I ended up at IBM around the turn of the century. They bought Lotus and I was brought on to write lotus notes applications.
The article asks “what is notes”. For applications it’s a nosql database with a gui front end. You can make custom applications and share with your team easily. Lotusscript bound it together.
We ported a green screen tracking software (year 2000 was approaching) to Notes and had a bunch of custom Notes applications the department used regularly.
It was clunky but also kind or remarkable that a very small team could develop custom apps.
The email client was just another notes database. I later worked somewhere that had Notes and only used the email.
Hard to imagine a place adopting Notes and just using the email... email was always kind of a shortcoming in the box. It was there, but wasn't very good imo. I think that Outlook was pretty great up until they started the cloud editions backing M365... I understand why they've changed it how they have, I just think it was better UX for most people before, even if it didn't scale well.
Both take excellent photos, especially in low light. I reprinted some of the original 5D photos 11”x17” and even though they have fewer pixels the quality was fine.
Canons are pretty cheap on the used market because they have a new mirrorless R series cameras/lenses so the older ones value dropped a lot.
A good lens helps a lot. Someone on the thread suggested a 50mm 1.8 “plastic fantastic”. It’s a great choice. Really sharp, lets a lot of light in, feels kind of cheap. I always liked the 24-105mm f4 zoom, but it’s pricier.
Cannons are no longer pretty cheap. If so then they have huge mileage on them, shutter count might kill your camera soon. I think the window closed two years ago and now they are becoming very cool again.
Besides the 50mm nifty fifty. There is "middle" range of "ultrasonic" zooms that are actually pretty capable and underrated/cheap. I have few for canon film cameras and their secret huge advantage is weight, optics wise they are pretty good (i have them converted on lumix full frame). I would also mention sigma 35mm art which can be get for less than 300eur and is THE lens if you know you like 35mm (person i ended up being).
Had a 3x NEC external scsi cd drive. It had play/ ff and rewind buttons and a little lcd that showed the track #. With the headphone jack it made a decent cd player.
I remember seeing my friends dad’s first cd player. Huge jazz fan and it did sound great. Especially the quiet parts (No tape hiss or record pops) and easy to use. He bought a couple of cds of rock and man they sounded good.
Every other media at the time required some maintenance to sound good. Records would scratch, those tape pinch rollers would need to be cleaned. Nothing was easy, cds were (skip forward with a button push). Cassettes still were the only way to record, better for portability and sounded pretty good (we did some a:b testing cd vs cassette as kids).
Late 80s, cds were everywhere. I stopped buying records. At my highschool radio station someone got a ton of great records from his neighbor who was replacing with cds.
My friends dad who liked jazz did lament that a lot of the jazz he had in record form would never be re-released as cds. Not digital so a lot of music lost to time and a format change.
Your dad's friends should have imported from Japan --- they were big on Jazz, and a lot of my Jazz CDs have spines labeled in Japanese on one side and English on the other.
The first letter was the recorder used for initial recording, say a Studer A800 as an example of an analog multitrack or DASH as an example of a digital one).
The second letter was the recorder for the mixdown, i.e. usually some 2-channel system like an analog ATR-102 or Studer A80 or a digital DAT.
The third letter was the recorder for the master, which for CD by definition was always digital. In the early days usually a Sony U-matic, which funnily enough was an analog video tape format which got reused for digital audio (and is the reason for the odd 44.1 kHz sampling rate of the CD).
Edit:
The code was actually always considered a bit meaningless.
For example, you could record on a digital DASH, but mix on an analog SSL console and print the mix to a digital recorder. That would have been a DDD CD.
On the other hand, you could record on an analog A820, mix on a digital Studer desk, print the mix on an analog A80 and that would have been a AAD CD.
So, two codes indicating "pure" digital or "pure" analog, even though both processes used both technologies.
Or record on a ADAT and mix on a Yamaha 02/R, which would have been DDD but probably sounded worse than the AAD recorded on a Studer analog tape ;)
Late 80s or early 90s there was also a DAD type, which often sounded really good.
From that Wiki link-
In practice, DAD was very rare, as many companies (especially the well-known classical music labels) used digital tape recorders (which were not prohibitively more expensive than analog tape recorders) during the editing or mixing stage.
I don't know if I have such a CD --- do you have an example which is noted as sound markedly better than other editions? (I'd especially be interested in a DAD disc which sounds better than an updated DDD disc)
Because most of my CDs are older and had previously been released as pure analog, so that's how I think of them, and that's where my experience is --- fair point though, putting parentheses around (re-) would have been better.
Maybe put the instructions you listed here on the site. I tried before reading the comments and got nowhere.
(Edit:I just noticed the instructions on the page bottom… move them up)
For me the symmetric pieces and the ability to just draw on any square on the grid to highlight it (even those that aren’t part of the shape you have to draw) was at first confusing (some Tetris pieces are symmetrical and you can’t flip)
it took some getting used too but it is oddly satisfying.
1. Instructions: You're absolutely right. I'll think of a way to make them more visible for new players. Great catch!
2. Flipping pieces (Mirroring): I have to respectfully disagree on this one. It would fundamentally change the essence of the game, which is exactly about making that small mental effort to rotate the piece in your mind before placing it. I believe it's better as it is now.
3. Drawing pieces: Limiting the selection so you can't highlight a square that isn't part of the piece you're drawing is a fantastic idea. I'll look into how to implement that.
Ummm, that change (if you mean being able to flip the pieces as if looking in a mirror) would fundamentally change the essence of the game. It would prevent players from developing the visual ability to mentally rotate and imagine the piece. I believe it would break the core dynamic and the spirit of the game, but I appreciate your feedback nonetheless.
> It would prevent players from developing the visual ability to mentally rotate and imagine the piece.
To me, this was the least fun part. Since there’s no penalty for entering squares incorrectly, I just tried the shape, and if it wasn’t accepted, I figured “oops, I must have flipped it.”
But I agree it would be a major change. If you ever share the source code, I would want to try doing this myself for my own use, to see what it feels like.
This happened to my mom when being interviewed when coming over here in the 60s.
During verbal questioning she said something like “of course”. The government agent turned deep red and asked her if she understood the question (English isn’t her first language and she hadn’t). She’s been here since.
I kind of get that the agent is looking out for the applicant in this story. You have no idea what’s going to happen when you do a security clearance thing and they ask about this and that. How serious is the wrong answer.
Excepting my favorite question which something like “have you ever tried to topple the government?”
The system is messed up when screening for honesty encourages people to lie.
So do we need new abstractions / languages? It seems clear that a lot of things can be pulled together by AI because it’s tedious for humans. But it seems to indicate that better tooling is needed.
The article asks “what is notes”. For applications it’s a nosql database with a gui front end. You can make custom applications and share with your team easily. Lotusscript bound it together.
We ported a green screen tracking software (year 2000 was approaching) to Notes and had a bunch of custom Notes applications the department used regularly.
It was clunky but also kind or remarkable that a very small team could develop custom apps.
The email client was just another notes database. I later worked somewhere that had Notes and only used the email.
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