Title: Pile of Projects
Date: 20190515
Tags: me hardware software
========================================

Michael W. Lucas said on Mastodon[0]:

>  The world belongs to people who finish things.

To which my thought was, "Well, I'm screwed."

I honestly can't think of any project I've completed in recent times.  Now if I
was judged by the number of projects started, I'd be all set.  I love to learn
new things and usually lose interest once the ratio of new things learned to
level of effort crosses some threshold.  Progress might trickle on for a while,
though, but I don't think I ever reach "done".

I have a couple of piles of projects.  I love cars so I have a pile of those in
various conditions.  I like computers so I have a pile of system administration
tasks, porting to do, programs to write, and languages and tools to learn.  I've
more recently been on a retro-computing and electronics kick.  I have an Altair
8800 clone[1] (covered in my blog), an RC2014[2] I assembled, and other various
old consoles and systems.

The most recent toy is a Mailstation[3].  Sort of a cheap TRS-80 Model 100 or
Amstrad NC100 (both of which I'd also like to add to the pile).  JCS has been
talking about his progress working with one which piqued my interest.  Once he
got his connecting to a BBS[4] I finally caved and added one to the pile.  It
was $5 on eBay, so not exactly the most expensive device I'll bury behind future
projects.  I'd like to port a Forth interpreter to it and use it with Gopher.
We'll see how far I get...

Planning to keep a bit of a running log of what occupies my focus.  Maybe it'll
help direct it, or at least be something interesting to look back on.


[0] https://bsd.network/web/statuses/102045815751523233#
[1] http://altairclone.com
[2] https://rc2014.co.uk/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidco_MailStation
[4] https://jcs.org/2019/05/03/mailstation