2013 was somewhat challenging for me, but I have great hope and plans for 2014.  It’s only February and I’ve already spent some time at the ICHEG consulting for them on one of their projects — a validation of my electronic game history and preservation work, and a huge confidence booster!  I can’t speak highly enough of them, but I will try to do them justice in a future post.

Where can stalkers find me this year?  I’ll do my best to be at both NVScene 2014 in San Jose, CA the last week of March, and I’ll do my best to be at @party 2014 in Cambridge, MA in June.  Look for the grossly overweight 6’2″ scener wearing a black T-shirt with a huge yellow Hornet target on his back.

Preservation plans this year include writing a DOS-based search-as-you-type interface for a curated collection I am involved in.  Not impressive?  The DOS front-end has to run on any system with a hard drive — let’s see YOU implement a realtime search-as-you-type interface on an 8088 CPU in 512K of RAM with a hard drive that can do about 6 seeks a second.  I already have an idea on how I can pull it off, and if I can, it will be a huge win for enthusiasts and exhibitors with a vested interest in this material.

This year is the 10th anniversary of 8088 Corruption, which hasn’t been lost on me.  Expect a future post covering 8088 Corruption in some more detail with an encoder or two leaked.  Also:  I’m working on the sequel.  What could a sequel possibly be, since the original is a one-trick pony?  Well, how about video in graphics mode, which I originally said was impossible?  I think I can do it, still a on a 5MHz 8088 CPU, still a CGA card, still in color (although the initial demonstration might be in grayscale while I work out the kinks).  Actually, I’m already doing it — in my head.  It’s designed and tested already; I just need to convert what’s in my brain to source code.

Hobbies should always be secondary to things that really matter.  Good things are happening with my family as well:  My sons are improving at school (and in life in general), and life with my wonderful wife continues to improve.

Things are really looking up this year.  It’s about goddamn time, too.