Mary Poppins Returns

We had a quiet Christmas, so we decided to go see a movie.  Based on the reviews that I had read, Mary Poppins Returns sounded good.

Now, I knew that this wasn't a remake of Mary Poppins.  So I expected it to stand alone as a fun movie.  My expectations were low - so that I don't do a Dick Tracy and be underwhelmed should the movie not live up to its hype.

I'm sorry to say that even though my expectations were low, the movie did not meet them.

First, I can't fault the acting of any of the actors.  They all did stellar performances.  At no point did any of them do bad - even the kids.

The problem is with the story and director.  The musical scenes were poor and way too long (and there were too many that did not improve the story).  The actors were at some times required to not maintain their character (i.e. they made decisions that their characters should NEVER have made).

It felt contrived and pretentious.  It's like they took a bunch of Mary Poppins ideas, dumped them into a pot, stirred them up and dumped them out.

At 1 hour in, I was wondering how long I would have to wait until the end of the movie.  By the end, I wanted to go.

IMHO: Go see Spider-Man instead.

VCFMW13

I enjoy geek conventions.  But since Penguicon self-destructed due to an infestation of Left-wing nut jobs, we had not been going to any conventions.  Then I discovered VCFMW (Vintage Computer Festival Midwest).  It's a reasonable drive from home and sounded like the Left-wing nuts would stay away.

The traffic was...  well... horrible.  But that's pretty normal for Chicago but we made it through.

The hotel overbooked (the reason that was given was a good one, though, and I agree with it) but they got us a room on Friday night at a nearby hotel.  That would have been nice, but my GPS sent me the wrong way, so it took us a bit to locate the backup hotel.

VCFMW started on Saturday morning, so we just checked out and went back to the original hotel.

But you don't care about our hotel and traffic issues.  You want to hear about the show.

Josh Bensadon - RCA 1802 Microprocessor
Very good talk about an early CPU that I never heard about: The RCA 1802.
Also we learned about Joseph Weisbecker, the Cosmac computer and his flip game. All items that I had never heard of before.

Glenn Holmer - geoCom (a BASIC Compiler for GEOS)
This was a nice talk about a backwater product. I had used GEOS way back in the day but I think it was for AOL on an IBM PC.

Mike Willegal - The History and Technology of the SCELBI Computer Business

Another good talk about a computer that I had never heard of before.  It's interesting that some of those computers are still in use today and how important this company was in the PC business.
http://www.willegal.net/scelbi/the8008andScelbi.html

The Auction

So every year, people donate stuff and they auction it off.  Proceeds go toward finding VCFMW (since the event is free to attend).  Lots of cool stuff.  Lots of old Sun stuff.  An ADM3A. And more.  It was supposed to be 2.5 hours and lasted over 4!

The last couple of events were videos, but we were tired and skipped them.

Side note: For some reason, we did not sleep well all weekend.

Jack Rubin - Annual Family Of Eight Panel

Another interesting talk about the PDP computers.  I'm not that interested in these, but still, it was interesting to hear how people are keeping them running.

Alexander Pierson - Cactus 6502 Homebrew
A very good talk on how he created an Altair-like system based on a variant of the 6502. Lots of detailed information. He learned a great deal how these old computers worked.
https://hackaday.com/2018/06/13/vcf-east-cactus-retro-because-it-wants-to-be/
CommodoreZ.com

The final talk was painful, so we bailed and headed home - dealing with the traffic and all.

I was able to pick up:

A TRS-80 TP-10 serial thermal printer

A Z80 assembler book (which should be useful when I get my RC2014 working)

A couple of other TRS-80 books

A new laptop case for my niece

Unfortunately, the deals that I had hoped for weren't there.  8(  I did see a TRS-80 Model III Cassette Only for $125 (working!), but I need to not bring in so much hardware.  I just don't have the room and I want to spend time actually playing with my machines.

Overall, a good weekend.  This is not an event that I'd go to every year - just because it won't change much from year to year.  But we will go back in a few years (or sooner if they have a speaker that I really want to hear).

PC-2 digital recorder

So I have a PC-2 (and PC-4) and, unlike my Tandy 102, the only input/output available is the cassette port.  (Yes, I know about the RS-232 interface for the PC-2, but the PC-4 has no such thing.)

So I located this on Tindie.com.  The SoundDuino claims to be able to record/playback sound.  Coupled with an Arduino, I should be able to make a nice digital recorder.  The keyword is "should".

After thinking it through, I also decided to pick up a 16x2 LCD display with buttons from Adafruit.

I also picked up a PowerBoost 500 Shield and battery to power everything.

Everything looked good.  I didn't see any problems.  Until I tried to actually make things work.

The main problem is that the SoundDuino doesn't work.

To be fair to the developer, he responded very quickly to my questions and even offered to replace my SoundDuino as though it was defective (he says that he tests all of them before he ships them out).  So I got my new SoundDuino and just set out to make his examples work.

After a few hours of work, I gave up.  Playback works fine.  The only problems that I had were with some sound files that were recorded with a really low bit rate.  I didn't expect the SoundDuino to play those.

The SoundDuino was very flaky.  I got it to record a short sound using the built in microphone - but only twice.  I never was able to get it to work with a known good microphone.  Communications was spotty at best.  Most of the time, the board wouldn't communicate back with the Arduino.  I could send commands, but responses never showed up.

Even playback wasn't reliable.  25% of the time I booted the device, the board wouldn't respond at all.

I fully believe that the maker tests all his boards.  But I don't think he really tests them thoroughly.

There was a minor problem with the LCD display buttons.  They didn't really de-bounce them very well.  I had to add some extra de-bounce code to prevent double clicks when the button was pressed only once.

Overall, a failed project.  But lots of learning in it.

As far as my PC-2 and PC-4 are concerned, using my PC's sound card is much more useful.

Altair-Duino and TI Silent 700

The TI Silent 700 is a teletype using thermal fax paper.  It's light weight (compared to many teletypes) and fairly quiet.  I picked up a 703 on eBay.  When I got it, I discovered that it had the "high speed" package installed (that's means it's 1200 BPS instead of the default 300 BPS).

When I tried to hook it up to my Altair-Duino, I found that the DSR to be asserted or it doesn't think that it's online.  I had a choice between cannibalizing one of my serial cables, or making my own.  I decided to make my own.

I found a place online that sells DB-25 connectors and bought some male and female connectors.

The Silent 700 has a female connector.  So I took one of the male connectors and started on that end.

I looped back DSR/DTR and CTS/RTS (not known if that's needed, but I did it just in case). 
RTS/CTS are pins 4 and 5.
DSR/DTR are pins 6 and 20.

A co-worker told me about "security wire".  This is nice stuff for my projects.  4 wires wrapped in one cable.  The stuff that I got was solid, making it easy to solder into the DB-25 connectors.

I connected wires from pins 2, 3 and 7 (Transmit/Receive/Ground) of the Silent 700 to pins 2, 3 and 7 on the other end of the serial cable that I was creating.  One thing that I learned is that the pin numbers on the female end are opposite the numbering on the male end.

I also needed a DB-25 to DB-9 adaptor to connect the home-made cable to the Altair-Duino.  I probably should have gotten DB-9 connectors instead, but I wasn't thinking and I had the DB-25/DB-9 adapter laying around.

The problem that I ran into was that I soldered pin 1 on the Silent 700 side to pin 1 on the other end.  The DB-25/DB-9 adapter linked that to pin 2 for some reason.  De-soldering the pin from the Altair-Duino end solved that problem.

I won't go into setting up the Silent 700.  It doesn't support 8-bit communication.  I set it for 7-bit, even parity.  Then I went through putting those settings into the Altair-Duino through their instrtuctions (https://www.altairduino.com/2017/06/03/serial-device/).

And I now have a new retro-computing toy to play with.

Christmas lights

I've updated my Christmas Lights.  Mainly rewired the cable for the lights so that the box doesn't have to be so close to the start of the lights and reworked the logic to make it less seizure-inducing.

GitHub project

Lost in Space - Reboot

We watched the first 3 episodes of the Lost in Space reboot this weekend.  And....  If lost me before episode 3 finished.

My expectation was that they would take the original idea, turn it around a bit to some up with a different story, but still keep the "Swiss Family Robinson in Space" theme.  I was disappointed.

The balance between sci-fi and drama was not there.  It was a drama set in space.  If you had replaced the space ships with wooden ships and planets with islands, you could have the same story.

First off, what was good:
1. The visuals.  Great special effects.  Great scenic shots.
2. I can't fault the acting.  I thought that they played their parts very well.

If you don't want any spoilers, you probably want to stop reading now.

What pissed me off:

1. The family unit was too dysfunctional.  They needed to have some to create some drama and action, but it just too much.
2. Too much angst from Will, who thought he wasn't up to the mission.
3. Too much "I'm immortal" teen attitude from Penny.
4. Too much brooding from Judy.
5. John Robinson is not a strong male role model.  He's supposed to be a soldier, but is too uncertain.  Maureen seems to be the "leader" of the expedition.  I had expected more of a partnership between them.
6. The Dr. Smith character was as evil as the original series intended - which was a good thing.  But without a strong family to counter her, it just didn't work.
7. The robot is an alien artifact.  As such, it's always suspect and not part of the family unit.
8. Too much "and the gods (i.e. alien robot) came down and fixed everything".  Boring.
9. Too many "suspend reality" moments.

The story that they came up with had sooooo much going for it.  Multiple Jupiter ships landing was a cool idea - and they messed it up.

From an article I read, the space travel technology that they were using was stolen from aliens - who wanted it back.  Hence the robot being there.  In a later episode, all the surviving Jupiter ships regroup and head back, but, of course, Dr. Smith messes everything up and warps only the Jupiter 2 to someplace else.

The planet with its storms, glaciers, forests, etc. would have been a great place to spend the first season just trying to survive, explore, etc.  And maybe save the Dr. Smith Warps The J2 thing at the end to move them to another planet to survive on for Season 2.

Penguicon 2018 - R.I.P.

Looking at the categories this year, if we assume equal distribution of panels there are 14 categories. I’m only interested in 6. That’s actually pretty good. But that assumes equal distribution.

Track	Really interested in	Sort Of Interested in	Notes
DIY	0	3	Most panels are craft, not really DYI.
Food	0	2	Many Vegan panels
Life	0	1	Lots of alt-left lifestyle panels
Penguicon	0	2	Really, only the opening and closing ceremonies, but that's nothing different for me.
Science	0	0	Not really science for many panels. Sorry, but anything with "J.R.R. Tolkien" in the title is not "science". Bob Trembly pretty much carries this track.
Tech	1	1	Programming panels were beginner level, which shows the level of the attendees.  Not much "tech" in the Tech track.

Wow. 48 hours of programming with only 1 panel that's really interesting and 9 that are sort of interesting. I remember when the norm was that I had to choose between 3 different panels that I really wanted to see, but were scheduled at the same time - and find time to eat lunch since there was no open slot for that.

Once again, there is little Linux, real science or tech.  Mostly alt-left stuff.  Penguicon is dead as a "geek" convention.  It's really just an alt-left festival now.

I guess it is true: The left really does ruin everything it touches.

Penguicon 2018 - a pre-mortum

Once again, we won't be attending Penguicon this year (I feel no loss at all).  But I do like to see what's going on with the convension I attended for many years.

When did Penguicon become a writing convention and not a Linux/Anime/Games convention?

Looking at the guest list this year, I broke them down into categories.

Writers:
MARK OSHIRO
DR. KRISTINE LARSEN
MARY ANNE MOHANRAJ
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL
AMAL EL-MOHTAR
Karen Burnham
Kevin MacLeod

Technical:
JOHNNY XMAS
Jeff MacLeod
Curtis Potterveld
Chad Sinke
Bob Trembley

Other:
CHRISTINE SUNU
MAGIC MEEPLE GAMES
Nemo T Rathwald
Charles Severance
Claire Winn

Which puts Penguicon as a very writing-heavy convention.

Reading the Penguicon 101, they still describe Penguicon as

"Think of a weekend-long Linux Users Group meeting with hundreds of other very curious geeks, nationally acclaimed guests, hotel room parties, debates about world-building and the practicality of ion drives, video games and gaming tournaments, nerdy makers selling t-shirts and hardware, anime, costume contests, and free caffeine and snacks always available in the ConSuite."

• But Linux has been lacking in the last 6 years.  None of the GoH or Featured Guests have anything to do with Linux.  And no Eric S. Raymond as a Featured Guest.
• "Nationally acclaimed guests"?  What?  Who?  I've never heard of any of these people before (except for MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL who is a known SJW, and Bob Trembley who I've known from past Penguicons).
• "Debates"?  Not with the politically correct crowd running things.
• And they are pretty low on Anime again this year, except for the cosplay people.

I would describe Penguicon today as a SJW-oriented event praising bad writers (who are SJWs) where you have people falling over one another trying to be more "victimized" than others.  And, oh, ya, there are few technical talks and geeks running around too, but try not to notice them.

Doing some (admittedly cursory) research on each GoH, I see that most of the guests are SJW (or lean in that direction).

Some have laid claims to knowledge/experience that they obviously never had.

***Tangent***
Some years back, I remember interviewing a "highly technical" person for a technical position.  His resume was filled with "headed", "lead" and "managed" terms but had no "programed", "wrote" or "created" terms.  That didn't fill me with confidence in his skills, but he might have tailored his resume to get past the managers.  So we interviewed him (mostly because our management made us).  To make a long story short, he never did any of the work on any of the projects he was on.  He just went to meetings and talked a lot.  Needless to say, we didn't hire him.
***Tangent***

Reading the bios of many of the Guests at Penguicon this year reminds me of this person we interviewed.  Lots of nice sounding things, but if you really read the bios, you see that they really didn't (and still don't) do anything.

In a month or so, they will have the list of panels for Penguicon 2018.  I'll look through them and post on them later.