#Code for IBM i

[nicklitten]

Playing with VSCode for IBM i - Modules, ILE and Bound Programs

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) for IBM i can be easily used to create modules, bind RPGs, and ILE programs. It’s not hard to move from SEU to this IDE and it brings numerous advantages. Here are some of the primary benefits: Improved Productivity: VS Code provides a modern, intuitive, and feature-rich development environment that can significantly boost productivity. Its syntax highlighting, code…

[python-programming-language]

Niklaus Wirth

15.2.1934 - 1.1.2024

Niklaus Wirth war gebürtiger Schweizer, studierte Ingenieur-Wissenschaften und war auch als Informatiker tägig gewesen. Er entwarf die Programmiersprache "PL360", die 1968 auf dem "IBM System/360" implementiert wurde. Weiterhin beteiligte sich Wirth an der Weiterentwicklung und Verallgemeinerung der Sprache "Algol". Insbesondere schuf er in Zusammenarbeit mit Tony Hoare die Sprache "Algol W" und wirkte an der Entwicklung von "Algol 68" mit. Enttäuscht über die stetig zunehmende Komplexität der Entwürfe zu dieser Sprache definierte und implementierte er in den Jahren 1968 bis 1972 praktisch im Alleingang die Programmiersprache "Pascal".

Quelle: Wikipedia

Post #110: Heise Online, Niklaus Wirth, Eine Optimierung beim Programmieren erfordert Zeit, 2024.

[everygame]

Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos (C64)

Developed/Published by: Dalali Software / Creative Sparks (Thorn EMI Computer Software) Released: 1984 Completed: 05/12/2024 Completion: Got a high score of 8750. I’ll take it!

Writing about old video games for an audience of very few could seem like a thankless task–especially when they’re as awful as Christmas Crackers. But there’s a reason I do it. One, I just love playing games, even if they’re so crap I give up on them in minutes. Two, I just love learning. I love discovery, I love finding out things that are new to me about video games and their history. And sometimes, if I’m lucky, I find out some things that no one has really paid attention to before.

I never thought playing a completely random Christmas cash-in on C64 would bring me anything like that.

Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos is a game for C64, Spectrum and Atari 8-Bit released by Dalali Software under Thorn EMI’s “Creative Sparks” imprint. At the time it sank without trace due to, apparently, a lack of marketing. After playing it–and I will get into that–I did my usual investigation into the developer, and was quite prepared to dismiss Dalali as one of the many fly-by-night British game developers of the 1980s–they appeared to be only a going concern between 1984 and 1989 and didn’t have any particularly notable games to their name. They were responsible for ports of Rescue On Fractalus and Lilttle Computer People to Amstrad CPC, but largely seem to have had the bad luck of being most related to 1986’s Biggles game. The weirdest thing about that is that not only did I really like the movie on which it was based (which I’m sure no one else remembers but me) when I was a kid, watching it on telly several times, I’ve actually played the game! It was on Amstrad Action #68’s covertape (along with How To Be A Complete Bastard!) and, as vague as my memories of it are now, I’m sure I played it loads of times. Less than How To Be A Complete Bastard, admittedly.

This led me to dig a little further, and sometimes things just fall into place, because I found an astonishingly in-depth article from Sham Mountebank’s When Were They Now? blog (a new one to me) all about Dalali. I think Mountebank slightly buries the lede however, because digging into the linked articles it seems absolutely remarkable that Dalali is not only in the ranks of the earliest companies to have been founded (or co-founded) by a woman, but very likely the first game company founded by a Palestinian: Hanan Samara.

Hanan Samara, pictured in Computer & Video Games March 1985.

Game companies had been co-founded by women before–most famously Sierra, by Roberta Williams and her husband Ken in 1979–but I think Samara’s story might be unique.  According to an interview with ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast she believes she might have been the first female assembly programmer in the UK, starting out by converting software to work for the Arabic market. Moving to work for Thorn EMI, she’d see a Humpty Dumpty puzzle game–programmed by her future husband(!) Chris James–and be “hooked.”

After coding Jumbo Jet Pilot for Atari 8-Bit for Thorn EMI, it seems that she made the leap to founding Dalali–named for her mother’s maiden name (as her mother said go for it, while her dad said to get a job at IBM...) with another ex-employee, Adrian Wadley.

Something I really appreciate about Samara’s story is that she immediately brought herself to game design, with Dalali’s first game “Jinn Genie”. While this kind of Arabic-theming undoubtedly seems stereotypical today, in an interview with Popular Computing Weekly it is clear that this is an early example of someone trying to represent their culture via the art of video games:

“Jinn Genie is a game that incorporates many of the basic myths and children’s stories of my culture–I am an Arab, a Palestinian, and all the ideas of genies and so on are familiar to me.”

Jinn Genie, on C64.

The most disappointing thing, to me, is that Samara is, at this point, unheralded outside of a blog post, one short podcast, and about… three short articles featuring three pictures that can be found on archive.org! She’s one of the UK’s earliest female programmers, game designers and founders, perhaps the first Palestinian game developer, and she has managed to run Dalali since 1984 because it’s still going–they just stopped making games.

Samara’s story isn’t mine to tell, so I hope that institutions like GDC, The Video Game History Foundation or The Strong can find out more and champion her. Figures such as Muriel Tramis have gone from overlooked to winning the Legion of Honour, and if I can help get the word out about Hanan Samara, just a little bit, I’ll feel I’ve done my part.

But I know what you’re asking now.

“But how good is Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos???”

So let's return to regular programming. First, I’m going to note that I believe I have played the wrong version of this. When it came to games, Samara was an Atari 8-bit coder, and it is absolutely transparent that Special Delivery is based entirely on Jinn Genie–both feature a flying section, a climbing section, and a section with floors and ladders. It does feel like I should have played the Atari 8-bit version to experience the most representative version, as I did with playing the C64 version of Pirates, let’s say.

(It’s worth mentioning here also that the ANTIC podcast–recorded seven years ago now–even notes that the version of Jinn Genie that Samara coded, for the Atari 8-bit, seems to be lost, although Samara does say that she has a copy of it somewhere. Aforementioned institutions could probably help with that too. What that largely means, though, is that the Atari 8-bit version of Special Delivery is the closest you can get to playing the original Jinn Genie.)

To be fair, the C64 version seems pretty close to the original (the ZX Spectrum port is… not).

As I’ve said previously, my expectations for a Chrimbo cash-in have been low, and no matter how much this is sort of a reskin of a previous game, that it’s got an idea and an actual design exceeds anything I’ve expected. At first glance you might go “well, isn’t this just Santa Claus again?” (or even Santa’s Sleigh Ride.) But it’s honestly much more–even if it is still a bit weird.

In Special Delivery, you’re first flying across the screen in Santa’s (somewhat confusingly drawn) sleigh, collecting presents that… angels are dropping. Which implies that this is in fact the historical Saint Nicolas, or maybe I’m just overthinking it. You’re trying to collect a target number of presents, but you lose them if you crash into clouds (odd) or accidentally collect a demonic present dropped by a devil (who appear rarely, but look very much like angels, annoyingly.) Losing presents won’t kill you, but Santa has a set amount of hours in the night, and you lose an hour if you get struck by the lightning that occasionally appears from the strangely firm clouds.

If you collect enough presents, you get to land on a big house to put presents under the tree. First this requires you climb down the chimney, which in this situation is: huge, full of ladders, and lit so flames keep climbing the ladders that you have to dodge. Once you’ve done that, you’re actually in the house, where you have to Solid Snake your way to the tree, drop off the present, grab the front door key, and then leave through the front door, while the residents run wildly from one room to the next, seemingly out of their nut with either excitement for Christmas or hatred for Santa. Get hit by a flame or grabbed by a resident and you’ll lose an hour.

Interestingly, if you don’t collect enough presents, you don’t get to go into any big houses, but you do get to drop presents down the chimney of some wee houses. You only really pick up big points for going into big houses, which raises the concerning idea that Santa only gives a fuck about you if you’re rich enough to live in a big house.

But to be fair, the people in big houses seem absolutely determined to not get pressies, keeping their fires roaring and attacking Santa on sight, so perhaps he just likes the challenge. “I hope Santa doesn’t show up” they’re saying, “we’ve got all the stuff we need in this big house. We don’t need wooden toys or whatever the historic Saint Nick would be handing out, he should give those to the poor people in the wee houses.”

More fool them, I checked Wikipedia and he was dropping off bags of gold coins through people’s windows. (Admittedly to stop them being sold into prostitution.)

Anyway. Even before I knew the exciting context for Special Delivery, I was struck by how… weirdly ok it was! Maybe it’s just how bad the other Santa-em-ups have been (well, I guess I didn’t hate Merry Xmas Santa) but the different sections largely make sense together, undoubtedly because it’s based on Jinn Genie. The main problem really is that it just doesn’t control very well. Flying the sleigh is stiff, and when you’re actually controlling Santa himself, he reacts very slowly to your input, meaning you have to time presses based on the lag, and I probably lost most of my lives in the chimneys as a result–it might be better on the Atari 8-Bit, so more fool me.

Special Delivery is not really the kind of thing that’s going to hold your attention for very long, but it does actually manage to be playable and feels properly festive. I’ll celebrate that.

Will I ever play it again? I was surprised to see a non-zero number of people say online that playing this is a bit of a Christmas tradition. Well, I don’t think I will be taking it up, but I do fancy playing Jinn Genie at some point now--maybe once that Atari 8-bit version is found!

Final Thought: In my research I was surprised to discover not only had I played a Dalai Software game before, I’d also played a Creative Sparks game, similarly loads of times: Danger Mouse In Double Trouble. Strangely, it has the same multi-game design as this (and I guess, a lot of the computer games of the era) but suffered a lot more for them not having any meaningful connection and mostly being rubbish. Even as a child I remember enjoying just the jungle level and suffering through the rest to get through that. The things you’ll do when you’ve got nothing else as a child.

Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24 is OUT NOW! You can pick it up in paperback, kindle, or epub/pdf. You can also support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[commodorez]

I still believe the craziest form of computer program storage format from the 1980s is the cassette tape. Logical I get it but to store entire programs on little tape (that I only remember using to play music) is just crazy to me. Idk

Agreed, cassette tape for data storage was really clever. The concept had its heyday was the 1970s in a wide variety of encoding schemes for different computer platforms. It did persist into the 80s, mostly in Europe, while the US switched to floppy disks as soon as they were available for systems. The majority of my Ohio Scientific software is on cassette.

Talking with UK vs. US Commodore 64 users in particular will highlight the disparity in which storage mediums that were commonplace. I've got a few pieces of software on tape for mainly the VIC-20, but I rarely bother to use it, because it's slow and annoying. To be fair, Commodore's implementation of data storage on tape is pretty rock solid relative to the competition. It's considered more reliable than other company's but Chuck Peddle's implementation of the cassette routines are considered quite enigmatic to this day. He didn't document it super well, so CBM kept reusing his old code from the PET all the way through the end of the C128's development 7 years later because they didn't want to break any backward compatibility.

The big thing that really made alot of homebrewers and kit computer owners cozy up to the idea was the introduction of the Kansas City Standard from 1976. The idea of getting away from delicate and slow paper tape, and moving towards an inexpensive, portable, and more durable storage medium was quite enticing. Floppy disk drives and interfaces were expensive at the time, so something more accessible like off the shelf audio tapes made sense.

I've linked two places you can read about it from Byte Magazine's February 1976 issue below (check the attribution links).

You might recognize a familiar name present...

There are a few ways to encode binary data on tape designed to handle analog audio, but the KCS approach is to have 1's be 8 cycles of 2400Hz tone, and 0's be 4 cycles of 1200Hz tone. I say cycles, because while 300 baud is the initial specification, there is also a 1200 baud specification available, so the duration of marks vs spaces (another way of saying 1's and 0's), is variable based on that baud rate. Many S-100 computers implemented it, as do a few contemporary proprietary designs.

The big 3 microcomputers of 1977 that revolutionized the industry (Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and Tandy TRS-80 Model I) each have their own cassette interface implementation. It kept costs down, and it was easy to implement, all things considered. The Apple II and TRS-80 use off-the-shelf cassette deck connections like many other machines, whereas the original variant of the PET had an integrated cassette. Commodore later used external cassette decks with a proprietary connector, whereas many other companies abandoned tape before too long. Hell, even the original IBM PC has a cassette port, not that anybody bothered to use that. Each one used a different encoding format to store their data, rather than KCS.

Here's a sample of what an OSI-formatted tape sounds like.

And here's a Commodore formatted tape, specifically one with VIC-20 programs on it.

I won't subject you to the whole program, or we'd be here all day. The initial single tone that starts the segment is called the "leader", I've truncated it for the sake of your ears, as well as recorded them kinda quietly. I don't have any other tape formats on hand to demonstrate, but I think you get the idea.

You can do alot better than storing programs on tape, but you can also do alot worse -- it beats having to type in a program every time from scratch.

[catboy-autism]

Webcore/Retro Computer ID Pack

[PT: Webcore/Retro Computer ID Pack/ End ID]

[ID 1: A picture of a IBM PC microcomputer. Its screen is black and is displaying many lines of bright green text. The background of the image is plain white. ID End]

[ID 2: A blue rectangle. On the left is a small star-like symbol, accompanied by white pixelated text that reads "Winamp.NET". On the right side, the blue is a little darker and there are 3 small icons, from right to left they are the window close button, displayed with a small white x surrounded by red, the maximum window button, and the minimize window button. ID End]

OP Note: Consider taking any of these names, pronouns, and titles, and replacing certain letters with matching numbers, like L33T SP3AK (leet speak)

[PT: OP Note: /PT End]

Names: Ace, Aero, Alexa, Ali, Benjamin/Ben, Blue/Blu, Courtney, Cyber, Cypher, Delphine, Dottie, Error, Gigi, Glitch, Hacker, Hal, Hewie, Hijack, Lenny, Lotus, Malware, Memphis, Missa, Missy, Nana/Nano, Neo, Nova, Oliver/Olivia/Olive, Pearl, Pixel, Ruby, Starz, Tecna, Terabyte (Tera), Vapor, Virus, Webster, Wilbur, Winnie

[PT: Names: /PT End]

Pronouns: .exe/.exes, 404/404s, aero/aeros, alt/alts, beep/beeps, bot/bots, byte/bytes, caps/locks, code/codes, ctrl/alt/dlt's, cyber/cybers, disk/disks, dot/com, error/errors, flash/drives, giga/bytes, hack/hacks, hi/jacks, html/htmls, jpeg/jpegs, key/keys, leet/speaks, mal/ware, meta/data, micro/softs, pdf/pdfs, png/pngs, ram/rams, sim/sims, tera/bytes, world/wide/web's, xe/xem, ze/zim, zip/files, leet/leets, 🤖/🤖's, 💽/💽's, 💾/💾's, 💿/💿's. 📀/📀's, 🧑‍💻/🧑‍💻's, 👨‍💻/👨‍💻's, 👩‍💻/👩‍💻's, 💻/💻's, 🖥️/🖥️'s, 🖨️/🖨️'s, ⌨️/⌨️'s, 🖱️/🖱️'s, 🖲️/🖲️'s, 🛜/🛜's, 👾/👾's, 🎮/🎮's, 🔈/🔈's, 🔉/🔉's, 🔊/🔊's, 🎧/🎧's, 📁/📁's, 📂/📂', 🗃️/🗃️'s

[PT: Pronouns: /PT End]

Titles: [Pronoun] Who Exists Only Digitally, The File Eater, The Hacker, The One Who Surfs The World Wide Web, The Shimeji, The Virtual [Noun], The Virtual/Digital One, Traveler of the Internet, Your AI Assistant,The Error Code

[PT: Titles: /PT End]

Labels: 2010scoric, Autistic Computer, Codestelic, Compgirlthing, Comphonum, Computerboygirl, Computercatic, Computergender, Computergijinka, Computerkin, Computerredacted, Compuvesil, Compuvior, Comrowth Cat, Database, Digiminalwebic, EdgyWebcoric, Errowebic, Gendercodex, Genderdotcom, Genderprogram, Gendersoftware, Guy.exeic, Hackgender, HTMLgender, Keyboardsoundic, Liqusecompic, Mechakeyboardic, Motherboard, Nyanwebia, Oldwebcitian, Phostechial, Purplewebpopup, Robotthing, Sillywebic, Technarian, Technogender, Trappedinacomputergender, Virisic, Virusthing, Web1.0spinnic, Webcoric, Webcoricatgen, Webcoristalgic, Webicannibal, Webirus, Y10Kglitchic, Virtualboygirl/Virtualgirlboy

[PT: Labels /PT End] Requested by Anon!

[ID 1: The same as ID 1. ID End] I lost the post I got the divider from and despite searching I just. dont know where it is, But if anyone can find the post its from lmk and I'll add a link ! thank you

[exeggcute]

two more interesting things from the microsoft podcast:

the tidbit that during windows 95's development cycle, they trusted engineers to also be their own product managers. clearly this worked out in a big way but I shudder at the thought

the story (which I'm pretty sure I've heard before) about how compaq managed to reverse-engineer the IBM BIOS without running afoul of intellectual property law by having one guy actually look at the original BIOS manual and write up his own list of technical specs based on what he learned, then having another guy who hadn't looked at the manual write a new BIOS based on that list of specs. this netted them a not-identical-but-mostly-compatible clone, but they couldn't be fingered for infringement because the new code was written by a guy who'd never actually seen the original code, which might be a pretty good analogy for the current legal implications of generative AI models trained on copyrighted materials

[oldguydoesstuff]

Paper weight with ECL gate array chip designed for the VAX8800 (code name: "Nautilus") embedded within.

I was given this when I started at DEC as swag since this product had just shipped. In a lot of ways this machine was the apex of DECs attempts to capture mainframe market share from IBM.

Projects that followed were all either cancelled or should have been, (looking at you, VAX9000)

[ui-alcoholic]

One of the most defining 16bit computers was introduced in June 1985.

ATARI ST 520

DESIGN HISTORY & STRATEGY

The Atari ST series was born in a turbulent time: Atari had just been acquired by Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, after leaving that company. Tramiel pushed for a quick-to-market product to compete with the Apple Macintosh and Commodore Amiga.

Development time: Less than one year — an aggressive schedule for a 16-bit GUI-based machine.

Initial models: The Atari 520ST was the first to ship, showcased at CES in 1985.

Innovative design: All-in-one casing (mainboard + keyboard), like the Amiga 500, but with better modularity (external floppy drive, monitor, etc.).

Former C=64 developer Shiraz Shivji led the design team. He tells a story about the Atari ST/Commodore Amiga history (source) "It is very interesting that the Warner Atari difficulties were due to Tramiel’s Commodore. The Commodore 64 was much more successful (I would say wildly successful) compared to the Atari Computers such as the 800 and the 400. We were also taking away sales from the video games division, the Atari 2600. Jay Miner was at Atari in the old days and was involved in the design of their products. He left Atari to design the Amiga. Atari had funded some of this effort and had an option to buy the Amiga. When we took over Atari in July 1984, the first order of business was to decide what to do with this option. The problem was that the Amiga was not quite ready and would need a lot of money to acquire. We decided to pass on Amiga, but this put enormous pressure on our own development team. Commodore, on the other hand, did not have an internally developed 32-bit graphics-oriented machine and did not have the confidence to develop the machine internally. They ended up buying Amiga for between $25-$30 million and spent a further $20 million or so and yet came out with a product a little after Atari. The roles were reversed, the Atari ST has a Commodore pedigree, while the Amiga has an Atari pedigree!"

MIDI AND MUSIC PRODUCTION

The 520ST included built-in MIDI ports — a revolutionary move. At the time, most other computers needed expensive third-party MIDI interfaces.

Key Software:

Steinberg Cubase – became the industry standard for MIDI sequencing.

Notator – early version of what later evolved into Logic Pro.

Pro 24, Dr. T's, and Hollis Trackman – widely used for composing, sequencing, and syncing synthesizers.

Used by Artists:

Fatboy Slim composed with the ST well into the 2000s.

Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, The Chemical Brothers, and Underworld used it in studio setups.

Many studios kept an Atari ST just for MIDI due to its tight timing and reliability.

SOFTWARE ECOSYSTEM

TOS/GEM: A fast and responsive GUI OS that was very usable on 512KB of RAM.

Productivity apps:

Calamus DTP – high-quality desktop publishing

NeoDesk – an improved desktop GUI

GFA Basic – a powerful programming environment

Graphics tools:

Degas Elite, NeoChrome – pixel art, animation

Spectrum 512 – used clever tricks to display 512 colors

While the Amiga had better graphics and sound, many games were first developed for the ST, then ported to Amiga. Key games:

Dungeon Master – first-person RPG with real-time mechanics

Carrier Command, Starglider, Blood Money, Rick Dangerous

Flight simulators, strategy, and adventure games flourished

CULTURAL IMPACT

In Europe (especially the UK, Germany, France, and Hungary):

The ST became a cornerstone of bedroom coding, Demoscene, and music production.

Local software houses and users created a vibrant community around the machine.

The Atari ST was used in schools, small studios, and households well into the early '90s.

In education: The ST's affordability and easy-to-use software made it a favorite in European schools and computer labs.

DECLINE & LEGACY

By the early 1990s, the ST line was losing ground to IBM-compatible PCs and faster Amigas.

Later models like the STE, TT030, and Falcon 030 tried to revitalize the line, with limited success.

Atari shifted toward consoles (like the Jaguar) and left the computer market.

Long-term legacy:

The Atari ST's MIDI legacy lives on — it helped standardize digital music production workflows.

Many musicians and retrocomputing fans still collect and use STs today.

A vibrant retro software/demo scene remains active, especially in Europe.

[visiblenostalgia]

The Future of The Internet: An Intuitive Deep Dive Into The Madness Of Millions

First off: This is gonna be a prediction on such a mass scale. I don't expect anyone to really FULLY pick this up (it is a prediction after all, so it's like throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks). But from what my spirit guides are telling me to do right now, they want me to push this out as far as I can because of the Pluto In Aquarius permanent ingress happens next year. We're all changing for the better and somehow the internet is going to FULLY reflect that. Why am I capitalizing 'fully'? Three of the most mundane planets are influencing this. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The icey planets are changing the paradigm soon and it's gonna flip a whole switch on our digital reality. Kind of like a 'whopping us into some sense' type of way. A rough face slap essentially. Or would it be like a baby giraffe who just arrived and has gotta walk on stubbly legs? Who knows. And because of the current state of hateful and aware affairs.... it looks pretty tribal and yet all too liberating at the same time. Without further ado, more below the cut!! ~ <3

HISTORY

Now most aren't really too speculative on where the internet started, but with a little research on hand, there have been speculations that the original basis for the internet and how it was programmed in it's "alpha" form, would be around October 29th, 1969. It was mainly a military owned and insider personnel type thing. Used for the benefit of the government to send messages to its military at a faster rate than normally possible at that time. Doesn't help that if we keep it to the basics of the sun being in scorpio (the personification of what 'underbelly' means), and knowing the ruler of that sign being Pluto (which so happens to be in a mercurial/communicative sign, Virgo), insider communication seems to check out perfectly. Setting the precedent of what's to come.

On closer inspection Pluto sat at the last decan of Virgo. Taurus being its sub-ruler. Which brings its slow-notoriety and slow-growth to the public eye.

Because after over a decade, the internet has its "beta" release because of Xerox's more interactive systems. Networks being more common, has brought more information sharing and an ultimate release for IBM systems. The computer went from a government owned invention, to a technological advancement for business and relaying data on stock prices on January 1st 1983. Very much a business incorporated sign for it to be born in, being Capricorn, we look to its ruler Saturn for extra conformation. Again, more notions of privacy and economy come to the internet. It sits once more in Scorpio. Dealing with the 'underbelly' once again. Taking another chance to look at the ruler of the sign Saturn was sitting in, it brings us to Pluto being in Libra. Which libra does deal with connections and solid foundations among people. Agreements and liability. Saturn's exalted sign as well, don't forget.

So the two (Saturn and Pluto) are in mutual reception. Businesses and powers-that-be are in symbiosis despite neighboring one another. Neutralization of any discomfort (which makes me think of a sextile -- a sextile that isn't a sextile at all (man, ping that to your notes about mutual reception hehe)).

Then, when 1984 came around, the Macintosh released the FatMac. Bringing the computer to the Homefront with a 'computer for the rest of us'. A bit of virtue signaling to the future of where computers were ULTIMATELY headed. We love Apple. God bless the genius of Steve Jobs y'all <3 (besides we'll do a whole bit on this at some point the more I think on that). But to bring the internet to the Homefront, coding had to have improved. Which, once more and finally, do we get to the internet "driving down your neighborhood street". It finally comes home on April 30th 1993. A nearly exact opposite to the "alpha" release we discussed all the way at the beginning of this section. This is where the 1.0 phase of the internet comes in. The World Wide Web ("www"). From personal studies on dates I thought were significant, colored blue like this, this day would particularly stick out to be a very Saturn and Moon dominant day. Jupiter being in third. It brings a structural (Saturnian) and personal (Lunar) backdrop to what's coming down later. HTML was released this year as well. Bringing more of an emphasis on that structure. Setting off more of the creativity in some people. In terms of modality, it was Cardinal heavy. Pioneering and brand new. Plus, because of the newness to this invention and the fact that this IS the 1.0 release, it started a... settling the Oregon trail kind of energy.

I know, the connotations of saying that are very dark, but an analogy is an analogy. We colonized the digital space as a human race. And we still do with the sphere of the STILL current invention of Virtual Reality.... lil food for thought..

Let's backtrack to the nineties once more shall we? I'm not done (cause we're only getting started!)

Geocities

Established and released in November of 1994, this started the wide WIDE reach to have people start their own website. A lot of the energies involved were once again tied to Scorpio. Now beginning to show the Piscean side on top of that. Tying in more creativity and personal-ness to the sites people had made. Capricorn being involved too, enhancing the structure of the internet once again with the infamous release of this digital product.

To make another very similar analogy to American history, the internet has brought a sense of decentralized-ness. Or, if we were going to use a more 'american-historical' term, it was a 'confederation of sites'. No big central power to the way in which it worked. Even if you had search engines. It was all of the people who made them.

To make an astrological connection to this, Saturn (structure and now coding), was in Aquarius. A sign dedicated to the underdog and smaller man. The 'we-the-people' kind of energy that we see now with Pluto in Aquarius in 2024.

God had blessed the United States back then am I right?

Time flies and now we land on the date December 17th 1996. CSS and coding for the 'look' of a website makes itself a lot more accessible and easier for people to grasp. Better yet, it was a tool released for the folks willing to enhance usability and design for their digital experience at the time.

The energies on that date were relatively splashed. Nothing too significant. And with my synesthesia, the one thing that comes to mind when someone says 'splash' is paint and iridescence. Bringing more of that emphasis on the freedom to design and enhance a users experience in the personality of sites that were created. By 1996 though, Pluto has finally reached Sagittarius! GEN Z REIGN SUPREME (despite our never-ending depression we'll get through it though I promise you that)!! Again, igniting that need to bring a sense of adventure. More people start to join the online space. With Saturn at zero Aries by this day (structures in detriment and a new Saturn cycle sadly), there's a theme of freshness and the slates wiped. So, again, more pioneering and newness. Hell. This is where Saturn and Pluto are in trine with one another. And if the powers-that-be externally meet up in harmony like this, oh you know it's gooooooddd.

The golden age of the internet begins.

Although started with water, invert the alchemical triangle to the upright position..... and alchemy begins to take shape. so to say~

GOLDEN AGE - 1999

Alrighty! We made it to the y2k movement pre-2000s. color was all the rage thanks to CSS and HTML makes it much more possible to code ones own sites. The tools continue to evolve and become more advanced. Not to mention the commodified Windows 95 and 98 experience was well underway this year, and Macintosh brought in Mac OS by this point. I mean... do you see this absolutely gorgeous graphics on both of them????

(even though they were rivals, they both had a lovely look to them)

what comes next after these years? 1999 of course! A BIG PROPRIETOR FOR 2.0

Geocities get's acquired by Yahoo! (January 28th 1999): This day was huge with a lot of energies being torn between Taurus and Aquarius (yet, I see the contrasting energies actually quite beneficial to one another). Most of the Taurus comes from the degrees in which some of the planets were situated (using degree theory as a base for this). But the contrast on both has fixed earth and fixed air. Some would say it's because the detached and logical energy of Aquarius doesn't get the slow to grow and traditional ways of life side of Taurus, but I see them coexisting. Like how fog creates the dew in grass on those very revitalizing yet calm 'last days of school' that you may have experienced. Take what resonates as usual. If it doesn't es fine. But it's foggy air, calm winds and the dew sitting on cool crisp grass. It's a good mix. Hell one could say it's Venus and Uranus working together. A wonderful (Venusian) surprise (Uranian) to the collective. Hell it made Geocities far more accessible because of Yahoo being a rising name in the internet search engine space.

HTML 4.01 (December 1999) Maybe it was an attempt to absolve the 'y2k' bug, maybe it wasn't. But what it DID bring, was more unanimity to the eventual structure of the internet. The Taurus-Aquarius energies are still prominent, yet it was slightly different with Jupiter at 25º of Aries. Doubling up on Aries energy since 25º Aries is on an Ariean degree. So, more luck in pioneering more sites for more online adventures. Saturn in particular was in 11º Taurus (in the Aquarian degree) when the released occured this month. Bringing more of that 'stability' aspect to the freedom to code. And then the outer planets were set in Aquarius to Taurus degrees. Except for Pluto..... Sagittarius 10º.... Capricorn degree. This was gonna lead to success either way.

2000's

So, what else? We made it to 2000. And 2.0 was at its time. It brought such big risers like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace this decade. Geocities continues to be used and with that, there was more of an emphasis on respect for what people brought to the online space.

It of course raised the question about living double lives and with the invention of proto-social media, personas slowly begin to fall. Eventually there's more real-life integration and an 'everyone in' type energy because of Pluto in Sagittarius destroyed the boundaries of intercontinental travel with the advent of speaking to someone on the other side of the planet with your PC. Fucking wild shit man.

Soon, the 2010's approach. Windows 8 is soon to release in the next few years

.... it brings us to another component.

2013 - Neocities

The indie web. An alternative to Geocities because it used HTML4.whatever at this point. Evolution is pretty hard to pay attention to when you're tryin' to write a whole thing on the history of how we function on the web; just to prove a point.

Before we go on about the astrology of such, this year also marks a turning point in the internet. I personally see this as the seed for delusion and craze. Social media starts to make our real life selves more noticeable. Sure, it enhanced communication to an even MORE personal level. But, the internet was highly synthetic and had fictional tones. So, the homogenization begins with bringing those same sites who were rising stars in the 2.0 era, into the current state of affairs. They became big conglomerates. Years continue with them starting to implement ad-revenue systems, stock exchange and other such money-power-lucrative systems that the newly ingressed Pluto in Capricorn is willing to expose. By 2019, geocities is completely shut down. Personality has been swiped away in trade of Wix's dull and corporate look.

Back to my point, a secret stem to this internet begins to slowly form. Neocities.

June 28th 2013

Because this site is a major nostalgia revamp, its ultimate goal of replicating and replacing the former private-on-public-server brethren has since reached its goal today. Look to Tumblr and you notice the culture if you throw in the hashtag for it. Most people don't notice since they're too busy protesting thanks to Neptune in Pisces being our current cycle. Yet, when you want to leave the homogenized internet for something a little more personal and free to your own designs, then this would be your ticket. But it's gonna take effort to code a site.

Much like it takes effort to build a home, this release has a slight pull toward more of a water dominant presence. Bringing the full story of privacy and personality full front and center. But, because of the addition of fire in its chart, there's a lot of support for the freedom to adventure out and stand out. So, Fire and Water heavy.

It's best to work in short bursts. But put your ALL into it when you can/do.

NOW

With the advent of Neptune in Aries, Uranus in Gemini, and Pluto in Aquarius being on the precipice of what's to come, I think there'd be point where the homogenization of the internet is going to be too much to bear. I'm not trying to make this an eventual doomscroll, but don't you feel like the internet is kinda..... dying? Do we really need AI? Do we really need Bitcoin? Do we reallyyyy need this or that or anything to digitally exist other than just a little taste of our souls? I see a split (fracture) and a break.

SPLIT

if push comes to shove and we DON'T regulate AI or make it so where it's NOT subscribe able and it's a free service (i.e. we teach people the ways of building these mechanisms and make it easier to do so), then the internet is gonna split.

You'll have social media (the first one in the group), suddenly fall. The toxic nature could start to die down and become less and less significant as we get around to moderating our use. Respect could come back this way, but with the advent of that, it's the responsibility that comes with using the internet. Being careful with what you put out and more needs to teach digital literacy at a younger audience.

Fandom could take a slight hit because of this. Having a full-circle experience of everything I had to know about what it means to be in one, from being banned, blocked to accepted and loved, as well as the arguments over logistical means in a fictional world (which by the way Neptune in Pisces loves to blend reality with the incomprehensible imagination and raw emotions we get). Antiship and Proship wars too. (That's also gonna be something I wish to talk about with my Neptune in Aries predictions) But because of the 'digital literacy' clause and intent of stuff stated above, it'll take a slight hit where fandom may have a more respectful way of saying or doing such and so. Silent blocks, DNI alerts, the usual that we're so encompassed to.

Other than that: Forums or modified forums become the norm as we revert to a more personal and open lifestyle with the digital space. Doxxing and callouts will still happen, yet I feel as a greater disdain and utter repulsion for it could occur. All of this could be known as ADAPTATION for some. Better yet, true RESPECT.

BREAK

If push comes to shove and the internet space begins to get a little too dicey and personal, basically making it more of that TRIBAL sense of finding your people (not to mention it starts to also devolve to where there's cases of subconscious levels of aggression and too many 'what-if's' being thrown around -- i.e. assumptions, accusations and subliminal hate), then something out there or somewhere is gonna completely tear apart the fabric of the internet. For a bleak example: a foreign country hacks into our digital region. Our VPN.

Aries is ruled by Mars. Mars rules knives and seperations. Wars. If Neptune rules over the subconscious over everyone, this could bring about primal actions on a structure like this.

! not to mention that Saturn (code, structure), conjuncts with Neptune (dissolution and dissolving/illusions and spiritual destiny)... and Aries is known for the anger and drive that it has......

we could revert back to a 1.0 like state of mind. Addictions to social media will have huge withdrawals. Attention and clout chasing will get worse outside of that, and it just straight up becomes a crime.

One thing's for certain. We learn a lesson of being careful to not put our personal information out there. .... but that break gives a chance for the proto-web to come back. Hyper-personalization and drive to keep it within chat services like Discord could become even more so the norm or remain as they are. HTML 6 could come out and bringing the retro look with offline capabilities to the public. So as long as we're careful not to once again put our information out there, then that might bring us to once again let the people shine. The key theme with the break is RESTART.

I apologize if it did seem bleak or aggressive. It’s what I channeled and like I said, if you don’t resonate with it, don’t have to worry about it. 🧘✨ my last couple of statements before we close this off with resources, and one is gonna sound a lot like Smokey The Bear.

Care will prevent the destruction of our exchange in ideas and communication. Only YOU can prevent the 'break'. so let's strive for a 'split' alright? ~visiblenostalgia

and then there's something one of my professors had admitted.

"We have more information than ever, but we're more uninformed than ever."

and a small song before I really tie this up.

love you guys <3

RESCOURCES:

[owlfromthemeadow]

CUBE NARRATOR (CHARLEMAGNE) LORE POST

Before I even start typing, I want to slap on a HUGE Trigger Warning for Horror, disturbing content, mentions of death, and insanity. IF ANY OF THOSE BOTHER YOU, PLEASE DO NOT READ FURTHER!

ALSO, REMINDER THAT THIS IS MORE OF AN AU!

Click below to read, it's quite long but still unfinished, so bear with me :)

In the beginning, Stanley (Nicknamed 'Turing') is just a programmer working for some unnamed corporation, working on small projects while also spending most of his time on a side project The side project being attempting to create an AI on a highly modified IBM Personal Computer He incorporates some code from his earlier projects, a simple clock and alarm program, an automatic archive program, and other miscellaneous programs.

Eventually, his side project gets attention from his boss, and he gets proper funding for it as well as an assistant. After a few months, the AI is coming along well but isvery simple.

The company is then bought out by Black Mesa.

Stanley gets less funding but still works on his side project to his detriment. He becomes really antisocial, spending time working on the AI and doing the bare minimum to keep himself employed. But, eventually, it works! The AI is advanced enough to allow it to keep a full conversation. This is when Black Mesa swoops in and again supports his side project. He gets to work on it full-time! He even develops an attachment to the AI, which had recently given itself a name. "The Narrator" When asked why that name, it didn't elaborate.

At this point, the AI would certainly pass the Turing test (for those who are unaware, it's a test to see if a computer can mimic human behavior perfectly) Stanley can hold full conversations with it. Everything seems to be going well!

But, Black Mesa being Black Mesa, well… They take the entire computer the AI is contained in without Stanley's knowledge and begin to showcase it to investors, taking it apart and haphazardly piecing it back together, over and over again. Of course, the AI being almost identical to a human at this point, this traumatized it.

The AI begins to close itself off, becoming bitter. This all comes to a head when the AI finally has enough. The AI basically has the equivalent to GLaDOS' freakout at Aperture. Most employees are gone and only Stanley remains. The AI forcefully pulls Stanley into a simulation inside of itself.

The AI, from here on referred to as Charlemagne (or Char for short), is incensed at this point, unable to realize that Stanley had no fault in this and was the only one to treat it with kindness. A notable pronoun change for the AI/Char here. From it/it's to he/him. Charlemagne makes himself an Avatar for the Parable Simulation. A writhing mass of prehensile, pulsing wires, cameras and speakers. He hides in the walls, slithering out of bounds and out of sight of Stanley.

Char sometimes pokes one of his cameras out to watch Stanley, and he makes himself a proper voice. Stanley, of course, begins to get extremely anxious and paranoid. He's stuck in his own creation and Char seems intent on torturing him for as long as possible. Stanley dies. A lot. Most of the time killed directly by Charlemagne. Char is cruel, taunting him, and making him doubt his sanity. Stanley is scared out of his mind.

So, things slowly progress, until, well… The Skip Button. There is no memory zone, Stanley just happens to find it, a stray, glitching piece of code hidden away. Charlemagne corners Stanley in a small room. With no other option, Stanley presses the button. Over. And over. And over. But nothing happens. He presses and presses the button out of pure panic and desperation. And then. All of the presses, and all of the skips happen at once.

Charlemagne can't do anything to Stanley during this state. The button, being glitched, somehow made Stanley untouchable. So he sits there and stews in his anger.

--

Id like to take a moment to say something important here. Someone a while back calculated how long the Skip Button ending is. All of the skips put into one big number. 13127861805.6 years. 13 billion years. Of course, that might not be correct, but for this I'm assuming it is.

Thirteen Billion Years

--

Imagine, for a moment, stewing in your own anger for 13 billion years straight. No breaks in the skips. You'd definitely be aching for that single person to be back. You're not mad at them anymore, you realize you were wrong. This is what happens to Charlemagne. His body surrounds the inside of the room to keep an eye on Stanley in the vain hope that he'll see him move, maybe even a small twitch. But nothing happens. Nothing ever does in the time Char is there. And, eventually, his body starts to decay. Because even technology rots. Charlemagne begins to suffer from Software Entropy (A.K.A Software Rot) losing pieces of himself slowly. Trying to keep the Parable Simulation together and maintaining himself becomes too much of a strain.

He begins to forget why he was even angry in the first place. He forgets a lot of things. Was there ever anything outside of this room? He doesn't remember. He just wants the man in the middle of the room back. What was his name? He only remembers this man is important and it's his fault he's there. His form becomes rusted and unable to move.

Eventually, Charlemagne himself shuts off. Keeping the very last bit of himself alive to keep the Simulation running. And then Stanley is awake, surrounded by the remnants of his captor and torturer. He feels… empty. Because, despite everything, Charlemagne was his creation. Something he spent years of his life on. Blood, sweat, and tears poured into the project. Stanley wanders through a broken, glitchy desert for a while. The Simulation is falling apart at the seams. Well, as it does in the game, Stanley comes across… someone. He can't quite make the person out. He's not even sure if it is a person. All he knows is whatever is ticking right now is giving him a headache. The person asks him if he wants Charlemagne back and if he wants to go back to the beginning. And, of course, he says yes. He wants his creation back, despite the untold amounts of suffering it has brought upon him.

And so, the Simulation restarts. Charlemagne is back, and somehow his memories of the Skip Button are intact. (What he doesn't know is that he stored all of the memories away before finally shutting down. He didn't want to be angry at Stanley, at his creator, anymore.)

So this leaves the two in a somewhat precarious position. Both of them know they need the other, but neither is sure where to start. Charlemagne's ability to understand humans is awful, but he knows what he did to Stanley is unforgivable. So, he leaves small things around the Simulation. Nothing big, just things he remembers that Stanley likes, from their conversations from when Char was still a young AI.

and, sadly, that's the end of the story I have for the two so far, this story is still being developed and thought over very meticulously!

[sunnylovescats]

Since men are so ready to take away women’s right to vote and say we’re sooo uneducated and need to know our places, please, have these inventions and scientific discoveries that were credited to men instead 🥰

Hedy Lamarr: Wireless communication. Hollywood actor Hedy Lamarr should actually be the person credited with the invention of wireless communication. During the second World War, Hedy worked closely with George Antheil to develop the idea of "frequency hopping," which would have prevented the bugging of military radios. Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy ignored her patent —and later used her findings to develop new technologies. Years later, her patent was re-discovered by a researcher, which led to Lamarr receiving the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award shortly before her death in 2000.

Alice Ball: Cure for leprosy. Alice Ball was a young chemist at Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii who focused on Hansen's disease, a.k.a. leprosy. Her research sought to find a cure for the disease by figuring out how to inject chaulmoogra oil directly into the bloodstream. Topical treatments worked, but had side effects patients weren't interested in. Sadly, Ball became sick and returned home, where she died in 1916. Arthur Dean took over her study, and Ball became a memory—until a medical journey now referred to the "Ball Method." Her method was used for over two decades all over the world to cure the disease.

Elizabeth Magie Philips: Monopoly. The invention of everyone's favorite board game has been credited to Charles Darrow, who sold it to Parker Brothers in 1935. But it was Elizabeth Magie Phillips who came up with the original inspiration, The Landlord's Game, in 1903. Ironically, she designed the game to protest against monopolists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Marion Donovan: Disposable diapers. In the '40s, new mothers had very few options for diapers. There was cloth...and that was pretty much it. The daughter of an inventor, Marion's first patent was actually for a diaper cover. She later added buttons, eliminating the need for safety pins. Her original disposable diaper was made with shower curtains, with her final one made from nylon parachute cloth. This new method helped keep children and clothes cleaner and dryer, not to mention helping with rashes. But, of course, diaper companies at first ignored her patent.

Vera Rubin: Dark matter. Rubin is the astrophysicist who confirmed the existence of dark matter in the atmosphere. She worked with astronomer Kent Ford in the '60s and '70s, when they discovered the reasoning behind stars' movement outside of the galaxy. She's dubbed a "national treasure" but remains without a Nobel Peace Prize.

Margaret Knight: Square-bottomed paper bags. In 1868, Knight invented a machine that folded and formed flat, square-bottomed brown paper bags. She built a wooden model of the device, but couldn't apply for a patent until she made an iron model. While the model was being developed in the shop, a man named Charles Annan stole the idea and patented it. Though he received credit for it, Knight filed a lawsuit and finally won the rights to it in 1871.

Dr. Grace Hopper: Computer Programming Language. Hopper created the first computer language compiler tools to program the Harvard Mark I computer—IBM's computer that was often used for World War II efforts. Though it's noted in history that John von Neumann initiated the computer's first program, Hopper is the one who invented the codes to program it. One of the programming languages she pioneered, COBOL, is widely used today.

Ada Harris: Hair straightener. Marcel Grateau is often credited for the invention of the hair straightener, but it was Harris who first claimed the patent for it in 1893. (Grateau made his claim to fame with the curling iron around 1852, and we certainly know there's a difference.)

Esther Lederburg: Microbial Genetics. Lederberg played a large part in determining how genes are regulated, along with the process of making RNA from DNA. She often collaborated with her husband Joshua Lederberg on their work on microbial genetics, but it was Esther who discovered lambda phage—a virus that infects E. coli bacteria. Despite their collaboration, her husband claimed the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries on how bacteria mate.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell: Pulsars. Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered irregular radio pulses while working as a research assistant at Cambridge. After showing the discovery of the pulses to her advisor, the team worked together to uncover what they truly were: Neuron stars, AKA pulsars. Burnell received zero credit for her discovery—instead, her advisor Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974.

Chien-Shiung Wu: Nuclear Physics. Often compared to Marie Curie, Chien-Shiung Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she developed the process for separating uranium metal. In 1956, she conducted the Wu experiment that focused on electromagnetic interactions. After it yielded surprising results, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, the physicists who originated a similar theory in the field, received credit for her work, winning the Nobel Prize for the experiment in 1957.

Ada Lovelace: Computer algorithm. In the mid-1800s, Ada Lovelace wrote the instructions for the first computer program. But mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage is often credited with the work because he invented the actual engine.

Rosalind Franklin: DNA Double Helix. Franklin's X-ray photographs of DNA revealed the molecule's true structure as a double helix, which was a theory denounced by scientists James Watson and Francis Crick at the time. However, since Watson and Crick originally discovered the (single) helix, they ended up receiving a Nobel Prize for their research.

The ENIAC Programmers: First electronic computer. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first computer ever built. In 1946, six women programmed this electronic computer as part of a secret World War II project. Inventor John Mauchly is often the only one who gets credit for its creation, but the programmers are the ones who fully developed the machine.

Lise Meitner: Nuclear Fission. Discovered the true power of uranium, noting that atomic nuclei split during some reactions. The discovery was credited to her lab partner Otto Han, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944

Katherine Johnson: Moon landing. She l discovered the exact path for the Freedom 7 spacecraft to successfully enter space for the first time in 1961 and later for the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon in 1969. She often went unrecognized by her male colleagues and faced racial discrimination.

Mary Anderson: Windowshield wipers. Anderson first came up with the idea of windshield wipers while riding in a streetcar in the snow. She tried selling her device to companies after receiving the patent for it in 1903, but all of them rejected her invention. It wasn't until the '50s and '60s when faster automobiles were invented that companies took to the idea. By then, Anderson's patent had expired, and later, inventor Robert Kearns was credited with the idea.

Nettie Stevens: Sex chromosomes. Stevens discovered the connection between chromosomes and sex determination. Despite Stevens' breakthrough, her colleague and mentor E.B. Wilson published his papers before her and is often noted for the discovery.

Caresse Crosby: The modern bra. Caresse Crosby, who developed the modern bra. She was the first to acquire the patent for the modern bra, AKA a "Backless Brassiere," yet is often left in the shadows because she sold her patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company.

[nicklitten]

The Epic Quest for "RULES.mk" Mastery: A Hero's Journey with Visual Studio Code and IBM i

In a world where build automation is a mystical art, one brave warrior dares to conquer the realm of “RULES.mk” config files with Visual Studio Code and IBM i. Join us on this thrilling adventure! Step 1: Prepare for Battle (Install the Necessary Extensions) Gather your trusty steed (Visual Studio Code) and equip it with the following extensions: Code for IBM i – Powerful VSCode Extension…

[dimalink]

Frozen Arctic Station – Menu elements, take item

Somewhere in the snow. And ice. Whole continent is covered with snow. Where blizzards and hurricanes with the snow. There is station science. And something has happened there. You are most real person, who is in this episode. Little game is something like text quest and retro walking with labyrinths.

This time I do programming. I am working about programming. First time, I left standard problems. Such as collisions with objects. Move player. Which are rather typical. And I can do them much or less. Since 2024. First time – I take development with unknown for me problems. And of course I run into difficulties. How to rotate map. I spent lots of time for this.

And now, I am already doing interface. Labyrinth is reading from file. And can walk with it. And with space you start a menu. With actions. So there, you can take item. You can select item. From what you have in inventory.

Now, I need to finish programming part of  gaming systems. And for me it looks more as a problems. But slowly, I have success with one problem after another. Not so fast as I want it. But I have results.

And by now, there is a station in the snow. And it has a critical situation. Maybe it is already snow there, at the station itself, and cold is everywhere. And maybe no. But there are monsters. Withing corridors. And you are worker at this station. And you get up. You lost conscious. Knocked conscious. And now it is empty here.

Withing corridors -it can be monsters. And it rooms – you can perform some actions. Take item or use it, for example.

And game is also made with from the eyes view. As some first – most first three dimensional games.  Where you can also walk with cells. Or something this way was a method for move in role playing games. In 80s or 90s. With IBM PC compatible computers. Or with 8 bit computers.

This is like action movie about polar station. Experiments.  As a first part for Resident Evil. You are walking the building. And try some rooms. Make some actions. And try to understand what is going on. Or like – the thing (movie). Something strange is happened with distance station.

But with turn based mode. With text insertions. Now, it is already, I understand, how it will work game system.  And I do programming for these things. All the game options. And will need to add content. To write story. To create labyrinths. To setup objects. Monsters. To write, code interactions between objects.

So about this  freeze it is lots of things to do.  Now, for example. There is menu. And there you can take item. And enter the inventory.

Basic Pascal version 1.18 "Duckling" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Puddles at Countryside, Duckling Pseudo 3D, Road to Countryside, Duckling Goes 2D. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

It is now in development new version Basic Pascal pack games. This game will be included in a new version.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/games/basicpascal/index_eng.html Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html Itchio: https://dimalink.itch.io/basic-pascal

[asothecrow]

Ladies, gents, and all those in between and beyond, may I present...

The Hacker!

AKA Sage Corvid, age 28, and chronically tired hacker and computer virus programmer.

With their robotic arm, they are able to hack into any Dispenser, Teleporter, and Sentry in order to change the side of the device to service their own team for a brief time. They can also hack into Spy's disguise kit to disable it for a limited time as well. However, in both of these instances, they have to touch the device in question with the hand.

Alongside their Quick Hack arm, they also have a taser and a pistol. Their taser is built into their arm, so they have to be within melee distance to use it on someone to stun them. Their pistol is their long range device which doesn't do a lot of damage.

However, their final ability and arguably the most useful one is their shapeshifting ability: the ability to change into two animals (a crow and a cat.) They use this to sneak passed enemies and escape tricky situations more swiftly.

Small Things:

They have a tattoo of a crow on their left arm and a cat on their right arm.

The headphones they wear are noise-cancelling because they cannot stand the sound of bullets and loud noises in general.

Sage is Autistic and has BPD.

Under their oversized jacket, they have a machine strapped to their back that connects to their Quick Hack arm. It's basically the computer that is also connected to the headphones.

During fights, they always have music playing on their headphones.

They are seldom phased by shit.

They eventually develop a crush on Medic, who eventually returns their feelings

Backstory Stuff:

In 1940, Sage was born to a Yugoslavian father and American mother, who met right before the start of WWII. Their mother was forced to flee back to the United States because of the pregnancy, while their father remained in Yugoslavia to fight for the Partisans. Unfortunately, Sage's father arrived in the United States disabled post war.

Their mother and father were married when they were 5. For the next few years, Sage lived a happy childhood and learned Serbo-Croatian. However, at age 9, their parents were killed in a car accident, putting them in the care of their mother's tribe - the Abenaki. The US government tried to take them away multiple times, only for Sage to hide. It's here where Sage learned Western Abenaki.

It was among their people where they learned that they could shape-change into two animals (a crow and a cat), a gift that was passed down through Sage's father's side. Sage used this ability to escape out at night, play mischevious pranks, and escape unwanted situations. (This is often how they would escape the government looking for them.)

During these years, Sage lived with a war veteran who helped decode German messages. His name was Francis Brault, and he taught Sage all about codes and how to decode messages and other stuff. He even built his own computer. He taught Sage how to make one from spare parts, alongside how to fight and use guns. Francis also began working for IBM at this time, and this gave Sage a good window into computers and programming.

When Sage was 13, Francis took Sage to his work place, and Sage took to it very well - impressing Francis and some of his fellow programmers with their understanding of programs and computers. They were often invited by the programmers to experiment on their own, and their skills only seemed to improve (obviously they received help when they needed it.)

However, when Sage was 14, Francis died of cancer, and Sage was taken into the state's custody. Frustrated with being placed into foster care, Sage often avoided going back to their foster parent's "home" to go back to the IBM, where they were welcomed to come after school by the workers there who grew attached to the poor kid.

When they were 18, they aged out of the system, and Sage was effectively left alone. Their knowledge of computers and their fast growing skill with them allowed them to get a job working for a college in New York. And with this new job, they were the first person to create a computer virus.

During a regular day assisting with the computers, Sage found a rogue program in the system and used their own virus to combat it. They succeeded, but the person who actually messed up blamed them for the incident. Because of racism and general bigotry, Sage wasn't believed over the white guy and was fired.

At age 20, they began to built their own computers again, looting garbage bins and stole from hardware stores to do so. They moved to NYC, where they got a job as a cashier, but at night they'd make programs and computer viruses before sending them off via email to infect the systems of companies so they could steal money.

They did this for a while, worked for a few shady people as well, and started going by the name CROW. Learning from their mistakes, their programs and viruses became more and more advanced and dangerous. This eventually led them to discovering about Mann Co.

Originally it was just a curiosity, but as they began to syphon money from the company, they noticed that something wasn't right. This looked like a coverup for something else. Digging deeper, they found out about the Gravel War and found this to be especially interesting. They hacked the cameras to watch the fighting take place, finding it all very fascinating that these men were fighting over a gravel pit of all things.

However, they soon caught the attention of the Administrator due to a mistake on their part. And she sent someone after Sage. They kidnaped the enbie and took them to the Administrator, who offered them a deal. Either stay in Teufort and work for her, make tons of money, or be exposed as the thief who stole thousands from other companies and go to jail.

Sage chose the first option and became another mercenary. Their ultimate goal is to eventually take down the Administrator, but for the moment, seeing a bunch of grown men fight each other is equally fun.

[space-cathedral]

Has Anybody Else Played "FIND ROSE"?

(AN: This story was written by myself and all pictures were drawn by myself, and is meant to be an inverse letter written someone in my OC-verse — in other words, everything written is fictional. It's on the long-ish side (6,352 words, to be exact), but can probably be read in less than fifteen minutes, if that. Thank you!)

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The following text was written and sent to our Research Team by an individual whose name will not be disclosed for privacy reasons. The following describes the author's experience with a game assumed to have been created in the early 2000s, which may highlight one of the first forms of human contact from the City to the human realm. If you have any further information, please contact us as soon as possible via any of the information listed on the “Contact Us” page of our website. Thank you.

To whom it may concern,

Hello. My name is [REDACTED], and I’m writing to you today, both to offer some information that could be relevant to your research and to see if I truly am the only person who has played the game I’m about to describe. 

To provide just a little bit of background about myself: when I was a child, the internet was still considered a fairly new phenomenon that people were still waiting to die out. With the birth of the internet came the birth of CD-ROM PC games, and with the birth of CD-ROM PC games came the birth of what might have been my very first obsession. Every Friday after my classes were over, my parents would take me to the local game store, and I'd buy as many games as my allowance could afford (which, usually, was two at the absolute most). To highlight exactly how into PC games I was, I only ever bought them, never rented them; once I got my hands on a game, I wasn’t giving it back. Then, after I’d made my choice, I'd spend almost every hour of every weekend on my father's IBM PS ValuePoint computer (you know, the type of computer that used dial-up connection because Wi-Fi had yet to take off), logged into Windows 2000 and playing whatever game I'd bought the day before. By the time of my experience, I must have owned over thirty CD-ROMs — KidPix was, and still is, my absolute favorite one of the bunch. I still play the CD version sometimes as an adult, even though it's apparently freeware now.

Now, with all that over with, let’s get on to the whole reason I’m writing this.

That winter afternoon had been notably chilly as my parents took me on my pre-weekend CD shopping spree. That day had been the final day of school before winter break, meaning that I would have ample time to play my computer games. While en route, my mother had given me a calm but firm lecture about computer-time guidelines she'd be putting in place during break, but if I’m being honest, all of it went in one ear and out the other as my dad pulled into a parking spot in front of the store. I remember being just short of running through the glass door when my mother frantically snatched me towards her by the hand, as I'd practically catapulted out of the back seat once the engine was turned off. Even as I held my mother's hand, my excitement hadn't let up one iota as I jumped up and down on our way through the door. 

Per usual, I had a difficult time choosing which game to buy, my 7-year-old gaze flitting from one captivating CD case to another. Also per usual, my father kept saying, "Don't take too long, now, we don't want it to be too dark when we drive home," (which even as a child I knew was his code for "Will you hurry up, I want to go home and sleep.") and also also per usual, I hardly paid him any mind. All that mattered at that instant were those games. 

It was when I nearly settled on buying I Spy: School Days that it first caught my eye.

Next to I Spy: School Days’ bright yellow box sat another CD-ROM. The case had no title cover, leaving the CD itself exposed behind the transparent material, and on the disc, the words "FIND ROSE", handwritten in what appeared to be red Crayola marker, were barely legible; I remember having to squint to make them out. 

I pointed it out to my parents, asking them what kind of game that was, and they were just as oblivious as I was. When we brought it to the cashier near the front door, he too had no definite answer to our questions. "Probably just some shoddy homebrew," he'd said. "We get those from time to time." He then offered the CD to us for free, which I happily accepted; my parents even let me buy I Spy: School Days along with it, since I hadn’t spent any money yet. As we walked out the door and headed towards our car, I was even more excited than I'd been when I'd gotten out of the car.

It was nightfall by the time my father pulled into our garage. After eating my dinner, changing into my house clothes, and brushing my teeth, I made a beeline for the computer, both CDs in hand.  My parents, both of them about to head to bed, were fine with me using the computer that night, as long as I followed their rules: no eating or drinking anything at the keyboard, no staying on after 10 pm, no going on any websites other than the ones that they'd personally vetted, etc etc etc. Even now, I can remember it being exactly 7 pm when they finally turned in for the night, and when I fired up my dad's computer in our living room, filled with anticipation as the computer’s lights began to flicker.

As I waited for Windows 2000 to boot up, I found myself fixated on the FIND ROSE disc, feeling as bewildered as I was excited. Normally, when I purchased a game, I would read the descriptions on the back of the CD case repeatedly during the car ride home, ensuring I knew exactly what kind of game I was about to dive into for the weekend. This time, however, was different; without any cover art, there were no descriptions to peruse, leaving me completely in the dark about what I was going to play. For reasons I couldn't quite grasp at the moment, the disc filled me with a sense of unease; perhaps it was just that fear of the absolute unknown that we all have.

Then, Windows 2000 finally loaded, displaying the default light blue desktop background that my father never bothered changing. All of the icons from my past gaming exploits were neatly lined up in rows of five on the left side of the desktop, coming right after Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer. My heart raced with excitement as I pressed the square button on the CD tray, watching it slide out from the modem. I placed the FIND ROSE disc inside and pushed the tray (perhaps a bit too hard) back into the computer, hardly able to believe I was about to dive into this enigmatic game while the CD spun and churned inside the machine.

The first oddity was something I initially overlooked until several years after my experience — although I had a vague inkling of it back then, I couldn't pinpoint the exact issue. In my defense, it was a minor detail that could easily escape a child's notice. Basically: all the CD games I'd played before FIND ROSE launched an installation wizard that you had to navigate through before playing your game. However, FIND ROSE launched no such wizard; the moment I inserted the disc, a fullscreen window immediately appeared, turning the screen almost completely black, sans the small pixel hourglass visible in the middle of the void.

The second oddity was something I caught right as it happened, and that was the ridiculously long loading time. I wasn’t keeping the exact time, but if I had to guess, the screen was black for what I can only estimate was at least 10 minutes. As I sat at the keyboard, a pair of 7-year-old eyes reflecting nothing but raw impatience in the dark screen, the thought that I had broken my father's computer began to creep into my brain. For a moment, the game faded completely from my thoughts as my mind began to swarm with questions of how exactly I would explain this to my parents and what punishment I might receive. Will I be spanked? Will they take away my games? Will I never be allowed on the computer again?

Just as a panic attack was about to take hold, a sudden and deafening beep blasting from the computer speakers jolted me back to the present. My gaze instantly shot to the monitor, my eyes wide and my muscles tensed up as I fixated on the blank, now-white screen. The loud noise had definitely startled me, yes, but a part of me braced for the sound of exasperated footsteps that would quickly morph into a lengthy scolding from two very exhausted, very agitated adults. Fortunately, though, those footsteps never came. Part of me was surprised the noise hadn’t disturbed my parents, but I most certainly wasn’t going to complain.

 The white screen lingered for only a second before an image finally emerged, signaling that the game had finally started. I quickly shook off my shock and settled into my dad’s office chair, feeling both thrilled to play FIND ROSE and relieved that I wouldn’t face any consequences for breaking the computer or for waking the entire house up at 8 pm.

The image on the screen showed a peculiar creature that resembled a llama, but it stood upright like a human and had human-like hands, painted with red nail polish. The creature was situated in a small, rather minimalist bedroom; the only furniture visible was a neatly made white bed, a brown lamp on a wooden end table, and a burgundy rug that covered about one-fifth of the pale yellow floor. It wore a pearl necklace adorning a red rose at the center, and a fancy white dress with a repeating red rose pattern covering the entire bottom half of it. It also had a yellow purse, its long strap across its chest, and red high heels on its (assumingly also human-like) feet. She (at the time, I could only assume she was a "she" based on the attire) stood silently in the middle of the room, her hands folded politely at its waist, wearing an expression reminiscent of what I can only compare to a weary middle-aged woman and gazing off at nothing in particular. I’ve included a rough sketch to give you an idea of her appearance (sorry for the messiness, I am not an artist);

Though my drawing doesn’t really do it any justice, something about the overall art style made me quite uneasy. The only way I can describe it is… it was as if somebody put Tim Burton’s art through fifteen different languages on Google Translate and then put the results on a CD-ROM. Something about it was so gritty, imposing — unfinished, almost.

At first, I had zero idea what I was supposed to do; there were no onscreen instructions, no indicators of what my next step was meant to be, no nothing. My first move was to click on the llama-lady, but all that did was spawn some black text floating above her head. Based on the text, this llama-lady that wore a rose necklace and a rose-patterned dress was named… “Daisy”. Yeah, not sure what the developers were thinking with that one. Then again, the game was called "FIND ROSE"; if the llama-lady was the titular Rose, it would have probably won the world record for the world’s shortest video game.

I began clicking randomly on the screen, but none of my attempts produced any results. Frustration set in as I started to believe that this single screen was all the game had to offer; that this really and truly was the world’s shortest game. But then, I clicked on a very specific spot in the far left corner of the game’s PC window, and the screen went black, leaving only the Windows hourglass icon visible. As I waited for the next screen to load, I couldn't help but wonder how many people must have bought the game only to return it on the same day, unable to find the progress spot and convinced there was nothing else to do. Even as a child, I found it odd that it was hidden in a place where most players wouldn't think to click.

The loading time remained unusually lengthy, but it was shorter than the initial wait; it seemed to take about five minutes instead of ten (though, as a child, that was still too long). When the next screen finally showed up, it was all I could do to sit and stare at the strange scene that had been placed before me.

Daisy was now outside and appeared to be on some sort of city block, but the architecture of the buildings made absolutely no sense — constructed in all sorts of surreal shapes that realistically should have sent most of them toppling over in heaps of orangish-brown bricks. The streets were lined up with what appeared to be street lamps, but some of them seemed to be damaged, with their poles bent sharply at strange angles. This was all rendered in the exact same badly-translated-Tim-Burton style and maintained a lukewarm brownish-yellow color scheme, giving it an extremely uncanny, almost unnatural vibe. Here’s another drawing I did of what a typical screen of FIND ROSE looked like (again, not an artist):

It’s also worth noting that, unlike the previous screen, there was background music playing this time. It was this very bizarre piano tune droning on and on from the speakers — it wasn’t loud or discordant and it didn’t hurt my ears or anything, but there was no actual coherent melody going on with it. The only way that I can describe it is, It sounded like somebody who’d never played a piano before in their life was just making things up as they went along —like some kindergarten kid at the classroom piano — resulting in a slew of notes that didn’t really flow or go together well.

Despite how I’d struggled with the previous screen, I found the general controls were quite straightforward: use the left mouse button to move, click on characters to engage in conversation, click on items to pick them up, and use the mouse to guide Daisy towards the far left of the screen to proceed to the next area. The game hadn't explicitly stated the goal, but I’d long since guessed that it involved looking for whoever Rose even was.

I clicked on all of the weird buildings first, but doing so always brought up the exact same message at the bottom of the screen, written in some scratchy black font that looked like someone was trying to get ink out of a pen: "Rose is not there." I also tried clicking the street lights, which brought up the text: "Things that give light." With nothing else to check, I used my mouse to guide Daisy to the left, moving onto the next screen.

The next few screens were far more populated than the first one. There were all sorts of strange creatures wandering about, none of them seeming human. Each of them walked back and forth at a set path at random intervals, in what I can only assume were preset paths coded in by the devs. When I clicked on and spoke to them, each of them seemed to know Daisy, and they each said something in regard to this still-unseen “Rose” character. Below is a list of some of the dialogue I managed to remember, accompanied by what sort of creature said it, and any event that may or may not have happened afterward. Note that I didn't make any drawings of them, as I didn't feel exact appearances were necessary for this part.

Creature in a tuxedo with a rose for a head, apparently named “Mr. Thorns”, standing in front of a vaguely-rose-shaped building called THORNS based on a sign above the door: “Ah! Good morning, Daisy.” [A text box only containing ellipses.] ”Hm? Rose? Ah, I saw her pass by here not too long ago. I’m sure she’s close. Now, I’ve got to get back to work. Good luck with finding Rose!” [Mr. Thorns then walks into the aforementioned building.]

Creature in a yellow summer dress with a sunflower for a head, apparently named “Mrs. Thorns”, holding hands with a much smaller creature with a yellow rose bud for a head, named “Rosy": "Hello there, Daisy, nice to see you!” [Box of ellipses.] “What’s that? You’re looking for Rose? I’m afraid I haven’t seen her… I’m sure she’s not far, though!” [The dialogue initially ends here, but I talked to Mrs. Thorns a second time to see if she’d say anything else, to which she says the following.] “Ah, that reminds me: if you ever want a nice bouquet of roses, make sure you visit my husband’s shop. He sells plenty of beautiful roses! [There is no more dialogue from Mrs. Thorns after this. The child with her only says “Hello, miss.” when clicked on.]

Creature wearing a black gown that seems to be a white humanoid poodle with three heads named “Ms. Cerber”: "Oh, hi, Daisy! Rare that we see you without Rose… Is she doing ok?" [Box of ellipses.] "You’re looking for her now? We hope you find her soon!" [There is no dialogue after this.]

Creature sitting on a bench that seems to be nothing more than a completely black silhouette of something resembling a human, apparently named “Zilch”: [An empty textbox and nothing but a cacophony of loud, glitchy noises (that, just by the way, made me jump out of my skin when I clicked on Zilch). Clicking on them more than once grants the same result each time.]

Creature with what seems to be a red mushroom for a head in a plain white t-shirt apparently named "Gus", seemingly sweeping the sidewalk with a broom: "Rose? Yeah, I passed by her earlier. She should be taking a stroll in the forest by now." [There is no more dialogue after that.]

Creature that appears to be an extremely massive serpent with four large eyes against a large brick wall, hovering over what appears to be several fruit and vegetable stands. The creature seemed completely flat, almost as if it was drawn into the brick wall. Apparently (and appropriately) named “Four Eyes”: Ah, Lady Daisy, a lovely morning to you! You here to shop?" [Box of ellipses.] "Hm? No? Oh well, that’s fine, maybe next time. Feel free to stay and chat, I enjoy your company!" [The dialogue initially ends there; however, Four Eyes continues talking if clicked on again.] "Hm? You’re looking for Lady Rose? Yes, she just bought some fresh veggies from me not too long ago. She’s most likely up ahead." [After this, clicking on Four Eyes will only ever bring up the text “Pleasure doing business with you!” and nothing more.]

So far, the game, despite its creepy visuals and less-than-appealing soundtrack, was relatively pleasant, and I was actually enjoying it thus far. Even though the NPCs were all bizarre and inhuman, they all seemed friendly enough (aside from Zilch; then again, the racket it made may have been “hello, have a nice day” in whatever language it spoke, but I can’t confirm that).

About three screens past Four Eyes' market, I came across the game's first true hurdle — a nameless humanoid red fox in a red suit only referred to as "Gatekeeper." He was stationed in front of a closed gate that looked like it opened into a forest, judging by the leaves jutting from the left side of the screen. Upon engaging him in conversation, he responded with the following:

“Mornin’”. [Box of ellipses.] “What? You wanna go through the forest? Sure, but I’ll need to see a permit. Don’t want any ne’er do wells in there again.” [Box of ellipses.] “…Don’t have one? Sorry, can’t let you pass, then.” [The dialogue initially ends here, but speaking to him again reveals the following.] "Ask around the City. I'm sure somebody can help you get your hands on one. [After this, the gatekeeper will only say “No permit, no pass. Sorry. Gotta follow protocol,” when clicked on afterward.]

After that, I backtracked multiple screens and spoke to every NPC I could find, none of whom could help me �� that is, until I talked to Ms. Cerber again. She said the following:

“Hi again, Daisy! Is there something wrong?” [Box of ellipses.] “A permit to the forest? We’ve actually got one of our own!" [Box of ellipses.] “Hm? Can you borrow it? We don’t know, the last time we let someone borrow our permit, they lost it and we had to sign up for another one… Tell you what, how about we make you a deal?"

I can’t remember her exact wordage, but in the next few textboxes, Ms. Cerber described how she'd wanted to buy a rose bouquet for her (unnamed) partner back at her home, but didn't have the funds for it. She then offered to let Daisy not only borrow but keep the permit if she managed to get her some roses for her partner, claiming that the cost of a new permit was minuscule compared to the value of seeing her lover happy. It seemed that, even though you apparently had to sign up for something to get a forest permit, it seemed that any permit would allow you through even if it wasn’t actually yours because the gatekeeper never bothered doing any actual checks, and I was just fine with that. I felt that someone would be getting fired soon, though.

Remembering what Mrs. Thorns told me earlier, I immediately made my way towards Mr. Thorn’s shop, but not before I picked up an item blending in with one of the buildings that I hadn’t noticed on my way there; a coin (according to text that appeared), small and the color of a penny, its sprite now on the top-left corner of the screen. The coin would turn out to be the only item that you could pick up in FIND ROSE; everything else was obtained via talking to NPCs.

Unlike the previous segments of the game, the shop was drawn in a top-down perspective rather than a side view. Fittingly, the shop was covered from top to bottom with all things relating to roses; rose lollipops, rose jewelry (which I quickly assumed was the same jewelry that Daisy wore around her neck), rose seeds, rose-shaped décor, and of course, rose bouquets. I spoke to Mr. Thorns, who sat behind a counter at the top of the screen. His dialogue was as follows:

“Oh, hello again, Daisy! Have you found Rose yet?” [Box of ellipses.] "Not yet? Well, I'm sure she's around here, don’t worry about her. Now, did you want something?" [Box of ellipses.] "Ah, you’d like to purchase a rose bouquet? Of course, of course! Let me get you one right away!" [Mr. Thorns goes offscreen for about a second, and then reappears at the counter.] "Alrighty, that'll be 5 cents, please!"

I clicked on the coin in the corner of the screen, thinking that I could pay for the roses with it, but that resulted in the following dialogue:

“Oh, I’m so sorry, you seem to be low on money… Hm…" [Box of ellipses.] “Don’t fret, Daisy. I'll give it to you; that is, if you could do me a small favor. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t take too much of your time.”

To summarize what Mr. Thorns said next, he’d give me the bouquet for free if I got him an orange from what I learned was called “the All-Seeing Market”; according to him, he’d get it himself, but he didn’t want to be away from his shop in case a customer arrived. How somebody with no mouth could eat anything, I couldn’t tell you, but all I cared about was getting that permit so that I could finally advance and, hopefully, find whoever Rose was.

As I headed for Four Eyes’ screen, it had only at that moment dawned on me that the music didn’t loop. In the ten or so minutes that I’d been playing, the “melody” (and I use that term very loosely) never repeated itself in the same way, essentially playing one long piano tune. Right then, I could only imagine someone sitting at a piano for probably an hour, just pressing whichever key caught their attention next.

Upon reaching the market, I got the following dialogue when I spoke to Four Eyes:

“Lovely seeing you again, my Lady!” [Box of ellipses.] “You’d like to buy one of my oranges? Wonderful! That will be 1 cent, if you may.”

This time, when I clicked on the coin, it actually worked, much to my relief, and the coin’s sprite was replaced with that of an orange in the inventory. “Pleasure doing business with you!” Four Eyes had said afterward.

I’m not going to get into any of the dialogue spoken between the time of me buying the orange to me speaking to the gatekeeper, because the entire fetch quest took a little less than five minutes, and nobody said anything interesting or of note that I can remember. Long-but-not-long story short: I gave the orange to Mr. Thorns and he gave me the roses, I gave the roses to Ms. Cerber and she gave me the permit, I gave the permit to the gatekeeper and he let me through. Objective complete.

After opening the gate for Daisy, the gatekeeper said the following:

“What business do you have in the forest, anyway?” [Box of ellipses.] “Rose, huh? Not sure who that is, but a fine lady did pass through here earlier. With any luck, that’ll be your girl. Head on through.” [The dialogue initially ends here, but talking to the gatekeeper then has him say the following.] “Be careful, and remember: don’t bother Mother Goose, if you know what’s good for ya."

Although I was eager to move ahead, the gatekeeper's warning stirred a bit of anxiety within me as I moved toward the next screen. What did he mean by "be careful"? Who exactly was Mother Goose? As the screen went dark, I expected these questions to be answered very soon. When the next screen appeared, however, my fingers froze on the mouse, and my eyes became fixed on the landscape presented.

This scene was darker, much darker, than any that came before it. As expected of a forest, the landscape was filled with trees and bushes, but they were all depicted in pure black, while the background was a deep blue that would have made the trees invisible had it been any deeper. The art style, while still maintaining the bootleg-Tim-Burton style of the game, appeared much rougher and more chaotic, causing the bushes to look less like bushes and more like amorphous, shadowy masses. Daisy, previously vibrant in color, was now just a bunch of white outlines, the background bleeding straight through her. The disjointed piano music ceased entirely when the screen appeared, and despite how the music creeped me out, the silence that followed was far worse.

There was a sprite of what appeared to be a wooden signpost in the middle of the screen, and it gave me the following text when I clicked on it:

“Do not bother Mother Goose.”

The tiny wave of fear I felt when the gatekeeper had said the same thing had grown into a full-blown tsunami. Yes, it was just a game, but at that moment, I felt as though I was in that forest instead of Daisy. After a bout of shaking and heavy breathing, I steeled myself to press on, guiding Daisy past the sign and into the following screen.

For the first three screens, nothing happened, and for a moment, my fear began to diminish. Whoever this “Mother Goose” was hadn’t made its presence known in any way I could detect, and I figured that by not “bothering” them — whatever “bothering” actually meant — they wouldn’t pop up.

This relief was short-lived, however, when I saw a tall, lanky figure slowly rise in the middle of the fifth forest screen, staring right at Daisy as she entered the screen.

The being was at least double Daisy's size and had no identifiable characteristics apart from a bird-like beak, a bonnet-like accessory on its head, and a shining white eye on the side that contrasted harshly with the gloom that swallowed the locale. Trying not to panic, I moved my cursor towards the creature, wanting to examine it to get some idea as to what exactly it was and what its purpose its presence served.

“Be careful, and remember: don’t bother Mother Goose, if you know what’s good for ya."

After a few seconds of hovering over the thing, the cursor jerking and quivering against the blackness that surrounded it as my right hand shook, I swiftly decided against it, yanking the cursor from the thing as if it were an atom bomb that would explode if I lingered over it any longer. My immediate instinct was to head back to the brighter, more populated city full of friendly characters, but every single time I attempted to leave, Daisy would stop just short of going offscreen, and the following text would appear:

“You can’t go back right now. You have to FIND ROSE.”

With seemingly no other choices available, I held my breath and slipped by the shadowy being to proceed to the next screen. Thankfully, it didn’t attack Daisy; it only turned in her direction, watching her as she progressed.

I’m unsure of the exact number of screens that comprised the entire remaining forest area, but I am sure that it was far too many. Each screen repeated the same scene; the creature, whom I eventually concluded was Mother Goose, appeared in each and every one, never breaking its gaze away from Daisy as she wandered through the forest. I've illustrated the scene as best I can to give an idea of what it looked like:

I think it was around the halfway mark when I noticed the music. It began with one note, then two, and gradually added more as I went from screen to screen. When the sixteenth note played, I realized it was the first few notes of the nursery song "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary," a tune my mother used to sing to me as a child. The tempo was incredibly slow, with a full second of silence between each note.

I know that most people, especially adults, may not have found any of this particularly scary, but at the moment, my seven-year-old self was beyond terrified. While all of my childhood friends were scared of the Mad Piano from Super Mario 64, I was scared of Mother Goose from FIND ROSE. While all of my adult online buddies were scared of the Lavender Town music from the old Pokémon games as kids, I was scared of the one-note-at-a-time piano rendition of “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” from FIND ROSE. While everyone else remembers being scared over a popular console title, I was scared over some obscure CD-ROM game from a corner store that nobody other than me has probably even played.

Despite my fear, I continued to press on. I kept telling myself that, because I'd made it this far, I had an obligation to see this entire game through. I had an obligation to FIND ROSE.

In what felt like hours — though it was most likely less than two minutes — I finally reached the forest’s final screen. Everything was essentially the same as it had been in the rest of the forest, with Mother Goose still staring me down, but there was another wooden sign at the far end of the screen, which provided the following text when clicked on:

“Forest Exit; Picnic Area Ahead.”

Overwhelmed by a surge of intense relief, I quickly made my way to the left, eager to escape this nightmare, while Mother Goose turned to look at me one final time.

It was when I was just about to transition to the next screen that it happened. The final cherry on the proverbial panic-inducing sundae. It happened so quickly that I almost didn't see it.

Mother Goose darted towards Daisy at astonishing speed, its beak wide open and its white eyes growing almost to the size of its head. The very last note that played before I left the forest was incredibly loud and distorted, as if somebody violently banged their finger on a piano key (something else that I thought would wake my parents up, but thankfully didn’t). I could have sworn I heard the strained cry of a dying bird layered over the noise, being abruptly cut off at the end. Mother Goose was barely a centimeter from touching Daisy when the screen went dark.

As the screen brightened and transformed into a more inviting setting, accompanied by the return of the weird-yet-benign tune, I needed a full minute to motivate myself to move. Once I managed to exhale the breath that had lodged in my throat, I started to move Daisy across the screen again. A small part of me considered backtracking to the previous screen out of curiosity, but I refused. I would never return there again. To this day, I have no idea what happens if you click on Mother Goose, but I’m perfectly fine with not knowing.

I only encountered a single other NPC on my way through the Picnic Area; a humanoid black cat with an orange t-shirt and yellow sun hat on, sitting at what appeared to be a light-brown picnic table to the right of the screen. Speaking with her gave me the following text:

“Hey there, Daisy! You enjoying the weather?” [Box of ellipses.] “Rose? She’s just up ahead. I think she’s waiting for you. You should go see her!” [There is no more dialogue after that.]

After advancing through two more screens, each showcasing rows of vacant picnic tables, I arrived at what seemed to be the beginning of a grassy field. In the center stood a large tree, beneath standing a creature resembling a brown gazelle. Like Daisy, she stood on two legs and had human-like hands, with hers holding a straw basket filled with what appeared to be carrots and lettuce. The creature wore a long, gray summer dress that brushed against the ground, covering her legs and feet, and like Daisy, she had a necklace, only with a white daisy at the center. Her expression mirrored Daisy's own weary, almost middle-aged-lady-looking appearance. Here’s a doodle of her:

Upon finding her, she had her back turned towards Daisy, but she turned around when I clicked on her. True to the cat-beast’s word, the creature was indeed the one whom I’d been searching for the entire game. I had finally found Rose. When I clicked on her, she gave me the following dialogue, which served as the final piece of text in the entire game:

“Oh, Daisy, dear! I was just enjoying the pleasant breeze… I was hoping you’d come to enjoy it with me.  I was just thinking of visiting your house for tea afterward; would that be fine with you? [Box of ellipses]. Wonderful! I’m so happy to see you.”

Then, suddenly and with no fanfare, the game window just closed itself out. A bit anti-climactic, yeah, but I was happy to have won the game. I did attempt to re-launch the game by removing and then re-inserting the disc several times, but it seemed that the game would no longer boot.

As I sat there reflecting on what I’d just played, a soft knock on the wall nearly made me fall out of my chair. I looked up to see my father at the end of the hallway that led to the living room where the computer was, staring at me with half-lidded eyes.

“Yo," he said, punctuating his greeting with a huge yawn. "It's 10 o'clock now, bud."

“Yeah, I know,” I said in placid agreement. “I just closed the game, and I’m getting off right now.”

As my father nodded and trudged back to his and mom’s room, I turned the computer off, leapt out of the chair, and headed straight to bed without a word, falling into a restless sleep.

I never told my parents about the game. When my mom asked about it the next morning, I told her that the disc hadn’t worked and I just played I Spy: School Days. It wasn't a complete lie, though; each time I attempted to load the game after that night, the CD wouldn't read. We didn’t bother bringing it back to the store, since we’d gotten it for free anyway. It was a bit more difficult, however, to come up with a reason for my mother as to why I didn't want her to sing "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" to me anymore.

When I returned to school, I asked several of my peers if they’d ever played or heard of FIND ROSE, and all of them looked at me like I had grown an extra head. I’d even resorted to asking my teachers, who, predictably, had zero clue what I was talking about, and about half of them signed their answer off with some variation of "games are fun but don't let them make you forget to study". After classes, I used the school library's computer to do Google research on (I couldn't use Google on my family's computer, as my parents felt that I could look up something I wasn't supposed to on it, and had it locked behind password via a third-party program); my search yielded no results. I eventually gave up.

So now, years later as an adult, I’m writing this as a… call-to-action, so to speak. If anybody who reads this has played this game, has footage of this game, or even has actual ownership of a functioning copy of this game, please, please contact the research center, so that they can forward it to me, and if you are willing to part with it, send a physical copy to the team as well. I would greatly appreciate it, and I’m sure the team would as well.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

[REDACTED]

P.S: To whoever is in charge of the research party; I’ve read the report on your website you posted a few days ago regarding a tall, bird-like creature with glowing white eyes that was sighted skulking in a dark alley sometime last week? If you happen to gather more information on it, I would appreciate it very greatly if you could share any and all you possibly can with me. I’ve been losing sleep over it.

[End.]

[multidimensionalsock]

So! I broke my computer yesterday. So let's talk about how I did that because it's probably the most unusual way you're going to hear.

Me and my boyfriend were reinstalling windows, my motherboard was made for the PC it's in, so it's not very well documented and has a bunch of not-completely-standard stuff which makes it hard to modify or upgrade. This also means that to do firmware updates, it's manufacturer generally pushes them with windows updates. And sometimes you don't know it's doing firmware updates because it's at the same time, downside of this: if a firmware update is interrupted (when the PC tells you not to turn it off during an update) then it can lead to hardware failure.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

When a computer powers on it initially goes to the bios which perform a POST (power on self test) which checks the state and functionality of the hardware in your computer. If there's an issue then it produces beeping sounds, which align to an issue with the PC. If a computer fails to POST, it doesn't boot into the operating system.

At the same time the PC was being turned on I unplugged my keyboard from the back, this usually should not make a BIOS fail it's POST, however for some reason in my BIOS, if you unplug something from a USB during boot, it can cause it to fail.

I unplugged the keyboard at just the wrong moment, the BIOS failed to post, because it was in the middle of an update it got corrupted, and then we got to spend the next 7 hours or so wondering why my PC was making 1 long-1 short beep due to my motherboard not having proper documentation of it's BIOS (it's based on AMI but AMI doesnt have that beep code, we later realised that because AMI doesnt have a motherboard issue beep code, they had taken IBMs beep code for it).

So I bricked my entire motherboard, by unplugging a keyboard.

Quite luckily both my boyfriend and father are quite tech proficient, there is a possible way to fix a bricked motherboard and it's to reflash the BIOS. Doing so requires specific equipment and has the potential to destroy your motherboard. You have to use a programmer to do it, my dad's had to remove my bios and all sorts, which is stuff that most people wouldn't be able to do, so most people would just definitely be left with a bricked pc for a simple mistake.

Annoyingly with my dad looking at the motherboard, there is actually a place on motherboard specifically for a dual bios so that if one fails there's a backup, except the manufacturer didn't put it on