The random ramblings of a French programmer living in Norway...
2018
  Optimizing Buggy Boy (1)
Thu 15th November 2018   
On the weekend of 2-3 November 2018 the Demosplash party was held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

There are not many demo parties in the USA, and even less of these showing Oric demos running on the actual Oric hardware specially with a Cumulus device!

  Performance Profiling
Sun 11th November 2018   
A few weeks ago NekoNoNiaow asked on the Defence Force forums if there was any profiling tools available for Oric programs "aside from the reliable but quite basic OSDK clock() function".

I had already worked on the topic, but no actual official release came out of it: Time to fix that!

  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".

  A Beginner's Guide To The Oric Atmos
Sat 13th October 2018   
Sometimes you buy stuff on eBay and you get disappointed (broken or incomplete things, ...) but sometimes you discover some little gems you did not even know existed.

A few weeks ago I bought some Oric games, and on a whim asked the seller if he had some other Oric related stuff around. All he had was the Oric Special Autumn 1984 issue of Personal Software, but that seemed interesting enough for me to buy it as well.

  Job Application
Mon 10th September 2018   
When I moved to Norway in 2005, I kept some of my most precious Oric and Atari hardware, but I left the rest to some of the Oric and Atari people I trusted to put them to good use.

Some of our unreleased demos have since appeared in various compilations after they were found in the old stack of floppies, but now and then they have found some old forgotten treasures.

  The hidden cost of making videos
Tue 4th September 2018   
Earlier this year, I was told that it would be "kind of cool" if I did some videos to show how I developed my Oric and Atari projects, instead of just writing blog posts and forum updates.

The first real test was in February when I did a few hours of live streaming during the Global Game Jam 2018.

  Not an artist
Sat 24th March 2018   
We live in a world where the common practice is to put people in neatly defined categories, like "artist", "train driver", "programmer", "race driver", etc...

In reality, if you examine any random person, you will find out that they are much more than that.

In my case, I'm a programmer, but I also dabbled in the art department (as well as many other things).


  Global Game Jam 2018
Tue 6th February 2018   
Like in 2015 and 2016, I spent the last weekend of January at the Global Game Jam.

In total, about 8600 games have been worked on by more than 42000 persons across 108 countries.