a few years ago i mentioned that i wrote a book about the exciting, awkward and embarrassing experiences of growing up with computers and video games in the 80s and 90s.

i wanted to remember what it felt like being the only dorky computer kid at school. or what it was like to hear my first modem handshake sound. or starting the first flamewar on the school's national FirstClass BBS in the macintosh lab over the lunch-hour

it was originally something i wrote only for my family and friends who were there at the time.

and then i met all of you folks when i started my first masto instance 4 years ago. i had no idea there were so many hardcore retrocomputing and gaming nerds out there; unix and mac and ms-dos folks alike.

so i mentioned it casually. i was surprised by the interest in the book.

so i spent the better part of the past 3 years rewriting the book for *you* fellow mastodon dorkus malorkuses. the book is a celebration of all of the best (and worst) parts of a kid growing up in the digital age.

we're all busy old tired stressed folks now. so every memory and cringetacular story is short enough to read on a 5 minute bus/metro/toilet ride. they're weaved together into an arc that starts at my family's first Tandy TRS-80 and ends at my school's Mac LC II and building my first Pentium 133.

it's finally published, and i'm super proud of what it became thanks to everyone here nerding out for years.

enjoy the book. i wrote it just for you. ❤️

paperback edition: https://mybook.to/EDuUf

DRM-free ebook (EPUB format) and chapter samples here:
https://tomotama.itch.io/mages-modems

#books #indiePublisher #bookstodon #author #macintosh #vintageApple #vintageComputing #msdos #dosGaming #yeg #canada #alberta #bbs #smolWeb #indieWeb

💾 EXTRA PODCAST!💾 Keen listeners might have been aware we didn't cover the history of how Halloween Harry was made during our latest episode.

Well with good reason, because we got a chance to sit down and talk to Halloween Harry creator @johnpassfield and let him tell us exactly how it went down!

https://www.dosgameclub.com/john-passfield-pete-mullins/

#dosGaming #retroGaming #podcast

we managed to pay voice actors for kitsune tails and we're a bunch of impoverished queers running on hopes and dreams instead of an actual budget

just in case you're wondering about AAA studios who say they wanna use AI instead of actual voice actors. they're not even saving any significant amount of money

OUT NOW: Dungeon Puzzle Sweeper!

The perfect game to play at the airport or under the dinner table this holiday season 🎄 It auto-saves, is optimized for mobile, and has online leaderboards!

This little remake has been kicking around all year and I wanted to finish up the rest of the presentation and get it out there. Free on itch!!

https://britown.itch.io/sweeper

Please boost and tell your friends!

#gamedev #indiegame #itch #release #minesweeper

🌐🤴 Who needs a FireFox when you have a WebBoy

💾 #discatte_preservation

🔗 https://archive.org/details/ibm-webboy-dos-3.0-pc110

This year's Interactive Fiction Short Games Showcase seems not to be getting indexed on itch for some reason so... help share this around for people who might have written sub-half-hour IF in 2025 that could use more attention, would you?

An event spotlighting shorter IF works that tend to get overshadowed by the longer ones in the IFComp and Spring Thing etc.

https://itch.io/jam/if-short-games-showcase-2025

#InteractiveFiction