The “tips & tricks” corner of this old German Amiga magazine is giving off some weird Scientology vibes.

Click to read on archive.org

In the intro text for that month’s collection of code snippets, it reads:

Experts estimate that programmers are merely using 30% of the Amiga. Learn how to utilize the remaining 70% here.

Hmm… where have I read a claim like this before – also in the late 1980s? :)

But, hey! Unlike those poor non-Scientologists who were using only ten percent of their brain, ordinary Amiga coders were already vibin’ at thirty percent in 1989!

I wonder how those numbers have developed since then. Have Amiga programmers become more enlightened and Guru-like, or are we in decline since we offload a lot of grunt work to nifty pre-calculation tools and convenient cross-development setups?

Join the church of Amigology and find out! And don’t forget to order a copy of our worshipped bible, “DMA-netics”, for only 200.00 €!

Another twostopbits.com find: A collection of old 88×31 pixel website buttons. Aww, the nostalgia! I didn’t even know 88×31 was the standard size for ’em, and that there was a standard size…

• Now!
  “Netscape Now!” buttons and their descendants
• 88x31 Collection
  Another nugget found in the comments

The colors, the dithering, the pixel mud – gorgeous! Here are the buttons I would use, today:

Wait, what’s that last one? Oh, just a subtle reminder that a new Coppenheimer release is out, now with pretty diagrams.

In case you’ve missed it, djh0ffman recently did a Twitch stream where he gave Coppenheimer a go. Check out the Twitch recording (starting at around 41:30)!

My IDE seems to think this, it just hates tabs – that is: the tabulator character to indent your code and your text files. Whenever it is restarted, my tabulator settings are reverted from proper tabs to 4 spaces:

Now, as a seasoned pragmatic programmer, I know to refrain from any tedious tabs-vs-spaces debate*. How about you refrain from messing up my formatting settings, IntelliJ? These issues have been around for ages – and yes, I do update my IDE from time to time, and no, I will not resort to editing some hidden configuration options by hand.

*) Because there is no debate. :) Observe the process of adding and removing a tab the correct way, and when poorly emulating tabs with spaces:

When editing code files outside of the IDE (in vim, nano, or in CygnusEd on the Amiga), this becomes even worse. To keep a consistent code format, you now have to type in 4 to 8 spaces like a monkey if you merely want to add a tab.

While consulting various Teletext services to track the latest projections of the European elections, I was reminded how many German TV stations employ advanced Telext features to render graphical station logos. (Teletext Level 2.5, from 1995!)

Well, four, at least… :)

Interesting graphics glitch of ZDF’s logo loading

Here there are, in their full glory, along with their Teletext level 1 fallback renditions.

3sat

3sat 2.5

BR

BR 2.5

phoenix

phoenix 2.5

ZDF

ZDF 2.5

Ah, the joys of confusing IT concepts and ambiguous names.

When I first read the word “sixels” in the context of Teletext graphics three years ago, that name immediately clicked with me, and I thought it fitting as a catchy combination of “pixel” and “six-element mosaic character”. I mean, it’s obviously exactly what you should call these little guys:

Today I learned that “sixel graphics” is also used in a very different context, describing a special graphics mode of oldschool terminals and dot matrix printers. Here, sixels aren’t the elements of a tiny 2×3 grid, but a vertical row of six dots! Since it can be used to display graphical data in your terminal, it’s widely used even today. You only need a bunch of arcane ESC-sequence incantations:

‹ESC›Pq#0?Ehle_ehlE??BF{{FB?^~__~^?]~```?~~CMzp?nn‹ESC›\

Easy, right? Dump that garbage right into your terminal:

Try it: echo -e -n "\x1bPq#0?Ehle_ehlE??BF{{FB?^~__~^?]~\`\`\`?~~CMzp?nn\x1b\"

Luckily, there’s no room for debate on which concept denotes the true sixels!

• Teletext went live in 1974
• That “SIXEL graphics” hack came years after that – around 1983 apparently, with the introduction of the DEC LA-50 printer

So, go have fun with your shenanigangs in those newfangled terminal emulators, but keep your ugly ESC sequences off my TV screen! And maybe invent a better name, while you’re at it. How about “POOP” – pixel obfuscation for obsolete printers? :)