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It was thirty years ago today... (and a bit more): My first ever public speech!

I came across a folder with the most unexpected treasure trove: The text for my first ever public speech! (and some related materials) In 1985, being nine years old, I went to the IDESE school, to learn Logo. I found my diploma over ten years ago and blogged about it in this same space. Of course, I don’t expect any of you to remember what I wrote twelve years ago about a (then) twenty years old piece of paper!

I add to this very old stuff about Gunnar the four pages describing my game, Evitamono (“Avoid the monkey”, approximately). I still remember the game quite vividly, including traumatic issues which were quite common back then; I wrote that «the sprites were accidentally deleted twice and the game once». I remember several of my peers telling about such experiences. Well, that is good if you account for the second system syndrome!

I also found the amazing course material for how to program sound and graphics in the C64 BASIC. That was a course taken by ten year old kids. Kids that understood that you had to write [255,129,165,244,219,165,0,102] (see pages 3-5) into a memory location starting at 53248 to redefine a character so it looked as the graphic element you wanted. Of course, it was done with a set of POKEs, as everything in C64. Or that you could program sound by setting the seven SID registers for each of the three voices containing low frequency, high frequency, low pulse, high pulse, wave control, wave length, wave amplitude in memory locations 54272 through 54292… And so on and on and on…

And as a proof that I did take the course:

…I don’t think I could make most of my current BSc students make sense out of what is in the manual. But, being a kid in the 1980s, that was the only way to get a computer to do what you wanted. Yay for primitivity! :-D

Attachments

Coursee material for sound and graphics programming in C64 BASIC (16195 KB)

Proof that I was there! (4972 KB)

Speech for “Evitamono” (1325 KB)

Comments

Marcelo Gutierrez 2017-10-28 10:44:30

Hey yo tenia 1 año

Hola Gunnarcito,

el 26 de julio de 1985 yo estaba cumpliendo 1 año.

Saludos desde .ni


vicm3 2017-09-07 12:16:51

Ahhh the old days

I remember being on a Galileo Center and a really bad teacher that can’t bear a very restless an curious boy that I was, so never finished the course.

Also took one at Sigma the sellers of Commodore at that time… I had a better if not more curious teacher there and that combined that the other students where all adults help to be there and be a better experience…

At that time I was in the zone of Insurgentes… five years or so latter where the televised contests at CFE museum… really weird that at that time we don’t cross paths.

I need to digitize my documents too.

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