@kirkman@digipres.club
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kirkman

@kirkman@digipres.club

Lover of Atari, BBSes and retro tech. I'm the amateur historian behind the "Break Into Chat" wiki and blog. In my professional life, I'm a journalist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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kirkman, to random
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Anyone else use MacPorts out there?

I can't install MariaDB right now, apparently because of an changes in libxml2 2.12+ (https://trac.macports.org/ticket/69428)

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to install an older "formula" before this breaking change. Anyone know how to do that?

kirkman, to retrocomputing
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"I think that in a few years owning a computer is going to be like owning a telephone. People will see it as a necessary appliance. A lot of people haven't trusted computers up to now, but that’s changing."

-- Joe Klein, independent trucker from Waterloo, Ill., in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 8, 1982.

kirkman, to random
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I want to continue to use my Mac Pro 2012 with OS X Mojave, but I've started running into problems with Messages and FaceTime.

I tried reinstalling Mojave, which didn't resolve the iCloud problems.

But it did bork much of my Homebrew-installed dev environment. Trying to fix all the problems was a fool's errand.

For years, I was a mostly happy Homebrew user, but it has become so hostile to folks on slightly older systems.

Today I decided to nuke it all and start over with MacPorts.

kirkman, to bbs
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Back in 1991, the sysops of the "STaTus BBS" in New Zealand created a for their board.

The system was powered by "Instant Graphics and Sound," a plain-text vector graphics scripting language for the Atari ST similar to RIPscrip, but predating it by several years.

Here's a video showing an IGS demo they made to give an idea of their impressive "GEM Desktop" interface:

https://vimeo.com/joshrenaud/status-bbs-demo

kirkman, to email
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Any other email savers out there? I have most of the personal emails I have ever sent (about 19,000) or received (about 25,000) for the past 25 years.

In 1999, I bought a first generation iMac with a hard drive (after years of being on a floppy-based Atari ST).

Just curious if others do the same, or if you just let email disappear as you switch accounts/services over time.

kirkman, to BBSing
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I give you ... "Photos of dudes (and one lady) posing with computers, for newspaper profiles of their bulletin board systems."

Rick Barrowclough on his computer.
The sysop of Pink's place has one computer for his own use, and one for his BBS.
Dr. Merle Marsh sits at a Macintosh terminal at her office.

kirkman, to space
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NASA says Ingenuity, the helicopter on Mars, has finally reached the end of its mission.

I first learned about the then-upcoming Ingenuity mission when I met NASA's Dave Lavery in Houston with an FLL Junior robotics team I was coaching in 2020. That remains one of my robotics highlights.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends/

kirkman, to random
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I grew up on these streets.

... the comparatively safe streets of Drahew on the planet Jondd, that is.

But it's never a good idea to linger too long outside my ship, the SunDog.

kirkman, to amiga
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🎼 🎹 🖱️
ICYMI — This week I'm sharing two previously lost programs for making music autonomously: "Magic Harp" and an earlier demo called "Computer Composer."

ADF disk images are available here:
https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/01/02/unearthed-kirschens-magic-harp-for-commodore-amiga/

kirkman, to amiga
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💾 🖥️ 🎆
I've unearthed some "new" old software for the new year!

Two fun programs for the Commodore Amiga compose music autonomously by recombining pieces of "musical DNA" from existing songs.

They were creations of Yaakov Kirschen and his team of student programmers at LKP Ltd. in Israel in 1986-87.

Get the ADF disk images here:
https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/01/02/unearthed-kirschens-magic-harp-for-commodore-amiga/

kirkman, to gamedev
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🍎 💾
Among the floppy disks we imaged from Yaakov Kirschen was a collection of copy utilities.

I didn't catch it until today, but these were compiled by Danny Wiseburgh, the same teenager who provided the graphics toolkit used by Kirschen and Gesher to produce their Jewish educational games.

kirkman, to retrocomputing
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I hope tonight Santa is able to avoid getting entangled in the U.S.S. Enterprise's transporter beam. 🎅 🖖

https://vimeo.com/247052599

Here for your viewing pleasure is "Star Trek: The Trouble With The Rangifer Tarandus," a short holiday ANSImation I made a few years ago. 🦌

kirkman, to VintageOSes
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Tonight I completed a proof-of-concept for a "Wrath of Khan"-inspired animated IGS main menu for my BBS, "Guardian of Forever." 🖖

If you're wondering what IGS is, it stands for "Instant Graphics and Sound." Basically an earlier version of RIPscrip, for the Atari ST.

You can learn more on Break Into Chat: https://breakintochat.com/wiki/IGS

Or see this thread: https://digipres.club/@kirkman/110395608293646885

An animation shows the shields going up around the U.S.S. Enterprise before displaying the main menu for a bulletin board system.

kirkman, to retrocomputing
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I didn't know there was such a thing as , but it's a cause I believe in and can celebrate! 💾 💿

Here's a talk I gave earlier this year about my work recovering the software of Yaakov Kirschen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv53gDSiKYU

You can find some of this software here:
https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22yaakov+kirschen%22

kirkman, to VintageOSes
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Hey Atari ST fans, looking for something new to play? 🕹️

In 2020, I published a previously unreleased game for the ST — "Dark Fortress" — made in 1989 by Herb Flower. 🏰

It's a fun platform/puzzle game written in GFA BASIC.

You can download it, and read some reflections from Flower, on the Break Into Chat blog:
https://breakintochat.com/blog/2020/06/04/unearthed-dark-fortress-for-the-atari-st/

Screenshot of the first level of the platform game Dark Fortress.

kirkman, to retrocomputing
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When the histories of journalism and BBSing collide. 📰 🖥️

This screenshot shows the top of an essay titled "FIDO Net Made Me Do It" by Randy Reddick, where he recalls using ProComm to connect to a BBS for the first time in 1984.

It's from the book "When nerds and words collide," published in 1999 to reflect on "computer-assisted reporting" or CAR. You can download it here: https://www.ire.org/when-nerds-and-words-collide/

kirkman, to VintageOSes
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Besides Landon Dyer's blog, can anyone recommend good first-hand accounts by former Atarians of the initial days when the Tramiels took over ?

kirkman, to ascii
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Bought something at Wendy’s for the first time in ages, and got / receipt with unexpected !

kirkman, to retrocomputing
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Thinking back to those glorious 8 months where we had DiscMaster. What an amazing tool. I hope it comes back someday.

kirkman, to random
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I've been digging through 60s-era tech/office-related magazines on the @internetarchive as I continue my Yaakov Kirschen research project.

The ads keep catching my eye.

kirkman, to bbs
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Just remembered how I succeeded a few months ago in making an animated Star Trek-themed login sequence in the IGS format for Atari ST users. 🖥️

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymii4HSuqt0

Such a busy summer, I had forgotten all about it, including the months I spent making a simple web-based IGS art editor (which you can try here: https://breakintochat.com/atari/igs.js)

kirkman, to amiga
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1/ A few months ago, in an update on my research project, I shared some closeups of slides from ~1986 that showed glimpses of his lost "Magic Harp" software for the .

It was an early algorithmic music composer ... Software that could produce new music in certain styles such as Beatles/pop or Baroque.

Closeup of an animated Bach character from the “ baroque” disk for Kirschen’s “Magic Harp” software.
Yaakov Kirschen, Sali Ariel, some of the staff of LKP Ltd., and friends, pose with Amiga computers around 1986.

kirkman, to retrocomputing
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For the last few years, I’ve been researching and rescuing other people’s old disks. 💾

But recently Rob Sherman (@Atari_BBS) turned the tables and salvaged one of mine! 👏

It's all part of his "Don't Toss That Floppy!" project, born out of a recent ANTIC episode @ataripodcast.

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2023/07/19/unearthed-my-old-oasis-bbs-atari-floppy-disk/

kirkman, to bbs
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Seth Robinson, creator of “Legend of the Red Dragon,” is on Mastodon now! @rtsoft

kirkman, to gaming
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I am just awestruck by this project inspired by one of my favorite games of all time. 🕹️

Šimon Lánský remade the world of "Machinarium" in Unreal engine 5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmpxjf-b_H4

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