Prolouge...Chapter Zero

Offline entry, ~4:10pm, 29 June 07

I’M IN! My application to Retrochallenge Y2K+7 is accepted and I am in.. and thus begins


THE PROLOGUE.

I’d heard of the retrochallenge via an Applefritter posting [I think...] back in April, and have been considering entering immediately. Those plans were put on hold for a fairly intense, high-end internship. Budgetary crises cut that into the second week; and my depression set in. Following a full week of cleaning [and I’m still not done yet] there was once again much anguish over whether or not to enter. The tension boiled over with the lack of a viable project, until the discovery of an old copy of SoftPC and a few dos games I had from my childhood snapped everything in place.

At 10:04 pm, last night, I clicked “SEND” and my application went in.

A few minutes ago, I received a reply and myself replied with the notification of this blog.

CHAPTER ONE: THE PROJECT

In the words of Professor Johanna, “I have never seen you finish anything, ever.” Lofty goals are my heroin [not condoning drug use, just an analogy] and yet always seem to be cut with baby formula expired in 1956, that actually contains the ashes of a thousand broken dreams and dead passions. This may come from an overwhelming lack of justifiable self-importance, but more likely from paradoxically inflated ego and lack of drive to finish anything big.

I intend to change that.

The original project (v 1.0) involved using the nifty collection of audio/video editing and graphics software to make an animated movie... live action, even?... and use HyperCard to make it interactive or something like that. This project is largely stymied by a lack of a means to capture video, and by time and sanity restrictions [as anyone who has ever animated *anything* will be quick to point out]; as well as editing video with 16Mb of ram and no way to use Virtual memory.

Going back and actually *reading* the retroblogs and realizing what is possible, and what not, allowed me to filter down the tangental energy and focus more on what others were doing and what I can.


Project 2.0 will be centered around that copy of SoftPC and MS-DOS 5; it emulates an Intel 80286, possibly 386.

Thus, I will attempt to do everything, including post to the blog, by DOS. There will also be Hypercard programming and extensive use of the Newton and Quicktake digital photography.

Or, put another way, not only will there be the endurance of breaking ties with the OS X world and stepping back in time [a whole 10-20 years] but a push to get DOS to be useful and recognizably so in applications that would not have been possible or probable in it’s heyday.