All of this talk about people's old BBSes is coincidental. I've been writing more, and have been tempted to go back to DOS text editor in a DOS VM, running full screen.

Multitasking is starting to be more of an issue these days, it's too easy to get distracted. Back when I was running DOS, I did one thing at one time, and I'd like to go back to that again - at least when I'm trying to get something done.

---
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Re: Nostalgia
By: Poindexter Fortran to All on Wed Nov 05 2014 08:40 am

All of this talk about people's old BBSes is coincidental. I've been
writing more, and have been tempted to go back to DOS text editor in a DOS VM, running full screen.

Multitasking is starting to be more of an issue these days, it's too easy
to get distracted. Back when I was running DOS, I did one thing at one
time, and I'd like to go back to that again - at least when I'm trying to get something done.

It's true. I take advantage of focus by using OSX's full-screen apps. I try to carve out time to tackle my tasks one by one, and then focus on them by making sure the related software is using up all the screen real estate.

I also make a habit of closing out browser tabs, exiting Facebook, and shutting
down other unnecessary apps. Sometimes I will also put it in Do Not Disturb mode so that notifications don't pop up and tempt me out of my thinking.

I sure wish I could also put muzzles on my children, because their loud obnoxiousness pulls me away from the focus too. But that's one of those things that is next to impossible to fix -- except maybe hopping in the car and driving across the country and never coming back :)

There's also some cool text editors for OSX that will take over your screen and
let you focus on writing and only writing. They are pretty interesting.

Knight

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Poindexter Fortran wrote to All <=-

Multitasking is starting to be more of an issue these days, it's too
easy to get distracted. Back when I was running DOS, I did one thing at one time, and I'd like to go back to that again - at least when I'm
trying to get something done

I hear you. I'm a writer (and...sigh.. blogger) too, and it's for this reason I do all my writing on my TRS-80 Model 100. Great keyboard, powers up in about a second, runs for a month on 4 AA batteries, can save to SD card, and best of all: no distractions.



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Re: Re: Nostalgia
By: vaclav to Poindexter Fortran on Thu Nov 06 2014 09:13:00

I hear you. I'm a writer (and...sigh.. blogger) too, and it's for this reason I do all my writing on my TRS-80 Model 100. Great keyboard, powers up in about a second, runs for a month on 4 AA batteries, can save to SD card, and best of all: no distractions.

Ditto on the writing bit, if you don't mind me butting in. I've had massive problems with distraction lately, which really sucks, because I was hoping to use NaNoWriMo to help me reboot into writing fiction again regularly (the last time I 'won' NaNoWriMo it was a nonfictional piece). What a great excuse to get myself another 8-bit computer that I've wanted for awhile... With being so busy lately, my worst problem has been distraction when I finally get a bit of computer time. That's an outstanding idea.

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Khelair wrote to vaclav <=-

Ditto on the writing bit, if you don't mind me butting in.

Nah, no worries, I do it all the time :)

I've had
massive problems with distraction lately, which really sucks, because I was hoping to use NaNoWriMo to help me reboot into writing fiction
again regularly (the last time I 'won' NaNoWriMo it was a nonfictional piece). What a great excuse to get myself another 8-bit computer that I've wanted for awhile... With being so busy lately, my worst problem
has been distraction when I finally get a bit of computer time. That's
an outstanding idea.

By my own admission, my multitasking skills are terrible. There always seems to be a squirrel, or something shiny! The 8-bitters (and early 16-bitters) are always great for single-tasking, but I find myself booting Debian or Solaris into command-line mode for single-tasking when I'm too lazy to drag out the old beast(s). So long as I don't abuse "screen" or "tmux" I'm fine.

I wanted to "enter" NaNoWriMo this year, however my 16 month old daughter takes up most of my time (as it probably should be). Hoping to participate in a couple of years.


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Re: Re: Nostalgia
By: vaclav to Khelair on Fri Nov 07 2014 07:44:00

By my own admission, my multitasking skills are terrible. There always seems to be a squirrel, or something shiny! The 8-bitters (and early 16-bitters) are always great for single-tasking, but I find myself booting Debian or Solaris into command-line mode for single-tasking when I'm too lazy to drag out the old beast(s). So long as I don't abuse "screen" or "tmux" I'm fine.

Heh. Yeah, I used to be a lot better than I am right now... For me, it's almost like I've gained a bit of ADHD as I've aged. I suspect that some of the recreation in my youth was to blame for this, and some other detrimental changes to my neurochemistry and neurology in general.
One thing that I do, now and then, is move off of the graphical desktop (which isn't even mine in the first place) to my console mode only machine. It's actually the server that I run my BBS on; it doesn't have enough RAM to run X comfortably, so I just stripped all of that crap off of there and usually have it headless. Right now, though, it's going to be moved again soon, so it's got a head. I find that I can focus on coding or whatever else I can accomplish in a text window muuuuuch more easily than I can on a desktop. It's not so much the ability to have multiple processes running and available (take 'screen', for instance), but more the little graphical tidbits, like the headline images on google news, that tend to end up dragging me away, I think. It really helps me focus on coding a lot better, if nothing else.

I wanted to "enter" NaNoWriMo this year, however my 16 month old daughter takes up most of my time (as it probably should be). Hoping to participate in a couple of years.

I'm off to a really poor start so far this year. Getting back into the swing of being a wage slave again has really hurt things. I lost the first serious delve into this plotline that I'd written a few weeks ago, too... While most of it shouldn't be too tough to get down again in some form, there were bits of the story that I'd thought up that I'm pretty sure won't come back to me until I've gone far enough in that making changes that big will be a real pain. :(
Maybe I should focus more for a bit on my automated backup script. Heh.

---
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Khelair wrote to vaclav <=-

I'm off to a really poor start so far this year. Getting back into
the swing of being a wage slave again has really hurt things. I lost
the first serious delve into this plotline that I'd written a few weeks ago, too... While most of it shouldn't be too tough to get down again
in some form, there were bits of the story that I'd thought up that I'm pretty sure won't come back to me until I've gone far enough in that making changes that big will be a real pain. :(
Maybe I should focus more for a bit on my automated backup script.
Heh.

I'd had an idea for a story a while ago - based on highly fictionalized events in my own life. I got as far as drawing up a storyboard, but there were a few elements of the story where I couldn't come up with a resolution, so I decided to turn the story into an adventure game (whether text or graphic) and see how it plays out.


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vaclav wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

reason I do all my writing on my TRS-80 Model 100. Great keyboard,
powers up in about a second, runs for a month on 4 AA batteries, can
save to SD card, and best of all: no distractions.

Nice!

I bought one on eBay 10 or so years ago, found the whole kit with case,
modem and tape recorder. Found out the = key didn't work, which made using
a BASIC-programmed computer a little tough.

I love the idea of a long battery life, instant-boot text-only computer. No distractions.





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Re: Re: Nostalgia
By: Poindexter Fortran to vaclav on Thu Nov 06 2014 11:19:00

I bought one on eBay 10 or so years ago, found the whole kit with case, modem and tape recorder. Found out the = key didn't work, which made using
a BASIC-programmed computer a little tough.

I love the idea of a long battery life, instant-boot text-only computer. No distractions.

I found about TRS-80 a couple of months ago and bought a Model 102 just recently. I haven't got it yet, but should have it in a couple of weeks. It seems to be a perfect laptop for writing and retro-programming. Looks like there is a BBS software written for it, too!

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Poindexter Fortran wrote to vaclav <=-

-

Nice!

I bought one on eBay 10 or so years ago, found the whole kit with case, modem and tape recorder. Found out the = key didn't work, which made
using a BASIC-programmed computer a little tough.

I love the idea of a long battery life, instant-boot text-only
computer. No distractions.

They're great little machines. Mine is mostly used for writing, but as proof-of-concept I wrote up a few sales quotes (for our internal "test" customer) in Multiplan and exported them (via the NADSBox SD card solution) to Excel on my work PC. While it works, I wouldn't risk my... job... doing it for a real customer :)


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Re: Nostalgia
By: Poindexter Fortran to All on Wed Nov 05 2014 08:40 am

All of this talk about people's old BBSes is coincidental. I've been writing more, and have been tempted to go back to DOS text editor in a DOS VM, runni full screen.

Yep, it's more fun and easier to write here (despite the clunky editor)
because you can focus on what you are doing, than writing on some silly web forum full of distractions and 20 TABs waiting in your browser to get
to them.

Multitasking is starting to be more of an issue these days, it's too easy to get distracted. Back when I was running DOS, I did one thing at one time, an I'd like to go back to that again - at least when I'm trying to get somethin done.

I could never go to that. I can't say "back" to that, because I never
had a non-multitasking system when I was BBSing. I was always actually trying to expand the multitasking possibilities. Amiga 500 allowed me to use NComm
for BBSing, but it was so incredibly cool to be able to also play some
smaller MOD files at the same time. And run some CLI commands on the other screen. But 1 MB memory didn't allow much of that, though.

With A1200 it of course became a different world, and multitasking became
a way of life, a normal way of being. So basically, I never really know what
it must've been like in the DOS times to do only one thing at a time..

In fact, it was one of the arguments to get an Amiga, because at least
that way you could get multitasking. Like the old joke goes; "The only
way to multitask PC is to run PC-Task on an Amiga twice".

(PC-Task is an old PC-emulator, like DOSBox, but more primitive)

Still, I know what you mean. I purposely try to separate myself to do
only one task at a time, when I am creating something, or I can't really
be sure I will be able to accomplish anything.

Fortunately, I have a real Amiga 1200 for creating pixel-graphics, for
example, so in a way, that's easy. Still, I put some japanese DVD-Magazines
or musicvideos or such to play on an old monitor next to the TV, on the
table where the Amiga is located, so I have some kind of 'inspirative
energy source' to help me with creativity.

I am not sure if that qualifies as 'multitasking', but I am sure that
even DOS-people at the time used television sets to watch stuff while
they were BBSing and stuff, so I am not sure anyone has ever
COMPLETELY focused on only one thing at a time. Heck, I hear that
graphicians even in the nineties used to *gasp* listen to music while
working!

And how many people turn on a radio while reading the paper while
eating their breakfast?

I guess it comes down to "what constitutes as multitasking"?

And also, aren't you a master of yourself.. surely anyone can do
exactly as small amount of tasks at any given time they choose to. Or
is this about lack of willpower somehow?

I don't see multitasking as any kind of a problem, and I couldn't go
"back" to not having multitasking. I see it only as a good thing. For
example, I can't believe how well some games work in VMWare - it's like
playing them normally, but you can this way multitask better, because
you can play them on a window while watching some TV show on another window, while taking pauses to write messages on a forum on another monitor..

Halo, Warcraft 3, Gunman Chronicles - they work amazingly well. The worst of t hem is the Gunman Chronicles - there is a slight lag in the mouse movement.

In any case, multi-tasking is here to stay, and I think humans are
actually designed to be able to do it. There is lots of latent power in
all of us, and the more technology advances on a given planet, the more
its denizens get to utilize these latent powers.

Hmm, I don't think this is the kind of post to bring Atlantis and other
planets into the mix, but if you widen the scope of thought, you realize
that focusing only on one task can be quite primitive, unless it's a
task that absolutely requires it (like creativity). For normal tasks, like reading a forum or writing to a forum or watching a TV show, while playing
some game, I don't see a problem with multitasking.

Humans can handle multiple stimuli.

It's just that if the stimuli is trivial and frivolous, it can become a little bit weird, I suppose. Like all that SMS/Twitter communication.. if you can
call it that. No serious and thoughtful expressions or exchange of ideas or thoughts - just memes, superficial crap and trivialities.

Anyway, I think I have messed up the topic a bit - multitasking doesn't suit for every purpose, but for casual computer usage, it's a heaven's sent, in my opinion.

I like multitasking.





---
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Gorkh wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

Re: Nostalgia

Yep, it's more fun and easier to write here (despite the clunky editor) because you can focus on what you are doing, than writing on some silly web forum full of distractions and 20 TABs waiting in your browser to
get to them.

I was excited to find out that my widescreen Linux laptop does a
somewhat decent full screen console mode with Syncterm. Back to the
80s!

I could never go to that. I can't say "back" to that, because I never
had a non-multitasking system when I was BBSing. I was always actually trying to expand the multitasking possibilities.

In the DOS world, there was a nice term program called Telemate that
had some limited multitasking. You could open up a notepad window and
edit text while downloading, and I had a TSR version of QEDIT that
worked OK if you had the right kind of serial port to allow buffering.

It wasn't until I started playing with OS/2 that I could have a
terminal in one window and use my system for something else at the
same time.





Amiga 500 allowed me

to use NComm for BBSing, but it was so incredibly cool to be able to
also play some smaller MOD files at the same time. And run some CLI commands on the other screen. But 1 MB memory didn't allow much of
that, though.

With A1200 it of course became a different world, and multitasking
became a way of life, a normal way of being. So basically, I never
really know what it must've been like in the DOS times to do only one thing at a time..

In fact, it was one of the arguments to get an Amiga, because at least that way you could get multitasking. Like the old joke goes; "The only
way to multitask PC is to run PC-Task on an Amiga twice".

(PC-Task is an old PC-emulator, like DOSBox, but more primitive)

Still, I know what you mean. I purposely try to separate myself to do
only one task at a time, when I am creating something, or I can't
really be sure I will be able to accomplish anything.

Fortunately, I have a real Amiga 1200 for creating pixel-graphics, for example, so in a way, that's easy. Still, I put some japanese DVD-Magazines or musicvideos or such to play on an old monitor next to
the TV, on the table where the Amiga is located, so I have some kind of 'inspirative energy source' to help me with creativity.

I am not sure if that qualifies as 'multitasking', but I am sure that
even DOS-people at the time used television sets to watch stuff while
they were BBSing and stuff, so I am not sure anyone has ever
COMPLETELY focused on only one thing at a time. Heck, I hear that graphicians even in the nineties used to *gasp* listen to music while working!

And how many people turn on a radio while reading the paper while
eating their breakfast?

I guess it comes down to "what constitutes as multitasking"?

And also, aren't you a master of yourself.. surely anyone can do
exactly as small amount of tasks at any given time they choose to. Or
is this about lack of willpower somehow?

I don't see multitasking as any kind of a problem, and I couldn't go "back" to not having multitasking. I see it only as a good thing. For example, I can't believe how well some games work in VMWare - it's like playing them normally, but you can this way multitask better, because
you can play them on a window while watching some TV show on another window, while taking pauses to write messages on a forum on another monitor..

Halo, Warcraft 3, Gunman Chronicles - they work amazingly well. The
worst of t hem is the Gunman Chronicles - there is a slight lag in the mouse movement.

In any case, multi-tasking is here to stay, and I think humans are actually designed to be able to do it. There is lots of latent power in all of us, and the more technology advances on a given planet, the more its denizens get to utilize these latent powers.

Hmm, I don't think this is the kind of post to bring Atlantis and other planets into the mix, but if you widen the scope of thought, you
realize that focusing only on one task can be quite primitive, unless
it's a task that absolutely requires it (like creativity). For normal tasks, like reading a forum or writing to a forum or watching a TV
show, while playing some game, I don't see a problem with multitasking.

Humans can handle multiple stimuli.

It's just that if the stimuli is trivial and frivolous, it can become a little bit weird, I suppose. Like all that SMS/Twitter communication..
if you can call it that. No serious and thoughtful expressions or
exchange of ideas or thoughts - just memes, superficial crap and trivialities.

Anyway, I think I have messed up the topic a bit - multitasking doesn't suit for every purpose, but for casual computer usage, it's a heaven's sent, in my opinion.

I like multitasking.

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Lol, I just came across your message re nostalgia and how you've been BBSing for so long. This is my first ever time and I am just getting to grips with the strange interface. Hope to see you around.

Craig

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Re: Nostalgia
By: Craig Molus to Zombie Mambo on Wed Jul 08 2020 01:18 am

Lol, I just came across your message re nostalgia and how you've been BBSing for so long. This is my first ever time and I am just getting to grips with the strange interface. Hope to see you around.

Craig

Hi Craig...
It's kinda funny; this 'interface' is where it all started for me! So coming back to the BBSes, in a way, is like... coming back to where I started. :P

This was internet 1.0 for ME...

I wasn't around in the 70s/80s for the VERY EARLY BBSes; but in the 90s... Synchronet, Renegade, Telegard (different BBS softwares) systems... I know them well. :P

Just saying... these 'strange interfaces' are where it all begin for some of us. I hope you 'get' the interface and continue to come around and meet everyone involved in BBS Scene 2o2o... :P Welcome.

pAULIE42o
M@STERMiND
AmericanPiBBS.com

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