The ticalc.org Newsletter
http://www.ticalc.org/
October 1999 - Volume 2, Issue 10
IN THIS ISSUE
Letter from the Editor
Calculator News
Interview with Dan Englender
Top Ten Programs You'll Never See
Miscellany
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Thank you for reading the ticalc.org newsletter! As the new school year gets under way, we always get lots of questions at our help email address and on IRC in all the calculator channels. I encourage you to check out our Help section, located at http://www.ticalc.org/help/, before you ask for further help. The Program of the Month process will start up again, starting with our regular nomination process. In order to nominate programs for the second round, please go to http://www.ticalc.org/community/awards/data/nom091999.html. After a nomination period of one week, the actual voting process will begin, and it will last for an additional week. In two weeks, the winners will be announced. For this month's interview, we have interviewed Dan Englender, President of the TCPA (TI-Calculator Programming Alliance), which has recently celebrated its one-year anniversary by releasing several new programs. More information can be found at http://tcpa.calc.org/.
Eric Sun
CALCULATOR NEWS
This month has been relatively hectic in the world of TI software. The biggest event has been the TCPA anniversary overhaul, and many new programs have been released. Check their website at http://tcpa.calc.org/ for more information. Other notable programs include Freecell for the TI-86, Lotus Turbo Challenge v1.0, and on-calc assemblers for the TI-86 and TI-89. More information can be found at http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/. In other news, Rusty Wagner has released Virtual TI v2.5. This is the undisputed champ of all emulators for Windows, and the new version includes features such as support for the new TI-83+. VTI v2.5 can be found in our archives. Finally, Texas Instruments has announced an SDK that will allow programmers to create programs that will reside in the Flash ROM. More information about this exciting opportunity can be found at http://www.ti.com/calc/docs/faqsdkmain.htm.
INTERVIEW WITH DAN ENGLENDER
Email: dan@calc.org
Web URL: http://tcpa.calc.org/
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Interview Log
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Eric
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How old are you and what level of education do you have?
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Dan
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I'm 16 and a Junior in high school.
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Eric
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What do you plan to do after you graduate?
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Dan
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Go to college and study something in computers or physics...not sure yet.
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Eric
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What calculators do you own?
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Dan
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TI-83, TI-83+, TI-92+.
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Eric
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What do you use your calculator for most?
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Dan
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Testing programs I write...I use it for math every now and again too.
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Eric
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How did you find out about the TI Community, and when did you first visit ticalc.org?
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Dan
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I think I sort of stumbled across a page in Yahoo (TIHQ, which I subsequently became a member of, and is now defunct)... I visited ticalc.org first when it was rather in "ruins" back in 1997 or so...I wasn't very impressed with it at the time, its very nice now however :)
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Eric
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What was the first program you ever wrote?
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Dan
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I think it was one of those silly 'guess the number' games...I eventually added levels, money, and all sorts of weird things to it and it got up to 5k or so (a 5k guessing game...hehe)
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Eric
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How did you learn to program in assembly language?
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Dan
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I used source code (I printed out the entire Turbo Breakout, Breakout, and DuckHunt sources) a lot to figure out what things did. I also got a bit of help from Joe Wingbermuehle figuring out my problems when I was first starting out.
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Eric
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Do you have an idol TI programmer?
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Dan
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I suppose Joe Wingbermuehle, since he's helped me out a bunch...and his programs just rock :)
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Eric
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What projects are you working on now?
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Dan
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I am personally working (it's near complete) on a neat system application for the 83+...it has a hex editor, disassembler, and all sorts of neat stuff. As for the rest of TCPA, we've got lots of nice stuff coming up, kicked off by our recent 1-year anniversary celebration. Our newly released puzzle game, Block Dude (currently for Ion) should be ported to the 82 and 86 soon. Lazer Mayhem 68k is another fun puzzle game which is coming out. Blink for Ion (Lights Out with a facelift) should be coming out in the near future....We've also got Black Hole, Pegs, and Desert Dust, among others. TCPA's website is at http://tcpa.calc.org/. |
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MISCELLANY
There are two versions of the ticalc.org Newsletter, a plain text version and an HTML version. To subscribe, send an email to majordomo@lists.ticalc.org with either "subscribe newsletter" (for plain text) or "subscribe newsletter-html" (for HTML) in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, simply do the same thing except replace "subscribe" with "unsubscribe". You can find all issues of the ticalc.org Newsletter in our Community section under Newsletter. The exact URL is http://www.ticalc.org/community/newsletter/. Any opinions expressed in this newsletter are the opinions of the newsletter editor and/or published authors. By no means are the opinions heretofore expressed to be considered representative of ticalc.org as a whole. Texas Instruments in no way endorses or is affiliated with ticalc.org. Any trademarks are hereby acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.
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