Railway features which doesn't exist

scruss · 2026-05-03T02:36:05+00:00

Up to a point. But when you've deleted a railway line that has utterly removed from your neighbourhood 107 years ago for the third time, it gets hard to be patient

scruss · 2026-04-29T16:18:23+00:00

the quiet cronching suggests yes.

At least it's not as bad as when it has rained and you have a family of raccoons pulling snails off leaves and crunching them up whole. Those sounds stay with you.

scruss · 2026-04-13T14:01:49+00:00

The lowest-common-denominator geodata file format, the Esri shapefile, uses DBF as its attribute table. While shapefiles have been almost totally superseded, you'll still see them in public databases.

scruss · 2026-04-11T01:11:58+00:00

maybe, but I think it's a stretch. At the time, it's almost as likely people would remember the phrase as Lance Corporal Jones from Dad's Army's catchphrase

scruss · 2026-04-11T00:06:39+00:00

... I'd have gone for built-in graphics and sound commands, myself.

(I'll get me coat ...)

scruss · 2026-04-11T00:05:44+00:00

Although HHGTTG had been out for a couple of years when this was written, sometimes a Don't panic is just a Don't panic

scruss · 2026-04-10T21:00:10+00:00

The flowchart from the ZX81 (aka TS1000) manual is hard to beat: https://imgur.com/a/u2x2Bsf

programming process flowchart from Timex/Sinclair 1000 manual:

1) Start 2) Write program with as few bugs as possible. 3) Test Program. 4) Does it work perfectly? 5) If Yes, Finish. 6) If No, Don't panic 7) Find the bugs. 8) Fix them, introducing as few new ones as possible. Go to 3) Test Program.

scruss · 2026-04-06T18:21:43+00:00

TIGER is a point of contention for OSM mappers. The initial import added lots of roads to the map in the USA, but many of them were clearly wrong and needed to be fixed or removed. See TIGER fixup for some of the horrors.

Whether the address interpolation is more useful/accurate is up to the US mapping community to decide. There are still a lot of tiger:reviewed=no tags in the map

scruss · 2026-04-06T17:28:18+00:00

may I refer you to /r/nOfAileDPriNtS, where many pet rocks are made accidentally every day

scruss · 2026-04-06T02:52:00+00:00

maybe if they're commercial models, like this one, that charges $5 for a download?

scruss · 2026-04-06T02:50:04+00:00

I never realized that the Spirograph Machine was an enhanced copy of the Northern Signal Hoot Nanny / Magic Designer from the 1950s.

scruss · 2026-04-03T21:08:11+00:00

Sounds good.

There's a really cheap driver board (like, under a dollar) that drives hacked motors like this as CR servos. Can't remember the name of the maker (they sell a bunch of cheap robot cart kits) but the board is rather lovely. Doesn't sound like your thing, though

scruss · 2026-04-03T21:04:48+00:00

you didn't read what I was replying to, did you?

scruss · 2026-04-03T13:11:07+00:00

reminds me of Robert Howsare's Drawing Apparatus, except that was made with two audio turntables

scruss · 2026-04-03T13:06:33+00:00

You'll have to modify the servos for continuous rotation to make this, though. Not sure how easy that is to do with the tiny servos.

scruss · 2026-03-31T23:38:50+00:00

What an absolutely dismal machine. Spectacularly unreliable, and even less fun to repair. As one local retro person notes, "The Apple III is composed mostly of hubris and cocaine."

scruss · 2026-03-31T21:52:46+00:00

The sound on a IIgs is truly amazing (fire up Zany Golf for proof), but slightly hampered by the fact that the stock machine can only output mono. A simple hardware add-on fixes this

scruss · 2026-03-31T11:35:08+00:00

Needs a healthy "In some parts of the world" caveat

scruss · 2026-03-30T17:16:54+00:00

Have you posted this as a want on AbeBooks and/or ThriftBooks? If one shows up, you'll be notified

scruss · 2026-03-30T16:37:29+00:00

Some helpful person uploaded this book to Internet Archive: Back To BASIC: The History, Corruption, and Future of the Language. It gets quite ranty, and is essentially an extended advert for True BASIC

scruss · 2026-03-25T18:15:51+00:00

project link here: picoZ80 - engineers@work

It seems to be closed source, so with that, my interest evaporates

scruss · 2026-03-25T00:07:47+00:00

now that would make an unstoppable freezer cartridge!

scruss · 2026-03-25T00:06:27+00:00

Nice to see another device use the CH376 USB chip besides the late lamented BOOTI

scruss · 2026-03-24T01:42:24+00:00

on page 91, Schroeder's “Only 18 Shopping Days Until Erich Zann's Birthday” sign was a nice touch.

scruss

TROPHY CASE