Decided to start 2 new clones, cuttings from the older carolina reaper. Maybe summer clones will do better than the ones I tried to start in the winter/spring. The jalapeño is flowering, but no peppers yet. 🌱🌶

game logic (1987) https://archive.org/details/micomBASIC-1987-07/page/126/mode/2up?view=theater

magazine screenshot (1985) https://archive.org/details/1985-12-anticmagazine/page/46/mode/2up?view=theater

@moshboy Woah, I remember seeing this one, but it was in a different magazine. Thanks for unearthing a deeply buried Atari ST memory. :)

The buttons are finally put to use. My laundry basket's original bag had developed a rip, so I made a new one from cotton canvas. I'm sure the materials alone cost more than a whole new basket would, but this way I can reuse the frame and it will bring me joy every time I see it.

So, at least one of my clones survived the heat wave, but not the one I expected to, but it's still not growing much. The older reaper gave me an early crop of smaller peppers, but now it's just making leaves, won't see more until the end of august maybe. 🌱🌶

@mogwai_poet I hang onto my phones as long as I possibly can, but audio jack is going to be the most important issue for me when I have to replace my current one.

@SpindleyQ I really love the ESS MIDI implementation, it had its own modified version of FM that had a lot of interesting capabilities. I found some flyers describing how they worked, but I could never find any games or music implementation that actually used them, aside from their own Windows MIDI drivers. Everything else just tends to end up going through OPL2/OPL3 compatibility modes.

@rnd On regular floppy drives it takes a few seconds for the motor to get up to speed and remain stable, but it's got a flywheel and heavy inertia by design. Trying to change the speed as you seek to different tracks probably adds a need to trade stability/intertia for settling time...

Anyway, if we took Amiga's safety-gaps-removed 1440k to 1760k, and Apple's "Zoned CAV" drive that improved 720k to 800k... maybe that predicts ~2000k?

@rnd Mitsumi's QuickDisk did have a continuous spiral track of data like a tape drive, though it wasn't a very popular format (most notably for the Nintendo FDS), but it still had constant rotation.

Amiga disks were formatted with extra sectors per track, shrinking the gaps between sectors versus IBM's format for extra storage (1760k), though I do think this made them tangibly less reliable. Atari ST's OS could handle extra sectors like this too, but the default format was like IBM.

@rnd IIRC apple actually did make a floppy drive that did this. There were tradeoffs in reliability though.

Eventually CDs did have a continuous speed change, though it probably helped a lot that it was optical media and for the first many years the data could only be written in a factory.

@rnd I'm not entirely certain where the number comes from, but my guess is it's mainly to do with the constant rotation speed. They don't put extra data on the longer outer tracks, even though the additional media would allow it. If you had a special controller that could slow the spin for outer tracks and add more sectors there you could probably get close to 2MB?

@mogwai_poet
god mode
qr code
for endless sode

My grandma's sewing machine's bobbin winder tire had worn out, but I couldn't find a replacement. It's an unusual size and placement, not continued in later models AFAIK.
So... I cut a slice out of a slightly larger (but common) winder tire and superglued it. Seems to work well?

@Bogusmeatfactory I also really, REALLY need to play Ultima III because I know it was such a huge deal to Falcom and other Japanese developers at the time, especially the story about their "borrowed" art in Xanadu. I need to explore that influence.

@JordiGH @Bogusmeatfactory Ultima 1 is not, it's more of an implementation of D&D but it has some really intriguing ideas about progression and how the world fits together. From what I've seen of 2 it starts to have a lot more going on in towns, but I don't think it's gotten to the level of "everyone has a full daily schedule" that seemed to be going on in 4.

@Bogusmeatfactory Heh, well I think I'm still hell bent on playing 2 first, the real worry is that I have to fight myself to actually play anything and maybe I'll never get to 4. :(

@Bogusmeatfactory After loving Ultima (1980) I've been waffling between playing Ultima II and Ultima IV. I hear so many good things about 4 (and bad things about 2) but I'm so curious about the journey.

I bought this cheap carving knife from Michaels and it was proving to be completely unsharpenable. I filed a shallower bevel, then tried to see if I could harden it with my kitchen stove (never tried this before). It actually seems to have worked? 😆🔪🔥

I needed some buttons for a sewing project, and I thought it might be fun to just make them myself. They're not quite circular and that kinda gives me joy every time I look at them. Bonus: birch wood smells incredible.