+++ Saturday 19 July 2025 +++

OCC25 Wrap up
=============

Desktop system
--------------
The system for the 2025 edition of the Old Computer Challenge, 
an old Power Mac G4, is kind of a mini-tower system under the
desk, and a display, keyboard, and mouse on the desk.

The last time I worked on this desk was around 2022, when I was 
still working, until my retirement --only the university system 
was a lot more capable. 

I enjoy working on the Power Mac, I love the old 15 inch Graphite
Apple Studio Display, and using a real keyboard.

The downside is that my desk is on the attic, above the garage,
working on the Power Mac leaves my wife alone in the living room,
and therefor I didn't spend that much time at the Power Mac.

iTunes
------
In the past I had loaded my music collection on this system, 
and the old iTunes version is nice to use.
It was connected to an old audio-system, but over time that
broke down, so now the sound comes from a cheap, tiny 
computer speaker set. Still, Eric Clapton while Emacsing
is great.

Plans and reality
-----------------
I have not used all the software that I had installed for the
challenge. 

I haven't started Flightgear, because I didn't spend that
much time at the desk. The facts that it is extremely slow on
this system, and that Flightgear with just a keyboard and a
mouse is not a great experience don't do much good to the
motivation either.

Also I had installed `Macintosh Common Lisp Version 5.2', but 
haven't touched it. This looks like a nice wintertime project.

The only system where I run the Palm Desktop is this Power Mac
and I started the Challenge with the idea to write at least
one phlog post on it. This didn't happen. 

I did install the Palm TX WPA2 Enterprise Security Upgrade,
however most of the times connecting to the local wireless
network fails.  So this wasn't a great success.

I did install a Guppy on my TX though! 
This is a toy-application, that shows a guppy swimming on the
display. See:
gopher://box.matto.nl/I/i/palm-guppy.png

To make this screenshot, I also installed a screenshot
application on the TX, both downloaded from palmdb.net and
installed with the Palm Desktop suite.

Mouse orientated
----------------
I have been using tiling window manager for a very long time,
mostly Ratpoison, on both private as well as on work
laptops. About eight or nine weeks ago I switched to EXWM,
the Emacs Window Manager. I used these tiling window managers
all with the aim to minimize the use of the mouse.

Using OS X 10.3.9 on the Power Mac is quite the opposite. 

After playing with it for a week, my conclusion is that I
still feel most at home at keyboard oriented systems :)

Change of perspective
---------------------
As always, doing the Challenge brings new perspectives.

For one, the Challenge resulted in a new phlog-workflow.

The Emacs on the Power Mac is too old for my normal workflow to 
create and publish phlogs. In Elisp I created an alternative
method. It results in a simplified workflow, and also without
dependency on Denote. I have decided to keep this new workflow, 
and add some extra functionality.

To make it a more fun and learning experience, I wrote this
Elisp code using the old 20.3.1 version of GNU Emacs. This
too brought some new perspective and again it was a learning
experience.

For future challenges I will prefer a system that I can use
in the living room, that is another lesson learned.

To wrap it all up: I spend not as much time as usual using the 
OCC-system and chatting in the #oldcomputerchallenge IRC-channel, 
but still it was a fun and learning experience!


Last edited: $Date: 2025/07/19 20:13:37 $