Category: UNIXish

Almost all of this was done within 24 hours of the last Lazy Reading.  No idea why there were so many good candidates for reading, but I’m happy about it.

• Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker.  I like the plan he is working towards, though I’m not sure how to implement it for myself.  (via)
• acme-colors, using font faces instead of colors for syntax highlighting in Vim.  I really like this, more than Solarized.   (via previous link)
• There’s a Solarized theme for puTTY?  Found by accident looking up Solarized for the previous link.
• Make the 486 Great Again!  Not found via previous link, just to break the pattern.  (via)
• Gopher: still active.
• Tetris on a business card.
• Life in Unix V7: an attempt at a simple task.  (via)
• UnifrakturMaguntia: a Unicode Fraktur Font.
• Xerox Alto’s 3 Mb/s Ethernet: Building a gateway with a BeagleBone.
• Analog Hard Disk.  (via)
• Reading disks from 1988 in 2018.  I have a linear foot of disks like this.(via)
• “Facebook is done with quality journalism. Deal with it.”
• The Making of Lemmings.  (via)
• Monster Manual, but not the one you remember.  (via)
• VintageCG on YouTube.  (via)
• Amiga.

Last anything for the year!  I packed in as much reading material as I could.

• “Bits, in this case, are actual physical objects.”  About the newest MAME.
• piu-piu-SH, a horizontally-scrolling shooter for the console.  (via)
• Reviving the Apple 410 Color Plotter.  (via)
• Print Color PDF Apple II Print Shop Christmas Cards.  (via)  The microm8 idea sounds interesting overall.
• Computer latency: 1977-2017.  Maybe I need an Apple][ category?
• winss, a process-supervision init system for Windows based on s6, an init system designed for Unixish systems.  (via)
• Repairing a 1960s mainframe: Fixing the IBM 1401’s core memory and power supply.  Nice pictures!  (via)
• The 2018 internet resolution everyone should have: Bring back your browser bar.  (via)
• The Hardest Computer Game of All Time.  (via)
• The text adventures of 1991.
• The little ssh that (sometimes) couldn’t.  (via)
• About the Use of Dot-Slash in Commands.  (also via)
• The Wayland Zombie Apocalypse is Near.  Linked mostly cause I didn’t know Samsung kept an open source blog.  (also via)
• Evil Coding Incantations.  Mentions the wat presentation, which I have linked here before, but if you haven’t seen it…  (also via)

I’m throwing in some end-of-year lists cause now’s the time for it.

• The Best Bandcamp Metal albums of 2017.  #1 on the list, Power Trip, is my new favorite band.
• Polygon’s 50 best videogames of 2017.  Some not-what-you-would-expect games in there.  (via)
• AF_UNIX comes to Windows.  (via multiple sources)
• The Comprehensive List of Window Managers for Unix.  (via)
• Uncle Miod’s Machineroom.  (via a comment in the previous source)
• XScreenSaver 5.38.  Note that the Android release is now a manual download.
• Repairing a 1960s-era IBM keypunch.  (via)
• The Quest for a Desktop email client.  (via multiple)
• ScummVM 2.0 released.  (via)
• Ron Mueck’s Giant Skulls.  I’ve linked to this artist before.
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 2: MUD.
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 3: The Persistent Multiplayer CRPG.
• Vim: My Shiniest Gems  (via)
• How to Setup a Unix News Server (1999).  Nostalgia, at this point.  (via)
• Squinting at ASCII.
• Oops.  (via)

Lots and lots this week!

• Creating a Christmas card on a vintage IBM 1401 mainframe.  (via)
• TIC-80: a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.  (via)
• FPGA-Based Disk Controller for Apple II.  (via)
• 52 weeks of Unix Newsletter.  You too can subscribe.  (via)
• Neural Network on a Commodore 64 (1987).  (via)
• Pancake – a CLI/Emacs web/gopher/file browser.  Linked really because of the gopher mention.  (via)
• File crash consistency and filesystems are hard.
• Computers suck: episode 17787 of 31279.
• What media/pop culture “easter eggs” are format-specific?  (via
• The Internet Archive.  Neat hardware!
• Debugging an evil Go runtime bug.  (via)
• Use pax.  Already installed!  (also via)
• Stuff the kids know and stuff they don’t.
• Internet protocols are changing.  A good summary of what’s coming/here.  (via)
• An epic treatise on scheduling, bug tracking, and triage.

 

Accidental theme this week: the 1990s.

• Normalization of deviance in software: how broken practices become standard.  Matches every place I’ve ever worked.  (via
• The Advent of Void.  I wish someone would do this with BSD packages.  (via)
• wiby, a 90s-only search engine.  (via)
• What Have We Learned from the PDP-11?  (via)
• VPN recommendations.
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 1: Strategy and Simulation.  You will surely have heard of some of these games, even if you never encountered them.
• 90s CD-ROM games.
• The man with a DiscMan.  More 90s.

Your unrelated photo of the week: untitled.

 

Thinkpad theme, I guess.

• More shell, less egg.  (via)
• Rob Pike’s Rules of Programming.  (via)
• What’s behind the Linux umask?  Well, UNIX umask.
• Another ThinkPad Retro sighting.  No Thinklight?  Well, maybe it’s backlit.
• Thinkpad X62. (via)
• “HTML email, was that your fault?”
• Vim Hates You.  (via)
• The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page!  (via)
• X and NeWS history.  “As the guy who single-handedly prevented X from becoming an ANSI standard…”(also via)

 

 

I finally used up my overflow links.

• Dusty Decks: Preserving historic software.  (via)
• Moore’s Law, from Rodney Brooks and from ACM.  (via)
• All you need to know about Unix environment variables.
• A Unix Person’s Guide to PowerShell.  (via)
• Nodes of Yesod: ZX Spectrum Next – developer blog episode 2.
• Steve Jackson’s Ogre rumbles onto PC in October.  Linked solely because I found the original asymmetric board game fascinating.  And never played it.
• Getting an Amiga 1000 Online.  (via)
• How to Hand Letter Like an Architect.  I took several technical drawing classes … 20 years ago?  It still affects my handwriting.
• Debugging DNS.  (via)
• Best option for modern X server on Windows?
• books chapter nine
• Carry a Little More to Waste a Little Less.  Good advice, but get a folding utensil set; it’s much easier to deal with.
• The HERE IS key.  (via)

Your odd video link of the week: what if the Doctor Who theme was composed by John Carpenter, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, or Tangerine Dream?  (via)

Apparently this is the week where I comment about my links.

• The Internet of Things – A disaster for no good reason.  Comparison of old smoke detectors vs. new.  You may already have an inkling of the outcome.(via)
• Powershell 6.0 Roadmap.  Interesting because it’s both Microsoft admitting people want a shell, and it’s Microsoft committing to creating a cross-platform shell.
• RFC8200: A revision of IPv6.  (via)
• 50 days of postmarketOS.  (via)
• The State of Developer Ecosystem in 2017.  Jetbrains-customer specific, probably, but: note how many developers don’t use version control or issue trackers.  It seems like those would be the most elemental tools?  (via)
• DOS Game System Project.  Real hardware, not emulated.
• AmigaOne X5000 review: The beloved Amiga meets 2017.  (via)
• This 10-Pound Keyboard From The 1980s Is Making A Comeback.   The urge for buckling-spring keyboards hits the mainstream.  (via)
• Linguistics and Programming Languages.  (via)
• Unix-like personal webpage.  I like the scanline effect.  (via)
• moving to https.
• Ask HN: What tools do you use to manage your life?
• What is a fantasy map?  A scholarly article at the British Library.  (via)
• Fantasy Cities, a Javascript city map generator.  (also via)
• Do people write insane code with multiple overlapping side effects with a straight face?
• Kingsway, a mix of a Win95 desktop and a fantasy roguelike.  (via)

Your unrelated animated GIF of the week: I find this …  Inspirational?  Hilarious?

 

There’s some meaningful links buried in here, among the trivia.

• Undefined Behavior in 2017.
• Unix’s mysterious && and ||.
• Almost one and a half billion seconds since 1970.
• The 555 chip storage ottoman.  (via)
• Avery’s laws[1] of wifi reliability.  (via)
• 48-Year-Old Multics operating system resurrected.  (via)
• Why I Hate Slack and You Should Too.  (via)
• Big Fucking TV can’t find the Fucking Shit Router.  (via)
• XScreenSaver 5.37 is out.  XScreenSaver makes for some fun live backgrounds in Android, I found.
• The Emacs Operating System.  (via)
• Block-breaking game in vim 8.0.  (via)
• Old school PC fonts.  (via)
• A rift in the NTP world.  (via)
• Roland McGrath bows out as glibc maintainer.  30 years is a long time.  (via)
• Hyperproductive development.  (via)
• The earliest known versions of Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler.  (via)