Bits and PCs - a Computers and Tech Miscellany

[ceptimus]

I just uploaded my entry to Logiker's Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge 2024

As in previous years, I did my entry on a Commodore 64 (actually an emulator running on a PC), and as in previous years, I hope that when the results are announced my entry will be no more than twice the size of the winning one.

I hope other people will enter this year. Please respect the organizer's rules and don't discuss the approach you used, the size of your code, etc. until after the results are announced soon after Christmas. Before the results, it's okay to post something like, "This year, my entry was on an Atari 800, in BASIC", but no other details.

https://youtu.be/3q5ZWJmMhgQ

[Ensign Steve]

Hmmm... In his pictures, the presents look square, but in my terminal, using the same characters, they are twice as tall as they are wide. Did vintage terminals have a more square character shape? Do you think it makes a difference?

        \O/
+--------+--------+
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
+--------+--------+
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
!        !        !
+--------+--------+

I can pad it with spaces, but that adds to my byte count

                \O/
+- - - - - - - - +- - - - - - - - +
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
+- - - - - - - - +- - - - - - - - +
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
!                !                !
+- - - - - - - - +- - - - - - - - +

[ceptimus]

I think you should use eight spaces, or hyphens, separating the ! or + characters, and eight spaces or ! characters vertically, separating the + or - chars.

Most of the classic 8-bit home 'game' computers of the 80s used an 8x8 on-screen font with square pixels, but in past vc3 competitions, people have done entries on old systems that used teletypes for output and didn't have VDUs at all. It's the characters that matter, not the aspect ratio of the characters or how that might stretch the output to a rectangle instead of a square.

You could always put in a second entry in the 'fun' category with the padding characters. When Logiker posts his results videos, it's the rare or oddball systems that always generate the most interest - not the actual smallest winning entries. And even on the common computers for the contest, like the Commodore 64, some people will put in entries with fancy animations and sound - they won't bother about code size at all.

Remember that rule zero is to have fun!

[ceptimus]

The interesting thing in past years has been how clever some of the entries have been. I've spent hours tweaking my program to save a few bytes here and there, but then the winning entry has used a completely different and unexpected algorithm to generate the same output with code of half the size. Sometimes I've been unable to understand the winning entry - even though it's only a few tens of bytes long.

I did an entry in FORTH one year that worked in base 17. People liked that one, but it was nowhere near the winner. Last year I used BASIC on the C64. No one using the same got under half my code size, which was a relief. The winner one year used assembly with self modifying code and also undocumented opcodes for the microprocessor. His entry was tiny. How he ever worked it out was a mystery to everyone.

[ceptimus]

I spent most of Christmas Eve coding up an entry for the 'wild' category. Also done on a Commodore 64, and also purely in BASIC. It's a real messy hack, and not even pretty to watch. It was, however, more interesting to me than the rubbish and repeats that have been on TV all day!

I think tomorrow, Christmas day, is the last day to make entries, then we'll have to wait till Logiker has done all the work of assessing the entries, and producing his 'results' video.

[ceptimus]

Logiker has scheduled his YouTube results video for tonight (December 28th) at 7PM CET.

Logiker's Christmas Challenge VCCC 2024 - The...

It's about three hours after the time of this post. Of course, you don't have to watch it 'live', and the same link should work afterwards.

Edit: I wasn't beaten as badly as in previous years. My C64 BASIC entry was 88 bytes (file size), and the smallest C64 BASIC one only beat it by 8 bytes. I've not checked out that entry yet to see how it was done.
There were assembler entries that were less than 44 bytes, and even smaller ones in FORTH and APL. Logiker's own code in APL was the shortest, but wasn't allowed as an entry by the organizer.

[ceptimus]

My 'wild' entry won a prize! An online edition of a magazine.
The entry was like an ASCII snake game, except the snake was steered by bouncing off on-screen barriers, instead of using a joystick or buttons. By means of some carefully positioned barriers and snake food, I arranged for it to eventually draw out the Christmas present shape.

[Ensign Steve]

L.A. County sheriff's dispatch system still down after New Year's Eve crash - Los Angeles Times

It's Y2K 2.0. Apparently some institutions (LA County Sheriff's Department being one of them) dealt with Y2K by just mapping the years 00 to 24 to 2000 to 2024, figuring that gave them an extra quarter century to deal with the problem. And then forgot.

[seebs]

vintage terminals did in fact tend to have tall characters, usually close-ish to 2:1 ratios.

[ceptimus]

Here's a YouTube video of my entry. There's a download link for the program in the video description if anyone wants to try it out. I found out yesterday that my entry also won a signed copy of the book 81 hires games for the 1K ZX81 by Johan "Dr Beep" Koelman

Link to the book on Amazon.co.uk

- YouTube

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

In case you didn't yet have a reason to join Bluesky, Amanda Palmer is there.

[image or embed]

— Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 6:43 PM

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

oh wow, didn't know about the allegations.

My heros are dead.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

oh wow, didn't know about the allegations.

My heros are dead.

Spill.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Married to Gaiman has its complications.

[maddog]

I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon. My current one is a Dell Inspiron 15. I don't remember how old it is, but I think I remember it came with Windows 8, until I was forced to upgrade to Windows 10. It is probably full of viruses and whatnot. It does everything very slowly. Among things I like about it is 3 USB ports (I had wanted 4), and it has a touch screen. I use it for writing Word documents, making Excel spreadsheets, email, online banking, reading a couple of blogs I like, and YouTube. I'm not much of a gamer. I play tame games like puzzle games and mahjongg solitaire.

Any advice, o computer savvy ones?

[BrotherMan]

I am not so much in touch with what's hot and what's not for like the last decade or so. BUT, even still, being a mediocre white middle aged man I absolutely have opinions that I simply must share with anyone who I can force to listen to me.

Since you don't have a very specialized need you could probably walk into whatever computer store you want and shop by vibes alone. However that manifests for you. By looks, by familiar brand, or price and walk away with something you probably won't be mad about.

I just looked at the CostCo site, to see what was there. Vibing by brand familiarity on my part I'd try to steer into Lenovo or Acer. They do have touchscreen models - which was the only sort-by check I used, thinking you at least wanted that feature. There's a good spread of what's available.

I'm not saying buy only from that store. It was just to look at what numbers (price and capability) there for comparison.

[JoeP]

I have been very happy with my current HP but I won't advise you on a specific model - mine was high end with lots and lots of memory (for the time I bought it at least).

[viscousmemories]

I sold my soul to Apple some years ago and I have not regretted it. I have iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Macbook and they all just work and work together seamlessly. Even if I didn't use a smartphone, tablet, or TV box I would still prefer the Macbook to any PC. I like never thinking about my computer's operating system.

[maddog]

I am not an Apple fan but for ordinary reasons like 1) I didn't grow up with computers in school, 2) my first computer was a Commodore64, which I could hardly get to do anything, 3) I learned PC first, and 4) although I had an iPad at one time and liked it for some things, (a) its "intuitive and easy logic" was neither for me, (b) in that particular time frame, you had to have Flash to watch YouTube, but the iPad didn't support Flash, so no YouTube, which was one of the most important things I wanted the tablet for (I understand that particular issue no longer applies), (c) Apple was very proprietary about its systems and programs, so PC and iPad did not play well together (I understand that's also improved over time), besides being a bit snootier and more expensive than PC, and (d) my car was broken into at the Wilderness Park, and the backpack with the iPad in it was stolen. So my experience with Apple products was relatively brief.

Excuses, excuses.

[specious_reasons]

A MacBook Air is probably the best casual use laptop you can get. The M series chips are shockingly fast and the battery is likely to last all day, multiple days with very casual use, and will do everything you want.

I don't have a specific recommendation for a PC laptop. I like Lenovo in general, but I'd pick anything you like that reviews well.

[Crumb]

I'm no expert, but my last two laptops have been Asus and they have been great quality. I don't know if they have touch screens. I am typing this on a Asus Vivobook that I got a few years ago that is still in tip top shape. I like to make them last to the bitter end.

[LarsMac]

ASUS makes top notch machines.
This one was my Son in-law's gamer, he drove it into the ground with no maintenance, no security, no updates until it all but died, on him.
I offered to take a look at it. Holy shit, it was (not) running Win 7, and had never had an update, there we several malware thingies, all fighting over the thing.
I tossed the drive and installed a new one, got a New disc reader, added another 4G mem. brought it up to Win10 Set up WebRoot, got all the drivers updated, and got it ready to give it back to him, and he up and died on us.
So, I kept it.
WinDoze says it won't support Win 11. Maybe, I will try Linux (is that still a thing?) when they force 11 on us. I dunno. Be a shame to toss it because of Microsoft.

[ceptimus]

Linux definitely is still very much a thing, and is my daily driver.

If you're coming from Windows, try out Linux Mint first. Download the latest stable Cinnamon edition ISO, and use Balena Etcher to write that ISO to a USB memory stick (16 GB or bigger).

Set your bios to boot from external drives, and you can then try out Mint, direct from the thumb drive, without affecting your hard disk at all. It runs a bit slow from USB, but quite usable.

If you like it, you can then choose the install option to install it properly on your hard disk - either replacing Windows, or repartitioning the drive and installing it alongside Windows in a dual boot configuration, assuming you have sufficient empty disk space.

[JoeP]

I too am using Linux daily. In my case the Kubuntu distribution - I'm a fan of the KDE desktop which it includes.

[LarsMac]

Interesting.
OK, then.
I have a couple of other laptops, and even a couple extra HDs laying about.
Guess it's time to shift gears bring the old techy out of hibernation.
[back in the 70s and 80s, I was that techy nerd. Built my own stereo system, built my first desktop x86, built a couple more, but when I got a job that was troubleshooting, and fixing other folks' systems i lost time to do my own shit, and after thirty years of that, I got lazy. Now time what I have the most of. Time to get busy.]