I hope my last few cable ties hold the top of the fence together for this storm. Tying them I noticed a couple from last time that did the trick for another section. Eventually it will be all cable ties #stormdave
Oz getting in his old car with Victor and turning off the Dolly Parton CD is very funny #thepenguin
Strange to see lengthy and detailed specifications making a comeback with numbered functional requirements like FR-001. My first job in telecoms was implementing a UI from specs like this, written by a whole team. That’s a kind of #retroprogramming now
Trying to find the right change for a bus in a dream is pretty tough
A spot has appeared in the middle of my forehead that is so severe that I look like I’ve been executed
I've been using git-flow for years or thought I was but I was really just using the feature commands to effect something like github-flow. So git-flow being removed from the git windows install is fine apart from now apparently I have to checkout -b like a savage
Had one of those bugs today that seemed to happen for no reason and broke everything. Debugging was a nightmare of race conditions. It was like an unknowable cosmic horror and I think I went a bit mad trying to comprehend it
Today's recommended website is chiptube.app. If you love chiptune music/SFX then head over for a huge slice of nostalgia. A massive catalogue of SID, NES, SNES, N64, GENESIS music awaits, plus lots more. Volume up to 11.
chiptune.app/browse
Some new fangled package manager destroyed my PATH variable which I had to rescue using regedit which felt a bit like an action move where the young gun messes up and the old hand has to step in to save the day. In my head
It’s in sad circumstances but I’ve now ordered #thesoulofanewmachine which sounds like it might be the blue chip version of #voicesfromafuturepassed predating anything I would remember but that’s perfect en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sou...
It would be cool if there was a kind of compendium of all the different things a #bbcmicro was used for. What job it did with what expansions and what software. This one ran a lab between 1983 and 1989 using custom software that controlled… etc
Read some more of #voicesfromafuturepassed but stopped at the Sophie Wilson chapter because I wanted to be fresh reading it if that makes sense. They’re all legends but she’s a personal hero. Looking forward to reading that today
Could only manage about 20 minutes of #alanwake to get past the helicopter bit where I died last weekend but then the next bit was immediately more combat and I wasn’t really in the mood
Noticed a weird bug where you'd "perish" if you reached some co-ordinates *next* to the edge even though they'd been cleared by the charter. Pretty sure it's a rounding issue from passing in trig results to POINT. Always rounding down using INT seems to fix it #sinclairbasic
I'm glad mine was yesterday the shape of the street seems to create a kind of vortex focussing on the exact spot my particular bin goes
I hadn’t heard of them but I am a bit of a casual but they’re good! The name makes me think of the posters you’d see around town of very local scene bands that would raise a smile but in a good way
Forgot to do something like PAUSE 0 : RANDOMIZE so the points of interest are the same every time. Maybe I could fit some more compressed screens as well to tell a kind of story
I think I’m finally getting the hang of combat in #alanwake. Stand your ground and drop flares to keep the taken at bay. Don’t bother shooting until you’ve flashed them with your torch a bit. Don’t run away unless you can see a light to run to
Coincidentally because I’ve been actively wondering about this @thisweekinretro.bsky.social this week mentioned that the #amstradcpc version of Jet Set Willy used compression to fit more screens. Interesting!
The #ironlung inspired #zxspectrum game I’ve been working on is now available. #sinclairbasic with some compression to fit a detailed game screen and some creepy visuals! www.eigengrouse.com/posts/the-mu...
The #monorepo approach works well with #retrocomputing i.e. include everything required to build, which means I can only use tools that allow this but I've yet to come across a tool created by the wonderful retro community that doesn't. And every project is different as I learn something new
Had an idea of LOAD ""SCREEN$ to combine #sinclairbasic with a detailed game screen (just don't CLS!). Then decided a buffer would let me switch screens. Now falling down a github.com/einar-saukas... rabbit hole to see how many .SCRs I can fit. Can you still call it BASIC? The eternal question
I don’t know if it’s because there’s a lot more water under the bridge, this would have been unthinkable when I was younger, but Hitler And The Nazis is on Netflix and for a split second I wondered if it was a documentary or sitcom or band or what
Well I got “ornithopter” for 64k before the options came up thanks to Frank Herbert but struggled on the £200 mushroom question #millionaire
Progressed a bit more on Alan Wake. It’s enjoyable for about an hour and then the combat ruins it but if you can make it through a stage it’s rewarding. Five out of seven
I don't think it was a total failure but I wasn't able to eliminate all the "choppiness" if you'll excuse the pun one final time. I did write a blog post about it though in case anyone still reads those things #zxspectrum #sinclairbasic www.eigengrouse.com/posts/udgima...
#palegreenghosts is such a tune
Listening to John Grant and I've just realised I cannot picture his face or rather I can only see Hopper from Stranger Things
A less "choppy" version of the water animation (from gif-superretroworld.itch.io/water-animat...) but this uses m/c and a double buffer. Still called from #sinclairbasic and using UDGs but having to CLEAR some room
Apparently there’s a very quick way of copying data to the screen by using how DEF FN string parameters are copied using LDIR but I’ve failed to figure it out yet. I’d rather do that than use a m/c PRINT routine as I’m trying to keep things BASIC-y
