Well, chug along and check this out! Freeze64 Issue 68 steamed its way into my mailbox, featuring a review of a train robbers game I never knew existed. Plus, there’s another captivating instalment in Andrew Braybrook’s Uridium “making of” series. I always enjoy diving into the technical details of retro development. You’re constrained so much, it’s a challenge fitting a game into such an environment. Impossible Mission III looks great too. I wish I was able to get further in the original game. Maybe this one will be easier. C64 games are hard as nails, aren’t they? Quite unforgiving compared […]
Photography
Lossy DNG isn’t so bad
Have you ever converted a RAW file to lossy DNG and noticed how much smaller it was? You can make the RAW file 80-90% smaller! I always thought of lossy DNG files as JPEG files saved at a compression level of 10 or 100%. In other words, with barely anything stripped, but it’s more interesting than that. I discovered that a panorama I made in Lightroom was a lossy DNG. After I made it, I tried converting it to lossy DNG, and the new file was the same size as the old one. So, panoramas are lossy DNG. They used […]
Web
Now on http/2
This guide made it pretty easy to update Apache2 so it uses http/2 rather than http/1.1. If you notice anything gone astray, please let me know! There was no change in PageSpeed scores, but then it was pretty good already, thanks to Jetpack Boost! This Cloudflare article is a good, high-level description of what it’s all about.
Ireland
Debug code left on the SEAI website
I filled in the solar PV grant form on the SEAI website this afternoon. I tried doing it this morning, but there was a “permission denied” error on their dashboard, which stopped things working. There had been a warning that they were doing updates overnight, so I figured it was probably teething problems with the update. Hours later, upon submitting the grant form, I saw a “Paused on debugger statement” popup. Clicking play on it continued the process, and it all appears to work fine now. One wonders what happened to just submitting a form and processing everything on the […]
Photography
Howto: Geotag photos in Lightroom with Google Timeline data
One feature in Adobe Lightroom that many don’t use often is the Map module. It’s really useful if your camera has GPS, if it can connect to your phone GPS, or if you manually drag images onto a map. I use the Sony “Imaging Edge Mobile” app to connect my camera to my phone via Bluetooth, but this drains the battery quickly when I’m out for a long time. It’s not ideal. If I want to use the Bluetooth remote control (not the app, the physical remote) I can’t use the location feature. The battery life of my camera when […]
Travel
We’re out of water
That’s not really an announcement you want to hear from the pilot of your flight, but that’s what happened on my flight from Athens to Amsterdam recently. The pilot came on the intercom and informed his passengers there was no water to flush the toilets or wash hands. He said that’s the first time he’s had to make such an announcement. The flight had been delayed an hour at Athens, and then we spent 25 minutes on the ground while the congested air over Europe cleared. So I’m surprised someone forgot to fill the water tank. Water bottles were provided, […]
Photography
Watch out for Aurora Tonight
If you live north of me in Europe, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll see an aurora tonight. I’m looking forward to seeing all the photos! The US Space Weather Prediction Center has issued its first “severe geomagnetic storm watch” today for the first time in nearly 20 years. The activity is expected to make the aurora borealis phenomenon visible across Northern Europe in the early hours of Saturday, May 11th (after midnight tonight). Donegal Daily Someone already posted fabulous photos from Latvia!
tv
May the 4th etc
From Facebook comes a typically low resolution, bad quality JPEG meme of a Klingon from Star Trek celebrating May the 4th, Star Wars Day. Star Trek FTW!
C64
Writing C64 ASM in VS Code
Thanks to this Hackaday article, I found a video describing how to use Visual Studio Code to write 6502 assembler for the Commodore 64! It’s been a long time since I’ve done any ASM on the C64, and compared to the programming environments available these days, I was working in the dark ages with my Action Replay monitor, typing code directly into memory. Kick Assembler is used to assemble the code into a .prg file, using the KickAss (C64) extension for VS Code to launch the emulator with the code loaded into memory. I see Kick Assembler 8-Bit Retro Studio […]
Funny
Faulty Towers – The Dining Experience
If you’re a fan of Fawlty Towers, the hit British comedy from the 70s, then you’ll love The Dining Experience. Apart from the entertaining “shows” the three actors put on, you’ll, of course, be eating a three-course meal. In Cork, they performed in the Metropole Hotel, so the food was great. Portions were small but it’s the experience you’re paying for and I have no hestitation in recommending it if you’re at all familiar with the show!