The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘History’ Category

Early Firefox history thread by @asadotzler on Thread Reader App (from before it was called Phoenix, heck from before Phoenix was created!)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/14

A few years back I bumped in this cool [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @asadotzler on Thread Reader App on early Firefox history (from before it was called Phoenix or Firebird, heck from before Phoenix was created!).

It is important to keep telling these bits of history as they are fundamental to understand the Web Browser landscape as it is now.

Great material that complements Wikipedia articles like these:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Database Development, Development, Firebird, Firefox, History, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

Trip down memory lane: book on p-Code based UCSD Pascal

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/06

Last week I wrote on File scoped namespaces – C# 10.0 draft specifications | Microsoft Learn, promising to write more on p-Code and UCSD Pascal. That’s now (:

I started with [Wayback/Archive] “java byte code” “ucsd” “p-code” – Google Search as I was looking for really old material on this (Java 1.0 versions became available in the 1994-1995 time frame, and a lot of material back then either did not make it to the World Wide Web (which slowly gained popularity around that time, see History of the World Wide Web) or has vanished due to link rot.

The cool thing is that many “new” people are not even aware of p-Code, as the 2019 thread [Wayback/Archive] What do you think about something like Pascal bytecode? shows.

I learned a thing or two from it as well, for instance that there has been a “recent” book on UCSD Pascal:

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Posted in Apple Pascal, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Event, gist, GitHub, History, Internet, link rot, Pascal, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, Standard Pascal, Turbo Pascal, UCSD Pascal, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

Monty Python and the Holy Grail turns 50 – Ars Technica

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/02

It first I thought “I didn’t know they had birthday on my birthday”, but then found out the article [Wayback/Archive] Monty Python and the Holy Grail turns 50 – Ars Technica got published on my birthday.

In fact Monty Python and the Holy Grail got released on 19730403 in London, and towards the end of April in the USA.

Dutch audio fragment of mid april about the anniversary: [Wayback] mp3 on [Wayback/Archive] Erik van Muiswinkel over 50 jaar Monty Python and the Holy Grail | NPO Radio 1 is great.

--jeroen

Posted in About, History, Personal | Leave a Comment »

No, You Are Not Getting a CVE for That (as it rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/25

A great rambling on “It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway” (I really want that printed on a T-Shirt):

[Wayback/Archive] No, You Are Not Getting a CVE for That.

Lot’s of references by [Wayback/Archive] Parsia to great posts by [Wayback/Archive] Raymond Chen mainly on security issues that are not: there is only a vulnerability when you get from the other side of the outside of the airtight hatchway to the inside, not when you are already inside.

And of course this great reference to H2G2 (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), a trilogy in five parts by Douglas Adams:

Arthur: But can’t you think of something?!
Ford: I did.
Arthur: You did!
Ford: Unfortunately, it rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway—
Arthur: oh.
Ford: —that’s just sealed behind us.
Douglas Adams —Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Fit The Second

Via:

--jeroen

Posted in Blue team, Fun, History, Power User, Quotes, Red team, Security | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

My first mobile phone was not a Nokia but a Motorola which I still have just like the first Nokia banana

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/11

A while ago someone asked on Twitter if people had mobile phones in the early 1990’s.

I bought my first GSM phone in 1995. Unlike my other mobile non-smart phones that were from Nokia, this one was from Motorola.

It was the international GSM version of the Motorola MicroTAC series (see picture below) which by then was way more affordable and smaller than the Nokia devices (see Nokia 2010 – Wikipedia and Nokia 2110 – Wikipedia).

This was in the age that world wide there were various competing mobile phone network standards.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, Cellular telephony, GSM, History, Personal, Power User, Telephony | Leave a Comment »

From Turbo Pascal to Delphi to C# to TypeScript, an interview with PL legend Anders Hejlsberg – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/09

Nice historic perspective: [Wayback/Archive] From Turbo Pascal to Delphi to C# to TypeScript, an interview with PL legend Anders Hejlsberg – YouTube

Via [Wayback/Archive] Zack Urlocker on Twitter: “Great interview with @ahejlsberg on the evolution of programming languages, the rise of TypeScript and more. Anders is one of the best programmers I ever worked with. …”

--jeroen

Posted in .NET, Borland Pascal, C#, Delphi, Development, History, JavaScript/ECMAScript, MS-DOS, Pascal, Scripting, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, TypeScript, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Happy 50th birthday Microsoft!

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/04

Some beautiful old Microsoft logo material posted on their Twitter profile in 2021 on its 46 birthday and a few of their tweets:

B&W logo

B&W logo

Colour logo

Colour logo

Looking at the Wayback Machine Archivals of the banner logo, I saw two things:

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Posted in History, Power User, Retrocomputing | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Welcome to #AprilApples! Apple II Computer event celebrated in the month of April

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/01

AprilApples Apple II Computer Event LogoLast year, #Appril][ got rebranded into #AprilApples, so I wish you a happy retro-month filled with April Apples!

[Wayback/Archive] Welcome to #AprilApples! Apple II Computer event celebrated in the month of April

Consider using the [Wayback/Archive] #AprilApples Style Guide with logon on the right, plus Garamond and/or Motter Tektura typeface when possible to really give tribute to the Apple ][ era.


Last year, a big surprise was that Apple Computer put a PDF version of the famous Apple Pascal Poster on the Internet Archive.

So today is a great day to give that more traction and link to it:

A year before, during April][, a remake of that poster got done on AppleFritter: Home[Wayback/Archive] Apple pascal poster, remade | Applefritter

Via [Wayback/Archive] Javmaster@bsky.social: “http://appril2.com/ ” – Mastodon

Fonts:

Images (I used a solid CSS brown background so you can see the difference between the regular logo and the outlined logo):

--jeroen

Posted in //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ///, Apple Lisa, Apple ][, Classic Macintosh, History, Power User | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

ASCII art generator: GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/27

Just in case I ever need ASCII art in a document again:

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree

Via:

--jeroen

Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Encoding, Fun, History, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Embedding a Floppy Emu in a standard APPLE II Floppy Disk Drive – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/25

Interesting modification: [Wayback/Archive] Embedding a Floppy Emu in a standard APPLE II Floppy Disk Drive – YouTube

STL: [Wayback/Archive] FermuAssembly.STL – Google Drive [Wayback] FermuAssembly.STL

Buttons: [Wayback/Archive] 3/4/5-Bit Independent Button Module MCU External Button Module Micro Switch Button Board Bluetooth-compatible Power Amplifier – AliExpress 502

--jeroen

Posted in //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ][, Development, Hardware Interfacing, History, Power User, Retrocomputing | Leave a Comment »