September 15, 2005

Not long ago I ran across a nice, brief synopsis of the making of the first consumer computer with a graphical user interface, entitled "A History of Apple's Lisa, 1979-1986". It's posted over at Low End Mac's Orchard, a site that has put together many historicals regarding computing and technology in general. Soon after, I picked up and read Dealers of Lightning : Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, an excellent book which gives an account of the glory days at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, from which sprung the technologies that inspired the Apple Lisa and upon which it was largely based. Andy Hertzfeld's Folklore.org has an excellent, similar account entitled "On Xerox, Apple and Progress". Well worth reading, all.

All of these texts have had me thinking about those early days quite a bit, lately. It must have been incredible to have worked amidst such new and revolutionary technology, actualy pushing the bleeding edge of computing at every step.

Very soon it will be clear why I wanted to go ahead and get this post out the door....

NOTE: This post has been modified to reflect that the story's original source, Braeburn, a website run by Tom Hormby, has apparently become a part of Low End Mac known as Orchard.

UPDATE: Have a look at Guidebook's Spotlight on Apple Lisa for lots of additional information. After all, it pays to know your roots....

September 6, 2005

That's what Wil Wheaton calls it.

I think because I didn't ever warm up to the role of Wesley in ST:TNG, I was never a huge Wil Wheaton fan. I mean, Stand By Me is a great film, and he did work for NewTek—and that's all good. But what I mean is, I never spent any time at his rather popular blog. For some reason I hit it the other day, my second time ever visiting it, and I found something great. (And it's really kind of interestng. I should read one of his books. I really will.)

He made mention of going on a search for "the coolest watch in history," in a post about something else all together. And that's how I found it. The Fossil Atari: Asteroids watch. A limited run of only 5000 were produced, only 2000 of which are being offered in the U.S., as I understand it.

Mine arrived yesterday. It is a thing of beauty and wonder.

(And no, you can't actually play Asteroids on it. I thought maybe you could. With the knobs and whatnot, but no.)

September 2, 2005

On Monday, August 22nd, the British publishing house Live Publishing went into administration, leaving the future of the excellent Retro Gamer magazine, as well as its other publications including the also retro-geared PC Action Emulate!, in much doubt. First published in January 2004, the now-monthly Retro Gamer is devoted entirely to the topic of retro computing with an emphasis on gaming and a slant towards the British home computer scene of days past (Spectrum, Amstrad, Oric, etc). Each magazine came with a cover CD full of old vintage game "ROMs," emulators, game remakes, etc.

I had a nice, personal encounter with Retro Gamer as described in my past post, "Retro Gamer Made Me Famous..."

The likely demise of this magazine is a sad thing indeed to any retro computing enthusiast that was lucky enough to have been aware of its short and wonderful existence. Let us hope that by some fortuitous twist of fate, the magazine will live on in one form or another.

For more information / discussion on this news see various news and forum links.