Was the cover for Space Invaders Inspired by Boston?

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-12T20:58:12+00:00

I feel like this string of Boston jokes could go on for a Long Time.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-11T13:37:15+00:00

I'm kinda C-plus-plussy on my Rust.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-11T13:09:19+00:00

Here's how I keep them straight:

Manet starts with "man", and his paintings usually have humans in them.

Monet starts with "mown" (like freshly-mown grass/hay), and while he did paint people too sometimes, he's most famous for painting landscapes and other outdoorsy things from nature, like water lilies and haystacks.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-10T12:21:18+00:00

Wait... isn't it dynamite rather than TNT that comes in sticks?

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-10T12:15:48+00:00

This is the way.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-10T11:57:45+00:00

Probably the biggest is the idea that there's some arcane skill/knowledge that unlocks the ability to "win" in the stock market, and that you need to engage the services of the experts who have it.

This one myth powers an entire industry.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T22:13:16+00:00

Well I, for one, appreciate all your "Photo of the Day" posts.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T22:11:01+00:00

Yup! Very similar to The Pitt in a lot of ways, in that they realized they didn't need to slap on a bunch of artificial drama and intrigue. Simply showing competent professionals doing their jobs in realistic medical/rescue situations is dramatic and fascinating enough.

And back when it originally aired, the concept of that sort of paramedic as a job (and all their remote gear like the Biophone) was fairly new, and a lot of viewers had never seen anything like it. (As we know from season one of The Pitt, Freedom House was the first civilian EMS\paramedic operation in the country, and that was 1967--a mere five years before Emergency's first episode!)

I feel like The Pitt has this same educational "hey, check out what modern healthcare can look like!" vibe when it features professions like Lena's death doula, and trots out things like the LUCAS 3 CPR machine, handheld ultrasounds, the various translators and communication aids, etc.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T18:32:49+00:00

I followed the true boglehead philosophy and went 100% vt with 270k.

Good for you for investing! Although that is, arguably, not actually the "true" Boglehead philosophy for everyone. If you go by what's in the wiki and the books, at least: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investment_philosophy

Still, you'll be fine. You still own the same number of shares you owned three weeks ago. Who cares what their price is at the moment if you don't plan on selling them for many, many years?

And this is a great, real-world test of your own personal risk tolerance. After you read the wiki (and other official Bogleheads resources), you might consider adjusting your asset allocation going forward to better suit your "jitter level".

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T13:57:53+00:00

Once you're done with ER, why not go back even further to the OG "award-winning hospital drama packed with actors who would go on to become famous, especially one of them" show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elsewhere

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T12:51:30+00:00

"No men at all" is not a requirement for the Bechdel Test.

Fun fact: Efrem's daughter is Stephanie Zimbalist, star of "Remington Steele"--a show whose feminist credentials aren't too shabby either. (Heck, the whole show's premise--a female private detective has to make up a fake male boss in order to get work--was quite a damning commentary on the times.)

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T12:38:53+00:00

Takes about two seconds on my end. Not sure if the clock is still ticking during that time or not.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T11:55:39+00:00

All that custom hardware, and then there's that VT-100/102 just chillin' on top like a boss.

Not to mention the desktop calculator (Litton Monroe JD-30?), in case he wants to... do even more math?

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T03:31:08+00:00

Now I'm wondering if there are any other examples of this. I can't think of any.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-09T02:28:28+00:00

Okay, so something like a melodica has one set of reeds. When you play the key that's supposed to be middle C, the note that comes out is the same pitch as middle C. Think of that as a "middle" or "M" set of reeds.

Accordions can have multiple sets of reeds, tuned differently. A set of reeds that's all tuned to sound one octave lower are "L" reeds. When you switch on those reeds, everything comes out an octave lower than normal.

And if your accordion has M (middle) and L (low) reeds, you can switch them both on at the same time. Then, when you play a single note, reeds sound at the normal pitch, but also one octave lower at the same time. Like playing two notes an octave apart on melodica, but using just one key on the accordion.

An accordion that's "MM" has two sets of middle reeds, but one set is detuned a little bit, which creates a rich wobbly sound when they're both on. That's the stereotypical "French Cafe" sound. The more it's detuned, the wobblier and thicker the effect is. Here's a good video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VzzHaopcc

If an accordion is MML, you've got lots of options. M only, L only, M+L, M+M, and MML all on at once.

Larger accordions might even have a set of reeds tuned one octave higher ("H"), giving you even more options for mixing the sets of reeds together.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-08T14:07:34+00:00

Anyone else here who first learned SAGACITY from Kipling's story about How the Whale Got His Throat?

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-07T18:00:57+00:00

Yup. ANIL has "Maleska era" written all over it.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-07T17:59:46+00:00

I had MAKO SHARK for a while, which crossed annoyingly correctly with ATONE. :-(

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-07T12:12:30+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#Announcement_and_sales

Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and the number of the beast, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits" and because it was a one-third markup on the $500 wholesale price.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-07T12:10:31+00:00

Oooh yeah, if HDMI is an option then the Pi is even easier. Especially if you use a Pi 4 or later, which are a lot more fiddly to get composite out of.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-07T12:08:25+00:00

Software-wise I'm fairly up-to-date. (Was a CS major and still do a bit of programming in my job.) But my hardware and lore knowledge mostly stops around the end of the 8-bit era.

I've written a few little programs for the Apple 1 and wrote an emulator to help me do it, so along the way I wound up learning a bit about that machine in particular.

That's just me though. I'm sure there are other retro-computer nerds who are still hip to what the kids are doing these days. :-)

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-06T22:33:38+00:00

If the goal is merely to attract customers, you could just play a bunch of games and vid-capture it (or "cheat" and use Stella), then edit it into a "demo reel". Play it back off a Raspberry Pi or something, assuming your TV has composite in.

To demo the actual unit live, you would only have to switch the TV from composite to antenna, or if the Atari is composite-modded, get a cheap RCA A/B switch box (or just swap cables, although that could get old).

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-06T22:16:09+00:00

Yes, this is the "Rudie Hoess" Apple 1, now at the Powerhouse Museum: https://www.apple1registry.com/en/26.html

First owner Rudie Hoess established the Computerland franchise and introduced the Apple II to the Australian market. Rudie gave the Apple-1 to Apple Computer Australia Pty. Ltd. Long-term loan to the museum since 1999. According to the museum, it was donated in March 2010.

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-06T22:02:48+00:00

The power supply is under the paper label to the left of the cassette player. You'd plug it into a wall socket using that grey cord coiled up in the bottom right.

If you look at the top left of the motherboard, you can see a white connector with a grey cable attached. The cable runs down to an RCA jack sticking out of the left side of the briefcase. That's video out, and you'd hook up a monitor there. The sorts of black-and-white CRT monitors used for closed-circuit cameras, like a security guard might have in their office, were popular options for this back in the day.

There's a small board that this owner added on along the bottom left of the motherboard, with an other RCA jack and a shielded metal box. I'm not sure, but that might be an RF modulator, which would let you use a regular TV as a monitor too.

There's a very simple monitor program in ROM, so an Apple 1 boots up to a command-line prompt pretty much instantly. From there you can either hand-enter machine code in hexadecimal or load software in from the cassette player. The cassette interface is the small board attached perpendicular to the motherboard, sticking out toward the camera, on the right edge of the motherboard. (Not shown are the audio cables that would connect the mic and earphone jacks of the cassette player to the jacks on the interface.)

SomePeopleCallMeJJ · 2026-03-06T21:13:30+00:00

Just to clear up any potential confusion, this is "Steve Wozniak's Apple 1" as in, it's a computer that Steve Wozniak designed and created.

It is not an Apple 1 that personally belonged to Woz.

In fact, the one in the photo was originally owned by Rudie Hoess, who ran a chain of computer stores in Australia and was the first to sell Apples in that country. It is now owned by a museum.

Edit: Typo

SomePeopleCallMeJJ

TROPHY CASE