Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

One motivation in the mix that got me installing Linux on another of my old computers was to take one more crack at getting a particular emulator running. To begin with, I had compiled “Virtual T” on macOS. As I poked away at it, though, I found its emulation of the floppy disk drive that could be interfaced with the TRS-80 Model 100 didn’t quite work. This wasn’t the only way to get programs and files into and out of the emulated portable. However, after I’d found the disk drive did work with the Windows version of the emulator (running via Wine, but an earlier version lacking a few features), curiosity had me trying to see just what the situation was with Linux.
( Curious byways )

Before I made the trek back to the Anime North convention this year I repeated a step I’d tried years before and dropped in on the Uniqlo store in my city’s shopping mall. This time, though, I couldn’t find the “45th anniversary Gundam T-shirts” I’d somehow picked up on Uniqlo selling this year, and in the end I donned the very shirt I’d worn the first time I visited the convention.
( Looking ahead )

Whether or not “three volumes of manga the anime was adapted from; four volumes of manga continuing the story beyond where the anime left off” altogether reduced thoughts of those old warnings about Dark Horse’s spotty track record in translating and releasing manga to an amused memory, it was pleasant to get around to the seventh volume of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! The story even happened to include something that made me hope I could say something here a little more profound than “this happened, and then this happened.”
( Before that point, though... )

After “Episode I” had followed “Episode VI” as an “anniversary theatrical re-release” (and scotched a certain residual suspicion the people at Disney would go only so far in acknowledging the Star Wars movies they’d bought as opposed to making themselves), I’d taken note of certain speculations as to what anniversary might be marked next. I’ll admit to once again pondering how two “divisible by five” marks would show up in the same year, even if I’d seen a comment or two about a “fortieth anniversary” re-release of The Empire Strikes Back back when it might only have been able to have been shown at the residue of drive-in theatres that had endured to that point. To be brief, I also have to admit that as we got closer to the next anniversary there were certain troubling thoughts of “the fall of the Republic” being too ominous an event to put on movie screens. However, a “twentieth anniversary” re-release wound up being announced for Revenge of the Sith, and I bought a ticket only to then recall certain dire predictions (not about the movie) from twenty years ago too.
( Revenge of the “sixth” )

In keeping up with the “Cartoon Brew” web site, I noticed reports of two “Looney Tunes movies” that had been made only to become entangled in the run-down state of their studio. Coyote vs. Acme became a cause celebre, or at least one recent example of “people want what they cannot have.” Amid rumours of other companies trying to acquire the rights to it, though, the other movie did get to the point of being picked up. With the impression it was connected to “new Looney Tunes” shorts I’d heard about but never quite got around to tracking down, I did start thinking it might be interesting to see The Day the Earth Blew Up.
( More than a few surprises )

As the new year started I was intent on getting back to the anime Blu-Rays I’d only just begun in the first days of October before breaking my hip. With family staying at my place afterwards to provide considerable and welcome assistance, watching anime on any screen larger and less private than an iPad had got to feeling awkward right away. Once I’d started making trips to and from their home so that they could keep meeting appointments of their own, that didn’t help either. Returning to those shows, my thoughts also turned to some Blu-Rays that had just come in, if in some certain way just to “get them out of the way now rather than leave them lurking in the pile.” Around that point, with schemes in mind to watch two episodes a week of some longer series, what wound up giving was any intention of seeing new titles streaming. The problem there was that I started thinking how sometimes not very many sour dismissals tossed into reaction threads to end-of-the-season reviews will nudge me away from trying to form my own opinions or just dampen my own best efforts at that. There does seem a threat of “always expecting the worst when it comes to recent anime.” It wasn’t until months later that I happened to wonder whether there’s that much difference between “a three-month-old series you gather you’ve been granted an all-clear for,” “a three-year-old series that’s still being mentioned but you haven’t quite found time for yet,” and “a three-decade-old series you suppose is worth watching because Discotek just licensed it, and they know what they’re doing...”
( More than a footnote: Albegas )
( A risky return?: Attack on Titan )
( Also getting around to it: Demon Slayer )
( Newer and older: Urusei Yatsura and Minky Momo )
( Streaming efforts: Blue Box and The Apothecary Diaries )
( Mecha movies: Macross DYRL and Gundam GQuuuuuuX )

Looking again at the Wikipedia articles promoted as recently improved, I glanced at one about “sports fans,” got a bit more specific by looking up “fantasy sports,” and then turned to the description of an IBM computer applied to that pastime early on. Heading on to how that computer was constructed from “cards” combining what would now seem simple electronic components, I then looked at the similar system of the Digital Equipment Corporation. That had me thinking back to the AltaVista search engine, and then I looked forward to Kagi, which I still haven’t sampled yet to see if I want to start paying for its service. An offsite link did appear critical of it, though, so I took a look at it and noticed the piece offered some faint praise of a small search engine I hadn’t quite heard of before. Once I’d managed to find Marginalia Search through a different search engine, my first impulse was to type in “MSTings,” and that managed to list part of my home page first. As gratifying as that was, I did then remember that the very first time I’d connected to the Internet (somewhat in advance of even AltaVista) I’d been thinking about the Infocom adventure games that hadn’t had a hint book in their economy collection (even if the first such collection’s hint book, in not being able to use the special ink and developer pen of the original “InvisiClues,” pretty much gave me the solution to everything any time I tried to find the subtlest starter hint). I didn’t have quite as much success now just turning up results with my first effort, but a bit of prompt refinement did work a bit better.

Advance reports of a new Gundam series did get my attention. It hadn’t been all that long since The Witch From Mercury; for all of the complaints from other fans feeding into my self-pitying thoughts that “mecha series don’t get a fair shake these days,” perhaps the temptation was to now think the franchise was actually doing all right. (In reflecting on the years between that series and Iron-Blooded Orphans, though, I did wind up reminding myself the “Build Divers” shows had appeared in between them.) The peculiar subtitle of the upcoming series “GQuuuuuuX” at least got my attention too, for all that I felt very tempted to anticipate knocking out the “u”s in private record-keeping of episodes watched. (While it’s not the exact same thing, I’ll admit to forever being tempted to think of “The 08th MS Team” as “Gundam MST08,” even if this didn’t extend to trying to cast that OVA’s characters in yet another “non-standard MSTing...”)
( At the very least, hints at a surprise given away )

Dropping in to the area bookstore not that long ago, I had definite thoughts of looking for a single new volume of manga by an artist I’d read some works from before. The consciousness I haven’t been grabbed by all that many new titles of late, bringing me pretty close to confronting those stacked-up volumes “waiting until I’ve seen their anime adaptation first,” did get me at least passing by a display table. One title I’d been aware of caught my eye again, and this time I picked up a first volume of Destroy All Humans. They Can’t Be Regenerated, then looked around a little more and saw the second volume in the series was also available. The small wrinkle that this was a manga about Magic: The Gathering, which I’ve never played, was still in effect. Now, though, I was at least wondering if this might be a marshmallow-light example of “even if a story isn’t ‘meant for you,’ you still might come to understand another small part of humanity a little better from it.”
( It’s in the cards )

In the final stages of preparing a post about some new-to-me Apple II emulators, I went back to the GitHub page for the “Mariani” emulator to retrieve its URL. While there, I happened to notice the number of “branches” to the code, and was curious enough to take a look at them. Spotting something called “delete-key-mapping” was sufficient to get me thinking I might keep delving into Mariani after my post was up.
( To correct your mistakes )