I’ve formatted and posted the first four (of twelve) articles in my VAX Professional series “MACRO Made Easy,” which is an introduction to programming in MACRO-32, the VAX assembly language (and Alpha and Itanium compiler).
I’ll post the rest of the articles over the coming few weeks.
Sometimes, it pays to clean out drawers. I totally forgot I owned these. I’m not even sure where they came from. I think they were an Ebay purchase about 20 years ago that I had forgotten about.
From 1986 through 1994, I wrote thirty-six articles for VAX Professional (later Digital Systems Journal), a technical journal for OpenVMS programmers and managers. My first article was published while I was still a student at Western Kentucky University. It was quite a thrill!
During that eight-year period, I wrote a dozen articles about programming in MACRO-32, the VAX assembly language. At one time, that was my preferred programming language. I still do a little MACRO-32 work, but it hasn’t been my “go to” language for many years.
The last seven articles I wrote were co-authored with Ed Heinrich. We had pitched a book idea about OpenVMS Systems Programming to DEC Press, but for various reasons, the book never happened. The project started as a day-long seminar we presented at DECUS Symposia a couple of times. Once the book fell through, we decided to turn our seminar into a series of Digital Systems Journal articles.
I’ve posted the articles here. Though they were written when the Alpha was new, the ideas presented in them are largely still useful techniques for systems programming under OpenVMS.
Writing OpenVMS Privileged Code
The internet is great for providing things you didn’t know you needed until you find them. For example, this page is The Don Martin Dictionary, an alphabetical listing of all of the sound effects Don Martin used in his MAD illustrations.
Enjoy!
http://madcoversite.com/dmd-alphabetical.html
Archive.org has scans of almost every issue of Twilight Zone, Fangoria, Famous Monsters, and Starlog, among others. The collections are not legal, yet they’ve been on Archive.org for quite a while now without ever getting removed.
Fangoria at Archive.org (347 files)
Famous Monsters of Filmland at Archive.org (221 files)
Twilight Zone magazine at Archive.org (64 files)
Starlog magazine at Archive.org (428 files)
The best SF show you probably didn’t watch is coming to Amazon Prime on June 1. All five seasons of BABYLON 5 will be available for free streaming for Amazon Prime members!
BABYLON 5 was conceived as a “novel for television,” with its story being told over five years. It changed some over those years, but it was the show that introduced the season- and series-long story arcs that are so common now. (BUFFY did it, too, but B5 was first.)
As I huge fan of the original Lost in Space—as a kid and still as an adult—I found this video fascinating. It’s a computer-generated look at one of the soundstages at the 20th Century Fox Studio based on blueprints. The video shows stills from various episodes showing how the set was reused in various episodes. Take a look!
My friend and musical hero Webb Wilder has a new CD, Powerful Stuff!, coming out on Friday, April 27, 2018! It’s a collection of previously-unreleased live and studio recordings from 1985–1993. I’m very excited that several tracks on the album were sourced from my collection of Webb Wilder recordings! For the past six months or so, Webb and I have been discussing what tracks should be included, and it’s fantastic to see that it’s real now. I received my copy of the CD from Webb on Friday. Pick up on it! Signed copies can be ordered from WebbWilder.com.
While I appreciate Prince’s guitar skills, I’ve never considered myself a fan of his music. There are a handful of songs I know and like, and one of those is “Kiss.” However, my favorite version of that song is a cover version by The Art of Noise that features Tom Jones doing the vocals. Kudos to Prince for writing it, but I much prefer this version. I never get tired of it, and I enjoy watching Tom in the video. He looks like he’s having a blast.
On March 16, 1968, the group known as Alice Cooper performed under that name for the very first time.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary, original AC bassist Dennis Dunaway has posted a “day by day” blog about the Alice Cooper reunion shows in the UK in November 2017. It’s a great read!