6502Lane is back. (You’re reading this, aren’t you?)
Exciting news, right? Probably it has lost a bit of its edge though, considering I take it offline every two or three months in a storm of tears and drama, and then bring it back again, often just hours later. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to stand it up ever again after the most recent decommissioning: the domain was set to expire after the end of the current registration and I felt I was done.
It had become clear the vintage computing book I was attempting to write wasn’t going anywhere and my entropy in community involvement was making it a more and more attractive prospect to clean out my storage space of Apple II and /// computers and documentation that hadn’t been touched in more than a decade.
The ever-increasing content theft and personal attacks both within the vintage computing hobby and beyond combined with my frustration at the crude nature of today’s blogging tools and a general waning of personal interest in the Apple II platform to dull my passion. I was happy to move on.
Former readers of this blog, tired of my cry-wolf, rage-quit-and-return antics, agreed and stayed away in droves.
And then a post appeared in the “Apple /// Enthusiasts” group on Facebook. Another user had come to a similar point in his life and offered up his extensive collection, hoping it would go to someone who would cherish and enjoy it, as he just didn’t have time any more and the focus of his priorities had shifted away from his former interest. I (and I’m sure about a dozen other collectors, hobbyists and recyclers) immediately contacted him and while I didn’t score the bulk of his holdings (most of which ended up on eBay a short while later for a king’s ransom), I did land a couple of interesting items that I’ll document here at some point.
As the bartering and electronic payments were flying back and forth between us at a furious pace, my RSS reader gently nudged me, reminding me that it was time to sign up for the impending Retrochallenge 2014 Winter Warm Up, or at least make a note of it for an upcoming episode of Open Apple.
Two years ago, I’d entered 2012WW with the intention of doing something – anything – with my Apple ///, but when you reach your 40s, time really begins to slip quickly past and before I knew it, I had less than a week left in the 30-day retro computing competition. Disappointed, I withdrew but promised myself to return someday. And that day, I felt, was here so I sent off an email to the organizer, announcing my entry and all was happy.
But there was a snag. You see, entry into the Retrochallenge requires an active blog, so the community can follow your progress and everyone can join in the fun. To make an already overlong story slightly less so, 6502Lane is back, apple2scans.net is back (though without most of the previous content … more on that later) and I’m going to be doing something with my Apple /// for the 2014WW. I’m thinking music and video — something you couldn’t easily do on an Apple II, much like Andy Hertzfeld’s inspiration for the Running Horses demo so many years ago.
There’s more to this sordid tale, but I’m out of practice and winded, so I’ll post more later.