The Independent Kixmiller Pigeon MrkII

Games would quickly dominate the Symbian platform. It only made sense as the Nokia handhelds found their way into the hands on millions around the globe. Combined this with the universal nature of the J2ME runtime and the thousands upon thousands of developers who were already familiar with the Java programming language, it would only be a short time before games would dominate the platform. I was able to get a taste of these games as most of them have been archived on well...Archive.org. Most of these games were loaded onto the SDK which supported the J2ME environment. However, compatibility greatly differed as many of these games usually conformed to different screen sizes, depending on the phone. Not all Symbian phones were created equal.  Many of the games expected a very small screen size, and thus, didn't scale well to the screen resolution of the device that I was using (240 by 320 pixel resolution). Despite that though, they were many games that did scale to the correct res...

  The Apple II Redefines Micro-computing! Like many of the 8-bit micros, many IIe's found their way into the home setting. Granted in the home market, the IIe wasn't as prevalent as a Atari 800 or C64. However, the IIe had a healthy presence in that market regardless. One way to measure the popularity of a home computer is by its games library. In that regard, the IIe did not disappoint. On one hand, this computer was no C64. Graphically, the C64 could run circles around the IIe. On the other, there were still many great games, and for many users, their would be countless hours of joy to be had. The Apple IIe was released at the height of the arcade crazy. As such, the IIe got many arcade ports of several classics, along with various clones of those ports. Games like Montezuma's Revenge, Moon Patrol, Centipede, Defender, Pac-Man (just to name a few) would define the IIe. Broderbund started to make a name for themselves on the IIe. A game publisher, they started to publish m...

When one looks at the details, one realizes that the war has been mishandled since the beginning. While a powerful Afghan army was made, nothing was done to build the infrastructure to support it. According to many reports, several units haven't been paid in months, and were now being called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for a horrifically incompetent and corrupt government. The corruption of the Afghan government knew no bounds. Things were never going to get better because our leaders didn't demand better from that government.  The Afghan war was horribly mishandled by both Democrats and Republicans alike over 20 years. I know that those who see their political preferences as unquestioned doctrine don't want to read that, but politicians on both sides failed because they didn't demand better from the Afghan government. Bush made serious blunders, along with Obama. As quick as I am to criticize Trump for anything, by the time he inherited the war, he was in a no-...

Their was no shortage of applications for the Symbian platform. The Symbian library became the largest of them all at a time when Palm was rapidly declining. Their were hundreds of programs available for such devices.  On one hand, one would be given a false impression as like in the case with WinCE, the vast majority of the software archive sites have shut down. However, many of these programs have been archived elsewhere, like Archive.org. Also, some of those mobile archive sites are still operating. This is where most of these programs came from.  Their were various programs that one could populate their Nokia device with. Their are various appointment keepers, calculators, media players, dictionaries. If one wanted to manage their finances and track their stock values, then there was an application for that. If one wanted to look up and element on the periodic table, then that could be done as well. Their was no shortage of web-browsers either.  If one needed directio...

  The Apple II Redefines Micro-computing! The Apple IIe, an updated follow-up to the II+, was released on January 1983. The IIe became the most well-known and iconic computer in the II series. There was a flood of games, productivity programs, and educational titles that populated the platform. The "e" in the IIe stands for enhanced. The IIe was a updated version of the Apple II+ that had a reduced chip count to make the computer cheaper to manufacturer. One of the big features of the IIe was the incorporation of the 80-column text mode as standard. On the II+, 80-column text mode was an optional feature that was added via a peripheral card that plugged into one of the expansion slots. However, it was incorporated in the IIe itself without needed that extra adapter, thus freeing up an extra expansion slot in the process. The IIe supported more memory than the II+. On that system, memory tapped out at 64KB, even though more could be technically...

I Don't Have Time For Family Drama There's this saying that you shouldn't go to bed angry because when you wake up in the morning, you're going to be in a foul mood. Well, this morning, I'm still somewhat in that fuming state-of-mind. One would think that after the last article "Things I Need To Get Of My Chest", I would have felt better. However, that lingering feeling of bitterness and disappointment hovers over me. It's that feeling of disappointment where one who should just accept who you are instead holds your views against you.  Before anyone calls me a hypocrite, there's been many of times (the vast majority actually), where I never said a word during conversations as many said things that I disagreed with, but kept my silence out of a sign of respect. Also, visitation to my blog is completely optional . Their are no guilt trips here. When I share a link on my Facebook Timeline, it usually just shows the title anyway, so one can skip it ...

  This post has been a long time in the making. Updates on my blog have been far and few. I've taken a break from it because supporting this blog has been draining on me emotionally. What started as a recreational time killer to release steam has involved into a labor of love that has been exhausting to maintain at times. This has especially been true during the outbreak. The migration of the blog from Duda to Blogspot has also been very taxing as well (moving some 200 post isn't fun). Thus, after the migration, I haven't really been that keen on updating the blog. I've been busy with many real-life commitments that have also been all-consuming. To unwind, I’ve mostly been playing video games and working on my YouTube channel. The introvert part of me takes over on my off-time. However, don't get the impression that I've forgotten about this blog. Their is a lot of content that I want to post. However, given that my blog is on a new platform, an opportunity ha...

If the history of Palm could be likened to that of The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire , then this would be the part of the story where the Roman Empire split itself into two. Palm splitting itself ranks among the dumbest things that the company could do to itself. Others describe it as the moment that killed Palm. Personally, I would agree. The company could have survived it as long as the split was better handled, and continued to have hit products while fixing their OS. Palm could have created something that would have caused corporate users to salivate over. However, this is Palm where talking about. This kind of luck wasn't in their cards. As such, the company split was essentially the beginning of the end. The company was split among its hardware and software division. The hardware company became PalmOne while the software company became PalmSource. For the hardware company, I'm still going to refer to it as Palm proper though. Anyway, the hardware team nee...

  Apple Drops The Ball Apple was ridding high from the success of the Apple II Plus. A successful computer needs a successful follow-up...right? Apple had their sights on their next goal; the corporate market. Their was a lot riding on Apple. While they've been successful conquering the the small business and education markets, they had no experience reaching out to corporate users. Microcomputers weren't a thing within the corporate realm. Corporate computing was very different in the 70's compared to today. The ubiquitous PC was nowhere to be found. The office was dominated by various electric typewriters made by manufactures like Smith-Corona and IBM. For those who did interact with a computer, it was typically a mainframe that was accessed via a dumb terminal, which was basically a monitor with a network connector. Apple saw a huge potential in the corporate market. However, they would need a computer to meet the needs of the office minions. The n...