diskzero

The QuickDraw code (LISA_OS/LIBS/LIBQD) is just glorious. While reading it, I am overcome by the creative genius of Bill Atkinson. [1]. Bill went on to become quite accomplished at cooking lunch for the team at General Magic. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic

It was pretty rosey for me, even with all the challenges, emotions and anxiety. I have experienced similar challenges, emotions and anxiety in jobs that were much less satisfying.

I think the moments are out there still; you just have to seek them out. I wouldn't say working on Apple ][, Lisa, early Mac or other early PC efforts were as obvious and groundbreaking as they seem now. I think about a lot of parallel efforts going on at the time that I wish I could go back in a time machine to work on: Symbolics Workstations, early Wavefront/Alias software, Self, Smalltalk, Dylan and other languages that didn't become mainstream.

There is so much out there that isn't over in computers and technology. It might be helpful to think about things that seem impossible, crazy and totally economically unviable. Sometimes we can let finding markets, solving scaleable problems and generating 10x returns for our investors cloud our vision.

Sonic Pi is really neat, especially the work that has been done using Erlang in the playback scheduler.

The author mentions using OpusModus, noting that it is similar in the spirit of Symbolic Composer. OpusModus is primarily the work of Janusz Podrazik, who also happened to be one of the main authors of Symbolic Composer.

Janus is also the co-author of a very nice book on the fundamentals of composition with OpusModus. [1] The book also servers a nice introduction to Lisp as well!

[1] https://diastemastudiericerche.org/product/marco-giommoni-ja...

I have been a happy user of OpusModus for a while. The latest version is based on LispWorks. OpusModus used to be based on CCL, but sadly CCL does not have a clear path forward to run on M-based Macs. It would be great for CCL to get some technical help, but OpusModus has left that platform.

The summary under the reference article above states this:

About a minute in, he talks about the work he did at Western Technologies, programming VCS/2600 Raft Rider and Qbert. He also mentions WT getting the contract to make home versions of a Mylstar arcade game that wasn't released called Qbert Circus. I'm not sure if he's confused and was talking about Q*bert's Qubes (which a VCS version was released) or possibly Circus Charlie (which a VCS version was planned but never released).

Dave Hampton, also well-known for his work on Q-Bert.[1]

You can watch a Computer History Museum interview with him here. [2]

[1] http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/qbert/qbert.htm

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U9eqBzmvZw

In the early 90s, my company developed a video game that was ported to the NEC PC-98. We got a few units to develop on and I found the industrial design to be pretty nice compared to the generic PC clones we had around.

The PC-98 re-entered my life while I was working for Be. NEC had us develop a version of BeOS for what was possibly the last of the line of PC-98s. Once again, I thought the industrial design was pretty decent. The flat-panel LCD monitor matched the style of the case, mouse and keyboard. The design was reminiscent of a SparcStation or maybe a Radius Macintosh clone.

These types of text metrics bugs show up in my code over and over and over and over again. I keep making them! When I was working on the icon view in Finder, icon layout, multi-line icon labels, additional info text and anything else using metrics would constantly be in danger of collapsing. Was this because I was a sloppy coder? Maybe... but the whole stack is so finicky and brittle and filled with some many special cases and different ways of getting layout measured it takes a lot of work to get all of the edge cases covered.

It isn't just Apple of course. I encountered almost the exact same bugs working on Nautilus at Eazel and various projects at Be. And in PowerPlant, and the Think Class Library and MacApp and... the list goes on.

My current music notation project pushed me to try and make multiple font support and layout as robust as possible, but I keep getting burnt! Text layout and metrics is just a difficult area.

As a former aircraft owner, I immediately began to calculate the costs of doing on overhaul on those props. My three bladed props would need an overhaul at least every 2000 hours. There is also a time minimum as well if you don't reach the hours before the time interval. It seemed like the engines and the props would hit overhaul hours around the same time, usually hitting me with a bill well over $10,000.

I wonder what the cost will be on dual, 11-blade adjustable pitch props? It makes my eyes water and feel thankful I am not the owner/operator of such an aircraft.

Perhaps it all makes sense given the fuel consumption and speed improvements?

She has been using Desmos, which is pretty good. I'll tell her about Geogebra. Creating interactive demonstrations can be very helpful. Sequences and series seem to be the latest topic students are having difficulties with.

The underlying logic is good, but being able to visualize the topic and play with parameters is important as well. Thanks!

This is really neat. Can you share what inspired you to create these components? My significant other is an educator and she is always looking for fun and inspiring ways to introduce mathematical concepts to her student. Are you approaching this from an educational perspective?

I'll be reaching five years myself in April. It is nice to have some time in sobriety, but it is still one day at a time for me.

Many Be employees, including myself, ended up at Apple; some after a brief time at Eazel and others later on. They had, and continue to, make great contributions. As a former Be employee and lover of BeOS, I can say that Apple acquiring Be would have been a disaster for Apple. I have no ill will to Gil Amelio, Ellen Hancock, Steve Glass and the other leadership, but they didn't have what it took (other than the NeXT purchase) to pull Apple out of crisis.

I prototyped several user OSX user interface animations using Quartz Composer during my time at Apple. It was a great tool for rapid iterations. We would demo to Steve, get feedback and quickly make changes. Before Quartz Composer, Bas Ording would create prototypes using Macromedia Director. He had a nice collection of Lingo routines for various types of animations.

I am a current LispWorks customer using the product for new product development. I wouldn’t consider my usage niche, but then again, I am not sure what you may consider to be niche or not.

The new MuseSound data files seem to be the result of the StaffPad aquisition. I haven't done an exhaustive comparison, but the sounds are the same SFZ-format, Opus compressed sounds that StaffPad uses. I don't know if the new MuseSampler is the same playback engine that StaffPad uses.

During my time at PDI/DreamWorks, all idle desktop machines would be incorporated into the render farm as well. I don't know if this is the case anymore with so many features of the renderer and simulations software depending on the GPU.

Quibi [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi

It has been 14 months since my wife passed after thirty years of marriage. There is a lot of good advice here. All I can say is things can get better. Grief is a process. Be kind to yourself. Seek out the company others if you can remotely tolerate it. Honor your wife by trying to be healthy and happy. You are not alone in your struggle.

I implimented a BSP renderer in my somewhat unremarkable CDROM game Dark Fiber [1] in 1995 or so. I also remember seeing the algorithm in Foley and Van Dam, but it wasn't until a conversation with John at some conference/tradeshow that I went for doing the engine using BSP. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to optimize the algorithm and I also spent a lot of time using Mathematica figuring out the equations. Well, that was at least my excuse for buying a fairly expensive piece of software as a small gaming startup.

https://archive.org/details/DarkFiberWindowsMac

We actually had an Intel build of most of OSX from the beginning. Various parts would go stale and then a motivated engineer would dive in and get it running again on some specific set of audio and video hardware. At some point the existence of the "Marklar" project leaked out, but several of us at Apple had various builds running on commodity PC hardware.

Yes, it is legal. There is no state in the US where it is completely illegal. Colorado and Utah limit the amount you can collect.

Colorado and Utah are last remainining states with such agressive policies. All other states allow the collection of water for domestic use. Additional permits are needed if you want to drink the water or use it commercially. Some states encourage it; I got a nice rebate on the money spent install my system in Arizona.

Tucson resident here. It did make me feel a bit better setting up my harvesting system. I collect about 10,000 gallons that I use to irrigate my thirsty grapefruit and lemon tree. If I didn't have to collected water, it would cost me a few hundred a month to keep them healthy. If I didn't have the collected rainwater, I wouldn't have the trees. Using city water to irrigate my citrus just feels obnoxious.

The whole process of setting up the system was a lot of fun and a lot of work. The soil here is quite hard, so I got a great workout digging the trenches.

I know my overall impact is negligible, but have a general sense of well-being by having the system. You could say the same about the solar systems I set up as well. I could just as easily pay Tucson Electric and Power as they are setting up big solar arrays now.

Thanks for the super informative reply. I am hoping as there is more activity on the space station, that more information will be coming out. It would be nice to be able to see something similar to the ESA, NASA and even Roscosmos launch feeds and Q&A sessions.

I suppose it could lead to a race to build a new generation of heavy lift vehicles or other propulsion systems. Maybe a return to the NERVA[1] engine! That technology was an interesting story point in the "For All Mankind" series alternative timeline.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA

Space stations and exploration can be a difficult proposition to justify to any economic system; democratic, socialist, communist, etc. For China to want to "beat" us, building bigger and better space stations would somehow have to align with the current and future five year plans.

I would rather have China and the US pouring tons of money into space stations and exploration, but it is hard to figure out the rationale for such a massive investment. China seems to make rational decisions, those of which I am not defending. I am trying to figure out how rational a $500 billion dollar investment in a space station would be to Chinese interests.

Does anyone know to what extent China has advanced the state of the Soviet technology that they have (I assume) licensed? I have been to the Russian Star City training facility, Baikonur Cosmodrome and been in the full-size Mir training module and the Chinese station components look very similar. I am sure getting good information is difficult, but perhaps someone here has some more info.

I'll agree with you that there are still techniques to be discovered.

I also agree that most humans manage to drive in challenging conditions, but their margins for error become slimmer and slimmer. I personally want my autonomous robot vehicle to be way more efficient and safer than the best human operator and also able to deal with conditions that any sane human would pull to the side of the road when encountering.