iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Trixter @oldskool.org · 13/08/2026

Novel audio compression codec development continues. Whenever there's a catastrophic failure, the result always makes me laugh.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 12/08/2026

Happy PC Day! It's the IBM PC's 45th birthday. The Chicago Classic Computer Club (the org that runs #VCFMW) recently accepted this donation of a used IBM PC 5150 system, notable for having its original boxes and packing material (which are much more rare than the items themselves).

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 15/07/2026

I remain amused that Google "Opinion Rewards" is still called that, and still uses terms like "surveys", as it hasn't been about surveys since the pandemic and is only used to train its AI and search offerings. Why do I still participate? To get them to pay for my AI plan. Yes, I am the product.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 09/07/2026

Dude! Are you me?? Try to find me Saturday night at VCFMW, would love to trade notes. Also, if you haven't listened to it already, you might like the Retro Dogfight podcast, they only cover air combat simulations, but they've covered some DOS ones several times.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 02/06/2026

Setting up a Sun Ultra 27 system for the 2026 VCF Midwest auction. This local repo has been building for **HOURS** because it's installing to spinning rust. Sun was my career for decades, but for the life of me I can't remember how we tolerated spinning rust I/O seek times. It's almost unbearable.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 01/06/2026

Hello, old friend. It's been a while.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 28/04/2026

And for good measure, here's another blast from the past. Fun fact, I'm pretty sure you wrote this on a Tandy 1000, because the composite color output is 180 degrees rotated from expected, which was a bug in the Tandy 1000's implementation. (Blue Angels by Artech has the same problem.)

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 28/04/2026

This one was a bit harder to track down 😄

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 28/04/2026

More seriously: Thank you for some fond teenage memories.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 12/04/2026

I just *LOVE* how AI enables theft AT SCALE. LOVE! IT! Surely we are not heading for a dystopian nightmare where no media can be trusted as authentic. Surely not.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 22/03/2026

Some unexpected finds at indyclassic.org today: an analog computer, and some NA demosceners.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 21/02/2026

I had to stop watching at 4m10s when I found myself angrily clocking more than one mistake every second. This frame is as far as I got.

Four minutes, ten seconds into the movie The Net (1995)

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 08/01/2026

1991. Presented without context 😄

20-year-old computer nerd with white cat

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 05/01/2026

You could say I'm a fan of Quarterdeck.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 01/01/2026

Found DOS in Outer Worlds 2! Well, a mish-mosh of DOS, dosbox, mis-typing an SBLASTER variable, ping, CHKDSK, and other stuff. But very cute to see on the display.

De-warped perspective-corrected cropped view of a faux DOS console

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 08/12/2025

This took me all weekend. I'm extremely happy with the result, but I'm likely never doing this again.

An overly-complex premiere pro editing timeline

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 07/12/2025

Putting together a short dos trivia quiz video for a holiday event with friends. 10 questions from easy to tough. Assuming it goes well, I'll post it to my YouTube channel afterwards. As usual, I'm over-engineering the thing. 😕 Have spent 10+ hours in production thus far.

A stack of vintage 1980s IBM PC boxed computer games.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 27/11/2025

The google doodle today for Thanksgiving doesn't lead to a history article, a historical figure, food recipes, or anything heartwarming: It leads directly to AI-generated thanksgiving "suggestions". Google doing this for a holiday meant to celebrate human connections is outrageously tone-deaf.

Google AI suggestions for decorating your Thanksgiving table with information you can't use because it's already Thanksgiving and too late to buy anything

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 23/11/2025

Choosing to spend my evening disassembling a rare PCjr cartridge ROM (JrVideo, supposedly speeds up PCjr video routines) while consuming pizza and caffeine. Reliving my youth, or retrocomputing like a boss? I choose to view it as the latter.

Disassembling a rare PCjr cartridge ROM like an absolute boss

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 22/11/2025

Writing my own disk drive cleaning program today because I don't like how other programs do it. (Mine uses a butterfly pattern, and only runs for 20 seconds, because that should be long enough to unjam any gunk from the heads.)

An IBM 5153 CGA color monitor showing Pascal source code being compiled.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 13/11/2025

I honestly can't tell if people are too unobservant/ignorant/stupid to notice things are wrong, or if they just don't care. Coca-Cola produced an AI-generated ad where the trucks aren't real in any universe. And there's this bit of irony from archive.org where the iPad is held screen outward.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 04/11/2025

One of the advantages of cataloging your software collection is that you can plot distributions like this. Many people are surprised when they see how early my collection skews. Well, I started collecting early, and find+archive stuff that hasn't been archived yet. And that's mostly early titles.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 31/10/2025

I'm not seeing what you're seeing. Are you at the right URL?

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 24/10/2025

New video in the works. 8 hours of editing (and counting) for a subject I've been wanting to make a video on for a few years now. Protip: Learn Premiere shortcuts. It is much faster to cut/insert/overwrite/ripple/etc with the keyboard. You can go minutes at a time without having to touch the mouse.

Picture of Premiere Pro with a gigantic computer nerd onscreen, and what appears to be eleventy-billion edits to a 35-minute video

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 28/09/2025

While I wait for #VCFMW video proxy generation, thought I would touch actual vintage hardware for a change. With the help of @necroware.bsky.social nwX287 RTC module, one of my Dell 316sx's has functional CMOS again. Found 2 more 1mb simms and an old version of memtest86 to verify the configuration.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 25/09/2025

Here's a quick example: The first image is the full UHD frame, the second is a 1280x720 1:1 pixel crop of the light cycles. Their film stock had more resolution than the source frames; scanned at 4K, you can now finally see the fine detail of individual pixels. Had no idea that detail was there!

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 16/09/2025

Space Racer (1988)! One of many PC titles that inspired my hobby path.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 16/09/2025

3 TB of #VCFMW 2025 presentation footage copying over. This may take a while to edit and upload.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 10/09/2025

Performing final equipment check for #VCFMW 2025

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 06/09/2025

Inventorying, formatting, verifying, and organizing all of the media required for this year's #VCFMW

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 05/07/2025

Discord added "server tags", custom 4-character labels + icon, for allowing members of a server to represent that server everywhere on Discord. Almost everyone I have seen on Discord doing this have tags that redirect to *private* servers. Trying to view them shows nothing. "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG"

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 08/06/2025

I can't remember the last time I had absolutely nothing scheduled for a day. Maybe today is the day I finally spend some time working on myself, envisioning how I want the rest of my life to play out.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 02/03/2025

Did not expect to get nerd-sniped this hard catching a glimpse of this Dua Lipa music video ("Dance the night"). Those aren't just random squares in the background: They're standard calibration color charts -- but Barbie-themed in color and lettering. Kudos to the creative team for this inside joke!

Dua Lipa and dancers in front of Barbie-themed camera calibration color charts

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 24/02/2025

Does anyone like my videos, and would like to see more of them after a year-long hiatus? I hope so, because I'm finishing up a documentary I've been working on for the past 6 months about one of the rarest PC sound cards. A passion project; I'll be okay if nobody sees it. But I have to finish it.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 12/02/2025

Was finally able to acquire a sealed copy. Start of a long history of desktop video production (and dabbling in writing codecs) for me that continues to this day. Gratuitous nerd-sniping: MS Video 1, Indeo, Cinepak If I hadn't been successful in Unix, I would have loved being in video production.

A sealed copy of Microsoft Video for Windows

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 22/01/2025

Despite these, I have caught COVID-19 three times.

Four copies of the computer game "vaxine"

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 02/01/2025

Fluxing some rare PC games tonight. The stack with Arcticfox contains what we hope are several variants of the same game for Bruce Lee. World Karate Championship and The Quest Have no known pristine Kryoflux dumps. This is considered "exciting" by PC software archivists.

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 30/12/2024

Not sure if this qualifies, but a promo sheet for TRON 2.0 signed by Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, Steve Lisberger, and Richard Taylor (computer effects supervisor on the first film).

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Trixter @oldskool.org · 22/01/2024

Need more space on my 30MB IBM PS/2 Model 30-286.

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