Attending were Charlie and Kathleen Boas, Paul Norrod, George and Carol Wyche, and visitor Lachlan Orr.
Visitor Lachlan Orr is a software programmer living in Leander. His background includes working with teams creating games. He brought his Amiga 2000 and a Commodore 1942 CRT. He setup on the table closes to Burnet Rd.
George... however, was late and still had to drive home to get Carol, the promised Amiga Future mags, etc. AND as a result forgot to bring his voltmeter. Its a wonder he remembered a camera.
During conversation Paul mentioned that Marilyn's next book is heading into the proof reading stage. He also gave George an English version of the camera manual that Mark found Mark, it seems, is off in northern India on behalf of Oceaneering just now, so he missed out. We're hoping for a picture or 2 when he returns.
Some of the conversation dealt with coordinate systems, Quartenions for moving around in geometric 3D. Paul talked about some of the many coordinates changes involved with Oceaneering's ROV (remote operated vehicle). Lochlan mentioned the difficulties in dealing with the game "Quake"'s coordinates quickly for real time play.
George talked about his "Pi day" program to find "KB" in the first 100000 binary bits of Pi. That guy could talk for 30 minutes about just that one topic... He mentioned former UT math professor, Dr. Wall, had suggested (strongly) that problems involving "infinity" are rather better attacked with notions of "unbounded numbers". Boldly venturing that there are more irrational numbers than there are rational numbers, George then asked, "How many irrational numbers do we know significantly anything about?" Only Lachlan ventured an answer, "About a dozen." Mr. Orr is sharp!
Paul suggested that George might like the book, "The Number Pi" which is far ranging in talk about irrational numbers.
Kathleen asked George if he'd heard the latest Ebola joke? He blinked a couple times and she shook her head slightly, looked down and said, "You won't get it..."
Chris Boas' "twitch" account is plotSpackle. Rather regularly he ingages the public for several hours why he plays video games. As he plays he will pause long enough to contribute to repartee of online conversation.
After supper, drink, and yakking, the fellows surrounded Lachlan's disfunctional Amiga 2000. It is full of cards and has a suspicious monitor.
Just staring at the revealed guts started jogging Paul's recollections of Amigas of the past. Paul had many excellent suggestions, all of which require Lachlan to put in some investigative labor with disassembly required!
Time ran out quickly, but Lachlan has a list of simple, yet tedious to answer, questions before his next visit. As a parting gift George gave Lachlan several old issues of Amiga Future. He was unfamiliar with the magazine.
