Getting closer, day by date, to being all packed up and ready to hit the road...
Then, yesterday, my wife hurt her hip. Not horribly bad. Not doctor / hospital bad. Just enough to take her out of commission for a day or so.
Which means trying to pack... while taking care of a wife... and three kids. Two of which seem to have an endless well of energy. :)
Dear heavens am I tired!
Hoping everyone zonks out nice and early tonight. A good night's sleep will hopefully mean we can get it close to done tomorrow. Or at least close-ER. Fingers crossed. ;)
After the Great Escape (from Portland) is complete in the coming days, I'll be starting a programming project.
Been a while since I've done any real coding. And I've got an idea for a game that I really want to make. Just sounds like a blast.
I'm trying to decide on the platform (toolset and target system) to make it for. Really torn.
The two options I'm considering right now:
Gameboy Color, Android, Web, plus a Linux/Win web wrapper (using GB Studio)
Linux, Windows, MacOS X, Android, Web (using Pico 8)
Two very different IDEs/SDKs and targets. I narrowed them down to these as I want something with roughly the screen resolution of a Gameboy (160x144) or Pico (128x128) and want to build this with limited RAM and ROM size in mind. In part because I enjoy that sort of development... and in part because of the look and style I want to use.
Pico 8 is great... because I can code in Lua. And get a native Linux build.
GB Studio is great... because I can put a resulting ROM on...
Oh! Yeah!
If anyone has questions or topics for tonight, but can't make the live stream, post em here!
Bill & Ted 3. Tonight.
TONIGHT!
You better believe I'll be talking about it tomorrow! Anyone else watching tonight?
Huh!
Microsoft. Buying TikTok. Well. Huh.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/27/walmart-is-teaming-up-with-microsoft-on-tiktok-bid.html
Lunduke & Friends will be live Saturday night at 9pm Pacific!
On zee YoooTooobs!
Come hang out with Hartley and I as we talk nerdy for two straight hours and recharge our souls. :)
Can't make it? No worries! Recordings will be posted here!
Just hit 700 members here on Locals! Woo!
Welcome, everyone! This nerdy little community is growing! Love it!
Load of stuff donated to goodwill.
Load of stuff to the dump.
Couple boxes packed.
Phew. Time for lunch! I'm pooped!
As I spend my Sunday sorting and packing clothes for our upcoming adventure... my mind has been wandering to... what type of software project I want to work on next.
Part of me wants to write command line TUI stuff in quickbasic. For DOS and Windows (and mac and Haiku) using the various compilers.
Then I feel like, heck, why not focus on DOS completely and code entirely in VB-DOS 1.0. Just because.
Then I think... maybe I'll just make gameboy games.
Decisions, decisions.
No Lunduke & Friends tomorrow night.
Last week was the first week back after a short break... but I need this week off. Gotta finish packing to get out of Portland before it explodes.
The week after, though, there should definitely be a live Lunduke & Friends. And I've got a couple solo shows coming out next week to fill the gap. ;)
Holy smokes moving is hard work!
We've got three kids (all under the age of 10). So most of the time, my wife and I are alternating -- one of us packs while the other one takes care of the motley crew. ;)
Two of our kids were born while we've lived in our current home. Which means lots and lots and lots of stuff to sort through.
Been doing dump runs this week. Bunches of 'em. Tossing old furniture we've been meaning to get rid of for ages. I've got a big car so I can take the kids with me a lot of the time. Which is great... means both my wife and I can be productively working on packing at the same time.
But makes for a tired Daddy. ;)
Can't wait to hit the road. Also nap. Can't wait to nap.
What would be your ideal computer?
Something that doesn't exist right now. Something not on the market currently.
What sort of CPU + RAM + Media + Display + OS combo would make you smile the most?
For me, I'm thinking:
Basically a mega, Classic Mac netbook. ;)
How about all of you?
This one was recorded differently.
And the Internet went out for like 30 seconds.
The main recording failed. Luckily I had a backup.
This is that. Quality is bad. But there are some fun parts. :)
Next weeks live show will be recorded... not like this. ;)
Got questions or topics you'd like to hear us address in tonight's nerdy live stream?
Feel free to ask 'em here! We'll take questions, as always, from the live chat room over on YouTube... but, if you can't make the show tonight (9pm Pacific), you can still have a shot at getting your questions in! Add them here (on Locals) as a comment and I'll do my best to squeeze some in during the show!
Linux. Games. Retro and modern computing. 1980s Sci-Fi TV shows. Comics. Any topic is fair game... as long as it's good and nerdy! :)
Lunduke & Friends is back!
Saturday night - 9pm Pacific.
On muh YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/bryanlunduke
Join us for a live, two-hour Nerd-a-thon. Bring something nerdy to chat about. The nerdier the better.
Planet of the Apes is such an amazing series of movies. Made even more awesome when watched on VHS. (Just found my copy of "Beneath" while doing some cleaning and organizing.)
Mozilla is laying off roughly 250 employees (I believe that's about a quarter of their staff).
Their stated reason for laying off 250 employees is... to develop more Mozilla products. Which. Typically you don't need to have less employees to build more products... but the announcement was so light on actual information, that it's hard to make heads or tails of it.
One example from the announcement:
"That means diverse, representative, focused on people outside of our walls, solving problems, building new products, engaging with users and doing the magic of mixing tech with our values. To start, that means products that mitigate harms or address the kinds of the problems that people face today. Over the longer run, our goal is to build new experiences that people love and want, that have better values and better characteristics inside those products."
What does that mean, exactly? Who knows! Lots of "values" and "diverse", "representative", "magic". Shrug.
Then there's this bit:
...
Found this little bit of swag (a nice spiral notebook) from the 2002 Apple WWDC.
18 years ago.
This is the one where Steve Jobs held a mock funeral for MacOS 9. Which was a weird moment in computing history.
You can watch it here:
I was over on the left side of the audience (stage right) about two rows back.
I'd say around half of the audience was psyched about the "Death of MacOS 9." The other half hated OS X with the passion of a thousand suns.
Was a funky event. :)
This is an intense one. Dark, disturbing topic that is directly relevant to the tech hardware industry. Recommend not watching around kids (without watching yourself first to make sure you want kids knowing these terrible things exist in the world).
Stopped reading Twitter (and Fediverse, etc.) 12 days ago. And, I tell ya, my stress levels have absolutely plummeted!
The difference is night and day.
Said it before, and I'll say it again, we humans simply were not designed to interact with that many people -- in a mostly uncontrolled way -- all at once. It just doesn't work.
I keep clicking the Share button on my Locals posts to share them over on Twitter. I have no clue if people are interacting with those posts or not. The only way to find out... would be to check Twitter. And I don't want to check Twitter. :)
Schrödinger's Tweets. They are simultaneously liked/retweeted/replied to... and not... until I log into Twitter.
Three days ago, there were 400 amazing nerds subscribing here on Lunduke.Locals.com.
Today, 72 hours later, we're up over 500.
I think that's nifty.
My original Nintendo Entertainment System box.
The one I got when this was new in the mid '80s. When I was a kid.
Beaten to heck. Been repaired (poorly) many times over. Doesn't smell great.
But it's wonderful.
There are now over 400 lovely, nice-smelling nerds that are members of Lunduke.Locals.com.
Up over 100 in just the last week.
Love it. Welcome, nerdy friends!
Why Original Battlestar Galactica is Way More Betterer Than The Reboot
by Bryan Lunduke
A debate on the merits of both the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) and the rebooted BSG (2004) was started [here](https://lunduke.locals.com/post/106488/religious-war-rebooted-battle-star-galactica-is-better-than-old-battle-star-galactica-change-my-mi).
And followed up [here](https://lunduke.locals.com/post/106598/calvinrempel-so-i-grew-up-with-the-original-it-was-an-event-as-a-kid-the-new-one-was-fine-ha).
While amazing, nerdy, and valid points have been made... I simply must chime in. Because this is Battlestar.
I love Battlestar.
What follows are my 5, key reasons why the original (1978) is far (far) superior to the 2004 reboot -- which, while interesting and cool in its own right, just doesn't hold a candle to the 1970's masterpiece.
While these five reasons ("Music", "Greene", "Goodness", "Monkey", and "Dirk" ) are not the only reasons why the original is better... they are, by themselves, enough.
Music
This is the intro to the 2004 version:
...
This one rolls out tomorrow everywhere else. Not for you Locals folk. No, sir-e-bob. You crazy kids get this one a full day early.
Because you are generally attractive. Also you smell nice.
Have a big soft spot for this specific version of MacOS. 8.5 was cool in that it was the first PowerPC specific release of a Mac OS. No 68K support. (And long before that x86 thing.)
This is the version I most often run on my 6100 and G3 iMac. A clean, well organized system. Not too bloated.
Plus... shipped with Netscape! :)
Phew. Found my missing NSA pen.
Got this at an OSCON a few years back. The NSA had a booth there. It make me giggle.
HOLY GUACAMOLE. We're up over 300 members here on Lunduke.Locals.com! That's awesome!
This is becoming a heck of a fun, nerdy little community in here! Thank you to everyone for not just helping to make what I do possible... but for being such stinkin' rad people to hang out with.
I've read some things from you cats that have really brought a smile to my face over the last few days. You rule.
What are your favorite Commodore 64 games?
The ones you come back to the most -- or spent the most time with back in the day?
I'm going to do a "My favorite C64 games" show, thought it might be fun to include favorite lists from some of you in the show, too.
Gimme your top 5. :)
Phew! Hot here today!
I was going to record two shows (the Unihertz Titan review and another goofy one)... but it's just way too hot! Crikey! I'm just drenched in sweat.
Maybe after the sun goes down and it cools off a bit. ;)
How are all of you crazy cats doing today?
Baby steps getting good Amiga emulation going on the Titan. Mouse & keyboard troubles, poor performance. But at least I can boot a Workbench! :)
Anyone else doing something good and nerdy today?
Mini VMac is a great Mac Plus emulator. But did you know it can also emulate a color Mac II? You need a separate build for it, but it works like a dream.
Here it is running Mac System 7.5 (in all its 256 color glory) on the Unihertz Titan (Android).
Physical keyboard works great. Alt key is mapped to the Apple Command key, which is handy. Though that does mean I need to bring up a virtual keyboard for punctuation. Not ideal, but an acceptable trade-off.
Speed is just about right. Here it is running MS Word. Very usable.
Mouse positioning is absolute. Which means instead of having the screen act like a trackpad, it's more like a drawing tablet. Which is handy for most stuff.
The emulated screen doesn't quite fill the square screen of the Titan. But pretty close. Very readable, even with smaller fonts.
Sound emulation is perfect.
Hypercard, SimCity, Railroad Tycoon... all the early Mac software should be playable here. Need to try a bunch out. See what the upper limit really is......
Got MiniVMac working on the Titan! I now have a fantastic Mac Plus emulator rocking!
Performance is crazy fast. SimCity plays great. :)
But!
It doesn't seem to work with the physical keyboard. Like... not one key is recognized. Not sure what's up with it. But the onscreen keyboard (which is kinda needed for the command key anyway) works well.
And fits oddly perfectly on the square screen of the Titan.
So I've C64, Apple iigs, DOS, and Mac Plus. Now to get color Mac working... then onto Amiga!
(Then I'll circle back to figure the keyboard out...)
Aha! Behold! Master of Orion 2 in DOSBox on the Titan!
This is using Magic DOSBox. Tried with DOSBox Turbo... but had keyboard trouble. Using Magic DOSBox the physical keyboard of the Titan (which is soooo nice) works well.
Except for the ALT key. Which means that number and symbol keys don't work with physical buttons. For those I need to bring up an on-screen keyboard like Hackers Keyboard.
A tad clumsy... but it works. Speed is solid. Haven't done benchmarks yet... I'd guess 486-ish. Soundblaster emulation is slightly hiccupy. Might need to tweak it a bit to get rid of the slight, occasional stutter. It's not bad.
Mouse emulation can either work like a trackpad... or using "absolute" clicking. Which makes games like this work like native touchscreen games. Super nifty.
Defender of the Crown.
Running in a C64 emulator (Frodo) on the Titan.
Speed is perfect. Physical keyboard works excellently (other than lack of special keys).
Sound makes me smile. Such a great game.
The world is nuts.
Anger. Violence. A pandemic. Regardless of where you stand on any particular issue -- or where you live -- I think we can all agree things are pretty crazy out there.
I don't know about you, but I need a sanctuary.
A place where I can talk about nerdy stuff with a bunch of awesome nerds. No scary news. No political yelling. Just pure nerdiness.
I propose that this spot, right here on Locals, be that sanctuary.
No advertising. No drive-by trolls. And no politics or horrifying news. Just us. Talking about Linux, old computers, video games, 1980s Sci-Fi TV Shows... whatever makes our nerdy little hearts happy.
A place we can escape to.
Obviously there's good reasons to talk about all the terrifying, stressful things happening in the world. Maybe we keep most of that away from here.
Now, I don't think we need to have some hard and fast rule where we can't even mention things like the pandemic. But, in general, let's focus on things that make us ...
Over the course of the week I'll be moving over to using Lunduke.Locals.com (and Patreon) for all of my social media-ing.
This isn't a full ditching of Twitter (and other social media), just minimizing how I use it and limiting the negative effects of it.
I'll still share links to my posts and articles on Twitter (and elsewhere)... but will begin ignoring all Twitter notifications and Twitter threads for the most part.
Why? Because open, large scale social media just plain stinks.
I've talked on this before -- Twitter has value. But it also has significant downsides. Finding a good ballance in using Twitter (so that it is a net positive influence) is a tricky thing.
My intended approach will be to post links to my content there -- for those that use it -- then retreat back to the saftety of Locals and Patreon. Essentially putting Twitter into "Write-Only Mode".
I may hop on Twitter during events (conferences, emergencies, etc.) but otherwise avoid reading it. Not a hard and fast boycot,...
A friend picked up the Unihertz Titan, couldn't handle the size of the beast, and sent it over for me to play with.
Huge phone. Square screen. Big physical keyboard. Heavy.
Kinda love the feel.
Running Android. Doesn't seem to be much other option at the moment. Some weirdness with the keyboard in some applications. Especially emulators.
I'll do a rundown on it soon. Got anything you'd like me to try out?
No new Lunduke & Friends this week or next week.
There's a bunch going on and we can't pull together the live Saturday night show tonight or next week. But we'll be back and rocking our nerdiness after that.
There'll still be new one-man episodes and comics this coming week, but no live show with the crew.
It'll be tough -- I really enjoy these live shows (they help keep me sane in an insane world) -- but at least we won't have a long wait. :)
Was sitting here, just now, remembering what a truly fabulous device the Nokia N810 still is. Even now.
Took some pictures of what this little beauty can do. Follow the comments to see the glory of the N810.
In order to post or comment, you'll need to become a paying member. This supports the work I do -- and also keeps out the riff raff. ;)
The rules around here are super simple:
1) Be Excellent to Each Other.
2) No cursin' or posting material you couldn't show on prime-time TV in the 1980's.
That's it, really! Be cool and keep it clean so folks can enjoy this at work and around their kids.
Oh, and nerdiness is encouraged. The nerdier the better.
IDE to SD card adapter replacing a hard drive in an Amiga? Flash floppy adapter for an Apple II? WiFi RS-232 modem emulator for a DOS PC? I've got some thoughts on what modern computer upgrades make sense with retro (1970s, 1980s, & early 1990s) computers.
(This one is a day earlier than YouTube or LBRY. Just for kicks.)
How to support, read, listen to, and watch The Lunduke Journal:
http://www.lunduke.com
== Made possible by ==
Amazing Hosting Linux server hosting at Linode ($60 credit): https://linode.com/lunduke
I made an episode talking about how Anonymity online is a bad thing. The Internet disagreed. Strongly. Now I respond to the responding. With a response. The Internet will probably disagree again. But it's cool.
(Posting a few hours early to Locals. Those YouTube and LBRY folk can wait.) ;)
How to support, read, listen to, and watch The Lunduke Journal:
http://www.lunduke.com
== Made possible by ==
Amazing Hosting Linux server hosting at Linode ($60 credit): https://linode.com/lunduke
No live "Lunduke & Friends" tonight.
Having a little heart episode. Think I'm ok, but I've been ordered to lay down for the night.
Show is planned to be back next Saturday night. Hartley in tow.
I've also been ordered off Twitter for the night. Which is also probably smart! Wife says I can use Locals as long as I only talk about things that relax me. ;)
Will Microsoft Windows still be dominant? Will macOS marketshare increase? Will it be the year of the Linux desktop? What will happen with servers and smartphones? Let's look 5 years into the future, to see if we can predict what 2025 will hold in the world of computing.
This video comes out in the morning for everyone else. Posting it a few hours early here on Locals.
Because you're awesome. And you deserve awesome things.
Seeing as Locals provides solid video hosting... would you like to have the videos that I currently publish to LBRY and YouTube also posted here on Locals?
Totally up to all of you!
Just an idle thought...
We often praise the ability to crack codes and communications of our enemies (cracking the Enigma machine, etc.). The people who do this are, in many cases, called heroes (and rightly so).
Yet we also tend to vilify modern attempts at exposing communication of our enemies. When bills get proposed to put in back-doors in encrypted communication systems (which is, from a practical perspective, not all that different from from breaking the Enigma and similar endeavors) we, often, view those efforts as bad. Sometimes even evil.
Even when the goal is to crack the communication of Terrorist groups, rings of pedophiles, etc..
There are, obviously, differences (and many of these bills have significant issues). But the end goal is roughly the same: "Crack the encrypted communication of an enemy." Yet the response is night and day different.
I find that absolutely fascinating.
I really like the experience here on Locals.
I like how fast it is. I like that there are no advertisements.
I like that it's easy to include videos and podcasts in a more flexible way than most social platforms.
But, what I really like... is that it's designed in a way to make "drive by trolling" really, really difficult. So we can just have casual conversations, with like-minded folks, without needing to deal with the garbage that places like Twitter or the Fediverse have.
Wonder if I can convince a good chunk of my Twitter followers to move over here to make it so I can simply give up Twitter entirely. :)
Topics include: How we celebrated Independence Day, Grilling watermelon, Hooligans looking like they're from Back to the Future II, Living in Quarantine week 7 bazillion, What was the first CD-ROM game and software we ever installed, 2X CD-ROMs are so slow, CDRW and DVD-RAM drives, Making fun of Lunduke for using 10/100 Ethernet, OpenCore and Hackintoshes, Flight of the Navigator is the best 4th of July movie, Stories of working at a movie theater in the 1990s, Linux Real-Time kernels, The best Bullfrog games (Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, etc.), Linux rolling releases, The benefits of longer release cycles for Operating Systems, Lots of firework explosion sounds, and dad jokes.
