FM Chiptuner and Retro Computer Nerd
https://netnomad.dxcomplex.com

  • 0 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
cake
Cake day: February 21st, 2024

help-circle





  • your mission, should you choose to accept it: 1983. CBS is going to tell you that you only get one disc for your double LP. a deflated Jeff Lynne is just gonna slap A1 on the first side and a few random tracks on the second and be done with it. you cannot let this happen under any circumstances. everything wrong with the world in the last half-century? it all starts with Secret Messages not ending with Hello My Old Friend. if you can fix that, you can save us all

    if you can also convince him to move Loser Gone Wild to the b-side it would greatly help the flow and pacing of the album but that did not have nearly the same level of impact on the space-time continuum so we’ll just file that as a “nice to have”



  • many retro systems have implementations of a language called BASIC, which is about as easy as it sounds. it has some quirks that aren’t transferable to newer languages and you won’t be able to make anything nearly as sophisticated as retail games for the same hardware but if you find modern engines intimidating, it can be a good place to start

    that said, +1 for godot if you want to learn a more modern tool. it’s way simpler than it may seem at first and there is a huge wealth of beginner-friendly tutorials available online


  • assuming reasonable definitions of “new” and “old,” i’d wager there’s been more good old music than good new music for most of human history. it all comes down to numbers- there’s simply more old music than new music! there are factors that i do genuinely think make pop music not as good today as it could be (see: streaming companies), but that’s a rounding error compared to the sheer scale of music history, plus all the bedroom artists making up for anything lacking in today’s pop music.

    that said, if you spend any time focused on a specific period or specific periods, it will not take long to find stinkers, if only because everyone has different taste and you’re bound to find something you just don’t jive with eventually. i’ve been in spaces where people who love classic rock for example review classic rock albums and their analyses are sometimes so brutal you wonder if there’s anything they DO like


  • _NetNomad@kbin.runtoProgramming@programming.dev...
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    rexx is my favorite programming language. it’s an interpreted language similar to python but it has actual visible block delimiters instead of going by indentation. the error handling system is also very convienent. the reason it probably faded into obscurity is it’s wild cowboy take on typing- EVERYTHING is a string until you try to use a math function on it. i get that it’s unrealistic for writing anything performance-sensitive but for writing shell scripts and utilities it is unmatched in it’s simplicity. it definitely comes closer than anything else i’ve ever seen to the COBOL ideal of resembling natural speech. the rexx interpreter was a default feature on the amiga and i think also os/2 but these days it’s really only ever used on mainframes and the few open source implementations for desktops and servers are a bit clumsy which is a real shame



  • even putting aside electronic instruments, modern building tools and materials have allowed some acoustic instruments to shrink. check out “mr curly” for an example- a contrabass clarinet that’s a bit shorter if anything than a soprano clarinet, made out of vinyl tubing. another example is the bass ukelele, an instrument smaller than a bass guitar that aproximates the sound of an upright bass thanks to thick rubber strings. in most cases the traditional form of an instrument is preferred just because of familiarity and knowledge passed down from generation to generation, so in order for something to “take off” it needs to address a specific problem, which for most instruments size is not