I have so many unofficial RISC OS font filetypes. Eventually I’ll have to allocate these properly and they’ll all change and break my tools. Plus how will I ever remember TTF and OTF if they’re not &77F and &07F? The nice thing about anarchy is that it’s very simple.

Incredible

Indeed it was the ability to incorporate any other processor that led Acorn, through trying the best of what was available, to develop the ARM instead. It's not just how this is possible, it's why it's possible to watch a video about it on the Tube. (Do you see what I did there?!)

Sir, a second bird is at the feeder

Apparently we're not socialling correctly here? <looks back at entire life> Well OK you've got me there, fair enough.

With humans now pushing beyond earth orbit in #ArtemisII it's worth looking back 5000 years to another extraordinary celestial endeavour The megalithic builders of Bryn Celli Ddu passage grave on Ynys Môn/Anglesey carefully aligned the entrance with the rising summer solstice sun ☀️ 📷 My own, 2024

Tapping the sign

Acorn really dropped the ball when it came to RISC OS Path Vars (like Run$Path) by using a valid chr as separator (“,”) when there was an obvious alternative – space. Though FileSwitch is therefore gimped we could have done better... but it’s HARD:

I'm sorry Dave I can't email that.

It's not PenIsland but did nobody ever consider?

I've just been told by an LLM that my RISC OS work is "Infrastructure for a future that hasn't arrived" so I'm going to have a bit of a lie down in a dark room.

How brilliant is this concept kit, Lego Fawlty Towers! Incredible detailing throughout. beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

If you’re going to get it wrong, at least get it definitely wrong.

Sky News being very negative about Nasa - they kept talking about this "crude mission". 🤔 Took me an appreciable time to realise they were saying "crewed" - because they're so terrified of saying "manned". 🤦‍♂️ Someone buy them a dictionary, this is ridiculous.

Driving music.

Thanks, I guess. And yes, it is.

A new SWI for the prototype RISC OS FM4 FontManager: EnumerateString, which allows callers to step through a Paint/Scan string one element at a time without knowing the format (it’ll be extended over time). This code is calling it in single-shot mode, but a callback can be provided – much faster.

In return for information about the thieves, Crimestoppers are offering a large bounty.

Sky News just said they can't describe Artemis as "Manned flight" because there's a woman on board ("and also a Canadian!"). Will someone PLEASE explain to these numbskulls the etymology of "manned". For all mankind. Before there's a manslaughter. Somebody call the ombudsman. Oh, the humanity!

Every sentence brings something new to the madness. Stick it on CEEFAX.

픽사고냥님

Hundreds of licences granted for new North Sea oil & gas projects under the Tories have so far produced just 36 days’ worth of gas. Yet more evidence, were it needed, that a crisis caused by fossil fuel dependence can’t be solved by drilling for more fossil fuels in the North Sea

Which allows me to point out that the superb Radio Garden is available worldwide EXCEPT for the UK, where it is hobbled to ONLY play UK stations. This is because of the effective monopoly enjoyed by PPL PRS Ltd over the collection of music licencing fees, which it persues highly aggressively.

I think the clocks in UK go back tonight. Or forward. Not sure. Is it forward

"In other words, the perceived worth of higher education has waned just as women have begun to outnumber men within it. Is it really a coincidence?"

Neee naaa neee naaa. In full jam sandwich livery, this Polestar 2 looks even more like a scaled-up toy car than it usually does. An all-time classic shape.

The best preparation for being a parent wasn't NCT classes or books; it was managing a team of software engineers. My 4 and 2 year olds are far better at playing with others than those maladjusted coders.

Why me? Why is it always me? Why is it only me?

I might want a RISC OS equivalent. Hmm.

The other day I had to translate an exclaimed sentence containing a quote, "Like this."! Google Translate moves the exclamation INSIDE the quote. This seems to be LLM-poisoned-by-American-typographic-illiteracy. Confusion over what is and is not part of the quotation is a common US typo.

RO5, in a nutshell. [IMO. YMMV. E&OE. Chacun à son goût. etc]

A significant consideration for the phones-on-wheels that the modern car has become: What happens when the manufacturer gets bored of updating your "old" car, or just goes bust? I'm not a fan of help-me-get-this-to-work open source, but I am a fan of if-all-else-fails, so this is all good.

How busy is an ice cave, usually?

Wind & solar are currently producing 65% of Britain's electricity. Meanwhile, renewables now offer 30,000 more UK jobs than oil and gas. Meanwhile, we're in a climate emergency. Meanwhile, we're in a fossil fuel supply crisis. Meanwhile, the Tories and Reform want to scrap Net Zero. grid.iamkate.com

I was replying in another thread and didn't want to gum it up too much with replies, so I'll be addressing the FUD around EV battery life Most current gen EVs last hundreds of thousands of miles and decades TLDR: Hyundai best, no data supports FUD or 'what about cost to replace hysteria' Context:

I’ve made a new version of the ObeySupport module that was supplied with Zap (and is not ubiquitous I was shocked to realise – ought to be). I’ve added a few new commands and fixed the ones that were broken. Are there any other *IFs that people would find useful? [ALT for syntax]

I know EV's are the hot topic now but I have been driving one since 2019. Of course I had a garage and a charger in it, not feasible for everyone but I am telling you, once you go electric, you will never go back.

Oops I accidentally

I’ve wanted this construction for decades, but the syntax (and more importantly the mechanism) just occurred to me – ten minutes later we have un-forked single-line IF. This is called “Functional THEN(” – I’ve highlighted the new syntax in cyan. How useful is that?! <glee>

For those at the RISC OS North Show on Saturday I spoke to about character code assumptions, here’s that “difficult” CP437 Alphabet; the VDU sequence to display a verbatim chr code; and nemoBasic just being awesomely convenient:

Less haste, more speed

🤭

I heard there was a secret cord that David kept in his cable hoard but he can never find it when he needs it

Oh look, a Cellular Automaton. Would you like to see the nemoBasic program that produces it?

Well this is very pleasant. 🌞 String things will have to wait.

I was in two minds whether to reveal this new 𝒏𝒆𝒎𝒐𝑩𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒄 feature before the RISC OS North show at Warrington on Saturday 21st March, but I am 𝐒𝐎 excited about it I’m going to tease it here without explanation. It’s a game-changer not only for a BBC Basic, but for programming languages in general. 😲

I've written a book! Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves is the story of procedural generation - the tech behind games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. It's about how it works, the games that use it, and the art and magic behind it. Out May 7th, in bookshops: linktr.ee/next_level 🎲🔮

Brexit going well

Imagine if Electric Car owners left these strewn about every time they charged their car. Imagine the headlines. The Daily Mail and the Telegraph would be FURIOUS. There’d be a CAMPAIGN. We’d be hearing about BANS. But for petrol & diesel? Normal. Fine. Nothing to see here.

I've just completely rewritten the Wimp's text formatting from scratch and it worked first time. 😵 I'm tip-toeing away before it explodes. [Required for seamlessly coping with UTF-8 - the RO5 code is total nonsense]