Dough Falling On Cedars
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Ken McLeod
@_the_cloud@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Retired software engineer. ☁️ @
"That's a lot of old computers."
雲に吠える老人
356 Followers
194 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 17, 2024
Replying to
@i0null@infosec.exchange Hey, don't be dissin' Larry. His service record is long and distinguished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_(cat)
Steve Wozniak presents Liza Loop with a replica Apple I computer, 50 years after he presented her with the first Apple 1 off the line, serial number 1.
#retrocomputing #vcfwest
SUCCESS! Finally got the Macintosh 512Ke on #GlobalTalk ! I couldn't find a Phone Net box with a DB9 connector, and my attempts to bodge one together weren't working. Picked up a DB9 LocalTalk connector for less than $10. Now I'm ready for next year's #MARCHintosh , or #Apriltosh , or maybe #AprilApples (though I think LocalTalk only worked on the IIgs.)
Stop Draggin' My Butt Around
Replying to
@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @catsalad@xantronix.social Came here for Willie, was not disappointed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tXHLZOruNQ
There's Nary An Animal Alive That Can Outrun A Greased Scotsman
The Gruyere Crack'd From Side To Side
King of Queens Who Married Henry VIII
Replying to
Express Yourself (Anal Gland Remix)
Replying to
@moonrabbit You may need the following important information from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations! https://autonomous.zone/@lake/116495038081993639
(EDIT: corrected source. It's UNFAO, not USDA.)
Replying to
@kottke@mastodon.social Imagine typesetting a newspaper, à la "Farewell ETAOIN SHRDLU," with hot potato-based type. Every night, fresh racks of letters have to be cut out and assembled into lines. At the end of the shift, the whole print shop smells like delicious, forbidden french fries. Some workers can't resist the lure and nibble on a handful of heavily-used serif fonts before leaving for the bar, ending up with the usual diseases later in life.
Replying to
@Cdespinosa Congratulations, although I think your 50-year service award will be a much more elite achievement.
I remember one of the internal channels had a discussion about employees who had spent over 50% of their life working at Apple (it's more than you might think!) Of course, Chris led that metric as well. :)
Replying to
@synlogic4242@social.vivaldi.net @a2_4am@mastodon.social You can try Mariani (a Mac version of the AppleWin emulator) here: https://github.com/sh95014/AppleWin/releases
There is also OpenEmulator, which hasn't been updated for a long while but is still very nice: https://archive.org/details/OpenEmulatorSnapshots
Replying to
@box464 Is it merely a delicious coincidence that one of the longest-serving Doctors was played by Tom BAKER?
Replying to
@MaryAustinBooks Peter Cushing (a.k.a. Grand Moff Tarkin) is not the person that Darth Vader "chokes later on" -- that was Admiral Motti, whose lack of faith Vader found disturbing.
There were two versions of Apple's "Star Wars" game for the Apple II. The first version was written by R.J. (Bob) Bishop in 1977. The second version, from 1978, was by Dana Redington. Note that "ammo" has been replaced by "energy," among various other changes. No word on whether Greedo shot first in the later version.
Replying to
@justkwin @integerpoet @jamesthomson @Cdespinosa DSID was assigned based on when your team was onboarded to the "new" Directory Services in the '90s. It was a staged rollout and the number started off being only 4 digits. The only person I found who had a DSID lower than mine was Jim Kateley. If he's still there, he can probably confirm how that all happened.
Replying to
@ipaschke What happened to NetHack 4.x? It seems they skipped that major version entirely with no explanation that I could see.
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@lake I think the family of snail-meat eaters depicted in the introduction section might actually qualify as ENEMIES OF THE SNAIL! The voles and frogs and thieves and such are simply competitors in the burgeoning snail consumption space and must be eliminated.
Replying to
@catsalad He is the spitting image of the cat on the warning sign, with the same gray/white face and frowny expression. I expect the residents had the sign made up especially for him.
Replying to
@thorne@rants.au @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social
INIGO [consults photo]: "Wait a minute. You have six fingers on your left hand."
YOU: "No, don't be silly. That's a picture that was altered by AI. I really only have--- urrrrrgggghhhh"
INIGO [stabbing you in the guts]: "HELLO! MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA!"
Replying to
@haineux@mastodon.social @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social Goals
1986: "we got computers, we're tapping phone lines"
2026: "remove the water from the bottom of the ocean"
The French Dip Lieutenant's Woman
Dutch Crunch: A Memoir of Ronald Reuben by Edmund Morris
I am Sloppy Joe's Liver (Reader's Digest version)
Replying to
@scruss@xoxo.zone On my system (macOS 15.7.5), wc -l < /usr/share/dict/words shows 235,976 words. I did a brute-force, n-squared search, calling rot13 on every word and then grep -E "^$ROTWORD$" /usr/share/dict/words. Only after it was done did I smack my forehead and realize I could have stopped after the letter M.
Replying to
@backupbear@aus.social
"We are the servants of the G-as-in-GIF, wielders of the Internet Flame! Go back to the Shadow, luser!"
"We put on our robe and wizard hat!"
"Rolling for damage!" 🎲
Replying to
@foone sorry if it was offensive... just thinking about other rubberized components from the early 2000s and how they feel now when you touch them.
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@scruss@xoxo.zone I think yours is better because it's strictly memory-based and doesn't write any temporary files. Adapting your solution to work on macOS, I can bring execution time down to 0.6 seconds!
Replying to
@scruss@xoxo.zone My dictionary has all 26 one-letter entries as words, and since A and I don't pair up, I just filter them all out. It stops iterating after M, since all pairs have already been made at that point. But it's still n-squared and stupidly slow; I'm sure there's a better approach. Will see if doing rot13 on the whole dictionary at once is faster.
Replying to
@ipaschke Thanks for the info! The last time I thought about NetHack was in the '90s so hadn't heard about that. Would think this should have merited a one-line explanation on the Information page, though.
Replying to
@catsalad Cat is *not* amused. That was the same warning face our cat used to make, eyes fully dilated and locked on you, seconds before he lunged and drew first blood. If you were lucky, you could raise your knee in time to block him, taking only light claw damage. The trauma has lasted longer, obviously.
Replying to
@Sheril@mastodon.social I really liked the world that was created in this book. While the revelation that eventually unfolds for the main character was disturbing, the ending did not change the feeling that this world was amazing and I was glad to have spent time in its halls.
Replying to
@scruss@xoxo.zone Well, the options may be hard to remember, but the 'comm' utility was essential for performance. As it turns out, there's no need for 'grep' at all, because 'comm' has already preselected the matches! Now the script runs in approximately 1 second, orders of magnitude faster than before.
Replying to
@aardvark@ioc.exchange @Cdespinosa@mastodon.social Apropos of nothing, the "BlackWatch" screen saver app for classic Macs has a countdown timer feature.
The Unpleasantness at the Bologna Club
Replying to
@scruss@xoxo.zone Nice! Another set of close rot13 synonyms: anil ↔ navy. Longest one I found was 7 letters: abjurer ↔ nowhere.
Replying to
@BMWCyclist@mastodon.social If you search for "db9 localtalk" on eBay, there are several listings available; not quite as good a deal though. It helped that I already had the other pieces of the LocalTalk network in place, including the Asanté LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge, so I only needed to add that one adapter to make it all work.
Replying to
@aardvark@ioc.exchange @Cdespinosa@mastodon.social I expect the phrase "tireless Cupertino mainstay" could come up at some point.
Replying to on f.duriansoftware.com
@joe@f.duriansoftware.com Paging @shayman@cosocial.ca to remind us who wrote NeXT's "Open Sesame" app.
Replying to
@wklj Of course the mug has an app. Of course it does.
DO NOT CONNECT MUG TO INTERNET NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT ASKS!
Replying to
@superbetsy@mastodon.social I've always liked Nina Gordon's cover version, which is basically how it would sound in this image. A white woman covering N.W.A. feels like cultural appropriation, but she was living in L.A. at the time and maybe had permission? https://soundcloud.com/user-723453044/straight-outta-compton-nina-gordon
