Category: Conventions

Almost all links from saved emails instead of RSS, for once.

• The history of Alt+number sequences, and why Alt+9731 sometimes gives you a heart and sometimes a snowman.
• Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firm.  (via)
• Entering text in the terminal is complicated.  (via)
• PySkyWiFi: completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights.  (via)
• A Mini Monitor for a Pi.  (via)
• July 19th: Will Wright interviews Chaim Gingold, author of “Building
  SimCity”.  Note the reversal.
• It’s Easy. But Is It Easy Enough?  Not necessarily advocating this.
• What You Get After Running an SSH Honeypot for 30 Days.  (via)
• Culinary Bibliographic Metadata.  The standards for library info look to me like a good example of a standard that evolved based on users, not commercial influence.  (via)
• Related: Working with ACSM Files on Linux.
• BSDCan 2024 on video.  Set aside time for watching these.  (via)

What’s the history of Cinco de Mayo?  (updated since last linked in 2016.)

• SNOBOL, ICEBOL, SPITBOL, et al.
• What is Computer Science?  (via)
• Live performance of Blur’s Song 2 on a modular synth.
• A history / greatest hits of dedications and footnotes.  (via)
• How I search in 2024.  Saved for the links.  (via)
• Some nice UOttowa rooms are available for BSDCan.
• A Thousand Suns.  Original sci-fi shorts.  (via)
• Announcing the long-awaited Links relaunch.  Good links, from where I grew up.
• Type-in.  I am assuming you know the text being parodied.
• Practical Vim command workflow.  Complex but useful steps.  (via)
• pcrowDoodle, my “desirable difficulty” laptop.  (via)
• Time is an illusion, Unix time doubly so…  I plan to be out of the computing field by the end of 2037 no matter what.

Your unrelated music of the week: you bet from Drass, an artist previously linked here as Shardcore.  (via)

No theme this week.

• BSDCan papers submissions close tomorrow – get yours in.
• Next NYCBUG meeting, March 6: NetBSD for the Advanced Minimalist.  Traveling and working with only a Pinebook.
• Anatomy of a Hollerith Card.
• More stories about the famously idiosyncratic author of that previous link, David Mills.  (via)
• Hypertext emerges from his well to shame the tech industry.
• Add coffee stains to LaTeX documents.  (via)
• What is a terminal-based game you’ve played that’s worth mentioning?
• Understanding phonetic symbols.  Written for IBM but talks about a standard.
• D100 sheets.  I enjoy just reading these.  (via)
• Nuclear Engineering Wall Charts.  (via)

Old hardware – really old – minitheme.

• ARCC tickets 30% off with code CH3AP.
• Fun with DNS TXT Records.  Password storage, bizarre but hilarious.  (via)
• The BSDCan 2024 page is up.
• The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard.  (via)
• Decker, Hypercard clone that builds web pages.  (via)
• User Manual for Babbage’s Difference Engine #2.  Which exists.  And you can build it.  Or 3D print it.  (via)
• Saturn V Apollo Flight Configuration.  Poster to print.  (via)
• Fake mainframe, real lights and switches.
• The strange world of Japan’s PC-98 computer.  Linked cause I remember seeing “PC-98” in I think the FreeBSD installer.  (via)

Half a year til Christmas!

• Software written in B.  C’s predecessor, revived – follow the whole thread for tools.
• History that I didn’t know: at one point the U.S. Department of Defense had its own Unix, supported by Ford, the car company.
• BSDNow at BSDCan.
• writefreesoftware.org.  (via)
• Three Challenges to Contribute Back to Open Source.  The not-code-but-essential parts.  (via)
• Netnews, the origin story.  (PDF, via)
• I asked ChatGPT to write a pf.conf to spec, 2023-06-07 version.   “if Skynet ever came into existence for real it would be unreachable”
• Operating Systems, Transit and Cultural Influences.
• 50 Years of Text Games: the games.  This is a treat.
• You can still buy hardware upgrades for your Mac Portable.
• A comparison of text-based browsers.  (via)
• Related: text-only websites.
• When Zeppelins Ruled the Earth.