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Screwtapello

@Screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy

12 followers 1 following 161 posts

The Revolution will be a teacup in a storm Or a bottle in a message, or a door to a key! The Revolution will always come with fries Because the Revolution will be […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ teh.entar.net/@Screwtapello, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

I was feeling tired today, so the only change I made to the Decker deck I'm working on was to add an "unlock" button to the credits page. The Decker runtime is also the authoring environment, so I can present the information I want without distraction, and then with a single click, add back all […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026

Some initial thoughts on reading this: - the NeXT UI was really nice. I wonder what something like Hypercard would be like with a high-resolution two-bit greyscale display. Too much? - The Lotus Improv approach to entering data and deriving new data reminds me of the classic computer science […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

@drj suggested that I add a DTMF example to my pitch-detection tutorial. I looked up DTMF on freesound and got a lot of hits, but most of them were crisp and clear pure-digital synthesis, or had a lot of fancy post-processing to make them into interesting instruments for music production […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

I've seen toots recently from people who want to Make Cool Stuff, but they feel discouraged because all around them they see a lot of people who just want to Consume Cool Stuff; they don't see a lot of people who seem to value the effort and intentionality of the process of making it. I, too […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

Back in the day, Netscape Navigator had a "Reload" command in the View menu, advertising the shortcut Ctrl+R (or ⌘R on Macs). When Internet Explorer came out, they followed IBM's Common User Access interface standards, so their View menu had a "Refresh" command with the shortcut F5, although […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

[genai discourse] "If I had a nickle for every time Western nations invested ridiculous amounts of money into a destructive idea, just to destabilise the Chinese economy, I'd have two nickles... which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice."

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

[genai discourse] Sometimes I hear people say something like "generative AI is invented now, we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, we have to live with it." And that reminds me of the history of opium. In the 1700s, the British started massively investing in opium production. In the […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

And here's the resynthesised version my code produced.

[Audio] Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Apparently you can't add more than one sound to a toot, so here's the original System 7 "Sosumi" sound.

[Audio] Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

The Discrete Fourier Transform actually extracts phase information as well as pitch information, which I was just tossing away since it's not needed for pitch detection. But if I *don't* toss it away, and I apply the correct phase offset for each frequency I […] [Original post on teh.entar.net]

A screenshot of Decker running some pitch detection software. This time, the resynthesised waveform looks a *lot* like the original... but going from quiet to loud where the original went loud to quiet. It's also quieter overall.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Then it occurred to me to wonder, now that I can take a sound and pull it apart into its component frequencies, what happens if I generate sounds for all the frequencies and add them back together? It turns out, it makes a waveform that does look at least a […] [Original post on teh.entar.net]

A screenshot of Decker, running some software to do pitch detection. At the top left, a list of sounds, with "Sosumi" selected. To the right of that, the waveform of the selected sound. Below that is a frequency spectrogram and a list of the detected frequencies; the loudest is 880 Hz. Below that is another waveform of all the detected frequencies added back together - it visually resembles the original in frequency and texture, but the envelope is very different.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I have been continuing to learn about pitch detection. I got to the point where I could generate a signal with a couple of frequencies, calculate its spectrum, and get a graph with spikes in the right places. So then I decided to throw some short alert sounds at it, to see what would happen […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

RE: mas.to/@antongorlin/117364900204982… I love those colours.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Today I learned about "magic eye tubes", a visual indicator of voltage levels based on cathode-ray-tube technology. They were used in the early 20th century until needle-and-dial voltage meters became cheap enough to take over. They sure look cool, though […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

America has fifty states, the American flag has fifty stars, that makes sense. Australia has six states, the Australian flag has six stars, that also makes sense. Except that five of those stars represent the Southern Cross constellation, not states. On the one remaining star, the *points* […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

RE: teh.entar.net/@ckape/11730689096321… This what happens when a goal ("this thing has high-quality documentation") gets a proxy metric ("this thing has a lot of documentation with complex sentences") that becomes a target ("let's automatically generate complex sentences"). People […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

RE: mastodon.social/@unsung/11729309558… Being the kind of weird kid who spent lots of time browsing the Character Map application, marvelling at all the weird symbols it provided, I was particularly puzzled by some of the keyboard symbols in the Miscellaneous Technical block […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

RE: mstdn.jp/@noco3n_com/11729126794062… I love the contrast of the red petals with the green/blue water(?) behind them.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

[genai discourse] I think there's (at least) two different groups of people interested in #retrocomputing. There's a bunch of people who see generative AI as just the latest in a long, long line of things that have each been "the latest, greatest technology" at different points in history. For […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

RE: mastodon.social/@shiz/1171282409639… This is how the FSF delivers the magnetic tapes filled with Emacs source code that people keep requesting.

mastodon.social

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

Good news! Somebody has bought an original copy of The Ultimate Soundtracker version 2.0 and imaged the sample disk. They even recorded a video showing the experience of using the software, for people without an Amiga. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DadGFX3Tb0k (the video description links to […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

This is a really nice tweak of the standard CGA 16-colour palette, I'm going to use it as my terminal palette for a while and see how I like it. forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=… Hat tip to @jplebreton

forums.scummvm.org

EGA games with a more palatable palette - ScummVM :: Forums

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

TOSEC's "Amiga Applications" collection has ADFs that claim to be The Ultimate Soundtracker disks 1 and 2, but (at least the version I can find) the program disk contains "Soundtracker IV by DOC", a demoscene hacked version, so I don't think the sample disk is trustworthy either.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

For example, Aminet's archive of the ST-01 sample disk includes one sample (Strings6) that's in a different format, and apparently written by ProTracker, which came out several years after The Ultimate Soundtracker, so this can't be the original sample disk. aminet.net/mods/inst?page=2

Aminet - Search

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

The Amiga "module" music format was hugely popular in the 1990s, with tens of thousands of songs written in "tracker" tools, often used in games and demoscene productions. Mostly on the Amiga, of course, but PC games like Jazz Jackrabbit and the original Deus Ex used music based on the same […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 30/07/2026

As part of this year's Decker Fantasy Camp jam, I cut the Amen Break up into individual drum-beats, and made a tool to let me put them back together in different ways. It turns out that making drum-beats is really fun - let it play, and add drum-hits, remove them, shift them around, and feel how […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2026

Apparently somebody's designed a brand new 6502-based game console, using only still-in-production chips and no FPGAs. gametank.zone #retrocomputing #wdc6502

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 27/06/2026

RE: mastodon.social/@kleptones/11682108… "Do not tumble dry. Do not tumble dry! Please! PLEASE! WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME?"

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 27/06/2026

I have reorganised my Decker font importing tool to be a bit more approachable - rather than starting with a list of obscure font formats, it starts with some links to collections of high-quality fonts, with instructions (and screenshots!) describing how to […] [Original post on teh.entar.net]

A screenshot of a Decker card titled "Damien Guard's ZX Origins collection". It has a lot of text and hand-drawn pixel-art screenshots describing how to navigate the site, download a font, and find the specific importable files within.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 13/06/2026

RE: mefi.social/@rodneylives/1167398838… Magazines were a huge part of the culture of the microcomputing era, and being able to (legally!) preserve these things gives a lot of context to the disk images you might find floating around. #appleii #apple2

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

Good news, nerds! The HP 16C Collector's Edition (a modern-manufactured version of the classic RPN calculator for programmers is now up for pre-order: hpcalcs.com/product/hp-16c-collecto…

HP 16c Collector's Edition - HP Calc

The HP 16c is back as a Collector’s Edition: the iconic programmer’s calculator with a classic design and modern programming functions.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2026

Turns out that there's a reason that Oberon's typeface is sometimes called "Syntax" rather than "Oberon". It's an actual, pre-existing typeface: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax_(typef… It was designed by Hans Eduard Meier in the 1960s, and Niklaus Wirth liked it so much that he hired […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/05/2026

I should make a shirt that says "Hamburgefonstiv" with some deliberately unfinished kerning. #typography

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026

I have begun writing a Decker deck that can import fonts from Rob Hagemans' Hoard of Bitfonts. It's been kind of painful because Decker's scripting language is a bit awkward at text manipulation, and the YAFF file format is geared for human consumption rather […] [Original post on teh.entar.net]

A textual representation of a table with five columns: "encoding", "strike", "left-bearing", "right-bearing", "codepoints". The "strike" column contains periods and at-signs, the others contain numbers.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 22/04/2026

Matt Colville has recently been thinking about the division between people who think of tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons as a hobby (like model railroads, or stamp collecting) and people who think of them as a folk tradition (like hopscotch, or singing). For Matt Colville […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 18/04/2026

@mwichary talks about the classic "don't write 'click here'" rule of hyperlinking. It's good stuff, as usual: unsung.aresluna.org/use-links-dont-… On the subject of "jack here, lift here, pull here": the reason "click here" is redundant on a website is because there's no […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 20/03/2026

RE: gamedev.lgbt/@milliesquilly/1162590… Well, I know what *I'm* doing now.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/03/2026

I know Apple pushed the original Macintosh as "easy to use" but specifically calling out the familiarity of the *keyboard connector* seems a bit much. (from BYTE Magazine, June 1984: archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1… )

A close-up of a diagram of the original 1984 Macintosh. A callout line connects a socket with the label "Keyboard connector — a telephone-type jack you already know how to use."

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2026

In the late 1990s, Pangea Software was a leading developer of Mac-exclusive games. Apple commissioned them to write demonstration code for the first release of the Quickdraw 3D graphics API, and their subsequent games Nanosaur, Bugdom, and Cro-Mag Rally were […] [Original post on teh.entar.net]

A screenshot of the game Nanoraptor, showing a dinosaur wearing a jetpack and running around a chunky late-90s 3D environment.

A screenshot from the game Bugdom, showing a blue-green cartoonish bug (six arms, two legs with cute sneakers) wandering on sandy ground, with a forest of giant grass blades in the background.

A screenshot of the game Cro-Mag Rally, showing a cave-man in a racing car made from a log and primitive stone wheels.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 23/02/2026

"At the time we wrote Appler we of course knew that the colors are supposed to be purple, blue, green, and orange, but we had never seen them displayed by an actual physical computer, because the Apple ][ displays that were available in Bulgaria were all monochrome-green. Alex looked at the […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 22/02/2026

``` The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required: libplacebo351 Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it. ``` Was it *ever* required, though? Really?

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 15/02/2026

RE: mastodon.social/@stonetoolsblog/116… Back in the 1980s, technology was advancing so quickly that every other year seemed to produce new hardware that needed new operating systems and new applications, promising new never-before-seen capabilities. But today the pace has […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 05/02/2026

If you have some SD cards lying around and want a slightly-more retro-tech aesthetic... charlyn.codes/floppy-stickers

Stickers to turn SD cards into floppy disks!

I designed and printed some stickers to dress up my SD cards as floppy disks! You can too!

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/02/2026

You might remember a few months ago, Linus Akesson released a C64 demo called "Nine" that featured a magician character that summoned nine on-screen sprites from his hat (the C64 only supports 8 sprites per scanline in hardware). Today the demo groups Fairlight and Genesis Project released […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/01/2026

I've been enjoying some Fancy Tea I got for Christmas. I don't know much about Fancy Tea, but my impression was that black tea is generally served with milk, and green tea or things with lemon do not go so well. So it's weird to me that the Fancy Tea with oolong (approximately black tea) […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 18/01/2026

Massive shout-out to this guy on Reddit, who figured out why Firefox couldn't prevent the screen from turning off when running under the Sway Wayland compositor, and also how to get it working. Lots of people just put up with it, or grumbled about GNOME or Firefox being buggy, but this guy […]

Original post on teh.entar.net

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 06/01/2026

A "photo" of the product packaging of Microsoft CoPilot Standard, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It looks like it was made in 1993 and sat in a dusty attic for thirty years.

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/01/2026

Happy reading in 2026! 7/7

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/01/2026

As for custom fonts, my current favourite for long-form text is Vollkorn. Six weights, each with italic; Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters; ligatures; small caps, all the accents you could want, it looks lovely, and it's pay-what-you-want. vollkorn-typeface.com 6/7

vollkorn-typeface.com

Vollkorn Typeface

The free and healthy typeface for bread and butter use

Screwtapello @screwtapello.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/01/2026

Having ebooks doesn't help if you don't have an app for reading them. Many EPUB reading apps are available for various platforms, but personally I do my reading on my Android phone, and currently my app of choice is LxReader. It's open-source (available from F-Droid and Google Play), it has a […]

Original post on teh.entar.net