speakers were the hottest thing i could never have imagined 😎

it has a DB50 half height scsi connector on the back, and will some day connect to my Colour Classic

#vintageapple #macintosh #retrocomputing

after years of digging and research, i finally found the toolkit ...

2026-06-02T20:10:19Z

after years of digging and research, i finally found the toolkit that was used to make MS multimedia software Encarta, Dinosaurs and Dangerous Creatures.

when i fell in love with these programs, i imagined they were built with a rich multimedia authoring environment/IDE like Macromedia Director. e.g. dragging and dropping images, sounds, text and video onto a stage, animating it with keyframes, and then scripting it for interaction.

the toolkit used was, as it turns out, a very roughly hewn collection of individual programs. there was no IDE. all of the content was written in RTF files, which were then compiled with links to external resources like wavs and avi's.

i cannot imagine what a nightmare this was for the MS Home teams to work with. there is no drag and drop of any kind, no object linking and embedding (OLÉ!), nor animation editor. this is a dog's breakfast of individual programs written by different people.

i'm frankly amazed that the MS Homes teams put together such well-designed programs *despite* how painful this toolkit is to use

the one thing i can say in its favour is that it has one badass tetricube logo for cover art :D

huge thank you to Phil M0OFX (npub1pu6…p73t) for archiving this extremely obscure piece of software

https://archive.org/details/microsoft-multimedia-viewer-2.0-rips-20210921-1.7z

#multimedia #cdrom #retrocomputing #win31

today’s rescue from fb marketplace whenever someone says ...

2026-06-01T00:34:19Z

today’s rescue from fb marketplace

whenever someone says “what on earth could you possibly use that thing for?” i know i’ve made a wise purchase. 🫡

#cdrom #multimedia #retrocomputing

ahahaha those blue EA classics are so ugly. i absolutely refused ...

2026-05-30T14:03:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…3zpu
_________________________

ahahaha those blue EA classics are so ugly. i absolutely refused to buy them when they appeared. there's something extra vile about the shrunken, perspectival box shots they stick in the corner.

that being said, I actually love EA's earlier classics budget releases. they at least had a minimalist approach to the graphics and didn't overwhelm it with bad art.

i can't find a good photo anywhere, but there were also Hit Squad re-releases that had the most abhorrent art on the front. but nothing quite as bad as those EA blue boxes 😆

haha to be clear: i have no rational answer for you but i started ...

2026-05-29T23:30:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…nrqy
_________________________

haha to be clear: i have no rational answer for you but

i started collecting trashy budget releases last year, because they're *way* more interesting than their big box counterparts in a lot of ways. i admire the terrible, low-quality graphic design, inferior cardboard, and cheaping out with photocopied documentation.

although i'm sure they give europeans warm memories, the ugliest for me are the KIXX/US Gold re-releases. there's something absolutely horrid about that logo

are there any adventure bike/dual sport motorcyclists on masto? ...

2026-05-25T02:11:08Z

are there any adventure bike/dual sport motorcyclists on masto? would love to hear some suggestions for folks to follow and converse with.

i rode motocross and trail bikes as a kid, and then sadly had no bike when i moved to the city. i’m looking at buying my first dual sport bike for long distance rides and am eager to hear from other riders on their preferences.

#Motorcycles

two years ago i finally lost my mind dealing with wordpress and ...

2026-05-22T15:57:21Z

two years ago i finally lost my mind dealing with wordpress and markdown for clients.

it forced me to write an entire website construction kit in php from scratch (kiki). it forced me to learn how to write a customizable markup language (bug). all so i would never have to touch wordpress and markdown ever again.

https://tomotama.com/kiki

two years later, there are now dozens of kiki instances run by sysop-admins around the world. it's incredibly gratifying to see the web made less shitty by just elbow grease and diy learning. the instance admins are a blend of writers and coders who painstakingly find bugs, dig into the source, and inspectorgadget workarounds. improving it and patching it is a lifelong commitment, even if it doesn't pay the bills.

in the coming week is a feature that 0.01% of users will take advantage of, but i'm so happy to add it, to keep the dream of an indie web alive: kiki will now generate RSS 2.0 compliant podcast feeds. i thought regular old web RSS was bad. but RSS for podcasts is about 10x worse 😅

the attached screenshot is a new site i'm building with kiki 1.2.0, which autogenerated a podcast feed using metadata in each post.

this morning i'm updating a client's wordpress site, and for all my moaning about how bad RSS is, i can't believe how much worse wordpress is. 😆

#indieweb #smallweb #selfhosting #kiki #rss

sometimes i fear all of the greatest pixel work was already done ...

2026-05-19T05:39:57Z

sometimes i fear all of the greatest pixel work was already done in the early 90s

was playing DreamWeb tonight and noticed this scene in a mobster's office. so much thought and careful colour choice went into this scene drawn by artist David Dew over 30 years ago:
- it is drawn from a palette of 256 colours
- the cigar is 3 pixels, with a single pixel for a flaming tip; and yet, manages to perfectly express that it is a cigar.
- the 5 pixel gun slides across the desk in a casual, yet threatening, manner

#pixelArt #dosGaming #msdos

okay so i found something pretty awesome the 3d scenes in Myst ...

2026-05-08T21:14:54Z

okay so i found something pretty awesome

the 3d scenes in Myst were all built using a mac modeller/renderer called Strata Vision 3D. i bought a boxed copy of this program with the intention of trying to recreate a model or two in the game, using the original renderer.

the box came with an extra disc - a library of shapes and textures. i noticed on the inside flap of the cd that it apparently included textures from Myst!

unfortunately, it turns out the disc was a demo. you browsed through the library until you found something you wanted, and then called a 1-800# to buy a serial number. you could enter the serial number and instantly have access to that texture.

unfortunately, no one has ever figured out how to crack Strata Clip 3D, and i couldn't figure it out today either.

fortunately, some creative digging turned up the Myst textures. they've been hiding on a Warez cd from 1996 for the past 30 years.

i just managed to load the program into system 7 and it's all there. these are the original textures used to render some areas of Myst. i still need to install Strata Vision to test them out, but afaik this is the first time these original textures have been seen since.

#macintosh #vintageApple #myst #retroGaming #win31

it was absolutely not that at my university, because I was there ...

2026-05-08T16:34:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…p93t
_________________________

it was absolutely not that at my university, because I was there when the change was made. the only impetus for getting rid of web space and all other kinds of self hosting was to decommission internal IT departments as a cost saving device. “we’ll save millions every year not having to run our own servers - Google can do that job for us”

hundreds of support staff lost their jobs permanently, the university made itself look like it was making fiscally wise decisions, and no one cared about the long term implications of it.

exactly. every single student and faculty member used to have web ...

2026-05-08T16:22:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…xz5e
_________________________

exactly. every single student and faculty member used to have web space. even if it was only 5mb.

it’s mind boggling to me that no university has something like cPanel for every department. let departments decide which software they want to support and use, and handle all the installation for individual professors/lecturers.

we used to do that with Moodle in the mid-2000s. moodle sucked, but it was ours to suck with.

remember when we used to have IT departments on campus because ...

2026-05-08T16:13:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…y6lw
_________________________

remember when we used to have IT departments on campus because self hosting was a university support job

@npub14wk…508e i belatedly just read your post on Death on the ...

2026-05-08T01:55:06Z

Eric's Edge (npub14wk…508e) i belatedly just read your post on Death on the Orient Star and i would absolutely love to see this get made. long, long overdue for a game like Last Express

awesome news. were you able to find a local printer?

2026-05-06T15:09:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…z03d
_________________________

awesome news. were you able to find a local printer?

really happy to have discovered something hiding in plain sight ...

2026-05-05T01:52:26Z

really happy to have discovered something hiding in plain sight for several years: robyn & rand miller's original Myst pitch document from 1991.

it's a succinct work of art in itself. i'm surprised at how much of the world design was already on paper.

as all of the copies found elsewhere online are heavily compressed webp/jpeg, i've uploaded the robyn's original PNGs to IA here:

https://archive.org/details/myst_proposal

originally from robyn's site:

http://www.robynmiller.net/video-games-films

#digiPres #softwarePreservation #archival #gamedev #myst #cyan

til the english term 'scuttlebutt' (as in: 'So, ...

2026-05-04T22:29:25Z

til the english term 'scuttlebutt' (as in: 'So, what's the scuttlebutt today?') originated from the Age of Sail. it has literally the same expressive meaning as water-cooler gossip.

thank you Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections: Stowaway!

compare this to the wikipedia entry for scuttlebutt - a dry factual kernel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt

#multimedia #cdrom #edutainment

https://minidisc.pics #minidisc ...

2026-05-04T18:50:16Z

https://minidisc.pics

#minidisc

when i was a kid with my first 2x cd-rom drive, buying a cd-rom ...

2026-05-04T16:03:41Z

when i was a kid with my first 2x cd-rom drive, buying a cd-rom in a retail box was a $100+ CAD affair. so at my house that never happened.

all of my software on CD were either pack-ins that came with the computer, or from cheap multi-disc compilation packs like Sirius Software's 5ft10 pak.

one of those pack-ins was a copy of Encarta '94. it had a nondescript jewel case without cover art - just a green MS certificate of authenticity. i never knew what the retail box looked like, until today.

holy cow is it beautiful. the box is a hardcover flip-open activity book, designed for kidhands to pull open and rifle through. visually, it models the Dorling Kindersley UK educational books - I assume they did the graphic design.

the user manual is a thick kid friendly comic book. there's even a separate manual that teaches kids how to write a book report and *then* an entire section of proper citations and giving research credit.

MS was a big, big place in those days. its educational division was more or less walled off from the rest of the murderous beast, and it shows. this program is thoughtful, beautiful, and suffused with craftsmanship.

i'm right in the middle of retooling the Multimedia HyperGuide podcast, and now i have to do an episode on Encarta. it's so damned well made. in the mean time, feel free to listen to previous episodes here:
https://podcast.vga256.com

#multimedia #cdrom #win31 #win95 #retrocomputing #podcast

oooo this plex bug made me nuts. this post is for anyone running ...

2026-05-03T21:12:34Z

oooo this plex bug made me nuts. this post is for anyone running the plex htpc client on an intel-based mac.

a week ago i swapped in an old mac mini 2012 as a plex media player. it did a perfect job with 1080p.

after five days of flawless operation, it started stuttering, turning the screen magenta on playback, and then inevitably crashing with a meaningless gpu-related crash report.

okay, i thought: nothing has changed with the machine in the past week. it must be some kind of hardware or OS issue that suddenly cropped up.

first stop: check the fan and heatsink to make sure the gpu heatsink hadn't detached. everything good.

okay, so maybe a Catalina compatibility issue magically appeared? i *had* recently upgraded it to the latest macOS security patch, which may have introduced some undisclosed gpu issues. okay, so i upgraded it (via OpenCore Legacy Patcher) to Monterey.

same behaviour. stuttering, 1-3 fps on playback in plex. everything else works great. so... an issue with plex?

i noticed after a few days of playback, Plex had quietly selfupdated. pieces starting to fall together....

... one search later: every person with an older Intel-based mac experiencing the same crashes with 1.71.1 🤬 https://forums.plex.tv/t/htpc-1-71-1-crashes-fails-video-playback/927580

the only solution: downgrade to 1.71.0. (which plex made almost impossible, because it buried its client downloads behind a web API.)

/user/adsyuk1991 did the hard work to scrape their API to pull down the right version. i've uploaded a copy of the binary to IA here: https://archive.org/details/plex-htpc-1.71.0.334-aaf-6bcca-universal

finally - critical last step: stop plex from selfupdating:

- Exit HTPC
- Open
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Plex HTPC/plex.ini

Find the [debug] section - add one if one does not exist

Add disableUpdater=true directly under the [debug] header

Save your changes

look, i get it plex. no one likes maintaining backwards compatible code forever. but a showstopper of this magnitude *has* to be patched even if it's tiresome.

#plex #macintosh

look i very much realize this comes an hour after i write a long ...

2026-04-26T17:07:09Z

look i very much realize this comes an hour after i write a long post about my alcoholism but i can quit thrifting floppies whenever i want mind your own business

#retrocomputing

hurk if, like me, you're the admin of a Google Workspace, you ...

2026-04-24T22:35:54Z

hurk

if, like me, you're the admin of a Google Workspace, you probably get randomonthly emails about useless new features they're adding that you instadelete

this week's gspam titled "New Workspace Intelligence admin controls" proudly announces that all of your Calendar, Drive, Docs, Gmail and Chat data has been auto-opted-in for mass ingestion by gemini

yes, you have to manually disable it in the Admin panel:

Admin -> Generative AI -> Gemini for Workspace -> Workspace Intelligence Sources -> Off

#google

i’m not sure what i expected when i received a copy of ...

2026-04-22T15:46:06Z

i’m not sure what i expected when i received a copy of Aaron A. Reed (npub1h9d…ya9n)’s 50 Years of Text Games. i was mostly afraid that it would be an encyclopedic mishmash of wikipedia facts on IF.

to my complete surprise it is extremely well-written, has original interviews with developers, and a demonstrates a strong understanding of textual game engines and scripting languages.

the fact that Aaron took the time to write entire chapters for Tradewars and LambdaMOO blows me away - I did not expect MUDs and BBS games to earn their way into IF history. hell, there’s even a chapter on Achaea!

if you’re into IF, game history, or how the sausage is made with game development, this book is an exceptional read.

https://if50.textories.com

#bbs #gamePreservation #history #mud #interactivefiction #bookstodon

just for @npub1hzy…wwp4 whose weekly experiments with the worst ...

2026-04-21T16:20:51Z

just for Ari [APz] Sovijärvi (npub1hzy…wwp4) whose weekly experiments with the worst pops and colas of the world allow the rest of us live longer lives 🙏

a selection of canada's finest generic pop brand at the Real Canadian Superstore grocery chain: President's Choice. the kind of pop the really cheap bastard on your team brings to a staff picnic because they secretly hate you.

Drivers are routinely given more parcels than are deliverable in ...

2026-04-20T15:56:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…3q9z
_________________________

Drivers are routinely given more parcels than are deliverable in any one shift. I’ve watched a driver cruise past my house and tap the “not home” button as they drove. The parcel is moved back into the sort for “someone else’s problem” tomorrow.

i hadn't realized that the cyanotype printing process really ...

2026-04-19T12:36:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…l2p9
_________________________

i hadn't realized that the cyanotype printing process really did produce a blue print! i've never seen an actual blue one until today.

til what i thought were blueprints all of my life, were in fact, ...

2026-04-19T12:14:07Z

til what i thought were blueprints all of my life, were in fact, whiteprints

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteprint

after 15 years of waiting for a copy i could afford, i finally ...

2026-04-17T02:38:51Z

after 15 years of waiting for a copy i could afford, i finally have an original copy of an underrated graphical adventure: Inherit The Earth - Quest for the Orb.

this is one of those strange games that gets dismissed by adventure gamers because it never cleanly fits into established genres. the mix of traditional 2d side-view art and isometric tile-based adventuring is in itself unique to this game. it pays off with a strong world/setting, and a surprisingly interesting final chapter.

you really get the feeling that the team *cared* about this project, and wanted you to enjoy what they made. because of this, the originality and authenticity more than make up for the (at times) uneven craftsmanship.

April Lee's ink illustrations in the manual were a welcome surprise. you might recognize her work from card games like Warhammer and MTG. less well known is that she was a staff artist at New World Computing, on several Might & Magic games, including HoMM. and then also did contract work for the Dreamers Guild.

best of all, one of the Dreamers Guild founders - Joe - continues to support the game with patches and new versions for Mac/Windows/Linux every year:

https://wyrmkeep.com/download.php#ite

#bigboxgames #dosGaming #furry_art #furry #adventureGames

i love them. they scream "family-owned computer shop in town ...

2026-04-16T17:19:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…67z2
_________________________

i love them. they scream "family-owned computer shop in town sold me a pentium 133 tower and they came with these free speakers"

that’s uh, quite the typo 😅 #macintosh #win31 ...

2026-04-14T15:33:22Z

that’s uh, quite the typo 😅

#macintosh #win31

does anyone else remember 1970s Federal hot coffee and/or hot ...

2026-04-06T03:57:45Z

does anyone else remember 1970s Federal hot coffee and/or hot chocolate vending machines in north america?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zfTxd7gZzo

for some reason these were ubiquitous at airports and bus stations for decades here, and then quietly disappeared

i cannot explain why, but i so badly miss hitting a button and watching that paper cup drop, and then fill with boiling hot water and substandard hot chocolate 😋

#canada

a decade ago i went through a long period where i had no friends, ...

2026-04-05T21:00:28Z

a decade ago i went through a long period where i had no friends, no money, no memory card for my ps1, and too much free time every night

one month, i sat down and played Final Fantasy VIII every night. because i had no memory card, the game was effectively in insta-permadeath mode: one bad decision in battle could kill the entire party.

that forced me to play very conservatively. i grinded every random encounter until my characters were overpowered for the area. this ensured that i'd never get accidentally ganked in battle. every night, i'd turn off the tv and leave the PSX on overnight.

after several weeks, i had made it about 40 hours into the game, and hit a nice cinematic reward cutscene. i sat back to enjoy the fmv: the party ran across a bridge, fleeing as the bridge disintegrated behind them. except it was weird: the party just stood there as the bridge collapsed.

......................

it was an *interactive* cutscene, and i was supposed to run the party the rest of the way myself.

the bridge collapsed, and they all died. the game over screen rolled.

i stood up, shut off the PSX for the first time in a month, and screamed

that was the last time i played FF8.

10 years later, i still don't have any friends or money, but i DO have a memory card.

is it time ff8? 🤔

#psx #retroGaming #finalFantasy #ff8

Nostr event nevent1qqsxzucz88ayfe3g4lfknahns92ghmls48hauevpa5kykcy6uwyyymszyz7fatlumdknt3zrce2h9lvt9czy0xhvlanm44cjamv90afqwxpvs8pl84w

2026-03-29T18:40:06Z

#silentSunday

i put a reading chair in the library corner of the living room. ...

2026-03-23T19:48:00Z

i put a reading chair in the library corner of the living room. it took henry 10 whole minutes to permaclaim it.

#cats #CatsOfMastodon

TIL: over two dozen Philip K. Dick stories are in the public ...

2026-03-06T21:33:59Z

TIL: over two dozen Philip K. Dick stories are in the public domain because their copyright was not renewed

https://philipdick.com/2012/04/03/public-domain-philip-k-dick-stories/

#books

i knew there was a reason i instantly liked the design of the ...

2026-03-04T02:17:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…3jj8
_________________________

i knew there was a reason i instantly liked the design of the canon BJC-70. the charcoal grey case shares a lot with the Powerbooks of its time. but the part that grabbed my attention was the ribbing at the back.

i pulled out my NeXT Laser printer for a comparison. Canon manufactured NeXT's laser printers, and then (iirc) later acquired NeXT's manufacturing tech when the company shut down in the late 90s.

no coincidence that Canon borrowed some of that styling for some of their mid-90s bubblejets.

#retroComputing #next #vintageApple

look, we all need another inkjet in the house like we need e.coli ...

2026-03-03T21:44:38Z

look, we all need another inkjet in the house like we need e.coli in our jello

but who could resist this tiny portable canon colour bubblejet 70.

i am finally realizing a dream that began when i saw it in Future Shop's printer aisle in 1995 for some outrageous price that my mother said "Absolutely not" to in a close and shut case.

update: just checked a catalogue - it was $700 CAD ($499 USD) at the time 😆

$7 later, i now have my first perfectly cromulent colour printer. it even came with six 30 year old ink carts. the ink cart holder is a nice touch.

i had to do it. this was absolutely headed to e-waste if i hadn't rescued it. didn't this have a battery expansion unit you could buy separately? (update: yup - the Canon NK-300)

#retrocomputing

for anyone new to globaltalk, the official globaltalk kiki is ...

2026-03-03T16:27:44Z

for anyone new to globaltalk, the official globaltalk kiki is loaded with really helpful information written by your fellow users. you can learn how to get your own gt instance up and running on various hardware, or add yourself to the zone list.

if you'd like to add your own pages or edit an existing page, please send me a pm for the password. (it's still the same password as last year)

http://globaltalk.dialup.party

#globaltalk

ahahah til that not only does Pangea Software still exist, but ...

2026-03-02T17:29:22Z

ahahah til that not only does Pangea Software still exist, but that @jorio source ported Nanosaur to modern MacOS and it works *great*

https://www.pangeasoft.net/nano/files.html

#macos #retrogaming #dinosaurs

so after the open discussion of how to deal with the canadian ...

2026-02-26T21:23:40Z

so after the open discussion of how to deal with the canadian content problem on the fediverse, i've decided to start small: i'm going to post little stories about canadian life once every day or two (we'll figure out a bigger strategy later.)

today's find: The Whole Lost Moose Catalogue.

whenever i'm out used book shopping, i keep my eyes open for the most obscure stuff i can find. the more hyperlocal and weird the better.

this book that began its life as a local zine from whitehorse (in the yukon) is easily in my top 10 bizarre and wonderful canadian retro obscura.

equal parts parody of stewart brand's "whole earth catalogue" and part real tips for living in the far north, it is absolutely replete with every kind of diy tool building, cabin building, farming, cooking, trapping, and living off the land information you can imagine.

and of course, being from the north, there is no shortage of weather, animal and gallows humour.

if you ever see a copy on the shelf, grab it. besides, who could resist a Lord of the Rings typeface on the front cover like that?

#canada #yukon #canadaverse

i've been reading a late-90s book about virtual worlds - some ...

2026-02-25T21:14:49Z

i've been reading a late-90s book about virtual worlds - some of them VRML-based, many custom 2d and 3d clients, and some MUSHes/MOOs/MUDs

i came across a scientific MUD i had never heard before, and i'm absolutely blown away by its goals and implementation: NAU Solar System Simulation/SolSys by prof Reed Riner at northern arizona university. it was online from 1990 until at least 2017 (and maybe longer?).

there is a little information out there on what SolSys was:

"The Solar System Simulation, originated at CONTACT VI in 1987, was developed into an intercollegiate curriculum at Northern Arizona University by Reed Riner, as an honors course in Anthropology and Engineering. Since 1990, it has included student teams from many colleges and universities around the globe.

The teams represent colonies in a simulated future human community in space. For example, Mars Colony is normally manned by NAU and the Cabrillo College team traditionally inhabits the L-5 Colony near Earth. (See L-5 artwork left by Joel Hagen.) Teams communicate via websites, Internet e-mail and a Multiple User Domain (MUD), a text-based, virtual reality program. Students are directed and encouraged by their local faculty advisors and by a board of professional consultants in the social and space sciences."

https://www.contact-conference.org/c03.html

seriously - a hardcore scientific MUD built around real-life anthropology and space exploration. and entire mud devoted to teaching players how to cooperate in order to accomplish goals together, instead of killing a bunch of shit. how fucking cool is that?

did anyone here play/use SolSys when it was still alive?

the urls went dead when prof reed passed away last year, and the university wiped his webspace

SolSys ran on a modified version of tinyMUD, focused largely on building and communicating. this is its last known homepage:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250328124317/https://www2.nau.edu/rdr/SolSys/

dr. riner's obit:
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/azdailysun/name/reed-riner-obituary?id=58181563

#mud #moo #virtualWorld #mush

my mom's morning off to a rough start remember how every ...

2026-02-24T18:40:02Z

my mom's morning off to a rough start

remember how every piece of tall ikea furniture comes with a little wall safety anchor/tether so you can screw it into the wall to prevent tip-overs?

this is why. 😬

inexplicably, peak Tom Selleck at the apple newton product launch ...

2026-02-23T13:10:04Z

inexplicably, peak Tom Selleck at the apple newton product launch at macworld boston on aug 3, 1993.

photographer: doug menuez
source: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/menuez

#vintageApple #newton

not sure how well known this already was, but i just stumbled ...

2026-02-23T02:46:00Z

not sure how well known this already was, but i just stumbled upon an archive of super high-res 35mm photos of Newton and NeXT photos from the 90s, by photographer doug menuez. the vast majority are candid b+w snapshots of the newton and next teams as they grind through workdays and product launches

https://ftp.buriedbits.org/#/General_Scrapes/Apple/Apple%20and%20NeXT%20Photos%20-%20Photographer%20Menuez%2C%20Doug/

#vintageApple #next #newton

henry cheering on team canada this morning #canada #hnom ...

2026-02-18T17:05:24Z

henry cheering on team canada this morning

#canada #hnom #olympics #CatsOfMastodon #hockey

the world is divided between those who would turn up their noses ...

2026-02-16T20:42:58Z

the world is divided between those who would turn up their noses at a $5 USR Sportster at a thrift shop, and mastodon

#1990s #dialup #retrocomputing

in the absence of a new 65scribe video so far in this new year, ...

2026-02-15T03:53:18Z

in the absence of a new 65scribe video so far in this new year, i'd love to hear your thoughts on the most *beautiful* macintosh computer. it doesn't have to be fast, functional or useful. just what your pure aesthetic taste deems pleasing.

#vintageApple #macintosh