Going a little retro
Yes, I am still here. This thing is still on.
I'm in the process of clearing up a few small things and bringing it up to date where I am now. The last time I made a serious effort to keep this "current" would have been 2017-ish and a fair amount of change has happened since then
For a start, I've changed up my socials, as some of the old stuff is starting to look a little cringe and times have changed too.
Bless the hackers that write the software that powers this blog, they've discovered finally that there's microblogging outside of Twitter (I refuse to call it X, that Elon being incel cringe) and Facebook (which has become a bit of a Boomerville / older GenX-fest).
Yes! they've discovered not only Threads (Xitter for the Instagam crowd) exists but also Mastodon and Bluesky, the latter of which gives me a warmer feeling as it feels like old 2009-era Twitter with no nonsense from The Algorithm and thus far less shit from those who would game the system for their own benefit
Really. Threads, on the other hand, is using Meta's algo and the weapons-grade bollocks that comes with it; semi-professional trolls, idiots who post nonsense "hey are you from Bumfuck, AK? Let's chat!" or "Does anyone here hate Hitler" purey for engagement.
The number of newbie developers and "cybersecurity consultants" posting "AI is great isn't it? Why aren't more people using FOTM IDE #765" and "HTML is a programming language and C is for old farts"-type engagement bait shits me to near death
Give me Bluesky, it's ability to offer "starter packs" (which I used to hook up with the old Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter, as well as Tom Tomorrow and Swift on Security who along with newer goodposters like Jeff Geerling (the Mad Professor of Raspberry Pi) and Jane Manchun Wong (the Nemesis of Waymo driverless taxis and bad UI/UX) does give me hope 🗡️
The reconnection to the UDIC (I still have the Dirty Dozen mailing list after 30 years!) also led me to resolve one of my burning gaming failures:
I never finished Ultima V.
I had it on the Commodore 64 and got to the bottom floor of Doom, had the sandalwood box and everything. But I never took the last step to find Lord British and give him the box, so he could use the Orb and teleport us out of this mouldy hole in the ground, and it's a dreadful decor.
I still have the original disks - but not the Player Disk from my teens. I did grab some .d64s so I could play it emulated, but I also have the complete set of Ultima games on MS-DOS so (also having hosted Ultima IV for 25 plus years) I thought I'd do Ultima IV first.
But given I'd rather not dick around with multiple emulators (C64 - VICE and Amiga - PUAE along with Atari 2600 - Stella and MAME for arcades) I found Launchbox (an excellent management frontend) and that not only did it handle box media, metadata and even some theme tunes but helpfully installed a good multi-core emulator in RetroArch, which managed the heavy lifting away from the above, but allowed me to indulge in installation and running of many old favourites like LodeRunner, Cannon Fodder, Frontier: Elite II (and First Encounters via DOSBox) even in machines I'd not experienced them on myself (Ultima V with music via C128 eumlation, running Amiga games in an emulated A1200 (never available here in my neighbourhood) - it was like a second childhood with extras (newer Kickstarts, faster chips, AGA graphics... 😂
I even got to relive the old Amiga "Guru Meditation" when it crashed.
So not only do I get to relive the mid-80s and early 90s but I get to debug all the old fun stuff just like the old days 🙃
(I wonder if I could get Frontier to guru consistently like my Amiga copy - all I had to do was click on the hyperspace exit I just came through and I'd get the Black and Red Flashing Screen of Death every time)