Through the Interface

Floppy Friday #14

In today’s episode of Floppy Friday we use a Commodore 128D – with integrated, double-sided floppy drive! – to play some classic arcade games. Many thanks to Daniel from Bern for parting with the C= 128D via an online auction: this was his family’s home computer growing up. It even came with a Seikosha SP-1200VC, which I’m dying to try out. (I grew up with an Epson FX-80, and I just love the raw – sometimes harsh – music of a dot matrix printer.) So why play classic arcade games on an early “personal” (rather than “home”) computer? It... Read more →

COVID Office Occupancy: a Dynamo mega-graph and blog series

I posted, back in May, about the work we’d been doing to explore the possibility of using the Space Analysis package for Dynamo to plan for post-COVID office layouts. Soon after that post our research relating to the pandemic shifted focus towards a longer-term plan of creating a “living lab” that would allow us not only to explore how design decisions might impact viral transmission, but to have these decisions based on data measured from a functioning ventilation system. Expect to hear more about that research in a future post. We handed over the work that had been done... Read more →

Floppy Friday #13

Welcome to Floppy Ferrari Friday! In this week’s episode we look at two classic video game experiences that allow you to drive a Ferrari. The first is one I’ve been meaning to play for some time and mentioned back in Floppy Friday #6: the classic 1985 arcade game Out Run. It was fun to play the Commodore 64 version – and on a classic “breadbin” C64, no less – but I will say I found the conversion to be a little lacklustre. I certainly enjoyed the arcade version more. The second is a much more “serious” experience, which is... Read more →

Looking back to look forwards

Over the weeks since AU, I’ve been heads-down with writing a chapter for a book that’s due to be published in this summer. The book is about innovation in the construction industry, and my chapter will talk about opportunities related to digital twins and generative design. Which means I haven’t had much time to write “serious” posts for this blog, of late. I did want to put pen to paper in this new year about the sheer joy I’ve been getting from recording Floppy Fridays, though. It’s clear there’s been a strong “retro” trend in recent years. I’d probably... Read more →

Floppy Friday #12

In this week’s episode of Floppy Friday we take a look at two games that came on a Game On floppy from April 1991: Turrican II and Pure Seed. I realised afterwards that Turrican II was made available as a demo version on the floppy – and that I’d loaded the “main” program rather than the demo loader, which explained the lack of loading screen, etc. I used a Commodore 1311 joystick – known as the worst joystick ever created, and apparently a poor copy of the classic Atari CX40 – to play the games, and liked it a... Read more →

Realtime collaboration inside the Forge viewer: a hackathon project

Just before the holiday break I had an interesting chat with Elias Cohenca (someone I’ve mentored on and off over the last few years). He was about to participate in his 6th annual hackathon in the Tel Aviv office, and wanted to bounce a few ideas off me regarding technologies. Our Tel Aviv office has held these hackathons – named Bazinga, after Sheldon Cooper’s catchphrase in the Big Bang Theory – since 2015. Elias has used the hackathon to try out some really interesting concepts, over the years, from adding BIM 360 issues into a mixed-reality environment using HoloLens... Read more →

Floppy Friday #11

In this week’s Floppy Friday we take a look at three more games on the Commodore 64: Rick Dangerous 2, North Sea Inferno and Black Panther. I actually recorded this one before the holiday break (which I’m still enjoying with my family up in the mountains), but I have to admit I’m looking forward to being able to record more episodes over the coming weeks. I’ve been researching what I need to do to fix my “breadbin” C64, and I’m cautiously optimistic I’ll be able to coax it back to life. I also have a C128 to pick up... Read more →

Floppy Friday #10

Happy New Year!!! I’m sure everyone’s thankful that 2020 is behind us (what a year that was). Let’s all hope 2021 is going to be at least somewhat better. At the time I recorded this Floppy Friday, I hadn’t connected the dots on the date (i.e. that Friday was due to fall on New Year’s Day). So please do forgive it not being mentioned. What I do mention is Batman from 1986 and 1989 – at the suggestion of Francesco Cappilli – as well as Arkanoid and Spacefighter. Enjoy! Read more →