Software development. Tech punditry. Retro gaming.
For many of us, we are entering the holiday season. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, we wish you all the best for the holidays and the New Year.
The Christmas tree has its origins in medieval and pagan traditions going back centuries. Today, the tree is, as the name suggests, associated with Christmas. Here in Australia, it is not …
The Sierpiński triangle is what is known as a fractal – a geometric shape that shows structure at arbitrarily small scale, often with a similar appearance as the scale changes. The Sierpiński triangle is basically an equilateral triangle, subdivided recursively into smaller equilateral triangles, ad infinitum. It is named after the Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński, although the pattern …
The PC Engine was a home video game console developed through a joint venture between Hudson Soft and NEC. Released in Japan in 1987, it was a commercial success, competing favourably with the well-known Nintendo Famicom/NES console of the era. Though technically an 8-bit console (having an 8-bit CPU), it included a 16-bit graphics processor, making it a remarkably …
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 …