Author: mdhughes

Yes, gen-most-important-ever

Yes, gen-most-important-ever, you invented protests and they change the world, which is why the '60s flower power protests ended all war, and '80s protests ended Apartheid (not the sanctions and Nelson Mandela's followers), and '90s-'00s protests ended global trade. ?

Hypercard! The Software Tool of Tomorrow!

Encouraging people to write & submit new Hypercard stacks. Which, as a retro-tech challenge, I think is great. But. How about first having a decent modern Hypercard environment?

Why not? There's the classic John Gruber hit piece Why Hypercard Failed:

"Apple PR says it's a dead product so it doesn't matter if you like it! I like the Yankees who are also a bullshit PR project!"
—semantic analysis of all Gruber's posts produced this summary.

Stanislav (not a pleasant or generally useful person to me, but perhaps correct for once), had a different read of Why Hypercard Had to Die:

The reason for this is that HyperCard is an echo of a different world.  One where the distinction between the “use” and “programming” of a computer has been weakened and awaits near-total erasure.  A world where the personal computer is a mind-amplifier, and not merely an expensive video telephone.  A world in which Apple’s walled garden aesthetic has no place.

Apple did have a near-Hypercard tool, Dashcode, which was slightly more technical but not much; it auto-generated placeholder functions and you'd fill them in with JS and use local storage as your database. They never fully supported it, killed it, and pushed Xcode instead, which is like giving kids a backfiring nailgun with no safety instead of a plastic hammer. Now they're ludicrously trying to teach kids BDSM Swift with the lldb debugger repackaged as "Playgrounds". I feel so sad for a kid whose first experience of programming is 100s of "unable to satisfy template constraint" errors; that's some hard unyielding playground equipment there.

There's a few modern variants, but nothing I know of that works:

  • Uli Kusterer's Stacksmith is unfinished, has no binary download or web site, and the build instructions are very pro-dev. Last time I tried it I couldn't get it to build, so…
  • SuperCard is $180/$280. Ha ha… uh, no.
  • HyperNext Studio is based on RealBASIC, and is free, but rarely updated. Does not run classic Hypercard stacks.

So everyone just gives up and uses emulation, because making a new Hypercard is impossible. If you're going to do that, do it the easy way:

Mainmenu

I revived & updated an old JS tech demo and I'm starting to add tools (and very trivial games, if I feel nostalgic).

Mainmenu

I wrote the first version of this in BASIC back around 1980-2, and I've been using my Python version with more tools, but this is prettier.

What I'm Watching: Death in Paradise

  • Death in Paradise: Dorkiest of all dorky English dork DIs Dick Poole is sent to a Carribean island to solve the weekly mystery murders with sexy local DI Camille Bordey and goofy island cops (Dwayne is Danny John-Jules, Cat of Red Dwarf fame!). Too perfectly fit puzzles, no random craziness, but good comfort watching.

    [Update 2018-03-07] S3 replaces Dick with Humphrey Dogood or some such, hapless and disorganized, almost a parody of a detective, and many eps use repetitive flashbacks, and people standing next to people monologuing, rather than conversations. The supposed screenwriter in one ep is writing a script full of novel-like editorializing, rather than an actual script, which suggests to me they fired all the writers and hired amateurs. Looking at the list of episodes backs that up; eps not written by Robert Thorogood are mostly dire. The appearance of Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon!) is a nice surprise. I miss '80s TV shows that would recycle actors constantly.

?

Many Coffee Machines on Ix. New Machines.

My new coffee buddy, Ninja CF087. I can't be trusted to make french press first thing in the morning. 4 size settings by 4 brew densities, and a timer, for $99 at Bed Space Above & Beyond. Also, comes with a milk frother and a 135-page book of recipes for coffee drinks and foods. That's a dangerous way to feed my habit.

First half-pot on "rich" is only ★★★½☆, drinkable and strong but not the tastiest, but that's as much because I'm at the tail end of a bag of beans. I think it'll be better with new beans.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shakes,
The shakes become a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
—Mentat scribe Mark Stein

☕️