iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 13h

Here's a FidoNet nodelist (think: /etc/hosts) from 1986: nodelist.fidonet.cc/download/nodeli… Here's one from 2026! nodelist.fidonet.cc/download/nodeli… You can load them as-is in LibreOffice Calc. The semantics are slightly […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 14h

I'm putting together the outline for a talk at Vintage Computer Federation Montreal's Nov 7/8 event, which obligates me to have some actual facks, so necessitates looking at old files. OMFG what a lot of work that was. Here's just one example, warring over the nodelist. Someone takes it on […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

I absolutely need to get rid of these two machines. They're too bulky and delicate to ship. Pickup in Los Angeles (Intersection of I5 and Glendale Freeway-ish). The HP 521C is in perfect working order. Look 'em up. FREE TO A GOOD HOME. The Cubic Corp DVM […] [Original post on tldr.nettime.org]

HP 521C Electronic Counter, with thermometer displays.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

I'm tired of seeing blue LEDs on everything.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Let's have the internet be up only during business hours, with greatly reduced bandwidth during off hours.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

On my way out to do errands (on bike, wish me luck) i peed on the edge of the garden. When he thought i wasnt looking Devo peed on the same spot. We are family.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Glad to not have anal glands that need "expressing".

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Any rsync experts here? I have a tricky problem. I thought I was fairly adept with rsync but this one has me stumped. My backup scheme is a 1:1 snapshot of my home dir, updated hourly, to 4TD spinning rust. The thing is about 500 GB. Just a simple copy, -ua --delete. Hourly a bash script […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Interesting guy, Christopher Strachey. Wrote probably first video game (1952), first computer music (i doubt this, certainly one of), CPL language (influenced C) predecessor to M4, and lot of fundamental stuff. Gay too. Much interaction with Turing. Also right place right time. Imagine working […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Seriously where else would they be? Im not stupid. And I'm not certain that bird is gonna help me.

Pigeon perched above a sign reading CAUTION WATCH FOR TRAINS ON TRACKS

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Gordon Pask, "An approach to Cybernetics", 1960: Automatic controllers receive perfect information about the system they control and have fixed decision rules, that determine 3 their actions. They are the stuff that automation used to be, and Sometimes […] [Original post on tldr.nettime.org]

Snapshot of a book page. Complete text in post body

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

"And yes, I am fully aware of the absurdity of combining GOTO 100 with AVX2, multithreading, TCP/IP and quaternion arithmetic. That is increasingly the point. I'm interested in the question: What would BASIC look like if it had never gone out of fashion? Thoreau BASIC 3.2 is my current answer." […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Ok my first thought was, yeah this is stupid but amusing; turns out, the author thought the same thing (see comments). But looking it made me think there is something interesting here, a unified full featured environment with real abilities. Im not convinced that BASIC is the way, lol, but as […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

I will be speaking at the VCF Montreal event in a bit over a month from now, 7 and 8 November. I was thinking of talking about amateur computing but I'm getting hints I'd be better off talking about FidoNet, time is always shorter than it is appears so that will likely be the subject […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

One of the most surprising things sbout reading Borsook's CYBERSELFISH today is how little tech has changed since 1999. The overall structure of corporations, the poor treatment of workers, the networks (snd i include the internet as well as social and economic) is today as-built in the late […]

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Scott Francis @darkuncle.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

#TIL that California passed a law allowing residents to submit a single request that requires *all* registered data brokers to delete personal info and stop selling it. will it work? for the ones who make a lot of money publicly, yes; for the criminals, probably not. But I’ll take it […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

Friend of mine did a job setting up a show for AI corps at Moscone Center. This was bathroom graffiti.

Graffiti: "sam altman killed suchir balaji"

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

I can't believe i overlooked this -- A/C condensation output as a source of mosquito breeding water. For our main house the roof top unit has a pipe that leads to a gutter, which was level enough to allow water to pool to 1/8". For that i added a mosquito […] [Original post on tldr.nettime.org]

Heat pump condensation drain feeding a small box eith a mosquito dunk.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

Wow. This guy (13th C; last name LLULL) had a large impact on early computing, and though I haven't read the book about him yet, there is a visually obvious reason to at least look at his work, though it was written as a way to convince people to become catholic (and so I am severely biased in a […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

We have a 12 yr old boy on the compound, M. A few months ago he came out of the closet as straight (lol, he really did that; he thought we'd be disappointed; we secretly are : - ) (Kidding mostly.) He has this friend who he's known since first grade, P, also 12. M is tall blond looks like a 15 […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

THIS to me is the definitive San Francisco punk oral-history style book -- I've been trying to recall what book epitomizes the politics inherent in SF anarcho punk and this is it. I know I own a copy but it's lost or "borrowed" I'm buying another (then I'll find it, and have two, pointlessly) […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

Gordon Pask observes that a statue is a special case of a dynamic system where the statue changes at each instant into itself.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

We ordered food tonight, zuzu got a plate to lick and the boys share the bowl. They're very good at sharing, unusual for dogs but these two share everything.

Disco and Devo both licking the same take-out bowl.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

I have this book ("WAR IN HEAVEN", Kyle Griffith. I've read it, closely. It's great! Completely seamless! www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_ali… Of course it's lunacy, religion, but damn, it's pretty "convincing". It's thorough and complete, a nicely closed […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

"There is no synonym of which I am aware for the word logarithm, and any attempt to replace it by a definition will put me even more deeply in the position of a pedant." Yes, that is certainly true, Norbert.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Friend of mind has a Silicon Graphics Iris Indigo. Not sure if it boots, but it's intact. Are these interesting today? They were neat-o when new.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

Huh, I didn't know smolweb had a specification, and a validator! smolweb.org/validator Tested my www.bleeve.me. Mixed results; I had been assuming I was already lightweight. I wasn't too bad, four Class F, six D... ... but the validator is looking everything in the .css file, little […]

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emily, professional edge case @emily.fedi.uni.horse.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Probability of wanting to switch jobs soon has gone from "maybe" to "extremely likely" recently, so now public and boostable: I'm looking for work. Software engineer, 14 years experience working on various SaaS things in various languages and frameworks, lots of linux […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

The boys are still utterly dedicated to each other 4 years later. While i was about to post this still devo started kissing/grooming disco.

Devo sleeping on disco. Two hairless dogs on the sofa amidst pillows

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 23/03/2026

As everyone ought to know by now, this is what is actually inside your computer.

a line drawing of an old CRT serial terminal showing a pair of paper rolls to illustrate how scrolling works

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

Yesterday i learned that leor zolman added all those code overlay functions thr thr BDS C compiler for CP/M to support Ted Nelsons Xanadu project! At their request.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

LOL! "Perfect Writer on the other hand, because it is written in 'C', will not become obsolete, but will easily accompany advances in computer hardware through the year 2000, at least." from the manual

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

See, these are the sorts of things that are interesting about old software [PARADIGMS]. Not nostalgia. Or, really, the code or programs itself. This is howculture was built. www.scrounge.org/unicorn.htm

scrounge.org

The Unicorn Fable

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

Wow. Is/was this common knowledge? Is it correct? "Well, there was the original Emacs - Editing MACroS? - a set of TECO macros running on the version of TECO implemented under ITS on the DEC machine at the MIT AI labs. " (I think that machine was a DEC-10 or DEC-20, but could be wrong.) […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

Oh my. CP/M PerfectWriter aka baby emacs has nice undo. And a configurable sized swap file. 45 years on it has some annoying quirks but I bet I can find workarounds (EVERYTHING IS SO TEENY) and fixes. Oh and it's a CPU hog; yeah this is the classic console/BIOS problem of many CP/M programs […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

I've got the fZ80 machine pretty damn solid and rounded out, and have the slack to look for more useful tools. PerfectWriter seems so far a possibility. It has some issues with console I/O and the CP/M BIOS, but it's running on MP/M OK and can probably be patched. All these funny paradigms for […]

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

At the end of the line you just typed, right after the period, is a solid or blinking box or underline. This is called the cursor.

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tom jennings @tomjennings.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

LOL, how quaint! "...for the person who has never used a word processor before." LEARNING PERFECT WRITER This TEACHING DISK contains two lesson sets on the use of the Perfect Writer word processor and one lesson on the use of CP/M. 1. AN INTRODUCTION TO WORD PROCESSING This is a set of […]

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