Foxhack

philpem, 11 days ago to random

This is garlic bread, I'm told

textfiles, 19 days ago to random

Are you a pull the plastic wrap off american or a keep it on american

philpem, 20 days ago to random

A line of pepperoni. How dare you.

philpem, 1 month ago to random

If you want to joke about the British Standard for making tea (BS 6008:1980), I feel it only fair to raise that Belize has a national standard (BZS 7:1999) for biscuits: https://bbs.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/BZS-7-1999_Specification-for-Biscuits.pdf

Even better, they headed off the obvious British joke about this being absolutely crackers.

philpem, 1 month ago to random

...what?! Fury of the Furries?!

I think it's time for bed.

Foxhack, 1 month ago to random

Well. Looks like Elmo's trash fire is finally starting to make it very difficult for people with old app versions to use the service. I'm having issues loading my feed, looking at profiles needs two or three refreshes to load, blocks aren't immediate... And this is on Wifi.

Why can't he just get kicked out already...

philpem, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

OH MY GOD. I just made a god tier cheese and ham sandwich.

• fry two slices of ham.
• once mostly fried, put cheese (I used cheddar, but Emmental or Gouda would probably be better) in the middle. add jalapenos.
• put the other slice of ham on top
• turn heat to low, just to melt the cheese.
• flip, fry for a little while on that side to make sure the cheese is fully melted
• put on a bagel, add a bit of habanero sauce or Tabasco
• enjoy

philpem, 2 months ago to random

I'm loving the resurgence of Xenia. Seems like she's taking over from Tux, mwahaha... https://meow.social/@rinidisc/112129420337449442

Foxhack, 2 months ago to random

I know not a lot of people care about this, but the Hotel Mario prototype that was found by a Youtuber was posted to the internet archive this morning.

I figured I'd add it to MAME, and submitted a pull request which was just approved.

MAME's emulation is buggy, and it works, but the audio giltches or just goes fully silent. The best way to play this is to start a game right away. #mame #hotelmario #mar10

Sneaky looking Bowser from the intro of the Hotel Mario prototype.
Smug looking Mario from the intro of the Hotel Mario prototype.
Title screen for the Hotel Mario prototype.

philpem, 2 months ago to random

I'd love to know what coriander is supposed to taste like, and why people enjoy it... to me it tastes like a bar of soap.

vga256, 3 months ago to history

did some game preservation research today.

a few years ago i was able to get my hands on one of the only surviving copies (in the world) of the interactive book Portal, for the Macintosh Plus.

no, not that Portal. the original one, from 1986, by novelist Rob Swigart.

thank the gods the ~40 year old diskettes were still viable, and I was able to image it on my Color Classic.

but, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get the damned thing to run properly. my CC hated it. mini vMac hated it. System 7 hated it. System 6 hated it. everything caused the game to lock up after a few seconds, or get hung playing random music.

that was until today. in a moment of utter insanity, i realized that the creators of Portal did something very special for the Macintosh Plus: they made the game a f'ing BOOTER. it was never meant to be run from within the OS. you just inserted the diskette, turned on your Plus. the entire game is an operating system of its own, executing instructions from the CPU and ROM. this isn't anything new for C64 or Apple // users, but for the Macintosh it was practically unheard of. they replicated the Macintosh System 2 gui perfectly, just for the game.

the Macintosh port is still gorgeous today: a mouse-driven point'n'click UI with high-res 1-bit icons, and high-res text. it feels good in a way that none of the other versions (C64, DOS, Amiga) do.

but what stands out to me, nearly 40 years after its release, is that this is a hypertext game through and through. the story unfolds as you click around, wandering from computer network to computer network, reading documents and piecing together how the Earth became abandoned hundreds of year ago.

as far as I know, Portal's creators (Rob Swigart and Brad Fregger) were never credited for producing a very early Hypertext game. Portal predates Hypercard by an entire year.

recorded some gameplay in mini vMac for posterity. as far as I know, this is the only footage of Portal for the Macintosh that has ever existed on the web.

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/portal

#macintosh #gamePreservation #vintageApple #history #hyperText

The user boots a copy of Portal (disk 1) on the mini vMac macintosh emulator. The game boots, showing a login screen. The user types in vga256 as his username, and the game loads black and white graphics. The splash screen for Portal shows, and credits the designers and writer. The player then begins playing the game. The game consists of a series of icons on the screen that can be clicked on, which yield text windows that tell the story. As the player clicks through text, certain desktop icons unlock which allow the player to progress through the storyline.

philpem, 3 months ago to random

Just watched a YouTube video about video games preservation and they dropped the line "the commodore 64 used cassette tapes. They were like CDs before CDs, you know what - ask your dad, he'll be dying to show you his old collection"

... I guess I'm finally old enough to be the butt of a dad joke.

darkrat, 3 months ago to random

First inter-instance media spam on one of my instances.

Several GB of media dumped into the media cache in just a couple hours, almost causing it to run full.

I recommend to at least temporarily block media from px.mathias777.com to mitigate it

#mastoadmins #fediadmin #fediadmins

screenshot of masto mod UI. a user calling themselves "killer of px.mathias777.com", which seems to be the cause of the issue

textfiles, 4 months ago to random

I'm doing a project involving the moving of hundreds of thousands of public domain documents into Internet Archive.

Yeah yeah anyway here I reveal my fascination with 19th century Chess Magazines.

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Foxhack, 4 months ago to Nintendo

So. Alex Jones released a game on Steam. It's full of tons of racist, right wing garbage and no one should play it.

BUT. The teaser trailer opens with screenshots of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Bros.

Except it's NOT Super Mario Bros! It's actually a pirate cart called Mario 16! A hack of Joe and Mac! #NES #Nintendo

philpem, 4 months ago to random

Seems like Fedex are trying for the "most annoying courier" award.
Two days running, loaded onto a van, then .... unloaded. Without a single delivery attempt. What the actual Foxtrot?! #rant

philpem, 4 months ago to random

Still tidying. Twenty VHS tapes. Still shrink wrapped. Not sure what to say.