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  • gingerbeardman 21 days ago | parent | on: Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?
    I made this project. It was first posted to various places a couple of years ago. I’m sharing it again now because this time of year is generally your best chance to catch an impression of The Great Wave on display.

    About The Great Wave: the original woodblock prints were mass-produced around 1830, but only a limited number of impressions survive today. They’re sensitive to light and are rarely exhibited—typically about once every four years. That’s why I built this site: to help people time their visits and have a chance to see one in person. Art lovers will understand the appeal of seeing a classic like this up close. Others may find the idea pointless or ridiculous. So it goes.

    About the Site: it tracks the display status of various impressions of Katsushika Hokusai’s "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (神奈川沖浪裏) across museums worldwide. I monitor official museum collection pages and check for changes in “on view” status. In the ~30 years I’ve been interested, I’ve only managed to see two different impressions, and I want to see as many as I can.

    The backend is powered by a series of Huginn scenarios that scrape museum websites on a schedule and track changes. Not every museum has a suitable website for this, but enough do to make the project worthwhile. The hardest part was initially finding all the relevant collection pages, understanding the structure of their data, and setting up the automation. I also run automated searches for press releases and news articles to catch anything the scrapers might miss. The whole process is largely hands-off, with only a final manual check before publishing updates.

    Over the past two years, I’ve simplified and optimized the system. The final data is compiled into a small CSV file, which is used to generate the web page and an RSS feed. These are cached as static files and are only updated when there’s new information. The files are hosted on a free Oracle Cloud Compute Instance running Caddy web server. That’s pretty much it!

    • jgrahamc 21 days ago
      Cool project but this isn't relevant content for Two Stop Bits. It's neither retro-computing nor retro-gaming. You should post it elsewhere.
  • gingerbeardman 175 days ago | parent | on: DREAM RIDE for Sega Dreamcast (and emulators)
    I'm the Dev. Ditto for me reading lovely comments like yours. Thank you
  • gingerbeardman 323 days ago | parent | on: Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh ...
    You're not alone! :)
  • gingerbeardman 366 days ago | parent | on: Is Tetris Really 40 This Year?
    Are those 1984 sources from before 2009? That's the point. It was always 1985 in books and everything.
    • bmonkey325 365 days ago
      I drew my conclusion from Wikipedia. I asserted I could see how one could get the date based on the code he wrote for the electronika 60. The @985 date when Tetris was playable is likely the real date. Adding licensing shenanigans, infinite Tetris, and easy spin - controversy has always been part of the story of Tetris.

      I liken it to gaming world version “Han shot first”.

      • gingerbeardman 332 days ago
        But Wikipedia is pretty clear in saying 1985
  • gingerbeardman 411 days ago | parent | on: Emoji History: The Missing Years
    Interestingly, the SAHRP PA-8500 device that the new earliest emoji were found on had two different colour screens over its lifetime: yellow (as shown in my blog post) and grey (in fact, it's more green).
  • gingerbeardman 411 days ago | parent | on: Emoji History: The Missing Years
    pretty cool, huh! I think you could attach them to a contact and share that contact with other users. but, of course, too early for it to catch on!
  • gingerbeardman 437 days ago | parent | on: Adding the “Move to Trash” function to System 7.1
    I've just updated the guide. Found a much, much easier way using my favourite power tool KeyQuencer to implement it in a one line macro!
  • gingerbeardman 525 days ago | parent | on: JINZO Paint — vintage mobile drawing app
    I find it interesting how many good ways of doing things have been cast aside in the name of "progress". When the dust settles we're often left with slower and more cumbersome but functionally equivalent methods: a net loss.

    JINZO Paint is a mobile drawing app from 1999 that inherits the Japanese "Multi Paint System" way of doing things, which basically means the ability to do amazing palette based drawing whilst protecting certain colours or replacing colours. It's a non-destructive way of painting and quite different to selection/masking methods popularised by Photoshop.

    Also in this post is how to run Windows CE software on a Sharp Brain electronic dictionary.

  • gingerbeardman 541 days ago | parent | on: History of The Graphical User Interface (GUI): A W...
    A comprehensive overview of the evolution of the GUI and what was lost along the way. Comfortable to watch at x1.25 speed.

    Xerox 00:47:00

    Apple 01:21:00

  • gingerbeardman 585 days ago | parent | on: Macintosh.js - Electron app emulating a 1991 Mac Q...
    This is pretty cool. I frequently use Infinite Mac https://infinitemac.org in a Flotato site-specific browser, as well as BasiliskII emulator on Mac and iPad Pro.
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