Glenda AdamsTo celebrate the Mac’s 40th anniversary, some of my old school Macintosh cross stitch projects. First up, the happy Mac startup icon on a classic checkerboard gray background. #NerdStitch 1/10
Another classic Mac #NerdStitch - oh those original bitmap fonts. I decided to update the classic “cross-stitch sampler” motif with the fonts as inspiration. 2/10
Wednesday Dessauer
joy larkin 🌺✨
nicki xaphania mouse 🐁
Daoud 🇵🇸One more tonight- a coaster with the ResEdit icon! I did a few old Mac icon coasters, this was the only one I could find again. Resource forks were the best thing ever invented. Plus you could use the Resource Manager as a database*! #NerdStitch 3/10
* Do not use the Resource Manager as a database.
Zack Katz@Gmatom I broke my computer so. many. times. with ResEdit. Amazing. A legendary application!
@zackkatz with great power comes great…oh shit I shouldn’t have changed that 🙂
Deacon Bleux
yakkoj 🦊>Resource forks were the best thing ever invented.
This comes out of the mouths of people who never had to deal with them from ProDOS or via FTP. ;o)
I think a lot of opportunity was left in the 1990s with the demise of forked files. They came about too late in computing to show everyone why they were a good idea, yet were very much ahead of their time. (also creator info!)
In exchange for file interoperability, we were cursed with file extensions. >:o/
Christian Kent 𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥@yakkoj @Gmatom There really was a divide in the philosophy of richly defined filesystems with a centrally-controlled truth versus a free-for-all
Apple in fact had multiple OSs and filesystems in the 1980s with tables of creator codes and file types, and plenty of “reserved” spaces for the future. @siracusa might like to talk about that one day … but ProDOS had its own set of 4-letter codes separate to Macintosh HFS I think — anything was better than the original Apple DOS 3.3 that had a single character, like “B” for binary (an “app”) and “T” for text and “A” for AppleSoft BASIC code. I forget if graphics (full screen pages) had one.
By the time the 1990s ended and Windows dominated, Unix beckoned, and interoperability was its own burden, it was twice bitten thrice shy, and I think OS X took a more pragmatic approach
Unix itself uses “file”, an app that takes a brute-force approach to determine contents via a pattern-matching database — and yet, never fully leveraged it
@yakkoj @Gmatom @siracusa Things came a bit full circle with the rise of the “internet operating system”, where a file is now genuinely expected to be able to brandish its provenance —
You really have to be able to know (and trust) where a file came from when it sits in your Downloads folder, and even moves beyond. There’s probably a chain of trust that ought to go beyond that to the files an installer proliferates, but instead we generally see network-reliant mechanisms to verify checksums, look for (ever-changing) malicious signatures, and in a return to the original ambitions, certify that a developer is a developer.
It’s surprising how very little can be done by a program file anonymously now, and it feels like signatures all the way down. OS X and Windows started off as a free-for-all, but our 1980s forefathers would be aghast at how hamstrung a file’s “permissions” are nowadays.
Similarly, RIP the “chmod” 777 permissions of Unix lore, none of which wield their power anymore. Especially in iOS.
@whophd @Gmatom @siracusa ProDOS in particular had a 1-byte TYPE code plus a 2-byte aux type that was assigned to files. It was very nice, and I think there's a central organization even today that handles the aux type assignments.
DOS 3.x had at first, T)ext, I)NTBASIC, A)pplesoft and Binary. Some weisenheimer at Apple thought it'd be a great idea to add R)elocatable, "S" type, and an additional "A" and "B" type. :o(
At least with file(1) I was able to write patterns to identify specifics
SouprMatt
Adam Patridge@Gmatom Totally forgot about that program. Thank you for this. I used to try to hack various parts of games with it back in the day. Good memories. Geez, I really miss Mac OS pre-X.
Uli Kusterer (Not a kitteh)@patridge @Gmatom Depending on how much you miss it: https://system7.app may soothe the pain with a little nostalgia.
@Gmatom ROFL! Thanks for the kind trolling ! I still reflexively twitched for a split-second when you wrote “you could use the Resource Manager as a database” ... so many times I had to tell people not to do that.
"Well, if you don’t mind crashing if you ever hit 2727 records, sure…”
dan 💾
Brendan (he/him)@Gmatom I *love* this!!! Don’t suppose you still have the pattern for this?
… or did you just grab the icon resource from ResEdit itself, and make an educated guess as to thread colours?
@Brendan I’ll dig around and see if I can find the pattern!
Mark T@Gmatom Now you can use your PList file as a database.
Rhi springs forth@Gmatom These are all so great!
Rev. GothAlice@Gmatom @billgoats * Do use it as a resource database.
Some of my favourite Macintosh games exploited resources to build overlay-based plugins. Escape Velocity, for example. Some PICT with a SHiP resource to describe them… MiSN mission descriptions… (FourCC codes here for illustrative purposes.)
Want to replace an existing SHiP? Define a new one with the same numeric ID in a plugin. (A plugin manager could be used to automatically resolve conflicts, too.)
ResEdit structure templates, even!
@alice @billgoats I extensively used custom template resources for data in Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat. It was a joy to be able to see all the mission data in human readable form in ResEdit! I’m pretty sure I did it with Space Rogue and probably some later games. Eventually the games got too big with too many internal data formats that we ended up with all flat files (for instance, all the Unreal engine games we did). Although I think I created some custom resource types for System Shock.
Another throwback, here is my cross stitch of the classic Picasso/Matisse style Mac illustration, used in marketing and packaging. 4/10 #NerdStitch
The framing on this still bugs me, it was a lot tighter on the edges than I intended. Someday I may take it out and get it reframed. #NerdStitch
Classic icons! Another ode to the cross-stitch sampler, this time I picked some of my favorite icons from the original Mac. Clarus is there of course, Moof! #NerdStitch 5/10
Michael Dales
Joachim Bondo
marceles 🌴🌴
I wanted to do a desktop scene for one of the my original Mac cross-stitches, but 512x342 is just too many pixels to stitch! So I cut and pasted the original screen down to a more manageable size, but still with some classic bits. Puzzle desk accessory! #NerdStitch 6/10
Dustin@Gmatom alright this one is very cool. All of them are awesome but this one made me go, “wow!” 😊
Something with a little gaming slant- a cross stitch scene from Dark Castle, one of the early classic Mac games. If you played it, you can hear the sound he made when he ran into a wall, in your head forever. 7/10 #NerdStitch
Robert Cassidy@Gmatom If I’m not mistaken the first game to use WSAD for movement to free up the right hand for mouse aiming.
A couple small stitching projects, Christmas ornaments with classic Mac icons #NerdStitch 8/10
Jim the U+1F9A6 (Otter)@Gmatom I once stitched a screen design for a hypothetical tennis video game back in junior high art class.
Tribute to the Mac’s 40th anniversary, from my cross-stitch projects - the best about box ever. Original Mac Finder mountains. 9/10 #NerdStitch
Last but certainly not least, my favorite classic Mac cross-stitch art I’ve done. The original Macintosh control panel. Those icons, and such a beautiful layout. Plus there’s a bunny 🙂 Happy 40th anniversary, Macintosh! #NerdStitch 10/10
I forgot to mention, I put a very specific date on the control Panel when I made the pattern to work from 🙂 #NerdStitch
Kelly Guimont@Gmatom this is AMAZERBEAMS!! Is there a pattern for this that one could purchase? Mine won't look this good but I'll enjoy the snot out of making it. (:
@Verso I’ll see if I can dig up the pattern, I made it from a screenshot of an emulator, so it’s pixel perfect!
Blake Patterson@Gmatom I was given a latch hook kit for Christmas (don't laugh), having told my wife and daughter of my fondness for the hobby as a youth. I am about to start creating pixel grid videogame characters and simple likenesses of vintage systems and see how it goes...
Steve Riggins@blakespot @Gmatom they should be in 8 stitch
Old account
Dane Deasy@Gmatom I’d love this as a big Turkish style blanket
Bathsheba Grossman
Ken Ryall@Gmatom Beautiful! I remember trying to explain to someone that you couldn’t turn the volume up to 10.
Pthorn
patpro@Gmatom gorgeous! It brings back so many memories 😍
Demilente@Gmatom Oh thank you for bringing back memories. We transitioned from using a typewriter to these little box Macs at university, then eventually a performa series. So these fonts and icons from simpler days bring a smile to our face.
David G. Smith@Gmatom Wow. So good I can literally hear the startup “Bong!” ❤️🤗❤️