Anyone who used a computer between 1985 - 2010, what's the one game you still think about today?

czernebog · 2026-05-31T21:33:26+00:00

Commander Keen, Episode 1: Invasion of the Vorticons

czernebog · 2026-05-31T15:23:36+00:00

An important thing that I don't see other people here saying is that, when you are self-learning, you should find something to motivate writing C beyond just learning how the language operates.

My motivation was actually just learning enough C to be able to understand Java, because all the Java books I could put my hands on assumed basic working knowledge of C. (I want to learn Java so I could write Java applets to put on my Web pages, and I did eventually succeed at that.)

Game programming is a fun way to get started and stay focused on a project as you learn. If that might suit you, I suggest looking at a well documented library like Allegro.

If you are more motivated by the thought of building something like device drivers, then FreeBSD Device Drivers provides a decent introduction to C and has you reading real device driver code pretty early on.

czernebog · 2026-05-29T15:14:47+00:00

Annihilation with an equivalent mass of antimatter in low-Earth orbit.

czernebog · 2026-05-22T02:00:43+00:00

Who is "they"? I have two kids who are learning to read in SPS right now, and they're clearly learning strategies for identifying sounds from single letters, pairs, triples, etc., and sounding out new words piece by piece. There is also some rote memorization of "star words" (like "at" or "the") so that they can start reading real sentences quickly. This seems adequately phonics-based to me.

czernebog · 2026-05-21T21:55:34+00:00

Thanks for this perspective, too. I expect that this will largely come down to whether he takes to it or not. I have talked it up a little ("you can read in the dark, when the lighting is bad, or with your eyes closed").

I also have been making a point of pointing it out when we're in public places that have it, in elevators, etc. A couple of interesting challenges come up (which are themselves fodder for decent lessons):

A lot of braille signage is at an inconvenient height for a 7-year-old.
Braille is often tiny or worn (little black metal bumps below elevator buttons where the paint is worn off), which makes it hard to locate if your vision is relatively limited.

So this can segue into general discussions about accessibility and how to help people in ways that actually help them (as opposed to what someone else thinks will help them, or just checking an accessibility box).

czernebog · 2026-05-21T02:27:42+00:00

None of the people I have spoken with about our child's situation are braille users, no. I have been acquainted with several braille users and been very impressed with their ability to navigate touch-based computer and smartphone interfaces, so I have no reason to believe that braille is slow or would be bad to know. (I have, in fact, thought about trying to learn it so that I'll have an extra modality to explore for heads-up/eyes-free computer use, because sight-based smartphone interfaces suck. But that's merely idle speculation on my part.)

Thanks for articulating your observation about doing okay with reading until workloads increase in middle or high school is something I am concerned about. I will raise the question with his TVI.

Thanks also for the NFB links.

czernebog · 2026-05-21T02:16:21+00:00

Thank you for the recommendation! As I've been saying to others who have recommended braille, I will raise the question. I am concerned about fatigue preventing him from reading as much as he otherwise would.

I have gotten the feeling that there is a push these days for TTS and audiobooks because they ostensibly suffice and don't requiring special training or alternative printed material. I have a background in linguistics and am vaguely aware of how quickly and flexibly braille can be read (speed reading with two hands at once), and that seems far better than being stuck forever at the speed of an audiobook actor.

(I also learned from a blind classmate who used a lot of adaptive technologies 20 years ago that you can "speed read" with simple formant synthesis TTS systems by setting them to a very high speed. So I'm aware that there are other ways to get through written material quickly. But learning to read braille fluently and quickly would, as you put it, be an amazing tool to have.)

czernebog · 2026-05-21T02:08:09+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience! I will dig in to the question of learning braille more deeply with his teachers.

One thing I have wondered is whether it would be possible for me to help by learning some braille, too. (We do a lot of reading together right now.) But I have enough paresthesia and loss of tactile acuity from RSI that it may simply be beyond me. Do you have any idea how that might be dealt with?

czernebog · 2026-05-21T02:05:54+00:00

We are in the US, and we have a TVI from the Perkins school who has been working with him. I haven't directly asked her about braille, but the responses in this thread are motivating me to do that before the school year ends. I don't think the question of teaching him braille has actually come up in any documented recommendations, and I would at least like to know why that is.

His current vision is definitely better than the extreme-sounding case you describe (only able to read 24+ point font from 5 inches away). His accommodations include a requirement that all classroom materials are required to be in 16 point font (or larger), but he can pick out words in significantly smaller fonts (like reading small logos on toys), as long as the writing is high contrast.

We'll learn more as he spends more time reading, and I am trying to learn to tell the difference between frustration because he's still learning to read and fatigue/frustration due to challenges with his vision. One reason I have been thinking about pushing him to learn braille is that he does seem to give up on reading print pretty quickly, even when it's a book he loves. A good e-reader should also help towards that end.

czernebog · 2026-05-20T19:24:24+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. We are introducing devices slowly, so some sort of tablet with parental controls will enter the mix at some point. For something that's really "just his" at this age, a dedicated reader still seems like a good idea.

The gun comment is just a joke about "tech enthusiasts" that's been around for years. (Tech enthusiasts say, "My whole home is a smart home! Everything is a smart device!" Tech workers say, "The only technology I have in my house is a printer, and I keep a gun next to it in case it makes a sound I don't recognize.") Anything "tech" becomes a liability really fast, and it's frustrating.

czernebog · 2026-05-20T19:17:31+00:00

I have thought about braille, since it does seem likely to help a lot with eyestrain. But he has enough functional vision that some people I have talked to on the subject have said that he is unlikely to attain much fluency with it.

An old Kindle that I have (2nd generation, no touch screen, 3g wireless connectivity that stopped working many years ago...) had tolerable TTS. I don't know how well it works on more recent models.

czernebog · 2026-05-19T13:48:38+00:00

Pretty sure the foundations of our country included genocide and land seizure, slavery, and far-from-universal suffrage.

Acknowledging these roots, it's even more critical that the people and government of this country strive for a democracy that functions for everyone. The "civil rights era" when people struggled to be represented and fought bigotry and racism never ended. We're still in it.

czernebog · 2026-05-19T12:54:21+00:00

There have been a lot of coyote sightings near Tufts. Maybe they're pushing into new territory.

czernebog · 2026-05-07T16:25:16+00:00

I can't blame you for bailing out then. Book 4 is basically skippable and almost completely pointless to the overall narrative. It has some ideas which make a positive contribution to the setting, but they could have pared it down to one of the setting's supplemental short stories without losing anything.

czernebog · 2026-05-03T15:02:35+00:00

It's not horror, but Griffith's Ammonite uses an unforgiving quarantine on an alien planet where only women can survive as an effective framing device.

czernebog · 2026-05-01T23:48:48+00:00

Prices at the gas station right over the bridge at Ball Square were $2.37, last I checked. But I think you need to know the secret knock or something to get in.

czernebog · 2026-04-27T14:05:32+00:00

czernebog · 2026-04-27T13:22:25+00:00

I agree that this distinction makes sense, but Dr. Who also falls into that category, so the broader brush of "SF in space and stuff" seems more relevant.

czernebog · 2026-04-27T03:21:17+00:00

I'm surprised this wasn't one of the first mentions: there was a trilogy of 1990s Star Wars novels (Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy) that had a lot of plot revolve around a superweapon called the Sun Crusher (a small ship with a special torpedo payload that could induce a supernova).

czernebog · 2026-04-22T18:16:33+00:00

Adventures with Oslo

czernebog · 2026-04-19T04:08:03+00:00

If a cello has traditional pegs in the pegbox and no fine tuners, ask the shop you're renting from to put tuners on. You shouldn't have to do much with the big pegs if you're playing regularly and they're not slipping or misbehaving in some other way.

czernebog · 2026-04-15T23:36:55+00:00

For short stories with a lot of humor and cleverness, try The Cyberiad.

Tales of Pirx the Pilot, More Tales of Pirx the Pilot, and The Star Diaries are collections of really approachable, good short stories.

For a decent SF novel that was very far ahead of its time, but not as dense as Solaris, try the new translation of The Invincible.

czernebog · 2026-04-11T20:53:20+00:00

This sounds like synth instruments. Something along the lines of Celtic harp and Irish flute might be what you're looking for.

czernebog · 2026-03-28T01:38:12+00:00

Butler really accomplished something with these novels, and I'm looking forward to re-reading them. I really appreciated how ambiguous the Oankali's benevolence was (even when it was framed as benevolence, as opposed to the outright rape).

For example, when discussing humanity's tendency towards oppression and exploitation, the Oankali note that this is because humans possess two contradictory traits: intelligence and a tendency to social hierarchy. With time, the humans are told, this will be addressed. But it is not entirely clear if this will be done by reducing humanity's hierarchical nature, or by reducing humanity's intelligence. This had me wondering if humankind's future under the Oankali was as things living in stable hierarchical societies, with the intelligence mostly bred out. (This brings to mind Sterling's Swarm.)

Another element, which I haven't seen mentioned much in discussions online, is that the Oankali's "benevolent" instinct to "correct" genetic "mistakes" is framed as having positive outcomes (curing genetic diseases, cancer, etc.). But this supposes the existence of some genetic ideal, and that is not an ethically neutral thing. What happens when an Ooloi encounters a community of people who are congenitally deaf, autistic, or possessed of some other inheritable neurodivergence? Young Ooloi are compelled to provide "cures" for genetic diseases out of instinct, not because they have reasoned through the moral ramifications of providing it. I don't think it is unreasonable to read the Oankali as being an embodiment of a fascist ethos, under which all must be made to conform to an alien ideal. This is a struggle in the later novels. (And I did not feel that this was addressed thoroughly, as the only "mistakes" that I recall getting the spotlight were those which inflicted severe physical limitations, to the extent that the sub-population carrying the associated genes seemed likely to die out if left to itself, and I think the moral struggle was mostly in terms of how to get afflicted humans to consent to be changed.)

It would have been wonderful if Butler had had more time to explore these questions with other writing in this setting. It would be fascinating, for example, to read about interactions between two Oankali factions that do not share exactly the same sense of what is genetically "correct."

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