This is a WordPerfect Post

One day this summer I had, via a random internet post, nostalgia for something I never used: WordPerfect for DOS.

I started WordPerfect with version 6.0a (or something similar), on Windows 95. My parents had WordPerfect, but the site of that blue screen with just a blinking cursor scared me off.

There was a printout of the different key commands that sat onmtop of our keyboard, reminding me of this program made of, no doubt, pure dark magic.

And yet here we are.

I looked up how to start FreeDOS, which is where this story really started. It was the 20th for FreeDOS and I thought it would be fun to run it under qemu.

So, while on vacation watching the summer Olympics, I started following tutorials and learning how to run anything, much less FreeDOS under qemu.

(I have tried and failed many times to get virtual box running on Fedora for my Windows 2000 needs…)

And once it was up and running, then came the next question: now wat?

The answer seemed to be, for some reason: WordPerfect. So, more tutorials, more tweaks and there it was, that blue screen from my youth that I dreaded so.

And now, it is sorta calming, sorta quaint. Still very blue. Ok, so I figured out how to change that, and it is now an orange, which I do like better.

I should not have been surprised at the features in WordPerfect for DOS, but I was. It was the standard at the time. I had not realized the blue screen was the writing mode, it is the ‘Text View’ where you input, and there is in fact a graphical view that shows the actual page layout.

That separation of writing and layout was ahead of its time, I think.

So, am I going to follow Martin and Walton in the path of only writing in obscure ancient word processors? No… Just another tool, another thing to have to play with, to feed the distracted mind to get the fingers dancing from time to time.

Running WP under FreeDOS has one quirk for sure: you can’t easily transfer files from the virtual machine to the main computer. For that, I made a quick bash script which mounts the image, copies the fires to the main machine, and unmounts. Not sophisticated, but functional.

From there, the wpd files can be opened into LibreOffice, or I can, as I did with this, simply save them as txt files.

(Fun fact, WordPerfect spell check did not recognize “internet” as a word, and Firefox did not know “WordPerfect”)

The Macbook of Theseus

My computer died recently. Was on vacation and it stopped booting up. Something about it, the timing perhaps, made me think it was the bad death.

But, I still hoped. I hoped it was the 3rd party charger I had with me, so waited until I got home to use the original.

Then I made an appointment with Apple, hoping a simple reset of some sort could help. And indeed there was about two minutes where my machine was connected the service computer that it looked like we would be able to flash and reinstall the firmware.

Alas, it was not meant to be, it threw up errors.

It was the bad death, the motherboard would need to be replaced, and because of the way this Macbook is made, it would take my harddrive with it.

It is one thing to have a back up strategy, and another to have to exercise that strategy.

My important files are kept on a local Nextcloud, synced with multiple devices. I keep a back up of my writing specifically on my Dropbox.

I have a Time Machine, but it had been giving me issues, issues which were a perpetual # 3 on the todo list. The last backup I had was January 2024.

I keep a lot of my nerdy programming projects on a Pi Zero I have set up just to be a git server and have started moving more to my online repository (https://code.jacobhaddon.com)

So. I was fairly confident I was ok. Fairly. Mostly. I was an anxious mess. Sigh.

It was only made worse when I got my computer back and discovered the January backup was corrupt, and no data could be retrieved. I had a June 2023 back up, it worked fine, and filled in some of the concern in my heart.

You see everything important was already on Nextcloud and Dropbox… I hoped. Because without the backup I couldn’t be sure, and that being sure part is what I needed as a part of the backup plan.

A few things were lost, things I can remake or download easily.

And the computer itself? The following were replaced:

  • Logic board (which includes HDD and RAM)
  • Touch ID board
  • I/O Board x2

Which means I think the only thing in there original is the battery… which I kinda wish had been replaced as well.

I didn’t lose anything other than some sleep, but I am not happy with the way things went with this effort. So right now I am still planning on how I’m going to make a better backup plan. My previous confidence seems was partially based on the idea I could rip the machine open and get to the hard drive if push came to shove.

Which is no longer the case.

Check your backups. Keep your important things in multiple places. Print, publish, push to keep things safe.

Be safe out there.

A Photographic Recovery

Way back in 2006 I had the chance to go to Death Valley with a friend. He brought his nice film camera and I borrowed a digital camera that, while I had used before, was not that familiar with.

I committed one of the cardinal sins of photography. I did not look at any of my settings before I started shooting.

The photos were of lower resolution than the camera was capable of, and, even worse, had a time stamp across the bottom corner. Here is one of the shots.

A Photographic Stick in the Sand, 2006, original res with timestamp version
A Photographic Stick in the Sand, 2006, original res with timestamp version

These files have sat for (checks calendar) let’s just say a long time on my computer. I had not the heart to delete them, but they were still a disappointment.

You see. Death Valley is beautiful. If you ever get the chance, go. Even if it is hot (bring water!) It is worth it. And yes, the experience was still with me, but I had still wanted to have some nice photos to go along with it.

Well. Here we are in 2023. I had recently purchased Photomator for the Mac. (There is another post here about me searching for a solution for my photos, but later) I’d used it on my phone for a few years, and decided to give it a go due to how great Pixelmator Pro was.

As I was playing around with the app, the tools and the interface I found myself back in 2006 with these photos. So, starting with the repair tool, I gave it a shot. And was amazed.

  • Repair removed the timestamp from a good number of images without too much compromise.
  • Super resolution upscaled the image from 1280 X 960 to 3840 x 2880
  • The ML Tools and some color adjustments corrected the older camera’s issues

And they look great, take a look at the same picture.

A Photographic Stick in the Sand, edited 2023, higher res and color corrected
A Photographic Stick in the Sand, edited 2023, higher res and color corrected

Are they as good as they could have been had I actually paid attention to the settings on the camera? No1. Are they good enough that I am now happy with them and am going to post them to my Flickr 15 years later? Absolutely.

I know these tools aren’t new, especially for you Photoshop experts. Which, I am not. It is more the ease and the integration with the rest of my workflow that brought these to my fingers (without a subscription cost).

And perhaps a willingness to do alterations to my photos I had not previously considered. (Afraid of, perhaps, crossing the line from “edited” to “modified”)

There is a happy epilogue to this, as I was able to get to Death Valley this year with my nice camera and I was very careful with settings. (I did forget my wide angle lens, however. Maybe next time…)

Black and White picture of Badwater, Death Valley, 2023, scaled to 50% to reduce size
Black and White picture of Badwater, Death Valley, 2023, scaled to 50% to reduce size
  1. Technically the camera had a 5 MP sensor with a RAW resolution of 2560 x 1920. BUT, I believe the natural output would have been better than an upscaled one. Also these photos were JPG, as I had not yet taken the leap to RAW. ↩︎