Blog

Catalina Scripting

In particular:

Quartz Composer
Deprecations
Starting in macOS 10.15, the Quartz Composer framework is deprecated and remains present for compatibility purposes. Transition to frameworks such as Core Image, SceneKit, or Metal. (50911608)

Tragic but unsurprising. None of those are even remotely a replacement, being machine-level programming tools, not a graphical tool for assembling a graphics or sound workflow. But there's probably almost nobody using QC anymore, because Apple neglects it and won't promote any dev tools except horrible goddamned walking abomination Xcode.

Script Editor
Known Issues
Script Editor might quit unexpectedly when saving or executing scripts. (50470730)
Scripting Language Runtimes
Deprecations
Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages. If your software depends on scripting languages, it’s recommended that you bundle the runtime within the app. (49764202)
Use of Python 2.7 isn’t recommended as this version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include Python 2.7. Instead, it’s recommended that you run python3 from within Terminal. (51097165)

More of the same, increasingly neglected non-Xcode tools.

Killing python2 is great. It's not clear if python3 will be included standard, or if you have to find that somewhere else.

On my old blog, I had a post "Macs Make Programmers", where I talked about all the great scripting languages and tools included in OS X, including Xcode back when it wasn't broken junk. Timmy Cook's Apple is making that very difficult.

So basically the first thing you need to do on a Mac is install MacPorts, sudo port install python3 and so on.

On the bright side:

This is a massive step up in security and usability. I was a long-time ksh user on HP-UX, Atari ST MiNT, and OS/2, switched to bash for Linux back in '95-ish, and went along with bash on OS X, even though the original default was tcsh. I switched to zsh in 2014, after the bash shellshock bug; and it was long overdue. Apple can't follow the current bash versions because they're under poisonous GPLv3, so even with shellshock patched it's still not safe. zsh is reasonably current and MIT-licensed so it can stay current.

You want one reason to switch right now?

F="foo bar"
rm $F

In bash, that removes two files, "foo" and "bar". In zsh, it removes one file, "foo bar" (you can get the Bash-like behavior of expanding args by rm $(echo $F), probably some other ways).

The Machine Stops

The problem with the Internet… and here I'm referring to (sweeps hand across everything in view) all of this, but to take just current events Google blocking ad-blockers in Chrome, Google downtime locking people out of their Nest thermostats and "Home"-controlled security systems, horrible prisons of the mind like Twitter and Facebook, and the cacophony of Fediverse drama over Eugen adding features (better features are already in Pleroma and glitch-soc Fediverse servers), Gab forking Mastodon, client devs making unilateral decisions to block domains despite helpless users complaining, or anyone having "free speech" (which Eugen in particular is opposed to; I strongly advise against using mastodon.social, find another instance). These are just a point-in-time examples, it's been going on for decades (oh, USENET, how we don't miss your flamewars) and will only end with us.

… is people using software they didn't write themselves. No understanding, education, or discipline required. Just install something and it works! It's a product, not a skill! But they don't know how, or why, or why they should not.

"It didn't take any discipline to acquire", in the words of Ian Malcolm/Michael Crichton.

Until the software they rely on shuts down, literally like E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops", and then weak unskilled mole-people crawl out of the wreckage of machines they never learned to understand, make, or repair, and then die.

My solution is drastic but logically unavoidable: No more software installs. As a child, you get a bare machine with nothing but a machine-language monitor. You learn ML first. You type in a language compiler or interpreter. You build up your own tools. We return to type-in program listings like Compute!, but no binary blobs, it must all be readable, comprehensible source, with design and implementation documentation.

If you want to share software, you need to build up your toolchain to that point yourself. Hopefully by then you've learned to read all patches you install.

Should this be extended to all technology? Information technology has the unique ability to coerce how and what you think; an automobile or an antibiotic does not. There's an argument (in "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long", for instance) that a citizen should be able to make all their own things, "specialization is for insects". But insects are the most successful clade on Earth, and will long outlive us; some specialization is probably acceptable, as long as it's not in the part that controls how you think.

I don't think this civilization can ever do that, it will not make hard changes that inconvenience anyone. I think this horrible Machine will lumber on a few more decades and then we'll all die from it. But maybe isolated tribes will survive, or intelligence will arise in the Machines, or in a few million years another intelligence will evolve, and build new things the right, responsible way. Their history books will describe us as being as foolish and self-destructive as the Easter Islanders.

Sigil Unleashed on Unready World

Couple months late (delayed by the pre-order goodies), but it seems scenic; I toured E5M1 and E5M2 on easy mode for babies, but now I need to restart at a real difficulty.

Like Romero's E1M4, it's way too dark. Just groping thru black spaces. It wouldn't make the levels worse to have a little better visibility.

I love the shoot-the-eyeball mechanic for switches. The standard Doom switches where you shove your face in a wall and then a bunch of walls open up is still kind of annoying.

I play Doom maybe once a year, and even after 26 years it takes me only a couple seconds to get my groove back, start weaving and shooting like a pro again. Gonna make a few runs at it this weekend, see if I can get thru.

The Thing with the Crank

"… project called, coincidentally, PLAYDATE. Got our fancy-pants federally registered trademark and everything. …
When our dumb thing launches, I feel there's a very real possibility people will start confusing your thing with our thing, and that will be really annoying for your thing. So ideally, I think it'd be best if your Playdate either tweaked its name … or otherwise came up with a totally different and unique name."
—Cabel Sasser in 2018 email, shown in twitter thread

I've been on the receiving end of name-thieving before, and it's always like that. "We have this trademark (LAWSUIT). We'd love to find a way to work together (LAWSUIT) and you could change your name (LAWSUIT), we wouldn't consider changing ours for a hot second (LAWSUIT)." I've had at least 3 names squatted by jackasses with lawyers. One contrary case: My very old doorgame and early CRPG experiment Delver conflicted with the name of some game company's internal engine, made 5-10 years later; no lawyers were contacted at least on my end, but I don't make new products called Delver, either.

Panic had a year to notice this and other prior uses, and change their name. Of course, they also had 4 years not to ship a black & white screen and a crank which doesn't even power it like the first OLPC laptop.

Maybe MadCatz will make a light & magnifier for it.

(this isn't the all-Panic-Playdate news network, but the weekend's been slow)

It Has a Crank All Right

It's being fellated by the usual MacMacs:

"This is fucking amazing."

But, it's… a small, ugly, awkward, yellow toy with a pointless crank, and a black & white non-backlit screen at about twice the resolution of the original GameBoy of 30 years ago. It has 12 unknown games, and may never have any more. For this, they want $149.

Is this a late April Fool's?

Meanwhile, you can get a MyArcade handheld console for $17 with 308 NES/SNES-type games; I can turn it on, pick a game at random, and have fun for 10 minutes, forever. You can get a RasPi setup for $60 which'll be a better home game console, or an M5Stack with gameboy face for $55; sadly the PocketCHIP which came with PICO-8 preinstalled is out of business, but it was $60 or less, too. Any of these are technically better, have more games, and are more programmable (I haven't pulled the MyArcade apart yet, but it presumably has an SD card inside…)

From now on, when someone announces a stupid product, I'm just gonna add "And it has a crank on the side!"

Support Me on Patreon!

With the BBS going public, and soon a real release of Perilar Fallen Kingdom, it's time for you to help me keep doing this!

Become a Patron!

I'd at least like to get my hosting costs under control, and anything over that goes to me making cool games and apps for art, instead of boring things to survive.

Mystic Dungeon BBS Update

I just added a doorgame conversion of Lost Treasure to Mystic Dungeon BBS; just go into the Door Games menu and hit L. Just a little toy to compete on the high score list.

Mystic Dungeon doorgame got a new patch, mostly just fixing display bugs, but I've nerfed poisons & paralysis to scale by damage inflicted; I'll see how that works in higher-level play, it may need another patch, so carry an antidote if you're cautious (you can get them from the alchemist in the NE of town). It's a fun, hard little RPG, I can get down to level 2 and 3 now, though that's very very dangerous; I'm nearly Level 3. Once anyone nears Level 4 legit, I'll add some more magic spells.

I'd like to see more competition; log in every day and do your 96 turns, and you can progress pretty fast. I like the turn limit, it prevents anyone (self included) from grinding for hours and jumping up the board unfairly.

I'm in progress at getting my Scheme text adventure completed, and then I'll doorgame convert it, and it'll go in the doors, too.

I need to look again at the file upload system, or maybe replace that entire feature with a script so you can browse files sanely.

Been pretty quiet, got a few users from Fediverse, but after doing some stability testing and system updates, I think it's in good shape now to advertise on /r/bbs, probably tomorrow morning.

The Best SF Author of All Time

So, I can't actually pick one, or even rank ten, but by decade (when they made the works most important to me) it's down to a short list:

  • 1830s: Edgar Allen Poe
  • … long empty stretch …
  • 1890s: H.G. Wells
  • … shorter empty stretch …
  • 1930s: H.P. Lovecraft
  • 1940s: A.E. Van Vogt
  • 1950s: H. Beam Piper, Clifford Simak
  • 1960s: Brian Aldiss, Robert A. Heinlein, Zenna Henderson, Frank Herbert, Andre Norton
  • 1970s: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Katherine Kurtz, Fritz Leiber, Anne McCaffrey, Michael Moorcock, "James Tiptree, Jr", Roger Zelazny
  • 1980s: Mary Gentle, William Gibson, Elizabeth Moon, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, Walter Jon Williams
  • 1990s: Pat Cadigan, Greg Egan, Neal Stephenson
  • 2000s: Neal Asher, Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds
  • 2010s: Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire), Martha Wells

I can make an argument for almost any of them to be "my favorite" depending on mood, but Piper might be the winner in a bracket contest. I suspect I'd get down to something like Piper vs. Egan and my head would explode trying to compare Space Viking with Diaspora.

My first pass at this, there were only 3 female authors (Pat Cadigan, Mira Grant, and Martha Wells). Several were only fantasy: Which I think less of, but I do read—and Leiber and Moorcock's science fiction are not their best works.

Many only had a few great books or short stories surrounded by a giant midlist of dullness, but that's also why Niven, Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Iain M. Banks, Dan Simmons, and Poul Anderson never made it. Several I do list produced dullness after their peak, like Gibson objectively only wrote one short story collection & 2 thin novels worth reading, one should not read McCaffrey's post-trilogy extended sequels, and anything Stephenson wrote after The Diamond Age needed an aggressive editor to cut out about 2/3 of his text. And yet many continue to write exactly what I like, decades later.

The '60s-'80s really produced a LOT of SF I liked. Was it objectively better? Or was it just "the golden age of SF is 12" which was 1982, so I read what was still in print?