@foone@digipres.club avatar

foone

@foone@digipres.club

Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators. (she/they🏳️‍⚧️)

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foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

So when I see a floppy disk anywhere my natural instinct is "ooh, I should image that and upload it to the internet archive!"
Which is a drive (no pun intended) that has served me well: I've imaged a lot of floppy disks.

Recently it has started betraying me, however. See, I've been doing a temp job where I digitize microfiche for the internet archive.

So now most of the time when I go "hey I should image that disk and put it on the archive", it's already IN the internet archive. Physically!

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

And if it's ALREADY IN THE BUILDING, they probably imaged it long ago, or it's in a pile of "disks we need to image" and someone else will be imaging it shortly.

So my instincts are useless in this situation!

nanochess, to retrogaming
@nanochess@mastodon.social avatar

I don't want to disappoint the 3 Body Problem series fans, but in episode 4 where an old IBM PC shows alien messages, the screen resolution is wrong and outside of the capabilities of the CGA and Hercules video cards available in 1984.

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@nanochess series ruined for me!

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@nanochess what about the PGC? That came out in 1984, and could do 256 colors at 640x480?

misty, to random
@misty@digipres.club avatar

Every Linux and macOS shell script programmer is a retrocomputing practitioner because shell script has been forbidden from changing for 40 years

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@misty I once had to maintain a single shell script that needed to run on Ubuntu Linux, a commercial embedded Linux, Solaris, SunOS (yes, both), AIX, and HP-UX.

The same script. No changes between OSes.

I have SCARS

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

i want something like Microsoft's Recall thing and will probably eventually build it for myself, using different tech

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@whitequark @timotimo I had a friend who did this back in the late 2000s.
It archived every HTTP request he did. It was pretty neat, but sadly I don't think he ever released it.

It also meant if I figured out the right search terms on his anime girls site, I'd get pictures downloaded from his banking site

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@whitequark yeah. This is a perfectly fine assistive technology that would help a lot of people (like me), it's just that it should be something you can audit and you decide to turn on, after knowing the risks.

terinjokes, to random
@terinjokes@meetwoof.com avatar

Does anyone have copies of the Information Age Floppy-ROMs? The audio doesn't seem to be online, at least by my searches of the Internet Archive, and I'd like to explore (and archive them, if necessary). /cc @foone

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@terinjokes I've got at least one of them. I can work on getting it digitized

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Is there any recourse -- besides bolt cutters -- to these scooter companies coming by in their truck and locking their commercial product to every slot in every bike rack so that nobody with a bike can use the rack at all?

Is there anyone at the city who will do something about these assholes?

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@glyph @jwz clearly the local waters have been insufficiently scootered

tef, to random
@tef@mastodon.social avatar

i know i'm showing my age but every time i see "AI features added!" i mentally interpret it as "Bonzi Buddy 2.0™"

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@tef yep.
I've got bonzi buddy installed on one of my VMs, I keep meaning to plug it into chatgpt to make some kind of point.

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

when is GCC gonna have support for shock collars?
it might help to shock the programmer whenever the compile fails

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

and you might say "foone this is just a masochism kink", but no!

I'm a python programmer. I don't compile my code. I just want C/C++ programmers to suffer. This is clearly a Sadism kink, keep up.

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@realtime that's one way to try and get the record!

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@JLab8 you can use pyflakes for that. It does a syntax check without executing anything

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@TheColourOfFear it usually does, but only as an optimization for if it has to import that module again. It doesn't do it for the main program, and it can be turned off with no side effects other than it eunningly a little slower

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@vxo @gooba42 nice

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@ppxl it'd either get people to stop writing C, or it'd get them to write better C.

Seems like we win either way.

artandtechnic, to random
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

There are few things that say ‘this is a cultural product of The South’ more than a promotional photograph of the women employed by a business, who are all wearing white blouses (or in more recent years, white polo shirts).

It’s one of those things that becomes weird, when you realize it’s something that only people in certain areas do… but it’s not clear why.

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@artandtechnic yeah I never really realized how much a southern thing that is. Especially back in the 80s

mjg59, to random
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer avatar

Why does my IdP have two entirely different flows for MFA auth depending on how you're hitting it

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@mjg59 yeah. I'm a good reverse engineer, but you know what'd be way better? NOT HAVING TO!

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Fun bug: my wife and I were playing Wheel of Fortune on the switch. We each created female characters, but the game crashed while spinning the wheel. Fortunately it saves your mid-game progress, except when we resumed playing, my wife's character was now a man.

She got transed by a crash!

GamesMissed, to random
@GamesMissed@mastodon.social avatar

I visited the MIT Flea today! A great selection of vintage '70s and '80s computers this time. I saw people happily boxing up VIC-20s and TRS-80s to take home. This is going to be a thread of some of what I saw, followed by what I ended up with myself.

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@GamesMissed very cool! These disks are super rare.

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Properly photographing a 3.5" floppy disk for archival is annoyingly complicated. The label has THREE sides!

I've already built an automated system to take a picture of the front of a disk, but really I need to take THREE photos if I want to get the whole thing.

That means either three cameras or I need to rotate the disk 90° and then 180°, which is going to really stress the limits of my mechanical engineering skills.

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

My first rodded-prototype failed for the very out of character reason of forgetting how big 3.5 inch floppy disks are

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

(actually the reason was "Amazon sent the wrong rods and I'm still waiting on the right ones")

foone,
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@k1m yeh, it's a known problem. These were done very quickly when I didn't have time to clean the printer. I'll definitely fix it before I do the actual prints.

foone,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@altareos yeah. 3.5" floppy disks were designed by sony, who actually designed them as 90mm disks

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