Saturday, June 28, 2025

From Facebook March 24, 2020

I was born at a time that made my life a transition between the old and the new. The people who came before me went through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean war. The technology of the 1960s was hardly distinguishable from the 1950s. The cars were practically the same. I didn't get a color television until the mid-1970s. High tech was a transistor radio.

In the early to mid-1970's I was very interested in electronics because at the time that was about as high tech as you could get. However, when the most primitive computers imaginable started to emerge around 1975, I became immediately hooked because I could see that this is where the future was headed.

John Coffey

Sunday, June 15, 2025

NES Games Were Written in Assembly

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kFjSxwijItU

@john2001plus
0 seconds ago
I wrote games in Assembly for the SNES, Gameboy Color, Atari ST, and Timex Sinclair 2068.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

10 Year Old Wins Utah Speed Chess Championship

Note the date:

https://chessplayeratlarge.blogspot.com/2009/02/10-year-old-wins-utah-speed-chess.html

The press always gets details wrong and reported this as a ten year old winning the state championship.

When Kayden was 8, I was only scoring about 50% against him.  He looked so small, but was playing very well.  My overall results against him went quickly downhill from there.  However, when he was 12 and almost a master, I won 1 out of 2 against him in a subsequent speed chess championship.

Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Sugar Consumption, Date format

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xHXtGsKq5JU

The International ISO Standard for dates is YYYY-MM-DD.  I have been using this format for at least 15 years.  

In the computer world, this is called "Big Endian", where the largest value numbers come first.  Many computer processors use this format for numbers, although Intel and Intel-compatible processors use "Little Endian", where the least significant part of the number comes first.  "Big Endian" has a small advantage because it is easier to sort records using this format.