Wapsi Square Forum

Bad design? Putting the Power, Reset, and Transmit buttons next to each other on a panel. Same size, shape, and color.

I always knew Krispy Kreme was evil.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: ↑Wed Dec 19, 2018 2:05 pm I always knew Krispy Kreme was evil.

True, but it turns out, if you can get a plain doughnut from them, and catch it before it gets glazed and then ask them to put the Chocolate on it, but With Out Glazing it First!, they're OK...

"Hail, Caesar! The British chieftan approaches!"

"Is he bound?"

"Of his health, I know not..."

Came out of the house yesterday evening, getting ready to drive up to San Francisco to see Cirque du Soleil's "Volta" show. Looked up, and saw something funny in the sky towards the sunset.


According to the media, a fireball had been spotted and filmed (probably a meteor although it might possibly have been a chunk of man-made satellite)... it was visible across much of California, and into Oregon and Arizona. It left a very distinct trail which was visible for several minutes and was blown around by the high-altitude winds.

If the shape of the trail is actually a rune of Mordor which spells out "Zalgo Is Coming", I would really rather not know.

While we are on a LoTR angle of More Stuff, here's something I picked up today. My daughter and her husband visited New Zealand a couple years back and took in many of the filming locations for the movie. One of the stops was Hobbiton- the set was developed into an attraction to visit. You can tour the paths around the village, see the various home doors and such, and enjoy a meal at the Prancing Pony. They came back with a handful of souvenirs including the map of Middle Earth. She finally had the map framed for him as a Christmas present, I may have to do the same with my copy!

Dave wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 7:03 pm Came out of the house yesterday evening, getting ready to drive up to San Francisco to see Cirque du Soleil's "Volta" show. Looked up, and saw something funny in the sky towards the sunset.

According to the media, a fireball had been spotted and filmed (probably a meteor although it might possibly have been a chunk of man-made satellite)... it was visible across much of California, and into Oregon and Arizona. It left a very distinct trail which was visible for several minutes and was blown around by the high-altitude winds.

If the shape of the trail is actually a rune of Mordor which spells out "Zalgo Is Coming", I would really rather not know.

Looks like a bottle opener to me. It's a sign from Glod - have another beer.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

God bless us, everyone!

Following up on the Copyright/Trade Mark subject from a few pages back:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... -years-eve

A Massive Amount of Iconic Works Will Enter the Public Domain on New Year’s Eve
Why the copyright terms on a goldmine of works from 1923 are about to expire.
-----------------------------

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope everyone had a safe NYE, and arrived home intact.

Apropos of nothing, I have ordered out from Buca di Beppo tonight. Spaghetti with Meatballs, and Mozzarella Garlic Bread.

No Tiramisu, though. Don't want Atsali and Castela hanging around my kitchen later tonight.

Ars Technica presents:

the Amiga, a story told in 11 parts - https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/

Start Here:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/07 ... ga-part-1/

I recall the 'good ol days' when talking about the technical advantages of the Amiga held one out as somebody in the know...

(And then there was that Titanium Cube thing, but that's a different story...)

TazManiac wrote: ↑Wed Jan 16, 2019 8:07 pm I recall the 'good ol days' when talking about the technical advantages of the Amiga held one out as somebody in the know...

Wow, that's a great blast from the past... with some names I know rather well. I never worked with the Amiga itself (wish I had) but got to participate in some of its later heritage.

Back around 1990 or so, I had been working for a small startup company developing an "expert system" software infrastructure... one of the then-popular approaches to AI. The startup ran out of money and folded after three years, and I found myself looking for a new job.

I got a lead on another startup looking for people with operating system experience. I went to an interview, and found myself talking to the company's founding threesome: Dave Morse, RJ Mical, and Dave Needle.

They grilled me for an hour or two, without telling me anything about the job. Dave Needle asked me a question that he said he was sure I wouldn't be able to answer, since I was a Software Guy and it was a hardware question. By very great good luck I realized that it was basically the same problem I'd seen discussed in a technical magazine a few weeks earlier, and that he'd asked me a trick question... it has been proven that a complete solution is mathematically impossible.

I pointed this out, and quickly proposed a solution which meet the spirit of the requirements, rather than the literal letter of them... Dave nodded and grinned and said "I've had senior hardware designer sit and draw logic diagrams for half an hour before they admitted they didn't know how to do it." The three left the room, came back a minute or so later, handed me an NDA, told me what it was about, and offered me a job working for RJ on what became the Portfolio operating system.

Dale Luck joined the company a couple of months later, and taught me about the benefits of the Amiga Way of representing linked-list data structures in memory... which we all agreed to use in the new product.

And that's how I ended up designing and implementing the CD-ROM filesystem and device driver, and doing a bunch of the architecture and design of the audio DSP in the 3DO Multiplayer videogame system. Good times indeed!

I still run into RJ (now at Google) and Dale (now at Roku) occasionally. I'm sorry to say that Dave Needle passed away a couple of years ago... he was the most interesting hardware designer from Jupiter I've ever known, and his wife Margo was also a wonderful person(*)

(*) aside from that one time that she came in to work (she was our office manager) wearing a dose of the then-popular perfume "Georgio". By lunchtime I had an allergic migraine with scotomas and verbal aphasia, staggered home (worrying Gwen considerably since I couldn't explain what was wrong), dosed myself with antihistamines and other medications and crawled into bed for several hours until it wore off. Margo was horrified, of course, and promised never to wear it again, and never did. I miss her too (she passed about five years ago).

Man, I don't have stories like that. I've spent 25 years in IT, and all I can say is that I've kept a lot of small businesses running that would have otherwise tanked.

Woah woah woah woah.

Wait just a Skorm-damned minute.

You. Helped invent. The underlying software and firmware. FOR THE CD-ROM? Only one of the most important portable storage mediums for at least several years?

I... I need to go sit down. Holy shit.

FPF was right.

All Knowledge IS Contained In Fandom.

I’m gonna have to get my mom to tell me about how her dad was a friend of one of the inventors or very first early adopters of the internet. She has stories about flirting with NASA nerds via some kind of terminal that nobody else in the city of Peoria had... or at the very least no other private citizen. Most terminals at the time were in research labs at universities or government facilities.

This doesn't surprise me, considering he lives in MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA.