if you're still working on your ph.d in metagrobology you can study for your dissertation defense here.

bonus points will be awarded for completing puzzles with eyes closed in front of a live examination committee

https://khuong.uk/puzzle_glass.html

#metagrobology

cursed puzzlecorn

as seen on the rear cover of Puzzle World: An International Magazine Devoted to the Art and Science of Metagrobology

#metagrobology

every autumn i replay the Quest for Glory series, and every single time i find something new in one of them

today's find: using the mouth verb on the fireplace in the Hero's Tale Inn produced this puzzling parser reply

.... until i realized it interpreted my action as "spit in fireplace" 🤣

#sierra #adventuregames #retroGaming

the book monger at the used bookstore won’t stop you from hurting yourself

#books

TIL: scummvm has been merging in slopcoded commits for the past year, and has a policy that welcomes them as long as no one notices they're slop 🤣

my favourite part: at the end, the guidelines suddenly become precious about no ai-art allowed. "We believe that art is something truly human that must never be replaced by AI." How about you show the same basic respect to the human coders that AI models steal from, @scummvm?

source:
https://manitu.social/@scummvm/117423576981316683
https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/blob/master/AI-GUIDELINES.md

#scummvm

@Tijn i'm not sure if this will directly affect you and DGC, but jitsi's new 95 minute session limit is a big pain in the ass for longer podcasting sessions. (you can't just exit and re-enter either - you have to start a completely new session at a new url after the 95 minute timer expires).

i switched to self-hosting with mirotalk p2p, and installation was a breeze (2 minutes).

"An executive mousepad, especially a finely crafted one, often signifies status and achievement."

😎

#yeg #1990s

sierra trying to siphon your mom’s money in 1996 @ThreeOhFour

#retroGaming

where i grew up in the north, just below the arctic circle, caribou were a rarity. my father told me stories about hearing the click-cluck of their hooves as thousands of them moved in herds. he said watching the herd travel through the tundra was mesmerizing.

thanks to this hunter near Great Bear Lake, i am finally hearing the click-clucks of their hooves for the first time (listen carefully for it above the noise of the wind). taken just a few days ago - this video is of the canadian boreal forest in autumn. i can imagine no place more beautiful than this, with its rich deep poplar and birch yellows and fiery red willow bushes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sigg3pl3_Tg

#canada #animals #caribou #trees

and fwiw fellow jitsi users: as of three days ago, jitsi has now implemented a 1.5h talk limit which is absolutely an insanely dumb move for people like ben and i who just manage to get past hello at the 1.2h mark

i'll be running my own jitsi instance after this, so expect future podcast episodes to be recorded in a more reasonable 2-9 hour duration.

had so much fun this morning recording a brand spankin new episode of CD-ROM Safari with @ThreeOhFour - we abused jitsi's new 1.5h recording limit with every bit of 1980s and 1990s game tooling/engine/development kits we could talk about, and STILL ran out of time.

covered today: C&C Red Alert, Civilization II, SimCity 2000 SCURK, Streets of SimCity, Monkey Island, and uh, to a lesser extent, rex nebular and the cosmic gender bender >_>

https://cd-rom.ca/podcast/season2/episode6

#podcast #multimedia #cdrom

the plot thickens. richard crandall - one of the creators of Rascal - went on to *work* for steve jobs at NeXT.

here he is demoing physics and chemistry programs he created for the NeXTStep Interface Builder. this is right in the middle of the big unveiling of the NeXT Cube.

https://youtu.be/92NNyd3m79I?t=4524

a fun living computing history project done by a small CERN team in 2019 that i've never seen anyone talk about: they rebuilt the first web browser - tim berners-lee's WorldWideWeb for the NeXT Cube - as a modern in-browser experience. it really looks and feels like a little NeXTStep application.

the project site:
https://worldwideweb.cern.ch

the interactive browser:
https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser/

to browse, click document -> open from full document reference -> type in a url

#worldWideWeb #digiPres #NeXT

as mentioned in the kid pix history article, john sculley demoed KP at the 1991 macworld in tokyo.

being generous, the author did not mention that sculley had the stage charisma of a week old dead fish, and somehow managed to make the most playful program ever created feel as fun as filing your taxes.

https://youtu.be/wVv1DT_zzc0?t=1379

#macintosh #vintageApple

of immediate fascination to me in that article is a single line:

"Originally I programmed in Rascal, a language developed at Reed College which was sort of a cross between C and Pascal."

Rascal turns out to be short for "Real-Time Pascal" - an entire software development kit programmed by Richard Crandall, Scott Gillespie and Greg Stein. there is very, very little known about it - aside from a handful of games (like Billiard Parlour - screenshot attached) and applications written with it in the mid 80s. it was sold by MetaResearch of portland OR in the 80s, and then completely disappeared.

worse, a copy of the (interpreter?) compiler/sdk/ide has never surfaced. reed college apparently has copies of it in its special collections! sadly, i'm nowhere near reed college.
the finding aid page is fascinating:
https://archivesspace.reed.edu/repositories/2/resources/41

a deep search of discmaster turned up exactly one artifact which was interesting: the world's only surviving Rascal source code! it at least gives us a peek at what programming in Rascal was like.
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/14165/MacTech-vol-1-12.toast/Source/MacTech®%20Magazine/Volume%2002%20-%201986/02.08%20Aug%2086.sit/02.08%20Aug%2086/pascal/Rascal%20source/KeyboardSleuth.src

(* Include files and constants *)
(*$U+*) (* Turn on full Uses *)
Uses __Windows, __QuickDraw,uToolIntf,uOSIntf,uPackIntf,__PackTraps;

Link __NoSysCall,__PackTraps; (* Make small stand-alone application *)

(* This is to Rascal procedure _EVENT what the first parameter
of GetNextEvent is to other languages
*)
EventMask 10; (* mouseDown(2) + keyDown(8) *)

CONST
Key1Trans = $29E; (* Low Memory Globals *)
Key2Trans = $2A2;

EOL = 13; (* end of line file delimiter (RETURN) *)

(********************************* ASCII values **************************)
Space = $20; (* *)

(* The following are Key #10, where US,UK "/" is (key # differs in US)
*)
Slash = $2F; (* / UK *)
Minus = $2D; (* - German, Spanish, Swedish *)
Equals = $3D; (* = French *)
Ograve = $98; (* Italian *)
Eaigu = $8E; (* French Canadian *)

#macintosh #vintageApple #programming #digiPres

a history of kid pix, as told by its designer craig hickman

http://red-green-blue.com/kid-pix-the-early-years

#macintosh #vintageApple #retrocomputing

@billgoats uncorrected 600 dpi scan. go nuts!

http://dialup.party/~tomodori/battlestations_1.png
http://dialup.party/~tomodori/battlestations_2.png

okay how have i never heard of nor seen this until now?

Cauzin Softstrip: a barcode format of encoded data that you could scan into your Mac and decode into a working piece of software.

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

this sure looks like a job for a thunderscan to badly munge

#retrocomputing #vintageApple

found in a 1987 issue of MACazine print mag

i’m intrigued by the existence of 1-bit comedically lukewarm macpaint comix as a genre.

#macintosh #vintageApple #comics

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