
81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video] - gazsp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDfIkXf3uzA
======
kristopolous
The production value and artistic merit of this was quite good but here's the
insight ... it's what I call the Ira Glass structure:

1\. show the meat, why you're interviewing them - if the person is say, a
miner you start off with machinery and sounds of workers

2\. do the intro of who the person is - have them state their name and
identity (occupation or other story-relevant identity such as an ethnicity or
physical attribute that is relevant to the story)

3\. give a backstory - relevant details that led them to the present such as
where they started, their parents, siblings, etc.

4\. identify the present and show the passion - usually with long-form charles
dickens details of rooms or where the person lives along with what they love

5\. talk about what the person is about to do - a cross country journey, a
competition, get married, etc.

6\. set the scene - the person getting ready for it and preparing, setbacks
along the way, human interest style narratives

7\. make it special - try to frame it as either a unique story or something
that effects a very small group of specific people

8\. conclude with a future oriented framing - say "the story isn't over" such
as talking about next years competition or some more ambitious task they plan
to do

~~~
AmigaBill
Hey that's really cool. Never heard that before. Thanks for that.

~~~
kristopolous
What makes this format the most obvious in my opinion, is The Onion's knockoff
of This American Life: [https://www.theonion.com/tag/a-very-fatal-
murder](https://www.theonion.com/tag/a-very-fatal-murder)

This is also the same format done by Radiolab. I don't know if this is a well-
documented structure to be honest.

I derived it myself after becoming lethargically bored listening to these
types of podcasts. I realized they all had essentially this structure,
sometimes with a few steps removed but rarely, almost never, out of this
sequence.

I would like to claim, although a lot of data would need to be collected, that
these steps have narrow time ranges with normal distributions and fairly tight
bounds. As an extreme example, they don't spend say, 53 minutes on machine
sounds and then cram the rest in the remaining time. I think there's more or
less a clockwork to them.

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PortableCode
Looks like she extended her Amiga with Microbotics Starboard 2 (2MB RAM and
RTC, visible in 2:36):
[http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=...](http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1036)

~~~
Jaruzel
oooh, I would _love_ one of those for my Amiga 1000.

------
busterarm
If this is not the coolest video I've seen on YouTube in some years, I don't
know what is.

~~~
icedchai
Great video! It reminded me of how magical it felt when I got my first Amiga
back in 1988! I followed a similar path, started with Basic, then moved up to
C (Lattice, later renamed to SAS/C.)

------
Klasiaster
Tought herself Amiga "demo" programming 30 years ago in C and BASIC because
she understood computers as a medium, and she can also use it to create art by
programming.

------
Keyframe
What she calls a yo-yo, I call ping-pong! An inspiring video. She is a demo
coder to the core.

------
neovive
Amazing video! She would probably enjoy working with Processing.

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gdubs
Ah, the Amiga was such an amazing machine. I never owned one, but I actually
subscribed to all the magazines.

Watching old Computer Chronicles episodes – and seeing stuff like this –
really makes me think about how different computing was before it became a
device for consuming more than a device for creating. Back then, you really
had to have a passion or at least a real desire to learn a new medium.

It's so interesting to see the unique things people did with their early
Amigas, Apples, Macs, etc – and how many people learned to program out of
necessity.

------
Jaruzel
Whats nice here (that the title doesn't really imply) is that she uses
AmigaBasic to programmaticly draw pseudo random colours and shapes to create
the art.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Sounds like she started with AmigaBasic then moved onto C. I quite liked her
"yo-yo" variables idea, not a typical algorithm but makes sense for what she's
making.

~~~
teh_klev
She does actually state this in the interview at around 3:45.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Yes, when I used "sounds like" I was referring to the video.

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forinti
She must be the last person using K&R syntax.

------
bringtheaction
This is cool. I was wondering, though, because it isn’t mentioned — is the
music part of her software or was it put on top by the people that interviewed
her? My favorite demoscene productions are the ones that include music.

Also, did she upload her work to pouet.net? I think probably she hasn’t but
it’d be cool if she did.

------
melling
It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t port their apps to the Amiga.

It probably would be alive today but people bought computers for the apps.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I dunno, MS ported the Mac version of Word to the Atari ST but by the time it
got there (late, and buggy, and overpriced) indigenous ST developers had made
their own superior products.

Interlace video for hi-rez modes on the Amiga also made it non-ideal for
office type applications. Maybe if Commodore had bothered to include a scan
doubler by default?

~~~
pjmlp
Amiga had quite a few cool office type applications like Pagestream.

The video wasn't an issue when using Commodore monitors.

~~~
bitwize
Yes it was. I used an Amiga with a Commodore monitor and while it was a lot
better than any TV or other composite monitor, the interlacing was still
noticeable and people's eyes would go wonky staring at that for eight hours a
day.

~~~
errozero
Any monitor from back then would look awful now. I do remember noticing the
interlacing on the Amiga though.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
It was awful when compared to the paperwhite monochrome displays of a Mac or
the Atari ST. It's frankly one of the things that set the Amiga back in the
productivity regard.

------
zengid
So is there an emulator or something we could use to get her running on an
updated machine?

~~~
glenneroo
I don't think she would go for using an emulator. She said near the end of the
video that the Amiga IS the artwork, and that she can only show her works on
HER Amiga.

~~~
zengid
You're right, but then later she says that she'd love a 'modern' Amiga, too. I
just could see someone giving her a Mac running an emulator and be like.. here
you go!

~~~
taejo
My understanding is that she'd like to treat a new machine "on its own terms"
\-- but modern machines are too complex. AmigaBASIC and Amiga C address the
machine's native capabilities.

A bit of retro-brite and a few spare parts in knowing hands might be more her
thing. Or maybe the plotter that was discussed here on HN last week.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Reading the video comments, the creators of the video suggest that the artist
was impressed by their A1200 and was interested in getting one, so I guess
that's 7 years forward in terms of modernity. Besides that, there's the
commonly accepted notion that limitation spurs on creativity.

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11thEarlOfMar
The original hacker painter?

------
bitwize
What this woman could achieve if she knew about fragment shaders...

~~~
Rotareti
_" What Morandi could achieve if he went outside..."_, _" What Yves Klein
could achieve if he knew red, yellow and green..."_, _" What Roman Opałka
could achieve if he knew about for loops and printers."_, I could go on like
this for a while.. This is not how art works.

------
azinman2
Someone needs to tell her about processing and get on a modern machine.

~~~
azinman2
So I got down voted, probably by someone who didn't watch the whole video. She
said at the end (paraphrasing) 'if someone updated the amiga and I'd love to
use something where it wasn't on the verge of giving out, the mouse worked
properly, ...'

Processing [1] is about the closest thing to her Amiga code, and is totally
cross platform.

[1] [https://processing.org](https://processing.org)

