The random ramblings of a French programmer living in Norway...
2019
  Fixing a Brionvega Algol BV1
Tue 26th November 2019   
The problem with vintage equipment is that it has a limited shelf life, and some specific parts are now either difficult or impossible to find.

For my Oric activities, I've been using a 36cm Sony Trinitron found in the storage area of Funcom when we moved to a new office, and it's been faithfully working for years... but recently it has started making some humming noise and sometimes have a faded picture, which is generally not a good sign.

  Shadow of the Beast
Sat 12th October 2019   
Now and then somebody speaks of the "game" Shadow of the Beast and uses it as an example of something the Amiga range of computers could do but the Atari ST could never dream to achieve.

This is totally true: Even with all the time and talent of the universe, there is no way a standard Atari 520 ST could compete, in what is after all mostly a technical demo designed to exploit every single feature the Amiga had.

The actual point of contention is regarding if the Atari ST port of Shadow of the Beast was as good as it could possibly have been considering the usual constraints of time, budget, etc...

  Fixing the SHV33 back cover
Sat 31st August 2019   
When my Nokia 700 became unusable as a daily phone, I searched for an equivalent high-end compact mobile.

Unfortunately, all I could find (under 5" size) on the European market was either the iPhone SE, or ultra low spec mobiles running obsolete versions of Android.

Then I took a look at the Asian market and saw that they had plenty of mobiles that would match my requirement, except of course they were not available on the European market, which mean I had to import one.

  Power Brexit
Sun 6th January 2019   
A few months ago, when I started collecting Oric software, I realized that my old tape deck was starting to be very tired and unreliable. Then I spotted an auction for a "Binatone Data Recorder", which apparently had been recently serviced with new belts and power cable.

The form factor also seemed ideal to fit on my desk without taking too much room... the only problem was that it had one of the annoying UK plugs that require an adapter to fit in EU mains.

Time to fix that.

2018
  Tape Storage Hacking
Thu 1st November 2018   
I recently started collecting some specific pieces of Oric software for some future projects of mine, and obviously when you have to pay the "eBay Collector Premium Tax"(tm) you would rather not have all your tapes get crushed, broken, or fade out because of the sun.

The solution is simply to invest in some adequate storage systems, which ideally would also pass the "partner test".

2017
  Everyday Preppers
Sun 5th November 2017   
Did you know that your ancestors were preppers?

I'm not talking of Doomsday Preppers, no. I'm talking of common sense people who did not have access to a 24/7 open Super Market or a 30 minutes guarantee Pizza Delivery Service.


  Upgradable hardware
Sat 12th August 2017   
These days it looks like more and more people think that maybe we should be a bit more conscious regarding how we treat our environment.

This is good.

Unfortunately, there are still people buying things that cannot be repaired or upgraded.

This is not good.


2016
  Reverse engineering
Tue 17th May 2016   
Thanks to a correct alignment of planets I ended up with a four days long weekend.

I had plenty of things to do, but I decided instead to spend the time looking at how one of my favorite Atari demo screens was done.


2015
  Noise reduction
Sat 2nd May 2015   
I'm planning to attend the STNICCC 2015 demo party later this year, ideally with an Atari prod ready in time to participate to the competitions.

Even if I'm doing most of my development on emulators, it's important for me to test everything on the real hardware!

Unfortunately the hardware in question is old and prone to failures, so it's time to get it ready and fix the issues.

2014
  Here comes the leet-mobile! (part 5)
Wed 21st May 2014   

Despite all our previous attempts the engine was not working particularly well, so I decided to do something I should have done a long time ago: Check the compressions.

2013
  Here comes the leet-mobile! (part 4)
Tue 18th June 2013   

After our first drive on the parking we were quite excited, but still there were some issues to deal with: the exhaust had to be fixed and we had to find out why the engine would die on idle.

Even more important, we had two months to fix all the issues before having to pass the EU Technical Control.

  Here comes the leet-mobile! (part 3)
Sat 30th March 2013   

So the Valp was now parked on the parking: Time to get things going.

Is it dead?

The first thing we did of course is to try to start it. Nothing happened. The blinkers and windshield wipers worked so at least we knew there was electricity going on, but since starter engines are notoriously power hungry we decided to buy a battery charger, remove the batteries, and let them charge for quite a long while.

  Here comes the leet-mobile! (part 2)
Tue 26th March 2013   

Now that we knew we wanted one of these horribly cute off-road vehicles, I started to contact the various sellers to ask questions about their state and it quickly appear that you could classify the various available models in three categories based on their prices.

  Here comes the leet-mobile! (part 1)
Sun 10th March 2013   

Been few months since I posted something, not because I had nothing to do, but because of a number of projects I committed myself to help with.

Today’s post is not computer related in any way, it’s about vehicles!

Commuting bliss

I moved to Norway about 8 years ago and have happily used the public transport system all that time.

2012
  Minitel memories
Sat 3rd November 2012   

What's this Minitel thing anyway

Outside of France most people never heard of the Minitel.

Released in 1981, first as a small scale test in Bretagne and then extended to the rest of the country, the Minitel business plan was a stroke of genius from France Telecom: Give the choice between the regular printed White Pages and a small dumb black and white terminal allowing you to find the same thing faster; then use the large number of available terminals to allow the creation of commercial offers to make a profit of it.


2011
  I'm in love with Kira
Sun 27th March 2011   
No, Kira is not the name of my girlfriend, it is not the name of my cat either, and I'm not in love with any particular film celebrity bearing a similar name.

Kira is only a small device you connect to your network, which in turn allows you to control anything that uses infra-red, kind of like an universal remote control.

  Home-automation experiments
Fri 25th March 2011   

Inspiration

For about two weeks now I've been working on a small home-automation project.

The inspiration came from few cool YouTube video, and in particular that one:



I'm not particularly fan of Star Trek, but the idea of controlling all the audio and video system from a touch screen using some fancy interface kind of resonated with my inner-geek.

  Communication protocol exploits
Sun 27th February 2011   
If you found this page using a search engine with the hope of finding any relevant information about exploiting things on the Internet, you are going to be disappointed. What I'm going to write about now was relevant only in a now semi-distant past.

I have to start first with a disclaimer: What you will read is related to events that happened a long time ago, when we were young, stupid and lucky. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

  How fragile is this Internet thing
Sun 30th January 2011   
Quite a lot of people these days take for granted the ability to communicate with their computers and mobile phones at any time of the day .



2010
  Hacking confessions (part 3)
Sun 5th September 2010   

First a disclaimer: What I'm writing here now is related to events that happened a long time ago, at a period of time when it was relatively safe to do it, the worse that could happen would have been the expulsion from the school. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

The beginning of the end

If I'm not mistaken, this article will be the last in the confessions category. After that I stopped experimenting, mostly because I had no good reason for doing them anymore.

  Hacking confessions (part 2)
Wed 25th August 2010   

First a disclaimer: What I'm writing here now is related to events that happened a long time ago, at a period of time when it was relatively safe to do it, the worse that could happen would have been the expulsion from the school. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

Up the ante

I wrote in the previous part there would be two parts, but considering that I miserably failed at writing, reviewing and publishing some of my longer essays, I decided that writing instead few short ones each dedicated to a particular issue would be more manageable. So here we are, expect at least a third one :)

The previous episode happened during the last year I spent in High School, this one happened three years later when I moved to Laval for my BTS Informatique de Gestion. The year is 1991, the place is the Lycée Douanier-Rousseau, a pretty Ok place to be considering how boring Laval can be.

  Hacking confessions (part 1)
Sun 22nd August 2010   

First a disclaimer: What I'm writing here now is related to events that happened a long time ago, at a period of time when it was relatively safe to do it, the worse that could happen would have been the expulsion from the school. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

Self made man

I'm one of these people who learnt by themselves most of what they knew about programming before working as a professional programmer. Sure I learnt a lot after I started work, but before that I did university mostly to get a diploma: Except methodology, and formal methods, I can't say I learnt much.