wrm

I have a funny funny bone

You’ll either get it or you won’t, and in general it’s probably safer to bet on the latter.

I found the following while scratching around on The Digital Antiquarian*, and it really tickled my funny bone.

Elias was a banker, so we left with more than most. $1,600 to spend at the outfitters—three yoke of oxen, 2000 pounds of food, boxes of bullets and spare parts: tongue, axle, wheel. Two sets of clothes for each of us. “What kind of clothes?” the children asked.

“Who knows?” I said. “The store only sold Clothes. In sets, though. That’s something.”

They asked what we would eat. “Food,” I said. “Just ‘Food.’ Make your peace with it.”

Of course, my frame of reference for all of this is relatively recent, I grew up playing Hammurabi.

* “Filfre” is of course an obscure text adventure game reference.

2011-09-26 by Computers Geek 0

An Apple a day

(Or how I came back into the light)

Way back in I guess 1980 or thereabouts my father had a friend who (amongst other things) was involved in importing Apple ][ clones from “China” (which in those days was Taiwan and Hong Kong). My father bought us a “Unitron” Apple ][, and it was probably one of the best purchases he made, ever.

These machines were all 64K Apple ][+ spec, but at first we only had the tape interface and, not knowing anything about the Woz, I set out writing a breakout game. I seem to remember that it was in Integer Basic (Applesoft Basic on the mainboard, but I did have a language card) but I can’t remember just why I would have chosen Integer Basic. Anyway, this potential work of genius* was lost to the vagrancies of the tape drive. It wasn’t long until we got disk drives.

Anyway, *wavy lines* to the present, and my brother falls pregnant and mostly kicks me out.  So I moved a whole bunch of stuff, including a Puma, a pinball machine and an Apple ][, to Fish Hoek.

And then I had to make it work again. We truly live in the future. Resources I used to dream about are now a ten minute download away.  For example, Understanding the Apple II is available from Asimov or our local mirror or ReactiveMicro and it really describes the genius grade weirdness well. There are also various guides to quick troubleshooting at the above and other sites.

My Apple was dead. No reset “beep”. A logic probe showed activity on the address lines and on all but one data line of the 6502. Checked the other side of the buffer, same thing. Through the keyboard MUX and the data latches, same thing. I was loathe to set up the ‘scope to see whether it was a read or a write cycle, so I pulled the processor and found that I still had data on seven of the eight RAM chips (because the video logic still drives an address into the ram every other cycle). Replaced the RAM chip from one of the other banks and was rewarded by a “beep” and a cursor.

Not having any 4116es on hand, I went to my stash (at my brother’s place, refer to the “mostly” kicked out above) and retrieved 25 x 4164 all nicely labelled in a tube. I have a lot of shit, but it’s useful shit, and I know where to find it most of the time. With a bit of a mod, 1/4 x 4164 works well in the place of a 4116. Runs cooler too.

(Very) fortunately Jason Scott is wrong when it comes to my floppies. The few I tested (starting with completely unimportant ones, and after cleaning the drive head) boot and run just fine. I don’t think he’s far wrong though — I will be making copies with ADT Real Soon Now.

Unfortunately, my keyboard is not happy. The D key is Dee Eee Dee dead. Makes it difficult to play Castle Wolfenstein.

Oh, and I found a game I remembered about a year or so ago, that I could not remember anything more of than “The object of the game is to figure out the object of the game”. That game is of course Nightmare #6, written in Integer Basic by some hacker, maybe even the Woz himself.

* Yea right.

2011-09-26 by Computers 0

I feel so… inadequate.

I mean, look at Marko’s! But hey, everybody’s doing it, so…

Just your generic Swiss Army knife. This is my third — I bought #1 in Switzerland in 1984 and wore it out about two years ago — the corkscrew tore out of the frame. I promptly replaced it — they’re cheap, less than a case of beer — and shortly afterwards donated the replacement to a baggage handler in San Francisco after forgetting to stick the damn thing in the checked luggage.

It has everything I need in an everyday carry knife. A bottle opener, another bottle opener, and occasionally I even use the blade.

Thanks Og.

2011-09-21 by Farting around 0

Spotted on Boyes Drive

Driving to work this morning.

See that little white car parked on the side of the road?

Yes, that’s the only piece of yellow line for about two kilometers.

2011-09-09 by Farting around 0

Shelving sort of done, for now

As mentioned previously, I finally got around to completing firstly the door and then the TV part of the shelving.

Well, the third shelf also materialised, with a lot of fighting and cursing.

Update: and after populating with a small selection of our books:

2011-09-02 by House 0

Proto Snark

The Diary of Tamsyn Blake, aged 12 3/4.

There was a lot of Drama* and Blaming going on which didn’t suit me at all.

[…]

*I think they keep getting confused. Drama is on Friday’s  Zonals are on Monday.

RTWT

2011-08-25 by Farting around 0

Whales

Driving home Mike Wills mentioned that the first whales of the season were in False Bay.

(Fish Hoek beach, looking out to the far side of Simon’s Town. That’s Boulders over there, for those of you with a thing for penguins).

Didn’t expect them to be so close to shore (OK, there’s a bit of shortening with the lens and all, but they’re right in). It was getting dark, so I didn’t stick around waiting for a more interesting photo opportunity.

These are Southern Right Whales, and we have plenty of them — as opposed to the North Atlantic Right Whales, who number around 400 and are individually named, and the North Pacific Right Whales, who are even more rare.

“Our” fellows cruize in here around the beginning of September, bringing lots of revenue for small towns like Gansbaai and somewhat bigger towns like Hermanus.

2011-08-24 by Farting around 1

Much more competenterer

Waybackwhen the Firearms Control Act of 2000 was drafted, they couldn’t decide whether they should licence the person or the firearm. So they did what any committee would do — they chose both.

Which leaves us with the situation where you can be fully “competent” to own, say, a handgun, but then be denied the licence for said handgun because you didn’t prove to the registrar that you “need” it.

If you want more than two handguns or four firearms in total, you need to be a “dedicated” [hunter|sports shooter|collector]. This basically means joining an accredited organisation and jumping through whatever hoops said organisation choses to make their members prove their dedication. This can be as easy as attending four meetings or shooting four matches a year. Once you are a “dedicated” individual it becomes much easier to obtain a licence for a firearm appropriate to the organisation you are “dedicated” with. After all, if you are “competent” and have a letter from the chairman saying you need a semi-auto rifle* for 3 gun shoots or as a collector or whatever it’s really difficult for them to deny the licence.

So when I went through the rigmarole I obtained competency for handgun, rifle and shotgun. You have to prove you know the law and that you know how to make the gun go bang in such a way that you can broadly hit what you’re aiming at. I suspect that at the time there was no Unit Standard for semi-automatic rifles, or maybe it was a security business only thing, but whatever, I didn’t do the “self-loading rifle” competency.

Until yesterday, that is. Because they’re sitting on a licence application for a Browning semi-auto 22, and the only possible reason they might not give me the licence is that I don’t have this specific competency (this is not how we read the law, but our police are well known for their creative interpretation of the Law & Regs as well as their point of view that if you don’t like it you’re more than welcome to take the matter to court (where they will defend themselves using your tax money)).

And more importantly, I want to apply for a licence for a Garand, because why I can.

So I bought the book a few months ago, from Parow Arms & Ammo. Completed the open book exam, made an appointment, was handed a closed book exam asking the easy half of the questions from the open book exam, exchanged that for a competency certificate they had printed the week before, and then had to put ten shots into an A5 paper target at 10m with a Norinco LM4 (I think).

I’ve heard that one can fail the competency but if you do you should probably have someone help you with the shoelaces thing in the morning as well.

* Semi-auto rifles are “restricted”. Means only thpethial people can licence them. Fully automatic firearms are “prohibited”. This doesn’t mean what Merriam-Webster thinks it means. It means that only vewy vewy thpethial people can licence them. Collectors and film props guys, basically.

2011-08-14 by Guns 4

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