Rachel Stantz @arjache@awoo.space
- Pronouns
- she/they
- Languages
- ENG/ESP/日本語
I tell stories.
Joined Apr 2017
Gonna be moving over to @arjache@toot.cat soon. I like awoo.space, but the allowlisting just isn't scaling well these days. I'll be doing the thing that moves follows over automatically. See you on the flip side!
Rachel Stantz
boosted
One first closeup image of another planet was a paint-by-numbers pastel drawing of Mars, done by JPL engineer Richard Grumm using data transmitted from NASA's Mariner 4 probe in July 1965. https://kottke.org/22/12/our-first-closeup-image-of-mars-was-a-paint-by-numbers-pastel-drawing
Rachel Stantz
boosted
Nowadays there are some really impressive dev environments for retro hardware as VS Code extensions. This one for Amiga is my favorite. The latest version has a frame debugger that among other things gives you a full cycle-level trace so you can see the screen output and internal register state after any Copper or DMA command, for example.
Rachel Stantz
boosted
With procedural generation you can save a lot of space for content but did you know that Pitfall! on the Atari 2600 uses one byte (!) to describe a room? Here's the link to an article describing how that works:
https://evoniuk.github.io/posts/pitfall.html
#gamedev #procgen #retro
Rachel Stantz
boosted
Did you know the BBS Documentary site had a massive collection of BBS software I'd collected, that was a bit of a mess?
Well, @f15sim did, and he spent a year on and off helping me get it whipped into cleaner shape, and now the site is even better. Hundreds of BBS software programs from history, here:
this is what I was working on yesterday btw. trying to understand the vector math behind Inkscape’s node smoothing algorithm (the thing that gives you automatic control nodes on bezier curves.) I think I understand it now but it’s still weird.
is orkut on activitypub yet
Rachel Stantz
boosted
To celebrate my calculator app PCalc turning 30 today, I've written up all the history I can still remember:
There's also a rare 30%-off sale, which runs until midnight tonight, PST.
Mac:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pcalc/id403504866
iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pcalc-the-best-calculator/id284666222
A big thanks to everybody who has used PCalc during the last three decades!
Mostly what I’ve been thinking is, gosh I am even worse at geometry now than I was when I was a teenager and actually knew math.
I’m on vacation, so naturally I have spent the past few hours thinking intensely about math.
Rachel Stantz
boosted
concept: ghost ship fedi instance. It only federates with one other instance at a time, and after a random amount has passed, jumps to another at random
I feel like every time there’s been a snowstorm this winter the forecasts have downplayed it and we’ve been ended up with way more snow than was forecasted initially. Most years it’s the other way around. Not sure if it’s just the models or the weather casters trying to be more conservative with their predictions.
Rachel Stantz
boosted
My 11yo expressed interest in #TextAdventures/#InteractiveFiction. I wrote stuff in #Inform years ago but I don’t think that would be his jam (and as beautiful as #Inform7 is I don’t think he’d be able to learn it quickly enough to avoid losing interest).
Does anyone know of good tutorials for #Twine that might be accessible to a bright 11 year old? I’d be happy to help him but I’d love to have something he could also read himself while I’m at work. Thank you!
sometimes I’m like “I should do more to let people know my different social media accounts” or “maybe being on an allowlist-only instance in the middle of a mass migration is a bad idea” but the truth is I’ve been part of many online site diasporas at this point and to be honest I feel like it’s healthy for some percentage of your followship to get shuffled up every 5-10 years
Did mixed nuts ever actually come in cans that looked like the ones full of spring-loaded snakes?
I realize I have the privilege of not needing to market my online presence, but I don’t want a new “global town square.” I’ve spent the past decade feeling a little stressed by the idea of being in the town square. I want to go to the park and watch the birds and play with the dogs.
Rachel Stantz
boosted
I found this backup tape while sorting through boxes — the final resting place of Sound Bytes BBS.
Turns out I can still fire it up in DOSBox and browse through everything as a time capsule.
Though the farewell message suggests the BBS would return in summer of 1996, the world moved on quickly, and the BBS scene — as it was — disappeared just like *that*.
By the time 1996 did roll around, we were busy building our area's first dial-up ISP, and there was no turning back.
I’m sure the writers who are on Substack find some value in the platform, but as a reader I find it incredibly obnoxious. If you want me to read your thing don’t put it behind a modal dialog and don’t ask me to subscribe before I’ve even read anything.
Rachel Stantz
boosted
📅 Happy 32nd Anniversary to Commander Keen!
🔫 Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, the first game in the Commander Keen series, was released on December 14th, 1990 for MS-DOS.
💾 This was the first major platformer for the PC!
Rachel Stantz
boosted
Here are some screen grabs of Nintendo dev tools from the 90s. Made for the Sony NEWS workstation by SRD this software was called CAD-TOOL and 3DCAD. #gamedev #retrogaming
- Pronouns
- she/they
- Languages
- ENG/ESP/日本語
I tell stories.
Joined Apr 2017
