Saturday’s report is brought to you by third year attendee Mike Whalen.
So, as I write this at 11:18pm on Saturday, July 18 2015. KansasFest is well and truly over. There no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It’s over, Johnny. It’s over!
NUTHIN IS OVUH! YOU CAN RELIVE THUH DAY!!
Well, okay, I suppose I could recount the day’s activities. That would delay thingsβ¦ a bit?
We all started in the morning.. and, uh, I ain’t gonna lie, I don’t remember it much. I think there was an egg or two. Maybe a bacon. I don’t know. What is breakfast.
But somehow I did wake up at some point because I do recall Kay Savetz giving us a good explanation as to how we can preserve Apple history via interviews. Kevin’s been producing interviews for his Atari (boo) podcast, ANTIC for the last coupe of years. I think he has like one hundred interviews. Anyway, Kevin made a compelling argument over why it would be useful to produce more and more interviews for the various Apple II podcasts and that you can find interesting stories in some unusual places β technical support, third party companies, etc.
Next up, Peter gave us a detailed history of LOGO, the programming language originally designed to teach children programming fundamentals. In the early 80s, LOGO caught fire at schools and many a school-child learned how to move turtles around a screen. Unfortunately, the language fell into disuse fairly quickly. Peter recounted the reasons why and then launched a fascinating discussion into new horizons in the programming languages for children. This child programmer appreciated it!
John Linville came back! Yes, he wasn’t run out by A2 fans wielding pitchforks for the heresy that is a CoCo session. In fact, we wanted more! John detailed his game Farhfall which he recently released for the CoCo. It’s basically like a reverse Crazy Climber. A fire is descending down on you. You need to fall from platform to platform to keep clear from fiery doom.
Brian Wiser was up next with his annual update about all things A.P.P.L.E. He announced several exciting projects including a cleaned up and redesigned edition of the classic What’s Where in the Apple. Brian demoed several pages that showed the original version, a recently released cleaned-up version, and their own work. It looks quite amazing.
After lunch, Ian Johnson gave us his update on getting working and useful Japanese language support on the Apple IIGS. Ian has been demonstrating the leaps and bounds made for a couple of years now and they’re very close to having Japanese lanaguage support that can work as well as it could. This will give the Japanese Apple IIGS fans something to look forward to!
The second to last session was a smattering of new product announcements. Charles Mangin from RetroConnector showed off his new //e audio adapter. You plug it in between the speaker and speaker connector and then you have an earphone jack just like the IIc owners have.
And with that all the sessions were over. It was time for the swap meet and exhibition. Everyone brought down their equipment to show off what they had been working on the whole year while others sold their wares. I hovered over the //e and a Newton Messagepad but didn’t quite go for it. Oh, and I also wanted No-Slot Clock for my IIc Plus. Alas, things went very fast.
While the festivities took place, the Hackfest judges reviewed entries and made their decision. When they were done, the attendees got their own look at the entrants. Amazing stuff. Carrington Vanston demoed his Tic Tac Pro which was a grid of nine smaller tic-tac-toe games determining the outcome of one big tic-tac-toe game. Charles Mangin demoed a small utility that reads disk images and creates a graphic representing the data on-disk. You must see to understand. Forrest Lowe demonstrated adding a litle randomness to every boot. One one boot, maybe one program will load. The next? Maybe a different one. Jeremy Rand demonstrated his take on Sodoku with its own A.I. John Leake of the RetroMacCast demoed his OMG Zombies game in which every step you take brings the zombies closer. Kay Savetz took Bob Bishop’s Li’l’ Red Bug and made it play itself. HE did something similar in 2013 with Structuris. Kevin prefers to let a computer do all the work, including winning games evidently. Kevin actually had two entries. The second one showed an script in which a disk already uploaded on the Internet Archive was opened, the file contents documented, and metadata created and re-uploaded to IA. It’s a very useful hack that will simply make it easier to find software on the IA. Martin, not one to be outdone, wrote an amazing enhancement for the Apple /// Monitor. He added disassembly and assembly. How does he do it? How? How I ask you? Lastly, Sarah showed a keen idea in which she edited the opening sequence of Olympic Decathalon to pay tribute to Caitlin Jenner.
The winner of the chicken dinner? CARRINGTON VANSTON with Tic-Tac-Pro.
Various groups went to several restaurants and/or the movies. I went to Eden Alley Cafe with several folks. Afterward, we all went to an extremely noisy and crowded Up Down barcade to play games. Back at Corcoran people began packing in earnest. Another KFest down. Another year until the next one. The good news? There will be a next one.
Apple II Forever, y’all.