Author Archives: Stephan Sokolow

Platformer Design Trends: Then and Now

Posted on 2020-11-27 by Stephan Sokolow

I started playing Celeste a couple of days ago and, while I was playing it, I started tallying up some of the ways that the average modern platformer, retro-styled or not, differs from its counterparts in the 80s and 90s. … Continue reading →

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Automated Testing for Open Watcom C/C++ and DOS

Posted on 2020-10-31 by Stephan Sokolow

One of the hobby projects I’ve been poking at again is written for DOS using Open Watcom C/C++ (v2 fork), and, being as averse to drudgework (and spoiled by modern tooling) as I am, I wanted some automated testing… so … Continue reading →

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Retrocomputing Category Announcement

Posted on 2020-10-30 by Stephan Sokolow

While working on an upcoming post (a run-down of C unit test frameworks that are easy to use under Open Watcom C/C++), I realized that I’m getting enough of these retrocomputing resource posts that mentioning them from each other is … Continue reading →

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A Major QtExceptHook Update

Posted on 2020-10-19 by Stephan Sokolow

For anyone who uses QtExceptHook, my port of the old gtkexcepthook.py script to PyQt5, I have an announcement I think you’ll appreciate… I just made a major update. If you don’t use QtExceptHook, it’s a single Python file you can … Continue reading →

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Making a 2-button Trackball Useful on Modern Linux

Posted on 2020-10-13 by Stephan Sokolow

I was the kind of nerdy kid who read computer catalogues for fun before his tenth birthday, and one of the nerdy things I always wanted was a Logitech Trackman Marble… an early optical trackball with a distinctive patterned ball … Continue reading →

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Fanfiction – A Prince’s Duty

Posted on 2020-09-24 by Stephan Sokolow

…and, in case you’re not into Naruto, here’s another one I had waiting in the wings: A Prince’s Duty by BonusPoints For all that Ranma ½ has a gender-transformative curse as such a central element of its narrative, there aren’t … Continue reading →

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Fanfiction – A Drop of Poison

Posted on 2020-09-23 by Stephan Sokolow

Since I blogged about something I don’t recommend, I shouldn’t keep people waiting for something I do recommend: A Drop of Poison by Angel of Snapdragons This is one of my old favourites. The gist is that, because Iruka is … Continue reading →

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