I had read the first edition of this book in 2015-ish. That version was very intriguing, but it exclusively used Python version 2 for all examples. This was a time when the language was known to be in transition to version 3, although many were doing so somewhat cautiously, if at all. The 2nd edition of this book covers the same material with updates that include usage of Python 3 and the appropriate counterpart libraries.

Originally published in the Commodore Hacking (C=Hacking) electronic magazine #14, November 1996. This post has been reprinted in Commodore Free magazine and other e-magazines. Jim Butterfield passed away on June 29th, 2007 after a long battle with cancer. I grieve with the family and the legions of techies who looked upon Jim as a mentor via his articles and ongoing contact with the Commodore community. Rest in peace, Mr. Butterfield.

Originally posted 5-21-2004. In the early days of 8-bit computing, a programmer’s most often-used tool was the assembler. Due to memory constraints, many of the early 8-bit machines could not run a full assembler. At best, one could hope for some sort of machine-language monitor that would include a mini-assembler and a disassembler. That was … until Don French came along and implemented a symbolic assembler on the unexpanded VIC-20.

This post was originally published in 1999. Being a bit of a video-game and classic computer enthusiast, I recently purchased the electronic book Halcyon Days - Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers. Note: In 2002, this book was made available to read freely here: https://www.dadgum.com/halcyon The author of the book, James Hague, is himself a game developer. Since I noticed that his complete bio was missing from the text, I asked if he’d permit me to interview him.

The original intent of this post was to focus Python-related materials to another of my sites. I have decided to just merge it into the main jimlawless.net site. Please see this link for posts about Python programming: https://jimlawless.net/blog/tags/python/

The Cycling Tour is the eighth episode of the third season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Cycling Tour is unusual when compared against other episodes of the show as the entire show is dedicated to one long skit. Michael Palin portrays the central character of the show: a bicycle tourist named Mr. Pither. Pither goes about his way on his bicycle repeatedly crashing and damaging his food supplies. As he talks to people he meets along the tour, he informs them that he is on a cycling tour of North Cornwall.

Portions of this post were previously published on Sun, 26 Jun 2011. I read the book Grey Hat Python : Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers by Justin Seitz. The book introduced the Python ctypes library to me. The ctypes library, allows a Python program to access to lower-level features of the operating environment normally reserved for C programmers. As an early experiment, I rewrote in Python the bulk of the command-line MP3 player I had originally written in C.

When I was a kid … ten or eleven years old … I happened upon a local AM radio talk show called Beatles Trivia. It aired Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m. I was a burgeoning Beatles fan, having “discovered” them in the mid-70’s. The show began as a 5-minute segment during the 7:00 p.m. to midnight “Hall of Fame Show” on Omaha’s WOW AM radio (590 on the AM dial.) By the time I happened upon it, the show ran for about an hour.

I had discovered the International Obfuscated C Coding Contest (IOCCC) some time in the late 1980’s in the pages of a printed technical magazine. At the time, my C skills were still in their larval stage, but I was very intrigued by the handful of entries that had been presented. In later years, I tried my hand at other obfuscated coding contests, each time usually on a whim. I managed to irritate a few people with an entry in an obfuscated Ruby coding contest and I managed to see print in The Perl Journal for one of that publication’s obfuscated Perl coding contests.

I like to use the PNG format for Mac screen-captures to ensure that I don’t lose any clarity in the source images. I often convert these images to JPEG format for inclusion in email or posts. I got tired of running the conversions by hand. tojpeg.rb is a Ruby script for OS/X and MacOS that uses the sips utility to convert the PNG files in ~/Desktop to JPEG counterparts. The PNG files are left intact.