Starwatcher2001

6 ms·

1.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
Been in software dev for 43 years. Done the 6am and 96 hour weeks. Then realised I'd missed a big part of my kids growing up, and once they were dead, spending little time with my parents. Too busy you see. I'd recommend people re
2.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
I seem to recall that "Drain" spun up the motor on the floppy drive to create the spin dry cycle.
3.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
Amateur telescope makers can make glass mirrors accurate to 1/10 of the wavelength of light using very simple tools and processes. https://www.bbastrodesigns.com/JoyOfMirrorMaking/Intro.html
4.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
One of my first "serious" electronic builds in the 1970s was a variable, current limiting PSU from Heathkit. (Advertised in Practical Electronics). Used that together with a breadboard kit to launch a life long interest in electro
5.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
“what have you been up to lately?” Be a little careful with this one. I asked a similarly worded question at an event over Easter got the answer "Burying my husband." Thankfully the lady was good natured about it and we managed to
6.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
My wife leaves the toilet door open when she's in there, which annoys me. One day I asked her why and she told me she used to do it deliberately when the children were little so she could hear what they were up to, and talk to them if
7.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
I'm doing something similar. I've decided at 62 to learn to play the keyboard and be able to read music. It's late in the day but I'm slowly getting there 30 minutes a day.
8.
by Starwatcher2001 3y ago
"That still mystifies me: The 6502-equivalent of an if-clause was branch-not-equal (BNE), but how did that work in reality? What's happening on the silicone then? How can a lifeless thing make a decision? Never really understood w
9.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
Nicholas Carr's book "The shallows - What the internet is doing to out brains" is a little old (2011), but an eye-opening read. "One thing is very clear: if, knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you w
10.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
You might consider humanism. It provides purpose and community, without requiring a deity.
11.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
That looks great. Bookmarked to have a closer look. I cut my teeth on a Model 1 Level 2 in 1979 and have been coding ever since. Still have my original working one, a spare and a model III in the attic. Probably a decade since I switched th
12.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
>Replacement of nice physical controls with touch screens and touch panels. It's so nice to have tactile feedback when you turn a knob compared to pressing some virtual button. And vital to anyone visually impaired.
13.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I'd put it back in the box and return it as defective.
14.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
> I am terribly afraid of death That's understandable. I'm concerned for my loved ones and the impact it may have on them when I go, but I have no fear of death for myself. I have no memory of the millions of years that passed
15.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
The TRS-80 level 1 ROM was 4k and the BASIC had the luxury of exactly 3 error messages: What? How? and Sorry.
16.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
Yup. Light pollution filters are practically useless now. When I started observing 25 years ago, galaxies and nebulae were viable targets from my back garden, now I'm limited to solar system objects unless I load up my gear and drive a
17.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
Wonderful resource. I may well get around to clearing my collection from my loft.
18.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
Thanks for your site and message. Sorry but personally I found your article difficult to read. Your font choice and background, which seemed to me to overwhelm the text with little contrast, made it hard for me to see and parse the words. S
19.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
Thats a really good point. In a similar way the number of available technologies gets bigger and bigger as we age, more choices, more to know and more things to fiddle with. Decades ago the whole MSDOS machine was mine and my tools were an
20.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I use a heirarchy of folders and within them I create a text file for each main task: \work\customername\StockSystem MyCust001 - Interface not updating PickStatus.txt MyCust002 - Add Stock Check Flag to ScanPullStock.txt MyCust003 - Look at
21.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I tried paper and log books for a long time (I've got half a filing cabinets worth), but no matter what system I used I couldn't always find what I wanted. (When did I last modify routine xyz, and why?). Moving to flat ascii files
22.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I know the feeling. I'm 62 and I can't go as long or as deep as I once could, but I've changed my strategy over the years and although I'm not as fast as I once was I'm still pretty productive. What I do is log virt
23.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
"First, very funny that with each comment the author is older." Yeah, not quite as quick off the mark as you youngsters :-). I posted a similar comment to yours in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2706571
24.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I'm 62 and have been in this industry for 40+ years. The BIGGEST regret in my entire life has been the time I spent as a young man working stupid hours on "super important" jobs, and missing seeing much of my kids growing u
25.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I recall there was a whole paragraph written about the sound command and that 20Hz was the resonant frequency of a chicken's head, discovered empirically. Borland did seem to be a playful company in contrast to Microsoft, their main ri
26.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
This is one of my favourite sites on noctilucent clouds: http://www.nightskyhunter.com/Noctilucent%20Clouds.html It describes what they are, how they differ from normal clouds, and how to recognise them.
27.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
My worst hack was a bug in a small network I wrote to interface to some barcode readers and displays. There was a buffer overflow in the interrupt routine of my 8088 assembler code, which would occasionally miss an outgoing character. The
28.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
We needed to take delivery data from a proprietory legacy system. It already printed delivery notes so I spliced into the RS232 cable to the printer and took a feed into a second PC. I then wrote a quick and dirty comms program to suck the
29.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
Not what I expected, but that brought back memories. The LM380 (the 386's cousin) was the first analog chip I ever used, somewhere around 1976. I built a small headphone amp with the chip and a handful of discrete components on a piece
30.
by Starwatcher2001 4y ago
I'm on the list to donate my body. Perhaps a medical student will gain just a little more insight or skill by practicing a technique on my body, and perhaps that will help them save or help a patient or two in the future. I hope so. Th

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