Podcast Episodes

RABBITS

Episode 144

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Published on 10 months, 1 week ago

The Haunted Hard Drive

Episode 143

Have you ever felt like a computer just refuses to work? Like a machine has a mind of it's own? In 1970 a hard drive at the National Farmers Union Corp. office decided to do just that. That year it s…

Published on 10 months, 2 weeks ago

OS and JEDGAR

Episode 142

This time we are diving back into the Jargon File to take a look at some hacker folklore. Back in the day hackers at MIT spent their time spying on one another's terminals. That is, until some intrep…

Published on 10 months, 3 weeks ago

Computer Ruins Grocer

Episode 141

In 1962 Food Center Wholesale Grocers Inc installed a new IBM 305 RAMAC. That's when things started to go wrong. The faulty machine seemed to have a mind of it's own, and would spread chaos to grocer…

Published on 11 months ago

Assembling Code

Episode 140

Programming, as a practice and study, has been steadily evolving for the past 70 or so years. Over the languages have become more sophisticated and user friendly. New tools have been developed that m…

Published on 11 months, 1 week ago

HUTSPIEL

Episode 139

The early history of computer games is messy, weird, and surprising. This episode we are looking at HUTSPIEL, perhaps one of the oldest games ever played on a computer. It's a wargame developed to si…

Published on 11 months, 3 weeks ago

Type-It-Yourself

Episode 138

I'm finally back to my usual programming! This time we are taking one of my patent pending rambles through a topics. Today's victim: the humble type-in program. Along the way we will see how traditio…

Published on 1 year ago

Edge Notched LIVE

Episode 137

LIVE from VCF West 2024, my talk on edge notched cards!

Since this is a live recording from an auditorium the audio is a little boomy, so be warned. Actually, I'm pretty sure this is the same space t…

Published on 1 year ago

Data Center Disaster

I've gotten busy preparing for VCF West, so this time you get a short one!

In this byte-sized episode we are looking at a short and strange story: that time a plane struck a software company, and the…

Published on 1 year, 1 month ago

Getting On TRAC

Episode 136

Have you ever formed a bad first impression? Way back when I formed a hasty impression of this language called TRAC. It's been called a proto-esoteric language, and for good reason. It's outlandish, …

Published on 1 year, 1 month ago