Last week I learned Wolfgang Nake had died on July 17th. Wolfgang has dedicated is retirement time to reenact the early #Atari TTL games - especially #Pong. We cooperated in talks, exhibitions, and in papers many times. I am very sad he died only 70 years old! One of my forthcoming essay collections on #ComputerArchaeology will be dedicated to him and his work.
In my weblog I wrote a short obituray on him:
http://www.simulationsraum.de/blog/2025/08/01/wolfgang-nake-1954-2025/
What do you do when you are sick with the flu on the sofa? Me, I am reading @nickmofo‘s excellent book „Racing the Beam“ about the Atari VCS. This also led me to nanochess‘s blog post about Video Chess.
#retrocomputing #computerarchaeology
Another English translated chapter from my earlier work is uploaded to ResearchGate:
Little Data – Fractal Image Compression: From a Network-Historical Miscellany to a Media-Structural Rupture
Today the 4th issue of the German #GameStudies magazine "Spiel-Formen" has been published. Main topic of this issue is #GameLabs. I contributed a photo galery about the "Signal Laboratory" at HU Berlin:
Today I've published an english translated version of my paper on the #ComputerArchaeology of (early) #SocialNetworks, describing the "Community Memory" project from Lee Felsenstein and others in the 1960s/70s SF Bay Area:
"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" – Public memories, democratic information, and restrictive technologies using the example of "Community Memory"
Today I'm going to #Munich for the @vcfe where I'm exhibiting early #Atari home computers, giving a lecture on the #GOTO controversy and holding an editor-editorial meeting about the next volumes in the #ComputerArchaeology book series. As the icing on the cake, swap (my) #THAT analog computer for a Leyboldt-Haraeus #AnalogComputer.
Another pre-print from me: "»I Program my Home Computer«. Discourse and Computer Archaeological Localizations of a Technology" - where I try to define "home computer" as a term, a technology, and a media historic event:
Just published: my (translated) chapter on "Unconventional Computing" as a pre-print on ResearchGate:
My proposal for this years SHOT conference in Luxembourg was accepted! I contribute to the "Code Histories" session with a talk about my #BASIC research project.
Last week I found these cassettes with an audio manual and bit-stream software for the "#Signetics Instructor 50" #SingleBoardComputer from 1978. Today I ripped the audio to an MP3 file. Feel free to download it here:
https://cloud.uni-halle.de/s/6M6iiq8rsF4lXQ1
And take a visit to this marvelous Instructor-50 website: https://ztpe.nl/2650/hardware/signetics-instructor-50/
Today I had an all-day seminar about "Code Critic" at MeWi Uni Bonn. I organized the talks of the students as a symposium. The last talk was about the #GOTO controversy that started in the end of the 1960s with a rant from Edsger W. #Dijkstra and lasts until today. The student's talk ended with a self-made meme.
Request for information on FPS-100 and related arithmetic processor machines:
Today I hooked up a USB DVD drive to a MacBook and put in a CDR I burned circa 1997 from a PowerBook 540c. Totally surprised that MacOS read it and displayed files in the Finder from a 27 year old obsolete file system.
At any rate, here's a picture of me with a face hugger I made for fun. The picture was taken with a Quickcam. #oldmacs #computerArchaeology #alien #prop
Dear #retrocomputing folks attending #38c3: is anyone of you willing to lend me a 5.25" floppy disk drive to read — in case I don't get my own drive before? It should be okay to remove the drive from the machine because I plan to connect it to my #greaseweazle. Of course, others could use my gw. The floppy is (likely, I don't have it yet) a 360 kByte DS DD MFM one intended for IBM PC. As it's called "master disk" I am expecting some kind of copy protection. #computerarchaeology #Bitsavers #flux
Today I start my lecture series "The World of #Game Labs" at the Department for Media and Communication at University Halle.
The first talk will be given by myself about the ten years of "Signal Laboratory" in the Media Science Department at the Humboldt University (2012-2022).
The talk will be in German and starts at 16:00 (4 pm) ct.
You can attend online here: https://mluconf.uni-halle.de/b/ste-zv2-y8r-ecd
The #MediaStudies of Uni Halle, where I am invited as a guest professor for the next semester, is about to establish a #GameLab called "Circuit Lab". We will use this for one or two rounds of "Game Circuits".
In the winter term 2024/25 I am teaching at the universities in Halle and Bonn:
http://www.simulationsraum.de/blog/2024/07/30/lehre-im-wintersemester-3/
Next month the enzyclopedia „Digitalität von A bis Z“ will be published. I contributed a chapter on #ComputerArchaeology:
Today my copy of "The Oxford Handbook of #VideoGame Music and Sound", edited by William Gibbons and Mark Grimshaw-Aargaard arrived.
I contributed a chapter about "Symbolic Music and Algorithmic Composing. Computer Archaeological Perspectives on #BASIC #Game Sounds"
