Software development. Tech punditry. Retro gaming.
If you’ve been wondering why Curmi the Blog has been so quiet of late, the staff at curmi.com have been hard at work over the last few months updating all their apps to work with the latest version of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS and macOS.
Apple released iOS 26, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26 and macOS 26 (Tahoe) on …
The Taito Egret II was an arcade cabinet that first appeared in Japanese video game arcades in the 1990s. It’s a cabinet style affectionately known as a “candy cab”, most likely because of the bright, often neon, colours associated with the cabinets. What made the Egret II stand out was the fact the monitor inside could be easily rotated for …
The Taito Egret II was an arcade cabinet that first appeared in Japanese video game arcades in the 1990s. It’s a cabinet style affectionately known as a “candy cab”, most likely because of the bright, often neon, colours associated with the cabinets. What made the Egret II stand out was the fact the monitor inside could be easily rotated for …
In a previous article we took a look at menu bars in iPadOS and macOS 26. The new operating systems bring some big changes – of particular interest here is menu bars for the first time on the iPad. We outlined new features and differences between the two systems, and some of the issues apps may encounter when using menu …
The next version of iPadOS and macOS is version 26 – based on the year 2026, though due toward the end of 2025. The updates (including iOS and tvOS) bring many changes already discussed on other websites. Briefly discussed by others is the inclusion of menu bars in iPadOS for the first time, though there are also changes to …
In 1990, the Intelligent Controller Cyber Stick was introduced to the world – an analog/digital controller for the Sharp Corporation X68000 series of computers. Considered by many as the ultimate analog controller, it was compatible with a number of Japanese computers and consoles of the era: X68000, PC98 series, FM Towns, SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis and the PC Engine (using an …
The World Expo has run in some form or another for the last century or more. The modern World Expo occurs every 5 years, and in 2025 it is being held in Osaka Japan. I was fortunate enough to be in Japan during the expo, and had two days to look around and write this brief account on some …
We have a new Mac service out for free download. But before we get to that, let’s talk a little about Services on the Mac.
Newcomers to the Mac may not be aware of Services – a powerful and extremely useful feature of macOS.
Services allow you to use features of other apps without opening that app, or in …
Early arcade games used CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes – think old TVs before flat screens). Colour CRTs were quite expensive, so early games used black-and-white screens. It was also expensive to manufacture chips and circuits that output colour, so this was another way to save money.
This use of black-and-white CRTs is why, if you ever saw the original …
Ed Riley, known as winkdot on the AtariAge forums, was a homebrew developer for the Atari 2600. Over the years he produced a wide range of fun games that he released for free to the Atari community.
Sadly, Ed Riley passed away in 2019. A great loss to the Atari community and the world.
Forum member Brian Matherne (Arenafoot…
The Atari 2600 (originally called the Atari VCS) is a video game system that launched in the US in 1977; one of the oldest home video game systems, and certainly one of the most well known and fondly remembered. In fact, the Atari 2600 was re-released by Atari in 2023 as the Atari 2600+, a system that can take …
At some point in high school students are taught about factorials. A fairly simple concept, the factorial of a non-negative whole number is written as n! and defined as the product (that means you multiply the numbers) of all the positive whole numbers less than or equal to that number. So 5! = 5 ⨉ 4 ⨉ 3 ⨉…