12th Day

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you folks (especially to Alex). I had run out of pre-mixed music that I could get in .mp3 format with the equipment I had at home, so I took a break over the holidays.

Exactly 8 years ago today, my C-64 demo group PSW released a C64 demo called 12th Day. If you want to watch it but don’t know how, leave a comment and I’ll help you out.

I had a good time with friends and family over the holidays. Some of the major events/activities included:

  • Harbron Hullaballoo: lots of friends and food
  • Ripped out old basement carpet and got it to the dump: a big and stinky job
  • Cleaned up my geek room, and started building yet more shelves
  • Finally completed Interstate ’82, the not-so-great sequel to Interstate ’76, which is one of my all-time favourite games
  • Played around with some new (to me) old computers kindly brought by Mary Ellen (Ron’s fiancee). I now have a Tandy Coco 1, and a MC-10, and also another Timex/Sinclair 1000 (my first computer ever) and another Tandy Model 100.
  • Fixed Victor’s computer
  • Watched a bunch of DVDs, including (so far) 10 episodes of Fraggle Rock which the kids really like. I also watched my new V DVDs, and a Johnny Cash concert DVD from 1994.
  • My truck wouldn’t start even though I had bought a new alternator and battery in May. Strangely, I gave it a good charge a week ago, and it’s been fine ever since.
  • Earlier in December, participating in and winning the 27th Mushroom Cup
  • Listened to some new CDs (Artists Against Success Christmas Compilation “Kung-Fu Santa With A Christmas Punchbag”, Sal Paradise “For You and Before You”, Johnny Cash “The Legend of Johnny Cash”) and digged out and ripped some of my older CDs I hadn’t listened to for a few years
  • Read some new books, including “Songwriters Speak”
  • I see WordPress 2 is out, so maybe I’ll upgrade to that soon. And more music should be arriving very soon, since I picked up a bit of gear from Richard’s house that will allow me to computerize some of my old 4-track tapes.

    6 Responses to “12th Day”

    1. reppepper Says:

      And today *is* the 12th Day (of Christmas).

      How “ironic”.

      Johnny Cash is everywhere these days.

    2. shroomAzoom Says:

      I think Johnny Cash is the flavour of the month right now. Which is fortunate for me, because I don’t think I’ve given him enough consideration until he showed up in the ice cream cooler.

    3. Alex Says:

      Sal Paradise. There’s a name I haven’t heard in YEARS.

    4. reppepper Says:

      So I’ve saved 12th Day but I don’t know which program to use to run it.

    5. Robin Says:

      re: Johnny Cash, the movie has certainly increased my interest in his music, though I’ve become more interested in this genre ever since I first heard the Lost Dogs, and in his music/life ever since I saw his bizarre but cool gospel film at Farrand Street Bible Chapel some years ago.

      re: Sal Paradise, I’ve really enjoyed this new album, which is a solo, mostly acoustic treatment of 16 of their songs (maybe some of them are new) by the lead singer/songwriter. He does add bass, electric guitar, some light percussion, and background vocals to a lot of the songs, but the acoustic guitar and vocals are front and centre here. Worth getting.

      re: 12th Day, it’s a C64 program which is easiest run using a C64 emulator like VICE. You can get VICE here: http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/crossplatform/emulators/VICE/WinVICE-1.18.zip

      Once it’s unzipped, run x64.exe. Choose Options->Video Standard->NTSC-M, and you’d also probably want Options->Double Size. Then click File->Autostart Disk/Tape Image, and find and double click the 12thday.prg file you’ve saved.

    6. Robin Harbron » Blog Archive » Tandy Color Computer Says:

      […] As I mentioned in my first post of 2006, over the Christmas holidays MEF brought me a bunch of computers that had belonged to her dad. I’ve had time to pay attention to my older computers again lately, and having finished going through all my C-64s, today I started checking out the Tandy (Radio Shack) Colour Computers that live at my house, starting with the one from MEF. […]