On Hoffman’s recent hacking stream he was running Rink a dink REDUX and it ran into a crash, presumably because of a bad disk. Curious, I’ve triggered a crash myself by disabling fast-ram halfway through the demo:

I really dig the level of detail that went into this. Even the dead-end crash screen that nobody would ever see under normal conditions has a stylish design! There are nice background colors for different error conditions, the sound is properly muted and all sprites are reset:

; Disassembled from $c00ca4

; Color 0 move in crash copperlist:
; 000033f8: 0180 0xxx
CRASH_COLOR0    = $33fa

deadend_red:
        move.w  #$0804,CRASH_COLOR0
        bra.b   deadend_screen

deadend_green:
        move.w  #$0084,CRASH_COLOR0
        bra.b   deadend_screen

deadend_blue_or_override:
        move.w  #$0048,CRASH_COLOR0
        move.w  override_color(pc),d0
        beq.b   deadend_screen
        move.w  d0,CRASH_COLOR0

deadend_screen:
        moveq   #0,d0
        move.w  #$7fff,d1
        lea     $dff000,a6
        move.w  d1,dmacon(a6)
        move.w  d1,intena(a6)
        move.w  d1,intreq(a6)
        move.w  d1,adkcon(a6)

        moveq   #4-1,d2
        lea     aud0vol(a6),a0
.mute   move.w  d0,(a0)
        lea     $10(a0),a0
        dbf     d2,.mute

        moveq   #8-1,d2
        lea     spr0data(a6),a0
.sprdat move.l  d0,(a0)
        addq    #8,a0
        dbf     d2,.sprdat

        move.l  #deadend_copper,cop1lc(a6)
        move.w  d0,copjmp1(a6)
        move.w  #$83c0,dmacon(a6)

.loop   bra.b   .loop

override_color:
        dc.w    0

Of course this attitude extends to the whole production, the details, the style, the pixel-perfect transitions… I extend a very belated hats-off to Paradroid! :)

PS: “But the colors are just red, green and blue?” No! Other coders would have used, well, coder colors, but these have style! Compare: RGB vs the colors used here: RGB

Finnish TV station Yle shows a Teletext exhibition celebrating the 50th Teletext anniversary. Check it out on your TV (if in Finland) or on their Teksi-TV website starting at page 840. It’s a vast showcase of amazing, clever, glitchy, cute and experimental Teletext art, so take your time to explore it all!

I’m very glad I could take part in this exhibition with my Golf and Musique Non Stop pieces! (Page 846)

In other news, I’m also extremely glad I’ve won the 3D competition at the Deadline demoparty last weekend. I’m still busy with preparing a little write-up, but in the mean time you may check out the live recording on YouTube.

Or, even better, check out AmigaBill checking out our demo, and see the magic of angaglyph 3D in action! :)

A piece I made for the 50 years of Teletext art exhibition to be aired on Finnish station Yle TV.

1974 marks the birth of a very British invention (Teletext) and a very German invention, too… :)

Source code as editor link.

Schon vor ein paar Wochen sind neue Rechtschreibregeln rausgekommen, und ich hab’s gar nicht mitbekommen! Das hätte ich mir als rechtschreibfixierter Jungspund nicht träumen lassen.

Nach der Grundschule erfüllte mich noch kindischer Stolz, in allen Diktaten insgesamt nur soundsoviel Fehler gemacht zu haben, und 1996 habe ich den neuen Duden verschlungen, sobald ich ihn in die Finger bekam. Neue Regeln, geil! Für mich war das der heiße Scheiß. Die Doppel-S-Regelung, mutig! „Kennen lernen“, Wahnsinn!

Heute? Die Zeiten sind vorbei, ohne nachzudenken die korrekte Schreibweise zu wissen und recht zu haben. Alles mögliche, pardon!, alles Mögliche muss ich nachschlagen – inklusive „recht haben“ eben gerade. Aha: In grauer Vorzeit gab es nur „recht haben“, dann war ausschließlich „Recht haben“ korrekt, irgendwann war „recht haben“ wieder im Game und jetzt ist das die empfohlene Schreibweise. Bei den alten Regeln musste man auch ein paar Merkwürdigkeiten auswendig können, aber wenigstens waren die überschaubar und eindeutig.

Oder „auswändig“ können? Nein, Quatsch, das galt ja nur von 1996 bis zweitausend-leckmichamarsch…

Jetzt ist also „gefaked“ offiziell erlaubt, wenn auch mit der schönen Einschränkung, dass es in flektierten Formen natürlich „gefakt“ heißen muss – gefakte Schlagzeilen, gefakter als du usw.

Daran werden sich bestimmt alle halten. Für 2030 sage ich voraus:

	Präsens	Präteritum	Konjunktiv I	Konju…
1. Pers. Sg.	ich fake	ich fakede	Okay,
2. Pers. Sg.	du fakesed	du fakedesed	langt
3. Pers. Sg.	sie faked	sie fakede
1. Pers. Pl.	ich fake	wir fakeden
2. Pers. Pl.	ihr faked	ihr fakeded
3. Pers. Pl.	sie faken	sie fakeden

Vielleicht kristallisiert sich mit der Zeit ja noch eine elegantere Lösung heraus? Ich wäre für die Isolierung des Fremdwortteils durch Kopplungen: ich fake-e, du fake-st, ge-fake-t!

The other day, the question came up: What does the Revision logo mean?

I am curious about that, too – I had already been pondering about the deeper meaning in 2013 (see the source code of doppelhirn):

// I always assumed the revision logo contains an encoded string in
// the 5 bits used. Either I am missing something, or that string is
// "FDLNDFEAEMLFDF DLFBRSP".

var logo =
  "   0                 000000         "+
  "000000000000000000000000000000000000"+
  "   000000      00  0       0  0   00"+
  "                                    "+
  "000000000000000000000000000000000000"+
  "       000000  000000000  0000000000"+
  "         0          00        000   "+
  "  0000                              "+
  "000000000000000000000000000000000000";

IIRC, when I asked around back then, the answer was “it’s nothing specific, it should just look cool”.

Anticipating, nay!, fearing a definite answer in the Revision orga chat where the question came up again, I wanted to have another shot at it before the mystery was revealed.

Break the cycle, erm, circle

The logo consists of concentric circles and looks like it may contain a bunch of rotary encoded bits:

I was already halfway into writing a tool to extract the possible bit combinations when it dawned on me: Un-circle an image to a rectangular representation? That’s a polar coordinate conversion, and there’s a Photoshop filter for that!

What the bits

First observation: This doesn’t seem to be very regular, neither horizontally nor vertically:

Second observation: My code representation was all wrong! Well, at least not completely accurate, but I think nobody noticed…

Thirdly, I’m really starting to think there’s no hidden message encoded in the logo… But let’s look at the bits.

Errm… Which bits, exactly? Shall we omit the columns full of ones resp. zeroes? Do we ignore the slight overlap in the center?

What are we even looking for? An ASCII string? Relative to which character, shall we interpret 00001 as A?

You decide! I think I’ve spent way too much time on this, and all I got was “EGOWUQUMEGOGEMABZJIMOGEAEM”. :)

Bit fiddler

Search for a deeper meaning yourself if you have JavaScript enabled…

Bits to use	A B C D E F G H I J K
Invert	Switch 0 and 1
Reverse	Reverse bit order
Flip	Change scan order (clockwise, counter clockwise)
Offset	Base character (hexadecimal, 41 = A etc.)
String	...

Manual recalc (should be automatic, though)

Source bits	Effective bits	Hex	Decimal	As character
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001001110	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11101001110	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101001110	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A