Stephan Sokolow @ssokolow@qoto.org

@kmeisthax @foone ...or Glob-top Chip-on-Board if you want to go by what Wikipedia calls them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_on_board

I just noticed Inkscape's new context menus and I'm frustrated. How is it that GNOME devs continuously find new ways to make non-GNOME GTK applications with no viable replacements increasingly alien on non-GNOME desktops?

Put a pin in this for future sharing → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO46CNftRDs

"Actually, it's not asteroid bacteria... we discovered that bacteria managed to evolve to eat the cleaning products we use to sterilize clean rooms" is one of the most intuitive examples I've seen for why people shouldn't leap to assuming fantastic answers like UFOs or cryptids.

Tip: If you're using WinSCP's synchronize command in a script but you don't edit your script very often and your new exclusion pattern seems to be getting ignored, check if you're trying to name a directory without including the trailing slash.
#windows #winscp #scripting

Tip: If a recent Firefox update added smooth scrolling despite the checkbox still being unchecked and you don't like your scrolling being slow/laggy, try going into about:config and toggling the `general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel` pref to also be false.
#firefox

I've also been temporarily un-readonly-ing the Netatalk share and having fun with Deluxe Folder Icon Creator, Iconographer, FinderPop's "Set File Type" menu, and AppleShare's ability to remember window dimensions.

#retro #retrocomputing #macos #icons

I got back to working on the icons for my retro-hobby file share and it now has 68k Mac icons for the Windows and Mac OS 9 views (and Linux, which reuses the Win7 icon).

I still need to make the Intel Mac 68k icons and most of the OSX PPC ones though, so the preview sheet is using old screenshots there. (I don't yet have as good a workflow for those.)

...I also need to write some tooling to check which alternative icon sizes I forgot to make.

#retro #retrocomputing #windows #macos #icons

I got back to working on the icons for my retro-hobby file share and it now has 68k Mac icons for the Windows and Mac OS 9 views (and Linux, which reuses the Win7 icon).

I still need to make the Intel Mac 68k icons and most of the OSX PPC ones though, so the preview sheet is using old screenshots there. (I don't yet have as good a workflow for those.)

...I also need to write some tooling to check which alternative icon sizes I forgot to make.

#retro #retrocomputing #windows #macos #icons

I just have to give a shout-out to https://www.retrospect.com/ for anyone who needs commercial-grade backup software.

I've seen people call them "the gold standard" for classic Mac OS and, in 2024, when I asked about the possibility of licensing an ancient version for lack of something like rsync on my Mac OS 9 retro-hobby PCs, they let me use a download and license key that they keep around for when customers need to recover old backups on "but we can't provide support" terms.

Random thought inspired by "too new but too slow" mini-PCs: I wonder what the odds are of someone making a bare-metal hypervisor/emulator that lets DOS and Win3.11 run "natively" on even Intel's proposed x86S, with emulated SB16 and CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA video.

Maybe, for a rainy-day project, I'll see how far I can minimize boot time if I build a Linux install that boots into full-screen DOSBox or 86box and a BIOS POST Plymouth boot splash to hide the rest on cold boot.
#retro #retrocomputing #dos

Tip: I haven't finished minimizing the reproducer yet but, if you're using rusqlite concurrently through something like `Arc<Mutex<Connection>>` and you're getting `Foreign key constraint failed` errors that go away if you force only one thread, check if you're using `INSERT OR ...` on a table referenced by a foreign key. There's some kind of bug and manually reimplementing `OR IGNORE` client-side by `SELECT`ing first worked around it for me. #rust #sqlite

Did I really forget to show the "XP pretending to be 98SE" side of my server's icon set? I can't find one in my timeline... oh well.

I've been on other things this week, but here's the complete overview.

As you can see, 10.4 isn't beyond proof-of-concept for the same "small sizes for older OS, bigger sizes in a different style for newer OS" trick I used for XP vs. Win7 and I'm currently just reusing my Win7 icons for Linux.
#retro #retrocomputing #windows #icons

@pink_arcana ...speaking of which, I should probably make sure my licensing guide covers all the common mistakes I've noticed.

(eg. Creative Commons explicitly says that it's a violation of their trademark policy to add new restrictions like "you can't re-upload this elsewhere as-is" to CC licenses.)

https://creativecommons.org/policies/#trademark

@pink_arcana The more public links, the merrier. My stance on that sort of thing is "If I hadn't wanted it to be shared far and wide, I wouldn't have put it on a public site where anyone can find it."

As for the explanation, I'm glad you liked it. I put it up because, over the last couple of decades, I ran into a worrying number of people whose understanding of licensing didn't even reach my IANAL level.

@pink_arcana I just wish things weren't so messy right now. I haven't had time to look for more stuff to add in months.

I've started to polish up the classic Mac OS versions of my retro fileshare icons. #retro #retrocomputing #windows #icons

...if anyone wants it, the tool is a shareware thing Icon Archiver in "Large Family" view mode.

...though the actual editing work mainly involves ex-shareware-now-freeware named Iconographer and Graphic Converter 5.x pending me discovering how to edit icons in Netatalk-flavoured AppleDouble resource forks directly on Linux so I can use GIMP for layers and select-by-color.

...and the .ico files for my retro fileshare now have higher-resolution versions for Windows 7... with the sizes carefully chosen so that XP will pick the dithered 98SE-originated 48px and below while Windows 7 will switch to the smooth ones at any size above that.

I wound up having to slice, dice, and redraw Windows 7's Libraries icon to get the kind of folder art I wanted to use for a base.

#retro #retrocomputing #windows #icons

Sorry for anyone who saw me pull the previous version. I accidentally uploaded an old screenshot from before I'd done the tricky to fix the scale of the DOS icon.