oilbagz

You most certainly will get a kick out of that Atmos if you get it booted up and functioning.

The Oric world didn't get much love in 1982/83/84, before the company fell apart completely - so there are many of us who would've felt particularly left-out, in terms of what 'could have been done', back then, with very little software. An Oric OG user had to write their own programs, while all the other machines got great stuff on the market.

Well, this is now resolved in the 21st Century, with 21st Century releases - titles still being produced by fans - which really, seriously push the limits of what you might've thought the Oric can do.

Get loaded up with some blakes7, space1999, pulsoids, l33t, or check out some of the new stuff being discussed on defence-force.org like a Wolfenstein-like mazerunner [1], or maybe a proper Loderunner [2] - if you're an Oric guy, this is going to be FUN for you. Finally.

:)

[1] - https://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2264 [2] - https://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2282

I think in this case, it was inevitable that the shop was going to be inundated with rich schoolkids from the neighborhood, and the sales guy as I remember him seemed to understand, intrinsically, that these computers were going to sell if the kids could convince their parents to buy it for them...

Not saying I didn't get chased out of the other computer shops of Perth in the 80's, but those are other tales of joyous mirth, for another time ..

Yeah, I guess they sold quite a few VERY expensive machines in that neighborhood, and there were raging arcade game controversies going along at the same time, so seeing kids do 'productive' things with computers - like program simulated galactic war games - seemed like a responsible thing to do.

In my case, that guy gave me a raging passion for computers that has led, 40 years later, to ridiculous things happening.

The "Computer Age" place stuck around for only a few years afterwards .. the cognescenti of my hacker club at school discovered TANDY and Dick Smith as places to test new hilarious routines .. and, meanwhile, some of us got modems.

Good times. I think my Mum still had that floppy disk around in her memoirs, somewhere. Something about how she righteously retrieved it from an old, much loathed, school principle, who had zero idea what it was, or what it would ever mean for the world that a 10 year old kid had simulated galactic war games on his person, in lieu of math homework, or so.

Anyway, yeah. Great sales guy, would time-travel and witness again.

It was 1981, and the first "Computer Age" shop had opened up in my town, a place called Claremont - more of a suburb, really, of Perth, Australia. A lucky place, for it meant there was .. inside an air-conditioned cube .. a row of Atari and Apple computers.

Two school-kids are sitting there, tapping away, at something from a magazine. It looks immensely interesting, but they scowl at me as I get closer as if not to interrupt. So I go poke on an Atari, and immediately dislike its membrane.

The sales guy, probably only a few years beyond his teens, unlike me not yet begun, grins and nods over at another Apple II machine, newly set up. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I bang away at it "HELLO" this and "dO somehting" this and whatever, until the sales guy swoops in, wangs in a floppy, hits the reset combo and lets me play SABOTAGE for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day, after an interminably long day at school, I arrive with a freshly purloined magazine of my own. The same kids from before are there, just minutes before me probably but seemingly there all night, and are having a blast. They proudly, this time, beckon me over to 'have a go' at their game, TREK, wherein I am an "+" and there are "*"'s and . and #'s all over the place.

After witnessing me fail miserably, yet nevertheless programmatically successfully, these older kids chortle themselves out into the heat .. and I stick around to learn how to copy it to another floppy disk. The sales guy obliges, and gives me my first 5.4" floppy disk to save things on, "as long as you come back tomorrow and type a few more programs in, from those magazines you kids have..."

So, I did. What a summer it was.

I'll never forget those older nerds.

I am a retro-computing fanboy and recently have been reliving the world of text adventure games on one of my most favoured "failed" computers of the 80's, the Oric-1/Atmos range of UK 8-bit machines.

https://www.oric.org/index.php?page=software

(Search for i.e. 'adventure')

The aesthetic is so pure, and in the context of oric.org, the titles are a testament to the spirit of an entirely different form of walled-garden/app-store.

I favour the Oric, and many of the great old architectures like it (Amstrad CPC6128!!) not for much more salient reason than it was my first 'real' computer, on which I first gained an immense amount of arcane knowledge that led me to an even more immense amount of arcana.

The adventure has been text since the very first day. A coders adventure game never STOP's.

*bonus edit: everything old is new again, and it is awesome:

https://defence-force.org/index.php?page=games&game=blakes7

All well and good, but the EU (and especially now the UK) is in no position to be dictating moral platitudes from some position of authority, that is for sure - especially on the issue of the repression of journalists, extrajudicial murder/assassinations launched from EU/UK territory, and so on.

It takes a certain kind of disingenuous authoritarianism to claim that Russia is committing heinous acts which preclude its participation in the world order, when the majority of the world order is just fine with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and extrajudicial assassinations being performed for the criminal purposes of the "Coalition of the Willing".

How about, don't be so eager to rush to judgement of other nations, when your nation (UK/USA) clearly has extant history with the same kinds of issues.

>First of all, I do not see any indication that Russia or Belarus tries to get closer to the EU, rather the opposite.

Putin has stated multiple times that he intends to have better relations with the EU, and that the Commonwealth of Independent States needs to work towards that goal, so .. I'm guessing you're not paying attention to that, since it doesn't serve the narrative that Russia just wants to 'go it alone against the world'.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/putin-sa...

No, it wouldn't be good for the USA, but it would be great for Europeans and Russians to see this happen some day.

Russia would be a perfectly fine partner with the EU, and it seems to be orienting towards that goal in a future date - American agitprop notwithstanding.

More like a tit-for-tat show of support for Belarus on the part of the Russians.

I saw a televised meeting between Putin and Lukashenko yesterday that ended with Lukashenko making the statement that went something like "the Bolsheviks rose to great heights, and we will match them", to which Putin chuckled, demurely. Its maybe not obvious to Westerners, but they are trying to rebuild a "Union of ex-Soviet States" in the region these days .. one by one, preparing a Bloc that can be an attractive partner to the EU, I suppose.

With these kinds of tit-for-tat responses, though, I guess its a shrewd strategy. "If we are allowed into the EU econo-bloc, such re-routes won't be necessary", seems to be the planned negotiating point ..

Get into Zynthian:

http://zynthian.org/

Tons of great code to read and projects to understand ..

Also, the Basic Synth book is a dream:

http://basicsynth.com/

>how do you find out whether your soil quality is still good enough?

The plants will tell you. But the answer always, always is: how good is your compost?

Until you get composting right, gardening can be very frustrating. But it all starts with a proper compost. You can fix almost any soil issue with composting techniques.

The curious thing about that, though, is that your compost, if its a house compost (based on output from your household) is only going to be as healthy as you, yourself eat. So that is a factor as well ..

How's your compost? I've reached the point where thats my first question for every gardener I meet.

Gardening is one of those subjects that brings me as much joy and satisfaction as developing and shipping productive software to real customers.

There is no greater feeling than to have fed ones family direct from the house garden, or to have raised ones children to understand and appreciate the rewards of cultivation of renewable resources, plants, in their own lives.

Every single human being should have a plant that they take care of, regularly, and participate in its life. No matter if its an avocado pit growing in the window, or a field of leafy greens, the care of plant life is a very rewarding activity.

We eat from our garden daily for 9 months of the year, and this year had the pleasure of seeing our last season's crop of mangold survive winter, rejuvenate, and provide us with ample harvest.

Gardening is a lot like programming, though. If you don't take care of the base layers, you may find yourself with a broken framework and need to refactor.

Just like programmers should know their compiler - gardeners should know their compost. The better the compost, the better the garden ..

I think the DevTerm is more supposed to be hung around your neck like a hipster. ;) Or, duct-taped to the datacenter wall for when its time to minicom the hell out of things.

He's imprisoned for violating state law. Why else?

Same as Julian Assange.

So the US is the one that stands to gain the most from this assassination attempt, then.

How ironic.

.. which seems to have inspired a few like-minded souls:

https://www.clockworkpi.com/devterm

I often see the 'crow lady' at our local park come to the fields and call out to 'her crows', and they immediately come to her, rest on her shoulders, coo and craw, and generally seem to be pets. Its pretty fun to see wild crows come when they're called, its magical.

She told me that she's been doing this with the crows for years - almost two decades now - and that she thinks the crows are telling their young about her, because she notices new generations over the years.

Of course, she's got treats for them - but even when they don't get treats, the crows seem to be really enamoured with her, as if she has a history of being the 'peanut giver' among the local murder.

ITT: folks whose livelihood depends on that Facebook Ads campaign manager payout, vs. those of us who would rather live in a world free from this sort of manipulation.

DAE miss AOL?

It amazes me that we don't charge third parties to use our network resources to retrieve their assets for displaying as ads.

We should be charging vendors for traffic that is only designed to forward their business, when it happens on our own local loop.

I think its very clear that the auto-hatred of Islam is driven by bigotry and fear. Anyone who does even a cursory examination of the subject can see it does not, in fact, promote corruption.

You might be pantywaiste about calling out bigotry online, but I'm not.

This would only be an appropriate and accurate response if indeed Islam promoted corruption in its teachings.

It does not. It only takes a bigot to assume it does, however.

Expressions of religious bigotry are not conducive to HN's guidelines.

Bigotry on the basis of religious grounds is repugnant wherever you see it, and should be called out wherever you see it, because it always results in atrocities. Casual bigotry like this only grows into collective hatred through complicity.

This has nothing to do with the Islamic world and everything to do with poverty and income disparity. The fact that you associate this with Islam is repugnant. The West is equally corrupt - you just don't gain a moral kick from recognizing the equivalence.

I think its quite appropriate to be discussing these projects, given that:

a) they are AMAZING (Zynthian is truly an extraordinary project - as is MOD, which is included in the zynthian distro incidentally) and,

b) these projects are available for you to put on your own hardware .. which is an ideology which runs counter to almost every other hardware manufacturer today, operating in the synth business ..

It should be noted, also, that this open attitude and sharing/caring is what good musicians do. Music is one of those realms where the maxim 'information wants to be free' is true, with every single note.

Look no further than Zynthian for another example of a balanced relationship:

http://zynthian.com

Seems like FOSS is more resilient to the effect that Wendy noted has, almost, made a farce of the synth market.

This is especially true of Pine's other interesting product, the PineWatch. There isn't a very clear path which of the many distributions that are available, is the right one to follow - Pine themselves don't seem to have any interest in setting up a canonical release asset that customers can follow, and I agree with you - this is fracturing the ecosystem.

Not shipping to Vienna, Austria, alas.

Well, I will for sure get one, when I can.

I bought an rsync.net account a few years back when John made it known on HN, and have used it solidly as a backup for my .. wristwatch!

I have a LILYGO that I coded up a time-tracking app, which basically creates an event log whenever I tap it, wherever I go - and when Internet is available, it squirts the log over to some text files that live on rsync.net ..

Pretty neat to be able to do this without much of a desktop or mobile phone in the way, I have to say. I wonder if there are more opportunities for this kind of IoT service out there .. it sure was fun to get this working without REST ..

> no good solution here

The solution is the de-stimulation of society from an era of overt sexual manipulation and an adjustment of expectations regarding the value of casual sexual activities.