A nice slogan for a t-shirt! Bit long, maybe…
Not so long is the list of new pointers I’ve added to the Amiga Pointer Archive. It’s just these four guys:
One of them is a blog reader submission, taken from a 1992 utility disk (thanks, LocalH!), and another one was a sketch by myself to test the social media sharing feature of the minisite. The other two appeared after the big update – I did a fresh scan of pouët links and went foraging at some FTP sites. And fixed some bugs while I was at it!
In the end, about a thousand new disk images showed up, but after filtering, nearly all the pointers on them were already in the database. That’s disappointing (in numbers), but also cool: I wasn’t missing a ton of pointers as I feared. I did try my best, though:
- RAR files weren’t processed at all (many pouët prod links have them)
- Neither were LHA archives
- Buried in the code was a
val limit = 100000from debugging, and the number of ADF files was of course just above that - Upper-case file extensions like were ignored
Most of all I’m glad I resisted the temptation of passing arbitrary condiments, i. e. clean up the code and do a “proper” rewrite, with a nice interface and configurable pipelines. It was tempting because the pointer-file collecting process had become a convoluted mix of self-written programs, external tools, and manual steps.
Painful, but with a rewrite and a cool new über-tool I would still be in the stage of building an ivory tower of code without anything to show for it.
One thing I might add in the future is a method to submit hand-drawn pointers directly to the archive – people are drawing not nearly enough Amiga mouse cursors nowadays! :)
Go visit the archive, see if you can spot the four new additions, and have fun exploring! Maybe even start pixelling a new pointer and save a handy URL for later, using the “export” button…
Months ago, I spotted a cool camera at the local Ramsch-, erm, “antique store”. Last week, I finally gave in and bought it – a nice little Game Boy Camera!
I’m still impressed with the picture quality coming out of the 128×128 pixel sensor.
Naturally, two new questions emerged:
- What is the best way to transfer the photos off the device in 2026, and why is it so complicated?
- What is the legislation on posting old photos you find on a camera you bought if the resolution is only 0.014 megapixels?
The last question might be a non-issue. Everything around the Game Boy Camera is about fun and playfulness. It’s packed with mini-games and whimsical features – which the previous owners wisely used to protect their anonymity… :)
