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

With Unicode symbols and the ever rising number of operators, C# sometimes seems steadily to evolve into APL

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/11/27

Finally someone phrased the feeling I had for almost a decade about the ever evolving C#: with the increasing number of operators and allowing Unicode symbols, it is slowly turning into something like APL: harder and harder to read for the majority of C# developers.

[Wayback/Archive] Matthew Crews on Twitter: “@buhakmeh Let’s be honest, we should all just be working in APL”

Via [Wayback/Archive] Khalid Needs A New Car on Twitter: “C# needs more operators.”

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, APL, C#, Development, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Memories of the Twitter Fail Whale that got discontinued 10 years ago (HT @YiyingLu, @failwhale).

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/11/01

From 2008 to fall 2013, Twitter used the Fail Whale, a 2006 artwork by Yiying Lu originally titled “Lifting A Dreamer”, to indicate problems on their site.

Now that it is about a year after Musk burned some 44 milliard USD buying Twitter, it is also 10 years ago they phased out the Fail Whale, so it is a good time to remember it and a reminder to check out how Twitter faired during Elon’s ownership.

With Twitter down, you’d see the image from [Wayback/Archive] Yiying Lu 🐳 🥟🧋 on Twitter: “It has been 10 years since my art piece “Lifting a Dreamer” became the Twitter Fail Whale, a symbol as @Twitter’s service outrage during 2008-2013. It has inspired hundreds, probably thousands, of funny, clever & amusing homages and take-offs from users globally. Here are a few: …”:

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Posted in Delphi, Development, History, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Expositie: 30 jaar Power Unlimited | Beeld & Geluid – 7 t/m 29 oktober 2023

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/10/06

Koop je tickets via [Wayback/Archive] Expositie: 30 jaar Power Unlimited | Beeld & Geluid

Via [Waybacksave/Archive] Martin Verschoor on X: “Zodat je wat te doen hebt de komende herfstvakantie! Speciaal voor jou met 30 (nee, dit is geen toeval) % korting met de code ‘PU2023’”

--jeroen

Posted in Games, History | Leave a Comment »

New in box: Super Serial Card – Apple Computer

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/07/24

Still need to test this out, but I got a new in box “Super Serial Card – Apple Computer

Details: Apple II serial cards – Wikipedia

Apple Computer’s Super Serial Card, sometimes abbreviated as “SSC”, is the most well known communication card made for the Apple II. Apple called it “Super” because it was able to function as both of Apple’s previous cards, the Apple II Communications Card for modem use and the Apple II Serial Interface Card for printer use. A jumper block was used to configure the card for each of the two modes. The card has a maximum speed of 19,200 bit/s and is compatible with both ROM revisions of the Apple II Serial Interface Card. Reliable communications at 9600 bit/s and higher required disabling of interrupts. The card can actually run at 115,200 bit/s as well, using undocumented register settings; but speeds between 19,200 and 115,200 are not possible using this technique. The Super Serial Card was released in 1981 and utilizes the MOS Technology 6551 ACIA serial communications chip.

Manual: [Wayback] a2_Super_Serial_Card_user’s_manual.pdf via [Wayback/Archive.is] Apple II Super Serial Card – Google Search

Image:

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Posted in //e, Apple, Apple ][, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

40th Lisa anniversary last week: download Apple Lisa OS Software version 3.1 source code files

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/30

I missed this because there is no RSS feed for [Wayback/Archive] Art of Code – CHM* (there is an email [Wayback/Archive] Art of Code Subscription, but [Wayback/Archive] Email is so last century • The Register).

Anyway: the Apple Lisa turned 40 last week and to celebrate that, the Lisa OS Software got released to the public through the Computer History Museum. That is: after you accept the [Wayback/Archive] Download Apple Lisa source code files: APPLE ACADEMIC LICENSE AGREEMENT Lisa OS Software version 3.1, or just download [Wayback] d1yx3ys82bpsa0.cloudfront.net/source/lisa-source.zip.

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Posted in 68k, Apple, Apple Lisa, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Some more Compuserve memories

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/20

Some years ago, I wrote CompuServe’s forums, which still exist, are finally shutting down on 20171215.

Getting older and various people passing away made me relive some of the CompuServe memories where I used to be [Wayback/Archive] “100013,1443”.

Semi-offline access software like TapCIS and later OzCIS and OzWin helped lessening the bill of mainly getting to the CompuServe forums BPROGA that hosted Turbo Pascal (and later PASCAL for Borland Pascal plus Delphi), BORGMBH (Borland Germany)  and PCVENB (for Turbo Power Software: a back then – large supplier of tools and libraries – later acquired by a casino software company) learned to know a few TeamB members and other (now) oldies like Neil J. Rubenking.

TeamB members coming to mind: Pat Ritchey, Kurt B. Barthelmess, Rudy Velthuis, David Nottage, Steve Fischkoff, Nick Hodges, Steve Schafer, Paul A. LeBlanc and others (I wish someone had a full list of past members).

Some links:

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

steven ”italian elon musk” monacelli on Twitter: “Master thread of recent suspensions of left leaning accounts under Elon Musk:” / Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/12/16

For my link archive:

[Wayback/Archive] steven ”italian elon musk” monacelli on Twitter: “Master thread of recent suspensions of left leaning accounts under Elon Musk:” / Twitter

Oh, and there was this Mastodon fear from uncle Elmo [Wayback/Archive]:

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Posted in Awareness, History, SocialMedia, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Thinking about you today Paweł

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/12/13

Today it is 5 years ago that Paweł passed away. For me it is hard to believe that I’m still around and this post feels like yesterday: R.I.P. Paweł Głowacki – you will be dearly missed, not just in the Delphi community

Thinking about you today Paweł!

–jeroen

Posted in About, borland, Delphi, Development, Health, History, Personal, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Isotopp’s classic IT book collection

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/09/26

This is too cool!

PSTN, ISDN, data communication, networking, Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, C, C++, Unix, Linux you name ancient but relevant stuff and it is there.

  1. [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “Ich hab hier diese …… “
  2. [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “Exotische Sprachen sind exotisch. Aus dem Postscript-Buch hab ich immerhin noch eine Signature bekommen. … “

Some pictures below the signature.

The isotopp and PostScript explanation is in my post How isotopp became the online handle of Kristian Köhntopp.

Via: [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “Weird Books: … “

–jeroen

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Posted in History, Retrocomputing | Leave a Comment »

History of ASCII Art

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/09/01

Geocities is long dead, but luckily a lot has been archived: [Wayback] Archive.is: History of ASCII Art with a very comprehensive history ranging from ancient old hand painted art to contemporary computer made illustrations.

Via: [Wayback/Archive.is] ASCII art: The roots of ASCII art

--jeroen

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