Category: Kirschen
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Digging in to “Nosh Kosh,” the Jewish Pac-Man clone
In 2022, I published Nosh Kosh — a Jewish spin on Pac-Man for the Apple II — as part of the Kirschen software collection that I rescued from cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen’s floppy disks. Since then, I have played “Nosh Kosh” on and off, but inexplicably I have never been able to get past the first…
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I’m heading to Atlanta — plus, Jack Tramiel’s phone numbers
I’ve been remiss in sharing some fantastic news. In April, I was awarded a “Geffen and Lewyn Family Southern Jewish Collections Research Fellowship” from the Rose Library at Emory University! This fellowship will enable me to travel to Atlanta for a week or two and study materials at Emory related to several Jewish educational games…
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Try Kirschen’s games and software on the Internet Archive
It’s been a little over a year since I began publishing the Kirschen software collection, and during that time I have also worked to upload Kirschen’s software to the Internet Archive and make it playable in the browser. The entire collection is tagged “kirschen-software” to make it easier to find. The emulation works well for…
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Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Magic Harp” for Commodore Amiga
When I published the original four-part “Bringing dry bones back to life” series where I shared 10 pieces of previously-lost computer programs developed by Yaakov Kirschen, I couldn’t include “Magic Harp,” his original Amiga-based “artificial creativity” music composing software. At the time, Kirschen’s wife, Sali Ariel, believed that it was likely gone forever, because she…
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Slides yield glimpses of Kirschen’s lost “Magic Harp” software
Yaakov Kirschen and his wife, Sali Ariel, are in the process of downsizing and moving to a new home in Israel. Sali has been hard at work, sifting through decades of collected belongings in preparation. She found a bunch of things related to Kirschen’s 1980s software development firm, LKP Ltd., and sent them to me…
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Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor
This Sunday I spoke about my retrocomputing hobby and digital preservation work at Arch Reactor, a hackerspace/makerspace in St. Louis. I was honored to be invited, and I had a blast sharing some of the things I’ve learned as I researched (and rescued) the lost 1980s software of Ya’akov Kirschen. I recorded the talk, and…
