Retro Revival
11:29 Tuesday, 27 August 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 84.81°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 83% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 458
Kudos to the NSA, the NARA and Michael Ravnitzky for making RADM Grace Hopper's 1982 lecture at the NSA publicly available.
I watched both parts this morning and found them fascinating. If you're interested in computing history, the ability to foresee the effects of technology, the blind spots of human nature, and the particular genius of Grace Hopper, it's well worth your time.
In the latter part of the second video, Hopper talks about very bright young people coming out of rural schools all over the country. Places where she said there were still "good schools." I didn't know what to make of the comment, but it felt problematic. Especially since one of her FBI security anecdotes involved city kids.
But it did call to mind something I'd read from Kevin Drum the other day. Kevin Drum was one of the first people, if not the first, to point out the correlation between the presence of lead in gasoline and crime rates. In 1982, the transition from leaded gasoline to unleaded was not yet complete. I don't know if anyone has looked at standardized test scores of urban students to see if the follow the same curve with respect to the introduction and eventual withdrawal of lead in gasoline.
It's a rabbit hole I'm disinclined to go down, simply because there are too many holes competing for my attention. But Hopper's remark did call Drum's post to mind.
Speaking of retro, I managed to get the //c to boot into a 32MB HD partition on the micro-SD card. I had to switch the Floppy Emu back to being an external drive; in the internal configuration, which allows booting 5.25" floppy disk images, the Smartport can't boot an external HD image.
The HD partition contained a large number of arcade games that had been cracked and turned into applications that could be launched from ProDOS. Not all of them work as advertised, though it's not clear to me why. But enough did work to provide some amusement. I played several rounds of Night Crawler, a Centipede clone that I enjoyed back in the day. You can try it here if you like. (Read the menu carefully. Press "R" for "Run," and "E" for Night Crawler. It's hard.)
I've got a version of President Elect 1988 that boots, I found the manual at the Internet Archive. I plan to give that a try. I never played it back in the day. I was married then, with a family and my then wife didn't share my enthusiasm for computer games.
The ROMxc arrived, but I'm going to wait to install it until I have a hardcopy of the Apple //c hardware reference manual, which should be here next week sometime.
✍️ Reply by emailGreedy People
12:30 Tuesday, 27 August 2024
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Words: 47
Rented and watched Greedy People last night. It felt like a mash-up the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino. Also felt like it was trying too hard. Pretty dark, mildly funny, no characters you'll get emotionally invested in.
An absurd morality tale with a few laughs.
✍️ Reply by emailMoon Descending
09:36 Wednesday, 27 August 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 55.94°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 8.72mphWords: 100
Happened to look out the window last night and saw this.
In other news, it's now official. I got my New York State driver's license, registered the Maverick in New York and registered to vote in New York. I've returned a card I received from the St Johns County Supervisor of Elections telling them to cancel my Florida voter registration.
Now if we can only sell that house, we'll have no significant "legal" ties to Florida. Family ties will remain, but we won't be paying property taxes to a state that is undemocratic, hateful and cruel.
I'll call that "progress."
✍️ Reply by emailPrepare
06:30 Thursday, 27 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 62.58°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 7.02mph
Words: 545
Life has been wonderful around here lately. I joke to people that I keep waiting for the meteor to strike.
Well, I think we can see what's coming. What's possibly coming.
Iran and Russia aren't very happy with the U.S. these days. China has its own agenda, but our low stocks of sophisticated interceptors and strike munitions may be altering their calculus with regard to Taiwan.
I have little faith that the federal government is prepared for what could possibly be coming.
I'm not thinking about kinetic strikes on the U.S., though there may possibly be conventional limited ones. I think it's going to be more along the lines of cybernetic attacks on infrastructure, primarily the electrical grid, communications and water.
These will be intended to sow domestic chaos, while impeding a military response to other actions, either against Taiwan or a Baltic state, possibly both.
Right now, I feel like I'm personally racing against time. I want to get this new house dried in with power and HVAC as soon as possible, and our next priority is going to be a solar array, with some battery storage.
But that's not going to do us much good if the society around us is suffering and struggling. We won't be able to count on much help, if any, from government at any level in the near term. So it's going to be up to individuals and maybe local committees to do what they can to prepare for significant disruptions to the key systems that sustain our way of life.
I used to say, "We're all preppers now," in connection with extreme weather events. My personal risk analysis now has international conflict as a greater threat than extreme weather.
And we definitely all should be preppers now.
We should all be doing our own vulnerability assessments. If you require daily medication to function, how much do you have on hand? How much are you allowed to buy in advance? We live in a highly optimized economic system, which makes it very brittle. There aren't large stocks of meds in the local pharmacies. They rely on logistics chains that are vulnerable to disruptions.
Food is similarly vulnerable, but you don't have laws or regulations that impair your ability to stock up. Canned and dry goods that can keep indefinitely. Be sure to have a hand-powered can opener.
Generators are great, as long as there is fuel. And if there is no power, it will soon follow that there will be no fuel. Do not stock up on fuel. That's not safe. I'd say just never let your vehicle get below three-quarters of a tank.
Buy some large-ish battery "power stations." Depending on your budget, you can get something that could run your whole house for a day, or your refrigerator for a week. But you'll also need some solar panels to recharge during the day.
You'll want to figure out something to do about water and sanitation. A five-gallon bucket and some sawdust can get you started. And you can store some amount of water safely, unlike fuel. But definitely think about water.
Get to know your neighbors.
I hope I'm just being paranoid, but I've got a bad feeling about this.
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