Imran Nazar ~ عمران نزر
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imrannazar.com
Imran Nazar ~ عمران نزر
@imrannazar.com
Front-end #typescript developer, author of RFC 7168 (HTCPCP for teapots); occasional plumber, more than occasional #c64 #retrocomputing enthusiast, terrible at #piano.

Header photo is a verdant scene looking over the landscape near Buxton, England.
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 20: Isaac Asimov/Robert Silverberg, Nightfall

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 30, 2024 at 2:22 AM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 19: Andy Weir, The Martian

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 29, 2024 at 1:56 AM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 18: Greg Egan, Permutation City

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 28, 2024 at 1:28 AM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 17: Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 27, 2024 at 1:21 AM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 16: Isaac Asimov, In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 25, 2024 at 4:41 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 15: Arthur C Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

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#Books
#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 24, 2024 at 5:13 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 14: Charles Calvert, Teach Yourself Windows 95 Programming in 21 Days

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#Books
#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 23, 2024 at 1:52 AM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 13: Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
#GNUTerryPratchett
December 22, 2024 at 1:44 AM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 12: Carl Sagan, Contact

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 20, 2024 at 9:52 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 11: Ed Tittel, HTML 4 For Dummies

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#Books
#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 19, 2024 at 9:56 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 10: Raymond E Feist, Magician

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 18, 2024 at 8:47 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 9: Iain M Banks, Excession

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 17, 2024 at 9:07 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 8: JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

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#Books
#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
#LotR
December 16, 2024 at 9:27 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 7: Larry Niven, Ringworld

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#Books
#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 15, 2024 at 9:29 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 6: Isaac Asimov, Foundation

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 14, 2024 at 9:05 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 5: David Eddings, Domes of Fire

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 13, 2024 at 10:08 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 4: Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 12, 2024 at 9:01 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 3: JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit

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#BookChallenge
#20DayBookChallenge
December 11, 2024 at 10:31 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 2: MS-DOS 5 User's Guide and Reference

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#20DayBookChallenge
December 10, 2024 at 9:55 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. (Cheating a little, as I did this on Mastodon already)

Day 1: A Wrinkle in Time

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December 9, 2024 at 6:15 PM
If anyone ever asks you "Why was the C64's disk drive so slow?", now you'll have an answer. A full list of sources for this tale is in the alt text; do drop me a note if you have any questions about the (even) finer technical details. Merry Christmas. 100/100
December 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM
If we count up the time taken by the instructions in the relevant section of this disassembly, we find it takes at least 19μs to read in a single bit from the serial bus; with the surrounding code, it can be more like 500μs to read a full byte, before the rest of the OS even sees it. 89/
December 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM
Fortunately, this problem was found before the hardware was finalised, so there was time for a hack: every eight lines, the VIC signals to the CPU that it's taking over the memory bus, and the CPU isn't allowed to do any work for 40 cycles. 84/
December 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM
So that's what they did: build a 12-bit cache for the screen and colour RAM values onto the VIC-II silicon, and push everything else around to compensate. The video chip uses this cached copy of the screen to index the character generator ROM and work out which shapes to draw. 82/
December 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM
The VIC has 16 colours: every unique combination can be expressed in four bits. Colour RAM on the VIC-20 isn't the normal eight-bit memory of the rest of the machine, it's four-bit RAM, and the VIC chip itself has a combined 12-bit data bus to read from both types of memory at once. 76/
December 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM