DiscMaster is an alternative interface for collections of software that have been uploaded to Internet Archive. It allows you to drill into disk images at the file level and preview the contents in-place, download individual folders, zips, images, or whatever you like. It’s been … | Continue reading
DiscMaster is an alternative interface for collections of software that have been uploaded to Internet Archive. It allows you to drill into disk images at the file level and preview the contents in-place, download individual folders, zips, images, or whatever you like. It’s been … | Continue reading
Yesterday I made a bunch of usability and quality of life changes to the sfxr.lua demo app. fix: getDirectoryItems (from a PR) fix: off by one sample length error (from a PR) fix: space bar was not playing the sound fix: selected wave form was being ignored (sounds were always sq … | Continue reading
Yesterday I made a bunch of usability and quality of life changes to the sfxr.lua demo app. fix: getDirectoryItems (from a PR) fix: off by one error sample length error (from a PR) fix: space bar was not playing sound fix: selected wave form was being ignored (sounds were always … | Continue reading
As I move away from game development on Playdate, I’ve released a couple of interesting old things… NEW WORLD This is an interactive music track where you’re the DJ. You control various instruments and vocals, doing live mixing of the track. It is a technology demo that was put t … | Continue reading
I made some usability and quality of life changes to the sfxr.lua demo app. fix: getDirectoryItems (from a PR) fix: off by one error sample length error (from a PR) fix: space bar was not playing sound fix: selected wave form was being ignored (sounds were always square wave) fix … | Continue reading
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of an almost forgotten WiiWare game called MaBoShi. I’ve posted a review, the staff roll for the first time in English, written an FAQ strategy guide, created a way for you to play it more easily on your iPhone, and even finally succeeded to make my … | Continue reading
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! The Italian Job is based on the 1969 cult classic movie of the same name, and released very late into the life of PlayStation in fact over a year into the life of PlayStation 2. It reviewed well and charted at number one for a … | Continue reading
I wondered how feasible it is to make Love2D games “on the go” (on a train, in bed, etc). Often I want to try a quick sketch, work up a prototype, or simply verify an algorithm. I’m happy to say it’s possible! Love2D Studio Available since Jan 2024 Free apps.apple.com/gb/app/love … | Continue reading
Dot underscore ._ and .DS_Store files are macOS-specific metadata cruft generated for foreign filesystems (like FAT32 or exFAT) that are not usually needed for disks that are mainly used on other platforms. Digital cameras, music players, e-book readers, and handheld gaming devic … | Continue reading
I was rooting around and stumbled across my old Collins Gem Basic Facts: Computers, a glossary or dictionary of computing terms. This “New Edition” is the Third edition, published in 1991, so at this point in time almost 35 years old. That year I read it cover to cover, multiple … | Continue reading
Given the ongoing discussion about whether or not TETRIS turns 40 years old in 2024 or 2025, I keep my eye out for early mentions of the game. As a bonus, this is an item that at the time of me posting it to social media a couple of days ago had not been covered in English anywhe … | Continue reading
I was rooting around and stumbled across my old Collins Gem Basic Facts: Computers, a glossary or dictionary of computing terms. This “New Edition” is the Third edition, published in 1991, so at this point in time almost 35 years old. That year I read it cover to cover, multiple … | Continue reading
I just added a bunch of backdated posts to the blog, mostly to do with my early games and gamedev: 2022-04-23 Wire Hang Redux for 64-bit macOS 2015-03-14 Boom Matt 2011-12-12 Wire Hang Redux: update 2004-06-20 Wire Hang Redux 2002-08-23 Terra Firma 2002-03-27 Yaking 2001-02-14 Be … | Continue reading
Japhy Riddle makes art, music, films, and animations. He’s also a retro technology enthusiast. Naturally, he combines all these skills and interests into wonderful videos and animations! I follow Japhy on social media and love his high quality videos and animations. Check him out … | Continue reading
Some time in 2020 I started collecting CD-ROMs from old Macintosh magazines. Whilst the discs are of Japanese origin—because the supply was plentiful during the extended spring clean of lockdown—they contain a great deal of software from all over the world and a lot of it is ther … | Continue reading
Over the Christmas break I had a spare week after a trip to Ireland was cancelled. What should I do with the time? I was already aware of the upcoming DreamDisc ‘24 game jam and had done some reading a couple of months back scoping out a Lua-based SDK called ANTIRUINS Engine that … | Continue reading
2024 was a bit of skipped year for me. A lot of time away from working, which was necessary but a process that I find difficult as I’m at my best when I’m creating. Here’s to 2025! Two viral blog posts dwarfed all other writing: Emoji history: the missing years (10 May, 15K views … | Continue reading
Initially I had thought this year wasn’t as good as last year in terms of music, but litening again to the best tracks from 40-something weeks proved otherwise. It was a great year. Most music I was sent by the Apple Music algorithm continued to be Japanese, thanks to my continue … | Continue reading
Golf video games are one of my passions, ever since World Class Leader Board and Microprose Golf on Atari ST. These days my favourite golf games I like to play are still the old ones. In particular I have a soft spot for T&E SOFT’s New 3D Golf Simulation series with its blue skie … | Continue reading
So the Macro extension and a bunch of smaller extensions were supposed to be it, but it’s so much fun to create these that whenever I get an idea for an extension I can’t help making it. This time I wanted to keep track of how many times I’m calling certain functions in my code. … | Continue reading
After creating a bunch of smaller Nova Extensions quite quickly I wondered how far I could push things, just as a personal challenge. I had the idea of implementing a Macro text recording and playback system. There was something similar in TextMate editor, and whilst the Nova API … | Continue reading
I’m a big believer in solving problems yourself if it’s possible rather than waiting for app updates that might never arrive. Making extensions for the Nova editor that I do most of my programming and blogging in is so much fun! So, here are some of my own creation: YAML Tag Pick … | Continue reading
Back in 2021 I had a look around and decided to base this incarnation of my blog on an open-source Jekyll theme called “Type”, though I’ve changed and added so much it’s quite some distance from the original as it stands today. As I added blog posts the performance became much wo … | Continue reading
Back in 2012 I wanted to make a quick game for the AGBIC game jam (A Game By Its Cover; make a game inspired by the imaginary cover art from the Famicase exhibition). There’s only one rule for this game jam, which is taken very seriously: respect the wishes of the original artist … | Continue reading
YAML Tag Picker allows you to easily select tags for the YAML front matter in your blog posts. It scans your existing posts for tags and presents them in a Choice Palette, making it easy to maintain consistent tagging across your blog. You can select multiple tags one after anoth … | Continue reading
Markdown File Linker is an extension for the Nova editor that allows you to insert links to local files as Markdown links, perfect for linking between articles in your Jekyll blog! Usage To run Markdown File Linker: Select the Editor → Insert File Link menu item; or Open the comm … | Continue reading
A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away I had to give an impromptu presentation about something I didn’t know much about. The goal of the task was to see how well we could ad-lib a presentation under pressure. Everybody in the room had to think of a topic whilst waiting for ou … | Continue reading
Let’s celebrate! we just hit 1000 games at my database of moai in video games 🗿 today is Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day) in Chile 🇨🇱 So here’s some “Moai-chan-dise” ✨ t-shirts and stickers in both silly and serious styles special “relaxing” sticker by @ … | Continue reading
Back in the mid-1990s I was using Windows 95/98 and running uo against bugs, problems, driver issues, unexpected things happening. I would often end up on the Microsoft Knowledge Base support web pages, where the issue would often be accompanied by the line “This behavior is by d … | Continue reading
A couple of days ago I was reading on Hacker News about a feature in some Linux window managers where they allow collections of tabs from different apps. This reminded me of BeOS, but at the same time it reminded me of an app from 1992 for classic Macintosh called Stapler (link), … | Continue reading
Sharp’s Denshi Techō (電子手帳) were a range of electronic notebooks or organisers, marketed as Bware in Japan and Wizard or IQ elsewhere. In Japan they won a prestigious G-mark Good Design Award in 1988 and in the USA an episode of Seinfeld was the prize. As well as being home to so … | Continue reading
Earlier this year I made a workflow for Alfred app to allow easy searching of Moby Games. Earlier this week it was released on Alfred Gallery. Download alfred.app/workflows/gingerbeardman/moby-games/ The workflow requires an API key that you can get instantly via your Moby Games … | Continue reading
Recently at Internet Archive a “glitch” (their choice of word) deleted a great many accounts, including my account that had been at archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman since 2015. Somewhat surprisingly, they are not reaching out to affected users but rather waiting for them to cr … | Continue reading
Yesterday on Twitter the inimitable Morten Just posted a preview of a tool he’s created that wrap ffmpeg to allow movies, such screen recordings but pretty much anything, to be re-encoded to a smaller filesize. I responded with a trick I use to do the same on right-click using a … | Continue reading
For June and July of 2024 the Shibuya Pixel Art Contest has been running for the first time in a few years. Entries are open all over the world, but can only be submitted to Twitter using the hashtag #shibuyapixelart2024. You have to include a name for the artwork and its origina … | Continue reading
Given the current discussion about whether or not Tetris is 40 years old this year, I thought it would be cool to add something interesting and relevant to the conversation. Plus, this is also something that is at the time of writing not covered in English pretty much anywhere on … | Continue reading
A little over a year ago I wrote a screenplay/pitch for a video game based on an animated short film created by THE LINE Animation Studio: the opening film from the CICLOPE Festival in 2016. I’d like to make this game but I need support to do so. Until then I figured I’d post it … | Continue reading
I use an Android tablet for reading ebooks. My favourite ebook reader is the Sony PRS-650 which was ahead of its time in a lot of ways. But these days I like to have internet connectivity whilst reading so I can do both dictionary lookups, Wikipedia lookups, and quick Google sear … | Continue reading
Emigre magazine was a highly influential graphic design publication. It was known for its innovative and experimental approach to typography and graphic design, pushing the boundaries of traditional design norms. The magazine was published from 1984 (year of the Macintosh launch) … | Continue reading
Since some of my first prototypes with Playdate I’ve wanted there to be a way to interact with the device using a mouse. Well, today is that day! No doubt you have some questions? How are you doing this? What’s the weather like? etc. How? A custom Hammerspoon script monitors mous … | Continue reading
During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a couple of them to see if they did anything cool or interesting. These sorts of devices are pre-internet, so there’s no much abo … | Continue reading
I’m really enjoying Dolby Atmos, “spatial audio”, or “surround sound” as we used to call it. There is so much music in this format on streaming platforms, both new albums and classic albums. I wanted to listen to Björk’s first four albums in “spatial audio”, but they don’t curren … | Continue reading
Apple recently changed the App Store rules to allow emulators, which means we’re now seeing emulators for classic video game consoles available for download! This is great news for a retro gamer like myself. Delta is one such emulator that currently focuses on Nintendo platforms: … | Continue reading
First, a little bit of Macintosh History. You probably know that on modern macOS you can select a file in Finder, on your Desktop, or in an app, and send it to the Trash by choosing the Move to Trash menu item, or by pressing Cmd+Backspace/Delete. This keyboard shortcut was added … | Continue reading
I use some software called Huginn to do various automated web searching and scraping. One use case is checking the status of all the institutions where The Great Wave is currently on view, or not. I also have it do automatic auction searches for various items I’m looking for, tha … | Continue reading
This week sees the first Anniversary Sale of Catalog, the official store for Playdate games. This means it’s also the anniversary of the launch of Sparrow Solitaire, which was the first Playdate work I did in 2023 after taking an enforced break. So I thought it would be interesti … | Continue reading