elb

elb, 11 months ago to NixOS

I've been using #nixos on a #RaspberryPi to run some services for a year or two now, because I really wanted declarative configuration and to lose the stress of upgrades/etc., but it turns out Nixos SUCKS on the Pi (don't @ me, you know it's true or you haven't tried). I bought a laptop-in-a-mini-form-factor-desktop x86 machine to replace it, but ... I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Installing w/ ZFS was not painless. I want private services, but I don't want to sysadmin them.

elb, 8 days ago to Lisp

I just updated my Medley from the Medley Interlisp Revival project (https://interlisp.org/) to get improved CLtL2 compatibility ... and boom, CL (loop)! Now to work through some CL code I've written to see if I can get it into the environment and running. #lisp #retrocomputing

elb, 9 months ago to academia

Something changed in #LaTeX and now \nocite{} has to come AFTER \begin{document}, which it hasn't for, oh, DECADES, and it broke every single one of my slide decks. WHY. #academia #teaching #LaTeXIsTheWorstExceptForAllTheOthers

elb, 7 months ago to retrocomputing

#Retrocomputing enthusiasts, #chiptune fans, #MSDOS buffs -- I'm looking for a particular piece of software, and I'm hoping one of you remembers.

In maybe the 1992 to 1995 time frame, I had a DOS multi-format module player (at least #Amiga MODs and S3M files) that I'd like to find again. In my memory it was a player, not a tracker, but I'm not 100% certain it couldn't track. It had a gradient-colored bar for each channel, which was at least capable of being a cyan color.

1/2

elb, 1 month ago to random

Why do people roast coffee dark, and why would anyone buy it? It smells like hatred and sadness and tastes like broken dreams.

elb, 8 months ago to ukteachers

1/ Today, a power outage before 8 AM that was resolved by some time before 8:21 AM took out substantial services on campus for my entire "work day" (some are still not resolved, as of 4 PM) that required campus services. I taught two lectures today, one with chalk on a chalkboard and one with dry erase on a whiteboard – which is fine, I think we learned a lot, EXCEPT that I had planned to do live coding today! This is the second time in a week that a similar scenario has played out. #education

elb, 10 months ago to retrocomputing

I'm really having a great time reading through issues of The Computer Journal (originally The Computer Hacker) from the early 80s. It's full of assembly (and mixed assembly/BASIC!) listings, schematics, and pictures of circuits on perfboard to stick into your S-100 bus, Apple ], or similar. [#retrocomputing

https://archive.org/details/the-computer-journal?tab=collection&sort=date

elb, 1 year ago to fediverse

It's not clear to me what's going to win the threaded-#Fediverse-conversations model, but I couldn't find anything serving #Emacs (possibly that's my own fault, or a result of incomplete federation on the server I'm using), so I spawned https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/emacs .

elb, 10 months ago to amiga

One of my colleagues sends emails which have a text/plain component that uses bare CR as line endings. Not LF, not CR/LF. Is he using an #Amiga? Maybe a #ClassicMac? Or perhaps #RISCOS? Curious minds want to know.

elb, 9 months ago to martialartsmemes

1/ I was at #TaeKwonDo today, and I had a realization that has probably been too long in coming.

I'm about one year into TKD as an adult (over 40). I suck.† I don't think I suck particularly more or less than any other middle aged guy with my experience, but still, I'm not good. I keep training because almost everything I really value in my life came more from not quitting than any innate ability.

Meanwhile, I'm an #educator at the #university level.

† more on this to come

elb, 10 months ago to amiga

I found and acquired an #Amiga 500, monitor, external disk drive, and (battery-corroded but hopefully fixable) 512 kB memory expansion. I'm new to Amiga, and the amount of information out there is OVERWHELMING, and seems to focus a lot on turning an Amiga into a 3.7 GHz PowerPC with 1 TB of RAM.

Assuming I wanted a #retrocomputing Amiga experience ... where should I start? What is some good exploration for a late-80s Amiga 500 setup with two floppies and 512 kB or 1 MB of RAM?

elb, 9 months ago to retrocomputing

If you ever feel like your computing or #retrocomputing compatibility tail is long...

I just got a Fios #telephone line, and ... IT SUPPORTS PULSE DIALING. Needless to say I have a #WesternElectric 500 on the counter in the kitchen, now.

The kids are so enamored.

elb, 5 months ago to random

PSA: if you use gnu textutils sort with -k and -n and it doesn't find a number, it sorts the entire line instead of the selected key, alphabetically. I haven't checked to see if this is a POSIX thing or not, but ... it sucks.

elb, 1 month ago to HomeAutomation

I really like the idea of #HomeAutomation. However, the available software systems just do NOT do it for me. My smart thermostat has been blinking that it cannot connect to my wi-fi for weeks, my #HomeAssistant is out-of-date because updating it is painful, my Z-Wave adapter is currently not functioning properly because somehow the adapter stack can't talk to it, ...

This is all a joke.

elb, 4 months ago to random

I have an otherwise completely static site that is assembled out of parts using Apache mod_include. There's no run-time logic to the assembly, it could all be pre-generated without any effect.

So I'd like to #askfedi what the simplest solution to replacing this with a static site generator #SSG is. Everything I'm finding is either a billion lines of javascript (eleventy, astro, etc.) or rather opinionated (hugo, jekyll), as far as I can tell. Is there a simpler preprocessor out there?

elb, 10 months ago to random

Unsurprisingly, this 286 motherboard that I found in the trash at a hamfest doesn't boot. It seems to draw enough current to shut down the (very adequate) power supply, although DC resistance on the power rails is not unreasonable.

elb, 6 months ago to retrocomputing

So a few weeks-to-months ago I was having one of Those #Retrocomputing Days where literally nothing worked. I tried to use 3-4 different systems in a row, because I just wanted to use something, I didn't want to fix something, and none of them would even boot, much less run.

1/

elb, 10 months ago to random

I acquired an off-brand 8088-ish PC-compatible #portable computer, and it feels SUPER cheap. The #keyboard, however, seems pretty nice! Examination of the keyboard module shows that, SURPRISE, it's Cherry Blues! The enter key and the spacebar (both stabilized) have some sort of Alps-looking mechanism. #retrocomputing

elb, 10 months ago to amiga

This #Amiga Workbench 1.3 disk seems to be very pessimistically laid out for booting, the drive sounds like it's seeking back and forth across the entire disk hundreds of times while booting. Is that a thing Amiga people optimize? #retrocomputing

elb, 9 months ago to random

My University's "security" policies prevent all kinds of good applications with valid security practices, and then they want me to do this:

elb, 1 month ago to emacs

One of my students opened up #Emacs today, opened up a GUI file manager, found a file, grabbed the icon, dragged it onto Emacs, and dropped it. And it WORKED. I'm not sure which part distressed me more.

elb, 6 months ago to random

TODO for today:

☑ coffee
☑ troll Ohio State University fans on social media
☐ read some Emacs articles
☐ watch a retrocomputing video

elb, 5 months ago to random

Course evals are in for Fall 2023, and ... I wish there was a better way to get feedback from students.

For example, one student here really tried hard to provide constructive criticism in the "suggestions to improve the course" category, but, for example, says "This course doesn't need Programming Assignment 1 or 3. 1 doesn't even test concepts that are specific to C". You're right, Programming Assignment 1 really doesn't ... and it's not for you, it's for the students who couldn't.

elb, 4 months ago to random

This is your periodic reminder that the Model 33 #Teletype – the device on which #Unix and the C programming language were largely developed – HAS NO CURLY BRACKETS.

The pictured source code is printed on a Model 35 Teletype, which is a different mechanism but uses the same ASCII '63 character set. Note that the Unix TTY driver (V6, in this case) knows this, and prints { and } as ( and ), respectively.

Somehow I never learned this in DECADES of learning about early Unix.

elb, 2 months ago to random

I was just feeling nostalgic for OpenCM, an early cryptographic-naming configuration management (version control) system from Jon Shapiro's EROS group at Johns Hopkins. I think Jack Lloyd (later participant on Monotone and author of the Botan cryptographic library) was one of the primary developers, if memory serves. It was the first VCS that I used that had competent branching and merging and really felt comfortable for parallel development. Sadly it's dead and gone, now.