Loading ...Thursday morning, I managed to roll out of bed in plenty of time for our first session. Steve Weyhrich shared how he has been digitizing valuable family videos and photographs using Photoshop Elements. Overall, very informative and appreciated information.
Next up, Stavros Karatsoridis provided a beginner’s tutorial to the Apple II Monitor. Stavros has kindly allowed us to share his slideshow, converted to PDF. It is available here. Nicely done, Stavros!
Ryan Suenaga’s presentation was about blogging for fun and profit. Lots of good, practical advice for people who are interested in making money on the web.
After lunch, Bruce Baker took us on another trip through Softdisk’s library of games. Softdisk has so much content, we could have spent a whole day going through it. Fortunately, the entire collection is still available from Syndicomm.
James Littlejohn took over and shared how he became involved in designing Apple II add-ons through his robotics hobby (and with encouragement from Henry Courbis), followed by his firsthand experiences learning to use CAD software to design his nifty products. Then he teased us by announcing he wouldn’t be revealing any new products until his session on Saturday. There were a few audible groans but everyone knows a dramatic product reveal is practically a KFest tradition, if not an art form.
Eric “Sheppy” Shepherd next demonstrated the latest Sweet 16 (currently in closed beta). This release includes several enhancements and bug fixes.
- CD-ROM support, partial ISO support
- Wired Ethernet support via Marinetti (Airport not yet supported)
- Joystick support (does not include gamepads)
- Uses Sparkle framework for automatic updating
- You can now paste text from the Mac clipboard
- Includes an NDA to toggle fullscreen mode
- Improved Leopard compatibility and stability
- Fixed various bugs, notably the color palette problems with Wolf3D and Dreamgrafix.
Other cool enhancements include providing GS programmers direct access to the 640×400 frame buffer allowing for VGA quality graphics. There is also a new Javascript debugger, for setting breakpoints and automatically performing tests checking the machine state as breaks occur.
For the future, Sheppy plans to reexamine the network code before version 2.0 is finalized, hopefully resolving the lack of Airport support. Other goals include the ability to mount Mac folders as disks, importing styled text and graphics from the Mac clipboard, Imagewriter II emulation (print to PDF) and further debugger enhancements.
Sheppy anticipates the public beta will be released mid-August. Look for an announcement on A2Central.
Coinciding with the new Sweet 16, is a new version of Ewen Wannop’s SAFE2 FTP client has been released.
Press release:
24th July 2008
SAFE2 2.1.8 ReleasedCongratulations to Sweet16 v2.0 for gaining Ethernet connectivity!
SAFE2 is the fastest full featured, stand alone, desktop FTP application for a real IIgs, and can also now be used as an FTP application with the Sweet16 emulator.
To use SAFE2 with Sweet16 v2.0, you will need Marinetti 3.0 or later installed, a Mac running Leopard, and an Ethernet connection. You will also need to install the Sweet16 Link Layer. Both the Link Layer, and the SAFE2 update can be downloaded from my website:
http://homepage.mac.com/speccie/
When using the Sweet16 emulator, SAFE2 frees you from the tyranny of floppy disks or disk images. Simply set up access to an FTP server, either on your LAN, or one you have read write access to, and transfer files easily back and forth.
With the new ‘synchronise folder’ feature, you can easily update your web site, or backup files, in one simple action.
SAFE2 2.1.8 has many bug fixes, and other interface tweaks. It has been optimised for use with emulators, and contains two major new features, synchronising folders and synchronising the IIgs system clock.
If you are updating from previous versions of SAFE2, you will need to install Geoff Weiss’s TimeZone Tool if you do not already have it installed. A copy is supplied with the SAFE2 archive.
Read the Version.History file for more details on what has changed in SAFE2 2.1.8.
As Sweet16 can now access the Internet directly, do not forget that many of my other applications can also now be used with the emulator. Spectrum, SNAP, and Whozat, all work just fine!
SAFE2, SNAP, and Whozat can be obtained from my web site:
http://homepage.mac.com/speccie/
To purchase a copy of Spectrum go to:
http://www.syndicomm.com/index.html
To get a copy of Sweet16, go to:
Later, most of us went out to see the 25th Anniversary showing of the movie WarGames. It was the first time I had seen the movie on the big screen and I have to say, it was a lot more enjoyable than I expected. It was fun seeing and hearing the “ambience” I had missed by watching it on a dinky TV. There are a few hidden pranks in the movie for the alert viewer that I thought were great (and a little geeky). I’ve decided this is a must-have for my DVD collection.
Another cool thing I learned during the interviews portion, was that whenever the W.O.P.R. unit’s lights were blinking away, it was some guy with an Apple II inside making it all work. Every time the Apple II was mentioned, the KFest attendees cheered.
We had a funny glitch occur during the movie… during the scene when David and Jennifer are looking for a boat to leave Falken’s island, the movie stopped and the screen went black. We were left there for a few awkward moments wondering what had happened and I made an off-hand remark about the projector running Windows. It was a cheap, predictable joke, but not more than 10 seconds after I had said that, the Windows taskbar briefly flashed on the screen and the audience erupted in laughter. Another minute went by and the movie picked up where it left off.
I forgot to mention yesterday that Kirk Mitchell and Henry Courbis have been posting their KFest reports to usenet newsgroup comp.sys.apple2
Oh, and there were some interesting discussions about this site overheard, Ultimate Apple II. Check it out.
And lastly, Ken Gagne has posted a few pics to Computerworld.
Well, this update is extremely late. I’ve had a few technical problems with the wireless coverage and it’s really cramped my productivity. I’ll close for now and start working on Friday’s update. Wish you were here with us.