@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.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

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
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

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.

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

I'm going to do some silver plating soon. Do I know anyone on here who has done silver plating? What do I need to know?

kirkman,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

@MLE_online My dad runs a plating shop. I don’t have any experience with it, but I’m happy to pass on questions to him if you’ve got any.

kirkman,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

@MLE_online @glasspusher My dad said:
"For commercial, immersion, tank style plating applications there are a couple non-cyanide processes. However they wouldn't be available to individual hobbyists. For them, you'd be looking at the various ‘plating kit’ companies all over the web. The best of these in IMHO is Caswell. https://caswellplating.com/electroplating-anodizing/silver-plating-kits/silver-tank-plating-kits.html "

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,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

Spurred by my inquiries, Larry Mears has resumed development of IGS in the past few years. I made this Star Trek-themed login sequence for my BBS using his latest IGS v2.19 format:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymii4HSuqt0

If you'd like to learn more about "Instant Graphics and Sound," check out my IGS wiki article: https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Instant_Graphics_and_Sound_(IGS)

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
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

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,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

👨 🖥️

I give you ... MORE "photos of dudes posing with computers, for newspaper profiles of their bulletin board systems in the 1990s."

Dave Long, a sergeant with the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, operates the County Jail BBS from his home.
Photo of a man working on a computer.
Greg Gooden, owner of The Annex computer bulletin board system, is one of a growing legion of small bulletin board operators.

kirkman,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

Though I have plenty more "photos of dudes posing with computers", I decided to share just one more — my favorite.

I love how the Cincinnati Post forced these three "major players" to squeeze together into a corner beside the PC running their gaming BBS.

Their board allowed users to play Doom II, Heretic, Descent, and other games head-to-head.

kirkman,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

@scott Here you go!

Love the pull quote — "We don't have to eat at Taco Bell anymore. We can eat at Jack in the Box."

Jump page of the Belleville News-Democrat "Lifestyle" section with photos and stories about APCI.

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

I found an especially large ball bearing covered in grease lying outside the grocery store. I can't imagine what it came off of but, I feel lucky

kirkman,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

@MLE_online Baby Yoda must have dropped it.

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
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

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,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

@vga256 It’s a cool game, and a formative one for me. I love how big the world is, and the interactions on the street and in the bars.

But I never really would have had the patience or ability to play it to completion.

kirkman, to amiga
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

🎼 🎹 🖱️
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
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

💾 🖥️ 🎆
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,
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“Computer Composer” is a colorful early demo of Kirschen’s algorithmic music composing process for the Commodore Amiga 1000. The demo uses speech synthesis to announce when it is “writing an original composition.”

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/01/02/unearthed-kirschens-magic-harp-for-commodore-amiga/

A screenshot shows the "Computer Composer" demo while it is composing new music to play.

kirkman,
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"Magic Harp" (ca. 1986-87) promised to produce all the music Bach (or the Beatles) never wrote, through the power of "artificial creativity."

Kirschen arranged with Irving Gould to produce two themed music disks ("pop" and "baroque") to be bundled with the Amiga 1000. Only a beta of the baroque version survives.

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/01/02/unearthed-kirschens-magic-harp-for-commodore-amiga/

Screenshot shows a large Bach character closing his eyes while composing new music in the "Magic Harp" software.

kirkman,
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@mwfc Thanks so much for getting the word out. I greatly appreciate it!

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.

textfiles, to random
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DISCMASTER returns in 2024.

kirkman,
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

@textfiles BEST NEWS EVER.

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
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

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
@kirkman@digipres.club avatar

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

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