{"id":3744,"date":"2023-09-14T22:32:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T21:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/?p=3744"},"modified":"2024-12-09T21:36:48","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T20:36:48","slug":"back-to-basic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/14\/back-to-basic\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to BASIC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I fancied doing some BASIC programming yesterday and wrote a prime sieve in PC-BASIC. It can list primes up to about 10,000 at a decent speed but struggles with larger numbers because of memory and data type limitations in BASIC. Here is a screenshot showing the program and its output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Screenshot<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Besides BASIC, other old computer tech has occupied my time lately. I run a VM with Red Hat Linux 4.2, which I first used in 1997, and code in C and C++ inside the VM<\/em>. I also switched from the feature-rich GNOME desktop environment to the rudimentary Fvwm window manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Screenshot<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My explanation for this trend is that I am rediscovering computers as a hobby, now that my new job does not require me to learn about them as an occupational necessity. I can enjoy using old operating systems and programming languages that I could not explore to sufficient depth as I speed-learnt to my present level. Take programming for example, I barely spent time coding in BASIC once I was comfortable with it and instead quickly moved on to Pascal, Clipper[1]<\/sup>, Visual Basic, Java, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose I am in a similar situation with my photography. From lusting for the latest digital cameras, I now take more pleasure from the slow and intentional motions involved in operating old film cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Either it is that, or it is simply nostalgia showing my age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1] Clipper is the first language that I used for serious programming. I did my project for GCE O-Level Computer Studies with Clipper.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fancied doing some BASIC programming yesterday and wrote a prime sieve in PC-BASIC. It can list primes up to about 10,000 at a decent speed but struggles with larger numbers because of memory and data type limitations in BASIC. Here is a screenshot showing the program and its output. Besides BASIC, other old computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1j9q5-Yo","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4114,"url":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/22\/nailed-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":3744,"position":0},"title":"Nailed it!","author":"Eddy Young","date":"22 May 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Those pictures mentioned in my post about playing with artificial light? They were a total loss. I messed up the development. I was not very happy about this costly mistake and needed to know what went wrong. So, I loaded another roll of film into the Nikon FM2 and drove\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"A squirrel eating a nut on a tree branch","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2024-05-21A-0003-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2024-05-21A-0003-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2024-05-21A-0003-150x150.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2024-05-21A-0003-150x150.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2024-05-21A-0003-150x150.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2024-05-21A-0003-150x150.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3284,"url":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/22\/hit-and-miss\/","url_meta":{"origin":3744,"position":1},"title":"Hit and miss","author":"Eddy Young","date":"22 August 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The results of my film development are still hit and miss. Here are samples from yet another roll that was started in 2018 and finished just this month. I set the camera to ISO 400 for the Agfa Vista 200 film. This mistake not only caused the pictures to come\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-21-0002-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-21-0002-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-21-0002-150x150.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-21-0002-150x150.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-21-0002-150x150.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-21-0002-150x150.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3315,"url":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/31\/the-fg-20-must-go\/","url_meta":{"origin":3744,"position":2},"title":"The FG-20 must go","author":"Eddy Young","date":"31 August 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Another week, another series of tests with film. Regardless of their questionable compositions, these pictures are rather good for being shot on expired film. They result from following the development instructions to the letter. Three and a half minutes in the developer chemical at exactly 38\u00b0C, as confirmed by three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-30-0010-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-30-0010-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-30-0010-150x150.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-30-0010-150x150.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4180,"url":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/19\/shirley-wellard-universal-film-cassette\/","url_meta":{"origin":3744,"position":3},"title":"Shirley Wellard Universal film cassette","author":"Eddy Young","date":"19 July 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The Shirley Wellard Universal film cassette was too much attractive vintage photography equipment to pass on. I bought two of them on eBay and successfully used one today with my Nikon FM2. The Shirley Wellard's beautiful design and solid build are not my only reasons for buying them. In fact,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Reloadable film cassette with its box and instructions guide","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3744"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4427,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions\/4427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}