This month in Open Apple, Mike and Ken talk with Melissa Barron, the Apple II community’s famed tapestry artist. The three relate their experiences exploring the past and future of computer media at conventions and museums in Chicago and Rochester, exploring the methods used to create and preserve history. Further tributes are made to Steve Jobs, while Mike Westerfield reclassifies old BASIC tools and releases new ones. Lord British’s Texas mansion is up for sale — a fitting home for Vintage Computer Festival Southwest? We debate various models of floppy drives and are wary of fake and expensive Apple II computers on eBay but excited about new e-books and iOS apps of interest to retrocomputing enthusiasts.
Congratulations to Todd Holcomb, who named the game as Spy’s Demise! He won an autographed copy of Bob Bishop’s Bomber on cassette, courtesy Mike Maginnis.
Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.
Introduction (0:00 – 11:40)
- Peter Watson’s homepage
- Andy Molloy’s homepage
- International Center for the History of Electronic Games
- Strong National Museum of Play
- Ski Colorado!
- Why are Apple II users ‘different’?
- The history of Apple II magazines
- Apple II Scans
- Review Open Apple on iTunes!
User Login (11:41 – 22:56)
- Melissa Barron’s homepage
- 73H 0r3g0n 7r41L KansasFest 2010 session
- Jacquard loom
- Melissa’s BFA art gallery installation
- Melissa’s Vimeo videos
- Apple II crack screens
- E-textfiles: Interactive projects for the Jacquard loom
- GLI.TC/H Kickstarter
II News (22:57 – 1:04:32)
- GLI.TC/H
- Steve Jobs
- Mona Simpson’s eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs
- Photos from the Apple’s Steve Jobs memorial
- 60 Minutes‘ Andy Rooney dies
- Peanuts‘ Charles M. Schulz dies
- Computerworld video: Steve Jobs one-on-one, the ’95 interview
- What Steve Jobs taught us about failure
- NeXT Computers
- Daniel Kottke: Apple was "Steve Jobs’ therapy"
- GSoft BASIC now freeware; Mike Westerfield’s techBASIC now available
- Earn a free copy of The Byteworks’ Opus II!
- techBasic homepage
- OpenEmulator Apple-1 emulator
- Brain Board woth Wozanium Pack source code
- AppleWin emulator for Windows
- Virtual II emulator for Mac OS X
- Vince Briel’s Replica I
- Vince Briel’s A2MP3 card
- Melissa’s Juiced.GS article
- Block Party, part of Notacon
- @party demoparty
- WriteRoom word processor
- Jason Scott documentary three-pack Kickstarter
- "Digging into Technology’s Past" — archaelogy article on the 6502 (also on Apple II History)
- Visual 6502 simulator
- Ronald Mak’s The History of Computing at San Jose State University
- Terminator’s Skynet
- Denver Apple Pi
- Vintage Computer Festival East 8.0 dates announced
- Richard Garriott’s Britannia Manor for sale
- Original Castle Wolfenstein painting auctioned
- Richard Garriott vs. NCSoft
- Richard Garriott in space
Apple Pickings (1:04:33 – 1:22:49)
- Utilities to adjust floppy drive head speed
- Apple 5.25" floppy drives
- Different models of Apple floppy drives
- Boston Computer Society publications
- Beagle Buddies
- Gravenstein Apple Users Group (GSAUG)
- Joe Kohn and the Mark Twain
- Apple Users Society of Melbourne (AUSOM)
- Stephen Buggie’s auction of AutoArk software
- Apple II power supply tech info
- Original Apple II goes for $5,145
- Fake Apple II
- Real Apple II, serial #A2S1-0101
- Spotlight on Bob Bishop
- Bell & Howell w/numeric keypad
Name the Game (1:22:50 – 1:46:24)
- Bob Bishop’s software catalog
- Bob Bishop’s Bomber
- Spy’s Demise
- Jimmy Maher’s history of interactive fiction e-book
- Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia e-book (excerpt)
- Prince of Persia ported to Commodore 64
- Prince of Persia Classic for Xbox 360
- Out Of This World for iOS
- Elite Collection coming for iOS
- M.U.L.E.
- Choplifter HD for PlayStation 3
- Archon II: Adept
- Alternate Reality
- Wizardry for iOS
- Akalabeth for iOS
- Andrew Plotkin’s PlotEx
- Andrew Plotkin: How I raised $24,000 on Kickstarter
- Frotz for iOS
- My Secret Hideout
- Meanwhile interactive graphic novel for iOS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:46:42 — 55.2MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More
Tags: 6502, Alternate Reality, Andrew Plotkin, Another World, Apple-1, Archon, atparty, BCS, biography, Block Party, Bob Bishop, Bomber, Boston Computer Society, Britannia Manor, Byteworks, Chicago, Choplifter, counterfeit, Daniel Kottke, demoparty, demoscene, documentary, e-book, Elite, eulogy, floppy drives, Frotz, GLITCH, GSoft BASIC, History of Computing, ICHEG, interactive fiction, Jacquard, Jason Scott, Jimmy Maher, Jordan Mechner, Kickstarter, loom, Lord British, mansion, Meanwhile, Melissa Barron, Mike Westerfield, Mona Simpson, MULE, museum, My Secret Hideaway, NeXT, Notacon, OpenEmulator, Oregon Trail, Out of this World, PlotEx, power supply, Prince of Persia, real estate, Richard Garriott, Rochester, Ronald Mak, San José State University, Stephen Buggie, Steve Jobs, Strong, tapestries, tapestry, techBASIC, Texas, VCF, Vintage Computer Festival, Walter Isaacson, Wizardry, word processor, WriteRoom
4 Comments to 'Show #9 (Nov 2011): Melissa Barron, Britannia Manor, floppy drives, and iOS'
Nov 18, 2011 5:14 AM
Hi guys,
Good work on another fine show, a massive one.
Something amusing I noticed that kept coming up in this show was how to pronounce certain names. In most cases I threw my hands up and cried, ‘How could you pronounce it like that?!’
First, ProDOS. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pronounce the word DOS as ‘dose’. Using that as my base, I don’t think pronouncing ProDOS as ‘pro-dose’ has any legs.
Second, I think ‘Hadean lands’ comes from Hades, so it can’t be ‘Had-ee-ann’. It has to sound like ‘Hades’, turned into an adjective.
Then there’s that old chestnut Karateka. How would you pronounce Karate? Now say that the same way that with ‘ka’ on the end. Unless the author created an arbitrary pronunciation of ‘Carrot-eek-ah’, I don’t think there’s any case for that… and that guy who (mis?) pronounced it that way on a TV commercial once has no case :)
To the subject of Name the Game. I’ll miss it, but your reasoning for putting it on hiatus sounded reasonable. It just depends on whether you find there is some Apple-centric podcast-based game you can come up with in place of it which actually does attract significantly more entries.
Cheers,
– Wade
Nov 18, 2011 7:36 AM
Thanks for listening, Wade!
These sorts of mispronunciations are what happen when you take an online interest offline. :-) In the case of "ProDOS" and "Karateka", you’ve likely heard a couple of different ways to say it on the show, with the right one being one of them. I suppose we’re just covering our bases by throwing out the others. :-)
As for "Hadean Lands", you’re likely correct, but I’ll see if we can get The Man himself to weigh in on this one.
On "Name the Game", we think part of the problem is getting people to turn the offline activity of listening to the show into the online activity of entering the contest. There seems to be a disconnect there, one that would likely affect any other contest we introduce. For example, all three hosts of another retrocomputing podcast recently raved about how much fun this contest is — yet not one of them had ever actually entered. Why is that?
We’ll be soliciting more ideas on these and other topics soon!
–Ken
Nov 18, 2011 11:15 AM
The Man doth say: “HAY-de-an.” (It’s in the MacOS dictionary, even.) You can put the emphasis on the second syllable if you like — I don’t know which way is more authentically Greek, but it’s an English word too.
Thanks for rolling past me on your show. :)
Dec 9, 2011 3:12 PM
Congratulations for your hard and interesting work, Gentlemen.
And for Todd, a special link to the AIF version of Bob Bishop’s Bomber (all my other digitized cassettes are WAV files) @ http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/softape/k7_softape_bomber.aif
Antoine