Librarian, library technologist and part-time digital preservationist. Somewhat interested in Telidon art and old computers.

On Mastodon since April 2022. Older posts are over at jdd (npub1gtn…6net)

he/him/they/them

Work: https://www.durno.ca
Not Work: https://jdd.freeshell.org

Last Notes

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Sign me up for the floppy edition!

2025-08-11 01:50:03 UTC

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Chebucto Community Net still offers dialup to the good people of Halifax
https://chebucto.ns.ca/
I see they recently updated their site; I kind of liked the old one though - check out the software download area …
https://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Services/PDA/PDA.shtml

2025-07-17 23:35:56 UTC

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Likewise! Yeah, there aren't a lot of folks working in this space 🙂
Cool project! Sounds doable - I haven't worked with a Sceptre terminal specifically but other terminals I've used just did standard RS232 serial. By "call in" do you mean via a modem?
For any unfortunate folks without access to NAPLPS hardware I've found Microstar's PP3 client works pretty well.
https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/items/1cf4340d-88b9-4dd8-a99b-871634dd8294

2025-07-17 19:45:55 UTC

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Telidon/NAPLPS has been a focus of my research for the past 10 years or so. I've written a simple program, heavily dependent on Microstar's MVDI NAPLPS toolkit, for sequencing and displaying NAPLPS graphics, that runs in DOSBox. (Haven't made it publicly available yet, but am willing to share). More info on my various Telidon related projects is scattered about https://www.durno.ca/index.php

2025-07-10 00:25:36 UTC

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I stopped by back in the late 90s I think. Here’s a photo I took of Mr. Chartrand with a squirrel on his head
https://media.cosocial.ca/media_attachments/files/114/826/075/134/932/636/original/423f19b9ce3e1888.jpeg

2025-07-03 18:29:06 UTC

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Dang, we have to wait 11,000 years for this?

2025-07-03 01:13:53 UTC

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I'm sorry, there is no way that site was coded in FrontPage 98. It is still a work of genius however

2025-04-24 18:52:26 UTC

Our web exhibition of Telidon art is now live! In the works since 2018 ...
https://www.remembertomorrow.ca/

2025-03-31 17:35:09 UTC

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The contents of an old storage room in Engineering recently came our way, which included three NeXT cubes and associated monitors. Engineering was the distributor for NeXT stuff on campus back in the day, and they still had 3 of them. Added to the Cube we already had in our collection (courtesy Fine Arts) we now have a surfeit of Cubes, a problem I never thought I'd have ...

2025-03-31 17:28:36 UTC

Really have to address the growing heap of donations to the Historic Computing Lab one of these days
https://media.cosocial.ca/media_attachments/files/114/258/205/908/781/825/original/83ac9a81b28a129d.jpg

2025-03-31 00:40:51 UTC

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His "careware "HTML editor Arachnophilia helped me learn how to do web stuff back in the 90s. I still display his "Internet Free Zone" banner on one of my sites as a tip of the hat to him.
https://arachnoid.com/freezone/

2025-03-30 21:57:16 UTC

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He was tired of customers constantly asking questions like “I’m looking for a DVD … no, I don’t remember the title or what it was about, but I remember its cover was sort of orange … do you have it?”