Jerry Stratton's Blog, page 33

8 (bit) Days of Christmas: Day 10 (Up on the Rooftop)

In the December 1986 Rainbow, J. D. German presented us with this game, involving flying and landing Santa to deliver presents!

8 (bit) Days of Christmas: Day 11 (O Christmas Tree)

Day 11 of the 8 (bit) days of Christmas is the graphic accompaniment to “O Tannenbaum” from Robert T. Rogers “Holly Jolly Holidays”, from December 1984.

8 (bit) Days of Christmas: Day 100 (Hearth)

Lower resolution graphics were more appropriate for animation, because you could page through up to eight screens like a flip book. This is Eugene Vasconi’s Holiday Hearth from December 1986.

8 (bit) Days of Christmas: Day 101 (Rudolph)

An early form of musical ebook, without scenes illustrating the progress of the song—in this case, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Along with the secret world of POKE.

8 (bit) Days of Christmas: Day 110 (Snowman)

Day 110 of the 8 (bit) days of Christmas is Arron Branigan’s snowman, from December 1986. One of the strangest features of home computers of the era, including the TRS-80 Color Computer, was the use of “artifact colors” to produce more colors than were supposedly possible on the machine.

8 (bit) Days of Christmas: Day 111 (Dual Greeting Card)

Day 111 of the 8 (bit) days of Christmas is Joseph Kohn’s dual greeting card, from December 1984. How do you create text on a graphics screen that doesn’t accept the PRINT statement?

8 (bit) Days of Christmas

Eight images created on home computer from the early eighties.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie. Play this song on your Mac’s command line with the piano script.

Importing an index into Nisus

Nisus makes it very easy to import an externally-generated index into a document.

The Silver Blaze Media and the Gaslight Election

This isn’t just the Gaslight election, it’s the Silver Blaze election.