Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #62:
"Baja" (name of Synchronet PCMS compiler/languege) is pronounced "ba-ha". Norco, CA WX: 60.2øF, 83.0% humidity, 0 mph WSW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs

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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ telnet://vert.synchro.net

Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

You asked for comments, so here I am, commenting.

Actually I've listened to every episode so far, and hope that you keep making them. I'm more interested when the conversation veers toward BBS & Synchronet stuff, but I don't expect it to always be about that.

You could liven things up by bringing Phil in for an interview or a guest co-hosting spot next time.

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echicken
electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com - 416-273-7230

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þ Synchronet þ electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: echicken to Digital Man on Tue Oct 20 2015 01:26 pm

Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

You asked for comments, so here I am, commenting.

Thank you. :-)

Actually I've listened to every episode so far, and hope that you keep making them. I'm more interested when the conversation veers toward BBS & Synchronet stuff, but I don't expect it to always be about that.

You could liven things up by bringing Phil in for an interview or a guest co-hosting spot next time.

<pffft> Breaking out in a fit of laughter. Yes, that probably would liven things up, but somehow, I don't think Phil would "get it" and ultimately sue us for "definition of character" if we didn't pull that episode down. :-)

I've pondered the "interview" or "guest co-host" idea, but a 3-way conversation always sounds awkward to me. And the scheduling would be a challenge; It's hard enough just getting the two of us to coordinate a time and we're in the same time zone! It's not out of the question mind you, just not imminent.

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #65:
Synchronet was conceived of and mostly developed in southern California.
Norco, CA WX: 62.0øF, 84.0% humidity, 2 mph N wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs

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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ telnet://vert.synchro.net

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Digital Man to TechDorks on Tue Oct 20 2015 04:08 am

Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

Wow, this was cool. Thanks so much for discussing my Shooter Jennings interview, and for talking about Break Into Chat.

I created the wiki as a way to preserve all of Wikipedia's door game articles, since it seemed likely many would eventually be deleted.

Over time, the scope broadened. I began adding articles for games WP never had. I began doing my own research and interviews.

To share those interviews, I created a BiC blog as well. I've interviewed a number of door game authors like Amit Patel, who wrote Solar Realms Elite. He later went on to become one of the first Google employees, and is credited with helping popularize the motto "Don't be evil." I felt that it was important to talk to primary sources like this so that there could be material for research, or citations on the wiki.

Deuce said the wiki was "biased," and he's right. I have focused more of my energy on the games I played personally as a teen. But I have also tried to focus on games that hadn't gotten much attention. LoRD and TradeWars are all well-documented and noted. But what about Assassin? Space Dynasty? etc, etc.

In the last year or so, I've spent a lot of time writing my own Synchronet doors and experiments in javascript. Ironically this has taken away time I would otherwise have spent doing research/writing on the wiki or the blog.

So, yeah, I definitely need to add entries for all of Sync's JS games. If anyone wants to help, get in touch. I would welcome it. Over the last 2-3 years, I've had three people request accounts on the wiki, and none of them have ever actually contributed anything.

--Josh

BTW - I've been working with an artist in Mistrigis to make a new parallax scrolling ANSI demo, using Sync's Frame.js. Should be coming out next month.

////--------------------------------------------------
BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

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þ Synchronet

Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

I always enjoy listening to these podcasts. One thing I noticed on this one
is that (at least in the last ~20 minutes or so), is the relative volume
levels of your voices - It sounded like your voice was a bit quieter than Stephen's, so sometimes I had to adjust my volume control a bit as I was listening.

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

To share those interviews, I created a BiC blog as well. I've interviewed a number of door game authors like Amit Patel, who wrote Solar Realms Elite. He later went on to become one of the first Google employees, and is credited with helping popularize the motto "Don't be evil." I felt that it was important to talk to primary sources like this so that there could be material for research, or citations on the wiki.

I heard Google has dropped that motto, and indeed, it seems to me Google has been doing some odd things. I've read that Google's Gmail service scans your emails to better serve up ads - They say that's all it's for, but I'm not sure I
believe that.. Also, a little while ago, I read that Google opened a medical research facility for looking into ways of extending the human life, which seemed odd for a computer tech company to do..

Nightofx

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Kirkman to Digital Man on Fri Oct 23 2015 02:46 pm

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Digital Man to TechDorks on Tue Oct 20 2015 04:08 am

Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

Wow, this was cool. Thanks so much for discussing my Shooter Jennings interview, and for talking about Break Into Chat.

Thanks for doing it! And for your blog/wiki and stuff. Anything BBS related, especially of quality, is rare these days and I appreciate your efforts.

Sometimes I'm not good at putting BBS/sysop names/aliases with realnames and web-sites, so I totally did not realize you (the breakintochat guy) were running Synchronet or on DOVE-Net! :-)

I created the wiki as a way to preserve all of Wikipedia's door game articles, since it seemed likely many would eventually be deleted.

Over time, the scope broadened. I began adding articles for games WP never had. I began doing my own research and interviews.

To share those interviews, I created a BiC blog as well. I've interviewed a number of door game authors like Amit Patel, who wrote Solar Realms Elite. He later went on to become one of the first Google employees, and is credited with helping popularize the motto "Don't be evil." I felt that it was important to talk to primary sources like this so that there could be material for research, or citations on the wiki.

Deuce said the wiki was "biased," and he's right. I have focused more of my energy on the games I played personally as a teen. But I have also tried to focus on games that hadn't gotten much attention. LoRD and TradeWars are all well-documented and noted. But what about Assassin? Space Dynasty? etc, etc.

In the last year or so, I've spent a lot of time writing my own Synchronet doors and experiments in javascript. Ironically this has taken away time I would otherwise have spent doing research/writing on the wiki or the blog.

So, yeah, I definitely need to add entries for all of Sync's JS games. If anyone wants to help, get in touch. I would welcome it. Over the last 2-3 years, I've had three people request accounts on the wiki, and none of them have ever actually contributed anything.

See (hear) my rant on the "open source myth". I forget which episode that was now :-)

I'm using dokuwiki for wiki.synchro.net and it has an external authentication feature which I'm using (with Deuce's PHP help) to allow any Vertrauen user to login and edit the wiki, no additional registration necessary. If you wanted to switch to dokuwiki, you could do the same, but I'm not sure your Synchronet BBS is actually open to the public. And switching from your current wiki engine might be a pain.

BTW - I've been working with an artist in Mistrigis to make a new parallax scrolling ANSI demo, using Sync's Frame.js. Should be coming out next month.

Yeah, I saw your post in the Synchronet BBS group on Facebook with the video. It's impressive (the best *looking* ANSI game/demo I recall ever seeing) and I look (very much) forward to seeing the actual game.

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #76:
Rob Swindell still has dozens of BBS-related magazines in his possession. Norco, CA WX: 85.2øF, 34.0% humidity, 9 mph E wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs

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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ telnet://vert.synchro.net

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Fri Oct 23 2015 01:13 pm

Door games and sound bytes reign high, oh my! http://mp3.techdorks.net/episodes/techdorks-2015-10-20-ep8.mp3

I always enjoy listening to these podcasts. One thing I noticed on this one is that (at least in the last ~20 minutes or so), is the relative volume levels of your voices - It sounded like your voice was a bit quieter than Stephen's, so sometimes I had to adjust my volume control a bit as I was listening.

I'm still battling with the audio levels (mic technique, changing equipment, and dynamic compression). It'll get better, I promise. :-)

One problem is that by the time we finish recording one of these episodes it's typically the wee hours of the morning and way past when any reasonable person would have gone to bed. So, I kind of go through the mixing/mastering steps quickly just trying to "get it done" so I can go to sleep and I as a result, miss stuff (like the extra "Stephen audio" at the beginning of this last episode - how the hell did *that* happen?!?). It'll get better, but thanks for the feedback.

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #1:
Synchronet version 2 for DOS and OS/2 was released to the public domain in 1997.
Norco, CA WX: 84.9øF, 33.0% humidity, 6 mph SE wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs

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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ telnet://vert.synchro.net

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Kirkman to Digital Man on Fri Oct 23 2015 02:46 pm

Wow, this was cool. Thanks so much for discussing my Shooter Jennings interview, and for talking about Break Into Chat.

Heh, and still nobody has given a proper URL for it. :-)

Deuce said the wiki was "biased," and he's right. I have focused more of my energy on the games I played personally as a teen. But I have also tried to focus on games that hadn't gotten much attention. LoRD and TradeWars are all well-documented and noted. But what about Assassin? Space Dynasty? etc, etc.

Yeah, it can't really be unbiased with a single editor, and sources for much of the needed information have dried up.

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http://DuckDuckGo.com/ a better search engine that respects your privacy.
Mro is an idiot. Please ignore him, we keep hoping he'll go away.
þ Synchronet þ My Brand-New BBS (All the cool SysOps run STOCK!)

I always enjoy listening to these podcasts. One thing I noticed on

this

one is that (at least in the last ~20 minutes or so), is the relative volume levels of your voices - It sounded like your voice was a bit quieter than Stephen's, so sometimes I had to adjust my volume control

a

bit as I was listening.

I'm still battling with the audio levels (mic technique, changing

equipment,

and dynamic compression). It'll get better, I promise. :-)

One problem is that by the time we finish recording one of these episodes it's typically the wee hours of the morning and way past when any

reasonable

person would have gone to bed. So, I kind of go through the

mixing/mastering

steps quickly just trying to "get it done" so I can go to sleep and I as a result, miss stuff (like the extra "Stephen audio" at the beginning of

this

last episode - how the hell did *that* happen?!?). It'll get better, but thanks for the feedback.

It's understandable. :) I always enjoy listening though.

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Digital Man to Kirkman on Fri Oct 23 2015 04:00 pm

I'm using dokuwiki for wiki.synchro.net and it has an external authentication feature which I'm using (with Deuce's PHP help) to allow any Vertrauen user to login and edit the wiki, no additional registration necessary. If you wanted to switch to dokuwiki, you could do the same, but I'm not sure your Synchronet BBS is actually open to the public. And switching from your current wiki engine might be a pain.

I've been using MediaWiki, mostly because it's the same software that WP runs, and so it's well-supported, and I could easily fork articles and content from WP onto my site.

But I'll definitely check out dokuwiki. I've been finding my MW install very slow lately, and despite my best efforts, it's not running any faster.

As far as the BBS, to this point it has been private, but I may be opening it up soon, and it would be cool if users on my board could edit the wiki without needing a separate account.

Yeah, I saw your post in the Synchronet BBS group on Facebook with the video. It's impressive (the best *looking* ANSI game/demo I recall ever seeing) and I look (very much) forward to seeing the actual game.

Yeah, this new demo is based on the same code I used to make the "girl in the forest" parallax demo I posted on FB. The new one features art by Whazzit of Blocktronics/Mistigris, and is more polished, and will be in the next Mistigris artpack.

I'm hoping that my daughter and I can make something playable from my 'tileset' code. But I'm still busy drawing/adapting RPG tiles into ANSI, and haven't done enough code work on the actual game.

--Josh

////--------------------------------------------------
BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

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þ Synchronet

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Kirkman to Digital Man on Fri Oct 23 2015 09:27 pm

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Digital Man to Kirkman on Fri Oct 23 2015 04:00 pm

I'm using dokuwiki for wiki.synchro.net and it has an external authentication feature which I'm using (with Deuce's PHP help) to allow any Vertrauen user to login and edit the wiki, no additional registration necessary. If you wanted to switch to dokuwiki, you could do the same, but I'm not sure your Synchronet BBS is actually open to the public. And switching from your current wiki engine might be a pain.

I've been using MediaWiki, mostly because it's the same software that WP runs, and so it's well-supported, and I could easily fork articles and content from WP onto my site.

But I'll definitely check out dokuwiki. I've been finding my MW install very slow lately, and despite my best efforts, it's not running any faster.

As far as the BBS, to this point it has been private, but I may be opening it up soon, and it would be cool if users on my board could edit the wiki without needing a separate account.

If you choose to try DokuWiki with Sychronet, here's the auth plugin for sbbs: ftp://vert.synchro.net/Synchronet/dokuauth.zip

Yeah, I saw your post in the Synchronet BBS group on Facebook with the video. It's impressive (the best *looking* ANSI game/demo I recall ever seeing) and I look (very much) forward to seeing the actual game.

Yeah, this new demo is based on the same code I used to make the "girl in the forest" parallax demo I posted on FB. The new one features art by Whazzit of Blocktronics/Mistigris, and is more polished, and will be in the next Mistigris artpack.

I'm hoping that my daughter and I can make something playable from my 'tileset' code. But I'm still busy drawing/adapting RPG tiles into ANSI, and haven't done enough code work on the actual game.

Looking forward to it. I thought the demo you put on FB looked like > 16 colors, but I guess just the extra cells of a 132x60 terminal helped to create that effect. Very Zelda-esque, imho. Keep it up!

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #75:
Michael Swindell still has the "Synchronet Blimp" in his possession.
Norco, CA WX: 70.4øF, 55.0% humidity, 1 mph NNW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs

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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ telnet://vert.synchro.net

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Nightfox to Kirkman on Fri Oct 23 2015 13:16:46

believe that.. Also, a little while ago, I read that Google opened a medical research facility for looking into ways of extending the human life, which seemed odd for a computer tech company to do..

Yeah I remember when all of that went down. Wasn't it their CTO or otherwise top tier level corporate officer that was saying that he made it a goal to extend human life indefinitely within his own lifetime or something like that? Some seriously megalomaniacal stuff going on within there.

-D/K

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Borg Burgers: We do it our way; your way is irrelevant.
þ Synchronet þ Tinfoil Tetrahedron BBS telnet://tinfoil.synchro.net

Re: Google/The Ultimate Evil
By: Khelair to Nightfox on Tue Oct 27 2015 10:45 am

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Nightfox to Kirkman on Fri Oct 23 2015 13:16:46

believe that.. Also, a little while ago, I read that Google opened a medical research facility for looking into ways of extending the human life, which seemed odd for a computer tech company to do..

Yeah I remember when all of that went down. Wasn't it their CTO or otherw top tier level corporate officer that was saying that he made it a goal to extend human life indefinitely within his own lifetime or something like tha Some seriously megalomaniacal stuff going on within there.

Human life extension may be possible, but couldn't they please get my Android phone battery to last longer first?


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þ Synchronet þ << Crystal Aerie >> Va, USA Telnet://crystal-aerie.com

Re: Episode 8: The Terminator Returns
By: Digital Man to Kirkman on Fri Oct 23 2015 10:52 pm

Yeah, this new demo is based on the same code I used to make the "girl
in the forest" parallax demo I posted on FB. The new one features art
by Whazzit of Blocktronics/Mistigris, and is more polished, and will
be in the next Mistigris artpack.

I'm hoping that my daughter and I can make something playable from my
'tileset' code. But I'm still busy drawing/adapting RPG tiles into
ANSI, and haven't done enough code work on the actual game.

Looking forward to it. I thought the demo you put on FB looked like > 16 colors, but I guess just the extra cells of a 132x60 terminal helped to create that effect. Very Zelda-esque, imho. Keep it up!

If anyone cares - I've opened my board up in case anyone would like to check out my newish "mermaid" parallax demo, the previous "girl in the forest" parallax demo, or the tileset game-in-progress.

guardian.synchro.net

The RPG tileset thing works in 80x24, but it's meant to be tried on a 132x60 console.

I'd love to get feedback from folks about the mermaid demos. I'm really curious how it performs for people across the country from me.

--Josh

////--------------------------------------------------
BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

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þ Synchronet