Last year I wrote posts about listening to the radio, watching TV and having a landline phone in the 2020s (in Dutch). Today, I want to talk about the place left for optical storage in the 2020s.
So now I got that new optical drive and can start burning CDs, DVDs, BDs (regular 25 and 50 GB blu-ray discs) and BDXLs (newer 100 and 128 GB BDs). But how long will those last?
I thought it was time to ramble on about Unicode and UTF-8 a bit, inspired by the need to convert old Amiga text files that have accents in them that won't display properly on my current Macs. Also some food for thought for programmers.
Read the article - posted 2022-01-30
Image link - posted 2022-02-19
Although in the 1980s and 1990s computer were capable of displaying text in many languages, they were limited to one set of characters at a time. So either Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Greek or Cyrillic, but not several of those at the same time. Unicode solved that, and modern computers can (in principle) display all characters found in all languages.
However, when it comes to typing those characters, we're still in 1990, with different keyboard layouts for different languages. Now obviously it would't be workable to make a keyboard that lets you type all Unicode characters. But it should be doable to come up with a system that provides access to all characters and diacritics that are used in latin script languages.
All it takes is one new key. I call it the globe key: 🌐
Read the article - posted 2022-03-06
A few months ago, I ordered the Drop + Matt3O MT3 retro keycap set:
These keycaps have the cool/retro "PETSCII" characters printed on the front. But how do you actually type those PETSCII characters?
Read the article - posted 2022-03-23
I thought it might be interesting to talk a bit about how my PETSCII typer web tool came together.
It all started with the Drop + Matt3O MT3 retro keycap set. I ordered this set because I like the old style key shape that's replicated here. And then as a bonus you get the PETSCII characters we know and love from the Commodore 8 bit computers printed on the front of the keycaps.
Not sure how I ended up there, but I found the Style64 C64 TrueType fonts, which replicate Commodore's take on the ASCII character set, usually referred to as PETSCII because the Commodore PET computer from 1977 introduced it.
So now I can have PETSCII graphical characters on my keyboard and PETSCII on my screen. The one missing thing: pressing a key and having the PETSCII character on that key show up on the screen. That's what the PETSCII typer does.
Read the article - posted 2022-03-26
On his Youtube channel, Matt Heffernan has a series of 8-bit Battle Royale videos to see which 8-bit computer is fastest. For this, he uses a simple program to calculate the world's lowest resolution mandelbrot set. Still, the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum take minutes to do this in BASIC. It's much faster in assembly.
Watching the videos, I started wondering how 16 or 32 bit computers like the Amiga would perform. Or even the C64 with a C version of the same program. So I made a C version.
Read the article - posted 2022-03-29
Back in the early 1980s, kids such as myself had their first computing experiences with 8-bit home computers such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. And the only way, or in Europe in those days, the only affordable way to load games and save/load your own programs was from cassette tape. And boy was that slow.
If we suddenly had a perfectly-reliable cassette tape, how fast could we possibly load data from it? This is a question I started pondering a while ago. To answer it, I had to do look into how data is stored on tape and how exactly we load it. Along the way, we'll find several limits and assumptions we have to work around on our quest for the fastest-possible loading.Read the article - posted 2022-04-03
On friday, I received my preordered THEA500 Mini. This is smaller and modern version of the Commodore Amiga 500 computer from 1987. By the same company that makes a similar version of the Commodore 64.
After exploring the A500 Mini for a few days, I can't really make up my mind on whether I like it, or it's too limited. So here some first impressions, I'll probably do a more complete review later.
So I had an interesting revelation when it came to deciding on my next review, and the prospect of watching Picard Season 2 came up - I just don't care about this show anymore. I don't want to watch it, and I don't want to review it. And here's why.Yeah, the last decade of "Star Trek" has nothing to do with what Star Trek has always been about the previous five decades. Now pour me another drink.
Read the article - posted 2022-04-15
Although there were definitely other CPUs in use in the 1980s, the vast majority of microcomputers people had at home or at the office used either a MOS 6502 or one of its variants, a Zilog Z80, an early member of the Intel 8086 family, or a Motorola 68000. Let's have a look at those four CPUs.
Read the article - posted 2022-04-19
On his Youtube channel, Beau of the Fifth Column opines about the Russian invasion into Ukraine. Today, he's doing something a bit different: some of his Russian viewers have asked him what Russia could do differently to make the liberation of Ukraine a success. Beau is happy to oblige.
🤣
Read the article - posted 2022-05-01
This is the third generation iPod that I bought for an enormous amount of money back in 2003. It has a "20 GB" (more like 18 and change) harddisk and came with a dock and a wired remote control. It still looks cool although the screen seems so small now. The red LEDs behind the touch buttons are very nice, but the touch buttons are a usability nightmare because you can't feel around for the buttons because then you'll activate them.
My later fifth generation iPod with 30 GB and a color screen that plays video has the click wheel, where the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions of the wheel are also buttons, that works much better. Unlike the older one, it also supports podcasts. But it hasn't aged as well, with even less battery life even though I replaced the battery a decade ago, and the screen backlight has issues.
The 3rd gen iPod only syncs over Firewire or USB, but only charges over Firewire. The 5th gen iPod only syncs over USB, but charges over Firewire or USB. However, with the battery being in a very sorry state, USB + the battery combined don't deliver enough power to start the iPod up successfully. So I first have to charge it on Firewire and then it has enough juice to be synced over USB.
Anyway, I was very happy with my iPods from when I got my first one in 2003 until I got my first iPhone in 2008. Apple discontinued the iPod "classic" in 2014 and the iPod Nano in 2017. They kept the iPod Touch around until this week, but that's not really an iPod, it's an iPhone without the phone part.
Permalink - posted 2022-05-13
Image link - posted 2022-05-14
Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic:
Offering the Russian president a face-saving compromise will only enable future aggression.
Unfortunate but true, I'm afraid.
Read the article - posted 2022-05-29
Image link - posted 2022-06-03
The A500 Mini, the Logitech F710 and Attack of the PETSCII Robots: an excellent combination. So let me cover all three in a single review.
Image link - posted 2022-06-10
In this digital age, we still may want to shoot photos on film. But what type of film?
Or why film in the first place?
I think that last question will have a different answer for everyone. For me, it's the joy of seeing decades old machines do what they were built to do so cleanly. I can just pull the film advance lever and push the shutter on my Nikon FE time and time again, it never gets old. It's even better when there's film in the camera. Although of course then this starts to cost real money.
Read the article - posted 2022-06-19
If you want to understand the chemical reactions at work during the processing of a film without going back to your school bench:
Read the article - posted 2022-07-01
If you shoot (or shot) photos on film, you'll probably want to scan that film in some way to get those photos on your computer. There are various ways to get that done. For reasons that I'll talk about later, I decided to have a go at scanning negatives using my digital camera recently.
Image link - posted 2022-07-05
The other day, the Youtube algorithm served me up this video: Film Photography's Future is its Past | Cameras and Coffee with David Hancock. In it, David Hancock more or less adopts the premise of this article: Film Photography Is at a Crossroads Headed for Extinction: What It Would Take to Turn It Around and Why It Won’t Happen by James Madison.
Is the world running out of film cameras? Is it feasible to create new ones?
The idea behind the AppleTV 4K streaming puck is that you see your content in 4K. In the case of photos in the screensaver, that's not what you get. The AppleTV 4K, showing photos from my laptop using "home sharing" (no not iCloud photos):
When I play a slide show with the same images on my LG OLED TV, I get this:
These are photos taken of the TV image, of course zoomed in quite a lot, but if you're sitting close enough to the TV to be able to tell the difference between HD and 4K, the difference is pretty obvious.
What gives, Apple?
Permalink - posted 2022-07-11
Last year I got a new webcam, which led me to ask myself what color temperature setting for my Hue lightbulbs would work best with that camera. (Turns out: 4000K.)
But: how do you set your Hue lights to a certain color temperature? I didn't find a good solution for that. So I built my own!
Read the article - posted 2022-07-12
The Best Camera:
We lost Olivia Newton-John... Back in 1980 she starred in a supremely weird and not very good movie, but with an amazing title song by ELO: Xanadu.
Permalink - posted 2022-08-08
Image link - posted 2022-09-25
These days, most of us have devices that can shoot video. And that's no longer as simple as it was 25 years ago. Back then, if you lived in a "60 Hz" country such as the US, your video camera would shoot 30/60 frames per second. (See interlaced video on Wikipedia to understand why this is "30/60".) In parts of the world where the electrical grid runs at 50 Hz, such as Europe, our video cameras would use 25/50 Hz.
Because converting 24 frames per second film to 25 frames per second video is horrible (the image stutters once a second), in 50 Hz territories, film would be sped up to 25 FPS to show on TV or record on video tape or DVD.
These days, we all just watch Youtube where the video framerate can be 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60 FPS.
Most of us also have a video recording device in our pockets that usually supports at least several different framerates.
So... what's the best framerate?
Read the article - posted 2022-10-04
Image link - posted 2022-10-17
In an infinite universe, everything that's possible does in fact exist. I've long held the position that the internet is pretty much an infinite universe.
So of course a Youtube video where someone created an accordion-like instrument consisting of two C64s with bellows made out of 5¼" floppy disks playing Scott Joplin ragtime classics does exist on the internet. Enjoy!
Permalink - posted 2022-10-23
Image link - posted 2022-10-28
Recently, a few podcasts that I listen to talked about smart home technology. We also got the release of new smart home standards Thread and Matter. So I want to look at what smart home options have worked for me, and see if it's possible to draw any conclusions about what could work for most people. (As in: who don't enjoy tinkering with tech for its own sake.)
Read the article - posted 2022-11-27
I just saw a Youtube video kind of reviewing the new Thread smart home communication protocol. I'm not linking to it because it attributed a bunch of things to Thread that are Matter, unless I'm very much mistaken. (And the latter is certainly possible. Do your own research before buying new stuff.)
Matter is the new IP-based system that lets a smart home "ecosystems" such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit and Samsung SmartThings talk to smart home accessories. Matter has two big advantages. The first one is that you're no longer locked into a single ecosystem or a limited number of ecosystems. Every ecosystem that supports Matter can control accessories that use Matter. Even better, multiple ecosystems can control the same accessories.
Thread, on the other hand, is simply a wireless protocol for talking to smart home accessories.
Read the article - posted 2022-12-03
It happened again: I look at my bicycle handlebars to see how fast I'm going, but my bicycle computer was gone. This happens to me every three to four years. A goot moment to reconsider what information I really need during and after cycling.
So let's talk about bluetooth and ANT+ bike speed sensors and Sigma Sport ATS and STS bike computers.
Read the article - posted 2022-12-20
Image link - posted 2022-12-30