Apple II Bits

I’ve been bringing a digital camera to KansasFest every year since 2002. Every year, I come home with dozens or hundreds of photos that require sorting, cropping, tagging, and uploading. And every year, as I take more photos, I fall further behind in doing so.

This problem is getting bigger.

The biggest hangup is metadata — specifically, captions. I like to write captions for each photo that suggests what could be but isn’t happening. Sometimes it’s taking note of something happening in the background, or expressing what someone in the photo might be thinking. And the more photos I take, the longer this process.

I used to post the photos in August, shortly after I returned home from KansasFest; then, when I adopted an academic schedule, I’d wait until Christmas break; now my goal is simply to get them posted before the next KansasFest.

I’m relieved to say that KansasFest 2014’s photos are finally online. I selected two hundred of my 266 photos to post, then chose eight to share on Facebook, Google+ and Flickr.

Why eight? If you look at my Facebook profile, you’ll see I have hundreds of albums, but each one is limited to exactly eight photos. There are three reasons for this self-imposed restriction:

1. Any photo uploaded to a social network grants a license to that network to use the photo as they see fit. Copyright is the lifeblood of a professional content creator, so I want to grant that license on only a representative sample of my work. The rest are hosted on my own server, where I can claim sole copyright — while knowing that anyone can still copy and distribute a photo as they see fit, at least I am not granting them permission to do so.
2. As a content consumer, I know how little interest I have in browsing hundreds of other people’s photos. I respect people’s time by presenting them only a reasonable number of photos; those who wish to explore further may exercise the option of clicking the link to view the full gallery.
3. As a writer, I’ve learned how necessary it can be to say something in as few words as possible. Choosing eight photos out of hundreds to best represent an event is the photographic equivalent of that economy of expression.

I doubt anyone was waiting for these photos to be released or even noticed their absence, but given my past involvement in the planning of KansasFest and the production of Juiced.GS, my photos have a tendency to show up in ads, flyers, videos, and more. I like to think that someone, somewhere, sometime, will take a moment to read some of the two hundred captions and enjoy my perspective on this unique event.

KansasFest is a week over, and all I have is memories.

Memories — and an awesome mug.

https://twitter.com/16kRAM/status/492749522863263744

For the second consecutive year, attendee Michael Sternberg hosted a Structris tournament based on his version of Martin Haye’s original Tetris game. I entered and, after a poor showing in 2013, rebounded in 2014: I had the highest score in the first round (100 points); went up against the reigning champion and broke the world record in the second round (249 points on level 17); and, in the third and final round, defeated the developer himself. It was pretty epic.

To give something back, I’ve created a Let’s Play video of Structris, coinciding with last week’s 25th anniversary of the North American launch of the Nintendo Game Boy, which came with Tetris. Enjoy!

Having returned from KansasFest 2014 just a day ago, I find myself with have far too many emails to write, packages to mail, and naps to take. As such, I can offer no words of my own to express the joy and attending my 17th annual Apple II convention — so I will let others’ words do so for me.

Please enjoy the following Storify, collecting select tweets, Flickr albums, Facebook posts, and more from #A2KFest.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the KansasFest committee released this image:

The blog post had no title (-20 to SEO), no body (-10), no ALT or TITLE tags (-5), and no informative filename (kfest2014.png) or slug (kfest-2014-teaser) — that is to say, no hidden clues.

But that isn’t to say we can’t make some inferences. Today is not the first time the KansasFest committee issued a teaser in advance of announcing the keynote speaker. In 2012, they posted this image to their Web site:

The image made no attempt at being obtuse: gamers quickly recognized it as the logo of Quake, a quintessential first-person shooter from id software, original creators of the Apple IIGS game Wolfenstein 3D. Early id employees included Softdisk alumni John Romero and John Carmack, as well as former KansasFest keynote speaker Lane Roathe. Carmack still has a streak of the retrocomputing enthusiast in him:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/283632618946318336

Given Carmack’s commitments to id and Oculus, it seemed unlikely he was available to speak at an Apple II convention. That left only John Romero — who was confirmed only hours later with an official press release.

So what can we learn from this latest image out of KansasFest? It features an entirely different style from the logos used for KansasFests 2006–2013. Presuming this teaser image is in fact the 2014 logo, and that its departure from tradition is not merely for aesthetic purposes, we should investigate its influences.

Fortunately, the committee has made this part easy. The logo was posted to not only the KansasFest blog, but also various social media sites, including the Softalk Forever group on Facebook. There, KansasFest publicist Peter Neubauer confirmed that this logo was designed in collaboration with committee chair Tony Diaz, who "created a new font using letters captured from original issues."

The debut issue of Softalk.

I’m not a former reader of Softalk, so I read Steve Weyhrich’s history of the publication. Of the names that were associated with the magazine over the years, two stand out. According to Wikipedia, "Softalk along with founder/editor Margot Comstock and founder/publisher Al Tommervik are named as pioneers of the microcomputer industry in the Smithsonian Institution." Of the two, Comstock is an active participant in the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook. She has also collaborated with Mike Maginnis on providing material to the Apple II Scans project.

Perhaps Comstock is too obvious a choice for this year’s keynote speaker — after all, the committee has done an excellent job in recent years of bringing unexpected celebrities out of the woodwork, such as John Romero, Mark Simonsen, David Szetela, and Randy Wigginton. But who else associated with Softalk would fit in the impressive lineup of past speakers?

No matter what, I’ll be at KansasFest 2014. But for an opening act? My money’s on Comstock.

The year has just begun, and already it’s been busy with conventions! Two weeks ago, I flew to Maryland for MAGFest, the Music and Gaming Festival. My full report is on Gamebits, where I mention checking out the dealer room:

Dozens of indie shops were selling used games, original art, posters, figurines, books, dice, and more. I desperately wanted to expunge all my cash on the awesome artwork and knick-knacks, but every time I stopped myself and asked, "What would I do with it?" That question guided me to buy Moviebob's book, Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick by Brick, from the Fangamer table, though absent from the table was Fangamer founder Reid Young, whom I'd interviewed a year earlier. The last day of MAGFest, I picked up some chiptune CDs at 50% off. That's all the swag I went home with.

Today, I attended a convention closer to home. Arisia bills itself as New England’s largest and most diverse science fiction and fantasy convention. This time, I hung out in the dealer room almost exclusively, coming home with dice, hats, buttons, and other assorted knick-knacks.

Geekware everywhere!

To get into either of these marketplaces was not free; registration for all of the convention was required. MAGFest was a reasonable $45 for the entire four-day event, whereas Arisia charged that much to attend just the Saturday of show’s four days. I found Arisia’s prices very discouraging. I’d never attended either show and would’ve gone to MAGFest regardless, but my motivation to attend Arisia draw was not the costume contests or the panels and workshops but solely to support local artists. To charge $45 just for the privilege of looking at the merchandise made the event less accessible to those who have only a passing interest in the hobby.

KansasFest, by contrast, makes its vendor fair open to all. Anyone from the Kansas City area is welcome to come to Rockhurst University on Saturday afternoon to buy, sell, and trade with fellow geeks. It has been this way since my first time attending KansasFest in 1998, and it continues now that I myself am a merchant. Because of this policy, Juiced.GS has a demonstrably larger subscriber base. I appreciate the larger audience and increased opportunities to sell my product, and if I were a vendor at MAGFest or Arisia, I’d be disappointed at how exclusive the event was.

I appreciate that the organizers of these events are likely not meanies with no motivation other than greedily charging admission. Convention centers and hotels have maximum capacities, and especially in the case of Arisia, which had to close registration for Saturday after selling out, it would at best be awkward for the vendors’ space to be so crowded; at worst, it would be against fire code. And with the event being so popular, it’s not like they need to open any part of the show to the public for the vendors to do a brisk business. By contrast, KansasFest, whose attendance is only in the double digits, doesn’t have any of these concerns; and with our hobby so niche, we can’t afford to be exclusive.

And yet, it’s an issue worth juggling. Having done my time on the KansasFest committee, I understand and appreciate the factors that convention organizers must consider. Few such cons are profitable, instead being held for the love of the community. But that’s the very reason why these cons should also serve to embiggen the community by giving them a taste of what it offers. An open vendor space would serve as such outreach while also making it a profitable and attractive proposition for the artists.

The Apple II community in general and KansasFest in particular have not only survived but thrived due to the collaboration and openness of its contributors. The KansasFest vendor fair is one of many things we do right. When and where possible, other cons should look to us as an example of how to make its members feel welcome.

From 2007 through 2012, I covered KansasFest for Computerworld, a magazine and website of which I was an editor. When I left that position in early 2013, I did so on good terms, leaving open the possibility of freelance work. I solicited suggestions from other Apple II users for how I might pitch coverage of this year’s KansasFest in a way that Computerworld hadn’t done before. Eric Shepherd proposed a series of attendee profiles, in the style of my previous coverage of BostonFIG. My editor loved the idea but asked that, instead of photos and writeups, I produce short video interviews.

I’d long wanted to shoot video at KansasFest, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. Andy Molloy helped me vet a list of attendees with unique, discrete roles who would exemplify the Apple II community. Throughout the week of KansasFest, I cornered a dozen people: programmers, historians, artists, gamers, and more.

Computerworld published eight of the videos in the slideshow, "Who goes to an Apple II convention in 2013?", which went live last Friday. This morning, KansasFest’s official YouTube channel published an additional three. That makes eleven — the unpublished 12th video was one I shot of myself, as a proof of concept. No one needs to see that.

My thanks to all who contributed to this project! I hope the below videos serve as an example of the wonderful friends you can make at KansasFest. Click the thumbnails for an introduction!