やっほ〜！
PR#6
Posted to Technology on Wednesday, 6th June, 2007.
According to Slashdot, this month the Apple ][ turns 30. It was in production for 18 of those 30 years, which likely makes it the longest-selling personal computer of all time. This is the computer I wrote my first program on, and spent countless hours banging in and editing code from Compute magazine — including page after page of raw hex code when a program included graphics.
In tribute, I ran a Google search on PR#6 to see what turned up. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, PR#6 was the command that kicked off the bootloader code for slot 6, the drive controller. The search turned up two relevant links: an Apple TechTip on a simple copy-protection scheme, and a fantastic blog entry that covers a bit about the Apple ][’s boot process, which brings back a lot of memories of old Shugart drives, including the terrifying sound of a track 0 seek – a process wherein the drive head was moved across the disk very quickly until it physically couldn’t go any further, resulting in a loud alarm-like buzz from the drive when it hit the limit of its reach.
Anyway, in celebration of the Apple ][’s 30th birthday, I recommend grabbing your nearest emulator, and banging in a call -151 for old time’s sake.
Google Reader
Posted to Technology on Wednesday, 30th May, 2007.
For years, I’ve been a fan of Brent Simmons’ OS X-based feed reader, NetNewsWire. It’s a fantastic application, and I’ve definitely got my money’s worth out of it. After partnering with NewsGator, I started using their online feed-reader on and off, with mixed results. I like that it keeps my feeds in sync between my computers, and that I can browse articles at lunch, but the interface is still not on par with NetNewsWire itself.
While NewsGator’s implementation was lacking, I really did like the idea of dropping the desktop app altogether and going with a fully online solution, so I started exploring other options. The obvious free alternative is Google Reader, and I have to say, I’m impressed. While the presentation isn’t as customizable as NetNewsWire, the functionality that I use is all there, and in fact, it has some extra search features that I miss on the desktop.
It was only when I launched NetNewsWire today and saw 290 unread items, that it hit me I hadn’t used it in almost a month. So while I look forward to
NetNewsWire 3, I’m sticking to Google Reader for the time being.
I also discovered that my prime news reading hours are apparently 6:30am to 7:30am and 9pm to 11pm, with a strange local maximum straggling out around 12:30am. I’d be curious to compare this to before I had a baby that woke me up around that time.
Update (2007-06-06): NetNewsWire 3.0 is now out.
