2025-12-11 08:59:11
Remember recently when I wrote that we all had our own first programming book? Even if that first wasn’t our “first”, we all remember the first one that resonated. For me it was the Llama Book, aka Learning Perl that made me fall in love with Larry Wall’s language, and programming more broadly.
Flight Simulator 98 was that “first” for me when it came to 3D gaming. We were still a few years away from the release of Train Simulator which would consume my life, so my formative experiences in computerised 3D space were from the cockpit and camera views of a Cessna, Learjet, and Boeing 737. First-person shooters were my first 3D games on account of my friends playing them, but I didn’t enjoy them (sorry, Doom fans). Flight Simulator 98 was the first in which I spent any real time, and remained my favourite even after trying 95 and 2000 back in the day.
I remember being enthralled by the box when I saw it at that Challenger department store in Funan Centre in Singapore. A “Flight” Simulator? Anywhere in the world? How did they store the whole world… on a disc!? Within a month I had a Logitech joystick, and was learning how to steer aircraft around Tokyo, New York City, and even Singapore. I cannot tell you just how much fun it was. Except I just did.
Over the years I got newer versions of Flight Simulator, and later X-Plane, but Flight Simulator 98 remains a staple. When the game stopped running on Windows, I ran it in a VM. Now I have it on my Dell Dimension 4100 with its scorchingly fast Pentium III and AGP Radeon 9600 XT graphics. I kid, but I would have loved that kit when I first fired that game up on my 200 MHz Pentium 1 tower:
I was a huge fan of simulation type games; basically anything starting with Sim or ending with Simulator. I loved exploring those procedurally generated and mapped worlds, to the point where I relish reliving that specific aesthetic even now. They were more 3D than what came before, but they still had that rasterised, textured charm.
Flight Simulator 98 came in a box, with a CD and a set of printed instructions. Most of us would consider this arrangement “normal” right up until App Stores and perma-subscriptions, and I’ll admit I do miss the thrill of walking home clutching a new treasure like that. It’s probably why I like physical music as well, but I digress.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the series also had additional printed material from Microsoft Press one could buy, including strategy guides and even a “pilot certified” book on instrument flight techniques. We may scoff at the blocky, low-resolution graphics today, but I knew people growing up who claimed to have used these flight simulators for training.
Above is my original boxed set of Flight Simulator 98, alongside my new (to me!) copy of Flight Simulator 98 Inside Moves, which a seller had alongside another one for Flight Simulator 2000. A lot of this is to do with tricks about getting the game configured (stabilised, one could say) which I already know like the back of my hand, but then it goes into way more detail than I would have expected. For example, now I have documentation for how to handle an engine failure in a dual-engined aircraft:
Once I manage to procure another joystick with a game port, I might spend a bit more time in it. Using the keyboard just isn’t the same!
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-12-11.
2025-12-11 06:47:22
It’s that time of the year where people are doing reviews of what they’ve enjoyed, used, and experienced. I thought it’d be fun to list out what I’m currently using, and see how it evolves over time.
This list was inspired by kivikakk.ee, Abhinav Sarkar, and Robb Knight. You can check out everyone else’s on the ever-expanding App Defaults.
3D modelling/CAD: Learning OpenSCAD, which I’ve found easier than other tools
Backups: rsync
Bookmarks: Clara’s and my Wiki
Books: Kobo, indie writers like MWL, and local council libraries
Browser: Firefox, despite Mozilla’s best efforts
Cloud storage: My own self-hosted WebDAV; works okayish
Code editor: Kate which is awesome, and sometimes Vim
Coffee grinding: The Baratsa Encore ESP, white
Desktop environment: KDE Plasma, macOS, tmux
Downloader: aria2
File system: OpenZFS wherever I can, also UFS, FFS, and APFS.
Git client: Plain git(1), which makes me long for svn(1)
Mastodon client: The built-in official web client
Music: My own MP3 library, ripped from CDs and bought from Zdigital
News: RSS, and PressReader via the local library
Notes: Wiki (kinda), though that’s not a great solution. Getting back into the Filofax
Orchestration: Ansible, and ill-advised shell scripts
Photo editing: ImageMagick in the shell, and the GNU Image Manipulation Program, but want to move to something else, maybe Krita?
PIM (email, calendar, contacts, tasks): Fastmail with Thunderbird and Fantastical. Eventually want to self-host much of this using Radicale
Photo management: Dolphin on KDE, macOS Finder. Not ideal; I miss Aperture
Photo shooting: The OM-3 M43 camera. A worthy upgrade to my favourite camera ever, the OM-D E-M10 Mark III
Podcast: The Apple iOS one; it’s mediocre, but servicable
Presentations: LibreOffice
Read later: None, though I used to use Instapaper
RSS: FreshRSS; I’m also building my own to learn Go
Shell: Portable OpenBSD Korn Shell, oksh
Shopping list: Nothing right now, which isn’t great
Smart home: Basic Zigbee, no Internet access
Spreadsheets: LibreOffice for personal, Google Sheets for shared
Swiss Army Chainsaw: Perl
Terminal: Konsole, and Terminal.app
Video editing: DaVinci Resolve
Video playing: mpv
VPN: Self-hosted Wireguard, previously IPSec
Word processing: LibreOffice, and some LaTEX scripts I’ve carried around for years if that counts
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-12-11.
2025-12-10 06:48:34
One of my American colleagues said this in the context of a new client:
We can propose a few solutions, but let’s not flounder in the Lake of Options.
This is awesomesauce. We can propose a whole bunch of options, but each of these require specs, cycling, feedback, iterations, docs, consultation, and other processes. People hire experts to get their expert opinion, and selecting the best of many options for their requirements. Too many options burn time, effort, and cashmoney.
I can even see this applying in life as well. Next time I’m at the supermarket paralysed with indecision over something inconsequential, I’ll remember that the Lake of Options is for brief dips, not for floundering.
(Related: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, a book I read years ago that still holds true to me, and one I will never stop spruiking here).
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-12-10.
2025-12-09 20:27:54
I overheard Clara on the phone today, and she pronounced “southern” the way it’s spelled… “south-ern”. My Singaporean Chinese friends said it that way too. I pronounce it “suh-thern”, which is decidedly not how the word is spelled. I almost said spelt, but that’s bread.
I’m a native speaker (or at least, as close as one can be living in countries that aren’t England), whereas English isn’t Clara’s (it’s not even her second, I think). Still, I’m as flummoxed as her as to why I (or indeed, anyone) pronounces southern as though it has a U instead of an O. I suspect like most things in English we lead to this point simply because “suh-thern” is easier to say (this paragraph had a lot of brackets, or braces as I think my North American friends would say. They speak their own variant of English there too, where they even attempted to make our spelling a bit more logical).
English! The language where everything is made up, and the points don’t matter!™
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-12-09.
2025-12-09 06:13:03
It’s the Christmas season, which means the obligatory Commodore Christmas Demo is getting a workout in the lounge when people come over. I’ve been setting up my “daily driver” Commodore 64C with the TV instead of my 8-bit monitor setup in the study, which lead me to remember a few things.
First, the Commodore 64 is awesome! I’ve been getting more stuck into 486-era PC hardware and the Apple II of late, but it bowls me over just how good the graphics and sound are every time I use it, especially for the time it was designed and released. It’s no wonder so many of my GenX friends and older have these machines etched into their soul. Compared to everything else at the time, it must have felt like an alien delivered the goods. I’m more a tinkerer than a gamer, but wow.
The experience also reminded me that I wanted to try some other cartridge loaders. Hey look, the topic of the post, and it only took me three paragraphs to get into it. I have an SD2IEC, and a Pi1541 in a beautiful little injection-moulded case, but there’s something about loading software from a cartridge that just feels right on a Commodore. It’s faster, sure, but it also feels nostalgic in a way loading something from a disk doesn’t. Though even having disks with software on it is fast disappearing.
Modern cartridge loaders all support various disk images and formats, so your first step is figuring out what software and games you want to run, then determining what’s compatible. Very early Commodore 64s also suffer incompatibility issues which can be fixed with mods, though that doesn’t affect my kit.
We have more options than I thought.
I learned about this from Adrian Black. Loading software onto it takes a while, and it’s a bit tricky to use at first. But it’s party trick is that it can also load custom KERNALs without mods. I have a customised version of JaffyDOS, along with an older JiffyDOS, and even the BASIC shipped with the Commodore SX-64. I’ve been extremely happy with this cart, to the point where I bought a second one as a backup. I also have an earlier EasyFlash kit on my pile of hobbies that I’ve been threatening to build one day.
I learned about this from Jan Beta. I don’t have one, but I’ve watched enough videos to see it looks much easier to load software than the EasyFlash. It’s by far the most affordable cart on this list, so I’m tempted to get one to try for bulk importing software to try.
This is less of a cartridge loader and more a Swiss Army Knife for your 64. It seems to do almost everything, from disk and tape drive support, to USB data transfers and stereo audio output, and even memory expansion. Long-time reader and contributor Rebecca calls it the “VIC-20 PenUltimate cart” for the 64, which I think summarises the value well. If you’re getting started and haven’t bought any other peripherals, the extra cost is probably worth it.
I learned of this while looking up cartridge loaders for the Commodore 264/TED family. This cart supports dozens of different platforms, which makes it compelling for my collection of random hardware.
Yes, this is as much a post for me to remember these as well. Please contact me if you know any more; I know I’m forgetting a few.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-12-09.
2025-12-08 06:57:54
I had a bit of a blogging and social media break when I went to Vietnam. The former I missed dearly, the latter I’m becoming accustomed to. It’s interesting; the urge to check it every second of the day has dissipated. In the most cliché way possible, I’m realising just how many mental CPU cycles it was taking up.
I’m keeping up to date with RSS, and I have so many group chats across messaging platforms that I’m not left wanting for conversation.
Not sure when I’ll be back. I do miss my friends on the Masto, but I might keep this going a bit longer.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-12-08.
