On yet to be released new Amiga game I am really looking forward to play is called Tales of Gorluth. I have seen the video of it and it looks really nice. It is designed by Patrick Nevian. I hope he will release a demo version soon so we can have a bit of a try.
I have started on a new series of programming articles for OS4.x called “File Attributes”. It will be about programming with files on OS4.x. From opening a file, obtaining it’s attributes and much more. I have already released the first article called “File attributes – Opening a file”. Before I write the next one I will write a next article for the Amiga Editor section. I will talk about libraries and their interfaces. I did talk about this before but it’s always good to bring it up again.
Currently I am listening to the latest episode of BoingsWorld. This time Ernie & Locke are also present. This time they are on the show as interview partners. I am just a small bit into the interview section and so far I am having a great time listening to it.
I came across rather interesting site called AmigaVikke. The site is dedicated to coding the Amiga the old way. It’s new and at the moment there is only a Copperbars tutorial on there. It is interesting to read some Assembler code and explanation.
A rather short column this time but since I had not written one for some weeks I prefer getting one out even if it is is a short column.
I really enjoyed the interview with Petro Tyschtschenko in BoingsWorld episode 34. A lot of interesting stories from Petro and better yet he is working on a book about his work at Commodore. He hopes he can release it in April next year. This is a must have book. The stuff you will read in there will just blow you away.
Pietro Ghizzoni (owner of the Amos Pro sources) has released the Amos Pro sources into the public domain. The sources can be (direct link) downloaded here. By now they should also be available on Aminet. For Amos fans, me included, it is a great moment to look at the sources. It is written in 68k assembler and using the classic hardware a lot. For a nostalgic trip I probably reserve some time to browse through the sources.
It is that time of the year again. What I am talking about? Christmas of course. We just had our Christmas tree delivered this morning. Normally we pick it up ourselves with the car but with our new Mini that was just not possible. Not only would it not fit but I would also not put it in the car if it would fit. There is no way I will mess up the car. It was also really cheap to have it delivered. You just have to find the right seller.
Till today we had some nice snow which makes everything look really great. Not only that it makes you want to do Amiga stuff because of the nostalgic feelings it brings back. Sadly it started to rain late last evening and even now it is poring. But I am sure we will have some cold and snowy weather again soon. With some hot coco playing classic Amiga games and browse through other stuff as well. What better way to go through the Christmas period.
I ran into another (as it would seem) issue with Aros regarding the pen colour. You might have read about the issue with the syntax highlight regarding Annotate and C programming and I got the feeling it effects everything. I was playing around with Amiga Guide files and when I set the pen colour the text colour remains the same. That got me really worried. It would be a real issue for me if it effects everything. I am hoping it was my poorly coding attempt at tackling Amiga Guide files but I am afraid it is not. Hopefully I will find out soon if it is me or Aros.
When scrolling through my Facebook news feed I noticed that
AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 was released. But at the same time I read this was announced by mistake. After going to the forums it seems it was put back on again. Apparently someone released it by mistake. I am still running with Update 4 so I would have to install Update 5 first before I can install Update 6. Besides that I need to put my A1SE back together first since I took the graphics card and sound card to use in my desktop for Aros. But since I use VirtualBox on my Acer laptop for Aros I can put the components back in the A1SE.
BoingsWorld episode 34 is also out. Always on time like promised and this time with Petro Tyschtschenko as guest. Sadly I did not see Ernie and Locke on the credits for this episode. I really hope they return in the next episode. I can’t wait to listen to episode 34.
Another great bit of news is that apparently MorphOS will run on the Sam460ex board. Suddenly such a board becomes an attractive piece of hardware. The fact that you can run both OS4.x and MorphOS kind of justifies the purchase of the board. No longer would you have to invest in two machines if you want both worlds. Even better, it will also run Aros.
Currently I am also working on an article about X-AMOS. Giving it a bit of a try to see if it is something you can work with. Another article I am working on involves games and their great memories. Plenty of stuff in the pipeline and let’s hope I find the time to get it done.
I did this for the first time last year August. You can read it again if you like. I thought it was time for a part 2. Week 45 experienced by me with you the reader in the front seat.
Monday 5-11-2012
My last day of my holiday before I have to return to work. I enjoyed a good 3 weeks of holiday which is about to come to an end. I had the opportunity to play a lot with Aros, writing for my blog and playing a lot of classic games. Sadly from tomorrow on I would have less time for all of this. Still I am determine to do as much coding for Aros as I can. I am currently trying to get the syntax highlight to work with Annotate. There is some kind of issue with Aros which causes issues with the pen colors. So if I set certain key words in the C syntax to certain colors it will be different the next time I reboot Aros.
Atari Flashback
Yesterday I came across the Atari Flashback for (I think) €17,50 but since I don’t know anything about it (except for it being a modern classic Atari device to play classic games) I did not pick it up. Anyone know this was a good deal or maybe has some nice, or not so nice, stories about this device? I did see newer versions of this device on the internet.
I had a few more coding attempts which was not bad. Still getting used to Zune (MUI clone) but I got to open two windows at the same time. I had some crashes at well bringing VirtualBox to a complete halt. But currently I got two windows open which will be the basis for my further attempts.
Tuesday 6-11-2012
Reality hits hard on your first day back at work after your holiday. What is noticeable right away is the lack of time again. I managed to have a quick peek at my e-mail and visit the Aros-Exec site around midnight. Not that I came back from work at midnight. It takes me one hour to drive to work and also (well yeah) one hour back home. Normally I am home a bit after 6:00pm. When I came back I had to hit the road with my wife for her business and we came back around 10:00pm. Still had to cook dinner so it got to be a long day. We grab something on the road of course but you want a decent dinner as well.
Wednesday 7-11-2012
Today I managed to catch up with the BoingsWorld podcasts. I finished both episode 32 and 33. As always great shows. It is in German so it is only for those who understand German.
Sadly there was no Ernie & Locke in episode 33. I do hope they return in episode 34.
Thursday 8-11-2012
Today was all work as I did overtime which left me with no free time at all. And that on the third day back after my holiday. It suddenly, like it was not already there, daunted on me that time is just going to be very limited for me to pursue my Amiga endeavours. Hopefully I can find some kind of solution that will leave me with enough time to work on my Amiga stuff. Fingers crossed!
Friday 9-11-2012
Weekend! As I thought and already reported the free time was just like I thought it would be, just about none. But it was not a bad week all together. Coincidence or faith, you decide, with the first Bucket Diary style column I was talking about the new car we got. I am going to do the same in this part. We won’t have a new car this week but we kind of sealed the deal so to the speak. Hopefully it will all happen next week so we got a really cool car.
We started with season 3 of The Walking Dead. Great start of the season and right away me and the missus are hooked. So much that we watch into the early hours of Saturday morning. Great start of the weekend if you ask me.
Saturday 10-11-2012
Saturday is always a busy day for the missus as she buys new products for he business. With me “tagging” along we have a very busy day. I “tag” along with her a lot and I enjoy it. Her business is growing so fast she is unable to supply all demands. Demand overshadows stock which is not a bad thing if you ask me. She is already thinking about expanding the business even further. Her wish is for me to join her business. I can’t tell you how excited I am about joining her.
With episode 4 of The Walking Dead finished we are left hungry for the next episode which will be broadcast tomorrow Sunday the 11th. Sunday, also known as the last day of the weekend. This Sunday I will clean the car and also the garage for this upcoming week when hopefully we have our new car.
I was really excited for the weekend to start. Not only will it be a long weekend (a free day on Monday) but I will also have time to play with Aros. At the moment (time of writing) I have about half a weekend left. It is almost (Sunday) 2:00am in the morning and that’s all thanks to Aros. I won’t stay up that long anymore but just do a bit (is it not always just a bit more?) more of testing before I go to bed. Currently I am burning Icaros again on a DVD and once it is done install it again. That will give me some time in between to do some writing. I got a new Aros section in which you will find my writings about my Aros experience. I have done a lot with Aros this weekend already. I can’t tell you how excited I am about it. Finally I had a spare desktop left to try it on and the more I use it the more I get excited about it. I still need to install Update 5 for OS4.1 but you know what I really have not given it much thought. All I can think about is getting Icaros installed and test it.
Two areas I am really interested in is emulation (especially games) and developing. For both I have no clue how it works which is kind of interesting. I hope it plays the old Amiga games very good and will support a USB joystick. I would really like to start developing for Aros so I am sure I am going to have a lot of fun with it. I know my current setup might not be good enough to run Aros but it will do for testing and I can always move to better hardware.
It seems Aros has made me very productive since I have written already 3 (not including this column) articles this weekend. Better yet there is still a lot more to come. The coming time I will dive into programming for Aros and even write some articles.
BoingsWorld
Worth wile mentioning is the release of episode 31 of BoingsWorld. I still need to listen to it but it will be (as always) a treat. It seems they always have it released at the exact given date. That is so not Amiga. 🙂
If you are wondering, I stayed up till about 4:15am and even at that time I had to force myself to stop.
BoingsWorld
I can´t believe I forgot to talk about it in last weeks column. I realized after posting it that I completely forgot about it while I really wanted to talk about it. What? BoingsWorld! BoingsWorld is a podcast about the Amiga. Since it is in German it is not for everyone. At least not for the people that don´t understand German. Luckily I understand German so I can really enjoy the show. I have to say they seem to get some really great guests on their show and the interviews are at least one hour and not getting dull at all. The format of the show is really good. The show is presented by Marcus Neervoort and Martin. I searched but I could not find Martin´s surname. I would love to hear from you people what his surname is. For me the German language makes everything sound really nice. So listening to both Marcus and Martin is a pleasure. I really like the language and country and that for a Dutchman.
Ernie und Locke
A new segment in the show is Ernie & Locke. It is not a long segment they have but I really like it. They talk about any random Amiga or Atari (at least that is the impression I get) related topic. It is funny and brings back a lot of memories.
I finished the new episode (30) already and it was a great one. The guest this time was Pascal Papara and boy did he had some interesting stuff to tell. Pascal created AEROS which is a hybrid distribution of AROS and Linux (at the moment Debian 6.0 is used) available for ARM and x86 systems. Soon I should have a spare machine available for this and I am going to try this out. I will keep you all posted.
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