
Chuck Moore (Inventor of the language FORTH)'s blog - plinkplonk
http://colorforth.com/blog.htm
======
heyadayo
The first post is actually heavily edited from its original, last night. He
cut out about 2 paragraphs where he talked about the "3 whiskeys" hey drank,
as well as a problem that he has that the internet might be able to help with.
(No specifics)

I'm impressed that he basically kept the same spirit of the post though
instead of just deleting the whole thing. I wonder what prompted the original
post though.

~~~
plinkplonk
"he cut out about 2 paragraphs where he talked about the "3 whiskeys" he
drank"

It was there an hour ago, when I submitted this, as were a few sentences about
how hard it was to hit the right keys on the keyboard with "3 whiskeys" inside
him. Coupled with the note about attempting to raise some money and failing to
led my comment about it being poignant.

Maybe he just woke up sober and didn't like what he'd typed when he was a
little intoxicated.:-)

It was fine writing. Too bad he felt the need to delete it. (but
understandable, blogging while (tending to) drunk might be too ...interesting
)

~~~
kragen
Now that I see he was OK the next day, I don't feel bad for laughing so hard
at it. Maybe he worries that it would cause people to think badly of him, but
in my case, anyway, it just reveals a more human, vulnerable side, which
doesn't diminish my respect for his intellect in the least. It said:

Hi. I'm at the cabin. Have had 3 whiskeys. It's been a hard day. And it's
really hard to type.

I talked to mortgage consultant Craig today, about raising money on my Incline
Village property. No joy.

I drank my whisky at my Yuba River outlook. Very peaceful. My insight was that
I need to use this web access to seek a solution to a dilemma. You can help.
I'll get back to you.

Walking back from the Yuba River outlook, I encountered a deer leg. Something
killed a deer and brought its leg there. How ephemeral we all are.

I brought to the cabin 1/8 cord of oak firewood. It was delivered to my house,
I loaded it onto the Jeep and drove it here. Tomorrow I'll stack it. You know,
this keyboard is almost unusable after 3 whiskeys. Hit the wrong key and funny
things happen. That does not happen with the colorForth editor.

You know, dealing with File Manager on the Earthlink website is just as
keystroke prone. It took me many tries and much confusion to post this
comment.

I just got a beep. Have no clue what it means

------
plinkplonk
I found some of the entries (specifically the last) very poignant. Maybe this
is what happens to a genius who is too much out of the mainstream?

~~~
jacquesm
Chuck is an absolutely amazing guy. Read up on his 'homebrew' cad system to
lay out chips, it is quite a lesson in how strongly a user interface can
influence a process.

TILs (threaded-interpreted-languages) have a very natural aspect to them,
almost as if that is how you are supposed to develop software.

In spite of that, actually doing it is pretty hard, one of the reasons why
forth never took off as a mainstream language. Still, in embedded control it
is fairly common, mostly because it is one of the easiest to bootstrap high
level languages.

~~~
joe_the_user
Elsewhere in the site:

 _Keyboard Continuing my experiments with keyboards, I currently prefer using
27 keys to provide the 48 characters needed. These are the home keys of a
standard 101-key keyboard, allowing the other 74 to be ignored.

The assignment of the keys changes, with the current one displayed on-screen
at lower right. It's pleasantly easy to type while referring to the display.
These keys minimize finger travel, as close to Dvorak's arrangement as 27 keys
permit.

They are used as function keys (menu selects) for applications. The only text
that needs to be typed is when editing source code.

Other arrangements are possible. Including, gulp, standard qwerty. _

Wow...

~~~
jacquesm
Yep. legend has it he had a chair with who triplets of keys taped to the
armrests to control the cursor and place the gates by 'chording', using a
system he called 'Okad'.

<http://www.colorforth.com/gates.htm>

one hand would control the cursor, the other the placement of the gates or
wires.

Would be nice if someone could corroborate or disprove that, I always thought
it completely matched the rest of the stories about Chuck Moore so I give it a
good chance of being true.

------
borism
now go read and upvote "Chuck Moore: Geek of the Week"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745294> to the top.

I think Chuck really desereves it!

