It was 1981, and the first "Computer Age" shop had opened up in my town, a place called Claremont - more of a suburb, really, of Perth, Australia. A lucky place, for it meant there was .. inside an air-conditioned cube .. a row of Atari and Apple computers.
Two school-kids are sitting there, tapping away, at something from a magazine. It looks immensely interesting, but they scowl at me as I get closer as if not to interrupt. So I go poke on an Atari, and immediately dislike its membrane.
The sales guy, probably only a few years beyond his teens, unlike me not yet begun, grins and nods over at another Apple II machine, newly set up. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I bang away at it "HELLO" this and "dO somehting" this and whatever, until the sales guy swoops in, wangs in a floppy, hits the reset combo and lets me play SABOTAGE for the rest of the afternoon.
The next day, after an interminably long day at school, I arrive with a freshly purloined magazine of my own. The same kids from before are there, just minutes before me probably but seemingly there all night, and are having a blast. They proudly, this time, beckon me over to 'have a go' at their game, TREK, wherein I am an "+" and there are "*"'s and . and #'s all over the place.
After witnessing me fail miserably, yet nevertheless programmatically successfully, these older kids chortle themselves out into the heat .. and I stick around to learn how to copy it to another floppy disk. The sales guy obliges, and gives me my first 5.4" floppy disk to save things on, "as long as you come back tomorrow and type a few more programs in, from those magazines you kids have..."
Wow that sounds very different to my experience back then. Nerdy kid trying to get time on a computer in a shop in Canberra - generally the sales dudes would chase you out of the shop. The "Computerland" store in Philip was the worst offender for that. The Microbee people were slightly better so I am pretty sure that's how we ended up with one (plus the Apple and Atari machines were insanely expensive back then, and the Commodores seemed like toys).
I think in this case, it was inevitable that the shop was going to be inundated with rich schoolkids from the neighborhood, and the sales guy as I remember him seemed to understand, intrinsically, that these computers were going to sell if the kids could convince their parents to buy it for them...
Not saying I didn't get chased out of the other computer shops of Perth in the 80's, but those are other tales of joyous mirth, for another time ..
Yeah, I guess they sold quite a few VERY expensive machines in that neighborhood, and there were raging arcade game controversies going along at the same time, so seeing kids do 'productive' things with computers - like program simulated galactic war games - seemed like a responsible thing to do.
In my case, that guy gave me a raging passion for computers that has led, 40 years later, to ridiculous things happening.
The "Computer Age" place stuck around for only a few years afterwards .. the cognescenti of my hacker club at school discovered TANDY and Dick Smith as places to test new hilarious routines .. and, meanwhile, some of us got modems.
Good times. I think my Mum still had that floppy disk around in her memoirs, somewhere. Something about how she righteously retrieved it from an old, much loathed, school principle, who had zero idea what it was, or what it would ever mean for the world that a 10 year old kid had simulated galactic war games on his person, in lieu of math homework, or so.
Anyway, yeah. Great sales guy, would time-travel and witness again.
It really was the best era, and lots that I can relate to in your story there, though I was on the far opposite side of the world in snowy cold Edmonton, Canada.
And re: the principal, here's a great quote from my grade 3 report card which I get a kick out of, and use to help my kids feel better about their report cards:
"XXX's work is very untidy. More work is needed in cursive writing. His journal entries are computer programs."
I wish I could find that teacher today and send her a copy of my job offer from Google from 10 years ago.
I was a teenager visiting Computer Age on the weekends at the same time. It was a time when computer access was still scarce and you hung around shops and went to conventions just to get access to one. Some friends used to go to the tandy store each afternoon after school and type in a lunar lander game they had written on the tandy 100 for sale. Each day the shop would turn of all the machines and wipe the game so they would go back up the next day and type it in again.
I am a retro-computing fanboy and recently have been reliving the world of text adventure games on one of my most favoured "failed" computers of the 80's, the Oric-1/Atmos range of UK 8-bit machines.
The aesthetic is so pure, and in the context of oric.org, the titles are a testament to the spirit of an entirely different form of walled-garden/app-store.
I favour the Oric, and many of the great old architectures like it (Amstrad CPC6128!!) not for much more salient reason than it was my first 'real' computer, on which I first gained an immense amount of arcane knowledge that led me to an even more immense amount of arcana.
The adventure has been text since the very first day. A coders adventure game never STOP's.
*bonus edit: everything old is new again, and it is awesome:
I’m sure getting an Oric and Blake’s 7 reference in a single post qualifies for a special upvote around here! Thanks for sharing, both great sites. I’ll dig out that Atmos I have in the basement!
You most certainly will get a kick out of that Atmos if you get it booted up and functioning.
The Oric world didn't get much love in 1982/83/84, before the company fell apart completely - so there are many of us who would've felt particularly left-out, in terms of what 'could have been done', back then, with very little software. An Oric OG user had to write their own programs, while all the other machines got great stuff on the market.
Well, this is now resolved in the 21st Century, with 21st Century releases - titles still being produced by fans - which really, seriously push the limits of what you might've thought the Oric can do.
Get loaded up with some blakes7, space1999, pulsoids, l33t, or check out some of the new stuff being discussed on defence-force.org like a Wolfenstein-like mazerunner [1], or maybe a proper Loderunner [2] - if you're an Oric guy, this is going to be FUN for you. Finally.
More like a tit-for-tat show of support for Belarus on the part of the Russians.
I saw a televised meeting between Putin and Lukashenko yesterday that ended with Lukashenko making the statement that went something like "the Bolsheviks rose to great heights, and we will match them", to which Putin chuckled, demurely. Its maybe not obvious to Westerners, but they are trying to rebuild a "Union of ex-Soviet States" in the region these days .. one by one, preparing a Bloc that can be an attractive partner to the EU, I suppose.
With these kinds of tit-for-tat responses, though, I guess its a shrewd strategy. "If we are allowed into the EU econo-bloc, such re-routes won't be necessary", seems to be the planned negotiating point ..
First of all, I do not see any indication that Russia or Belarus tries to get closer to the EU, rather the opposite. And this kind of blocking policy increases the separation.
Also, it takes really a lot to have the EU make any decision within short notice, but Lukashenko definitely managed.
>First of all, I do not see any indication that Russia or Belarus tries to get closer to the EU, rather the opposite.
Putin has stated multiple times that he intends to have better relations with the EU, and that the Commonwealth of Independent States needs to work towards that goal, so .. I'm guessing you're not paying attention to that, since it doesn't serve the narrative that Russia just wants to 'go it alone against the world'.
No, it wouldn't be good for the USA, but it would be great for Europeans and Russians to see this happen some day.
Russia would be a perfectly fine partner with the EU, and it seems to be orienting towards that goal in a future date - American agitprop notwithstanding.
If Putin wants to have better relations with the EU, he is very welcome. He just should stop with certain things which are kind of incompatible with that. Like odering murders on EU territory, and keep his fingers out of the Ukraine. Oh, yes, if he has any influence with Lukashenko, he might tell him about not threatening European airplanes.
All well and good, but the EU (and especially now the UK) is in no position to be dictating moral platitudes from some position of authority, that is for sure - especially on the issue of the repression of journalists, extrajudicial murder/assassinations launched from EU/UK territory, and so on.
It takes a certain kind of disingenuous authoritarianism to claim that Russia is committing heinous acts which preclude its participation in the world order, when the majority of the world order is just fine with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and extrajudicial assassinations being performed for the criminal purposes of the "Coalition of the Willing".
Isn't that great? We're not going to allow non-democratic countries like Russia into the EU. Certainly not when they are so clearly documenting that they have zero credibility, no treaty Russia signs can be trusted.
So it's probably fine that they make own club.
They only have control on flights in and out of Russia though so how much leverage can it really provide? All the EU airlines can just say sure we will fly over Belarus on the way to Moscow while still avoiding it on every other city pair that doesn't involve a Russian destination. That is why I say it seems largely symbolic.
Why would any European airline fly over Belarus while the incident isn't resolved? No airline should fly over states which intercepts civil airliners in transit.
Yes, Russia, like any other state, could intercept airplanes too. But so far, they have not. International air travel means, that you have to fly across many countries, if you want to fly in a somewhat straight line. There are a few exceptions, where flights are not permitted to cross a countries airspace, but intercepting approved flights is pretty much unheard of. That is why the actions from Lukashenko created so much outrage. It is one of the fundamental agreements of international flights that got violated. If Russia would start intercepting airplanes, they would be internationally isolated quite quickly.
My understanding is that you can intercept a plane in transit in your airspace. The problem is that Belarus lied when they said they had information of a bomb onboard.
Another problem is the kidnapping of a passenger who then got promptly very sick and damaged in the friendly heavy hands of the KGB and police. You know, the usual thing the totalitarians do.
Eh, how is Assange doing? People are being treated well in Guantanamo? Didn't Austria divert a flight on merely the suspicion that Snowden might be onboard? Or does that not count because it was just the President of Bolivia's official government jet and not a Ryanair flight?
Fair enough if you want to criticize Russia for being a kleptocracy that assassinates enemies on foreign soil, but diversion of flights to capture enemies of the state and then not treating them well in captivity is unfortunately not a hallmark of totalitarian regimes but a general feature of western statecraft as well, so let's not blow this tit-for-tat response out of proportion.
How about, don't be so eager to rush to judgement of other nations, when your nation (UK/USA) clearly has extant history with the same kinds of issues.
>how do you find out whether your soil quality is still good enough?
The plants will tell you. But the answer always, always is: how good is your compost?
Until you get composting right, gardening can be very frustrating. But it all starts with a proper compost. You can fix almost any soil issue with composting techniques.
The curious thing about that, though, is that your compost, if its a house compost (based on output from your household) is only going to be as healthy as you, yourself eat. So that is a factor as well ..
Gardening is one of those subjects that brings me as much joy and satisfaction as developing and shipping productive software to real customers.
There is no greater feeling than to have fed ones family direct from the house garden, or to have raised ones children to understand and appreciate the rewards of cultivation of renewable resources, plants, in their own lives.
Every single human being should have a plant that they take care of, regularly, and participate in its life. No matter if its an avocado pit growing in the window, or a field of leafy greens, the care of plant life is a very rewarding activity.
We eat from our garden daily for 9 months of the year, and this year had the pleasure of seeing our last season's crop of mangold survive winter, rejuvenate, and provide us with ample harvest.
Gardening is a lot like programming, though. If you don't take care of the base layers, you may find yourself with a broken framework and need to refactor.
Just like programmers should know their compiler - gardeners should know their compost. The better the compost, the better the garden ..
These are very cool devices that I would buy to play around with but, I don't really understand the idea with a hingeless flat screen. That can promote a very bad posture if used on a table as one needs bend the neck to see the screen. Sure, these could be used in handheld mode but how much can you type with thumbs only before you want to use more fingers??
I think the DevTerm is more supposed to be hung around your neck like a hipster. ;) Or, duct-taped to the datacenter wall for when its time to minicom the hell out of things.
Two school-kids are sitting there, tapping away, at something from a magazine. It looks immensely interesting, but they scowl at me as I get closer as if not to interrupt. So I go poke on an Atari, and immediately dislike its membrane.
The sales guy, probably only a few years beyond his teens, unlike me not yet begun, grins and nods over at another Apple II machine, newly set up. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I bang away at it "HELLO" this and "dO somehting" this and whatever, until the sales guy swoops in, wangs in a floppy, hits the reset combo and lets me play SABOTAGE for the rest of the afternoon.
The next day, after an interminably long day at school, I arrive with a freshly purloined magazine of my own. The same kids from before are there, just minutes before me probably but seemingly there all night, and are having a blast. They proudly, this time, beckon me over to 'have a go' at their game, TREK, wherein I am an "+" and there are "*"'s and . and #'s all over the place.
After witnessing me fail miserably, yet nevertheless programmatically successfully, these older kids chortle themselves out into the heat .. and I stick around to learn how to copy it to another floppy disk. The sales guy obliges, and gives me my first 5.4" floppy disk to save things on, "as long as you come back tomorrow and type a few more programs in, from those magazines you kids have..."
So, I did. What a summer it was.
I'll never forget those older nerds.