RE: [stella] Time for a change?

Subject: RE: [stella] Time for a change?
From: "Lee Fastenau" <stella@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 01:17:33 -0600
> Its more than 7 months now, since the archives stopped working.
> 
> Nothing has improved since then and (therefore?) less and less
> people are posting to the list. So, before it slowly dies, I suggest
> strongly we better start to move to a different place.
> 
> Have fun!
> Thomas

Just sort of addressing Thomas's original post... and to wax nostalgic and
cheesy (so, please bear with me :)

Not by all these responses, but by the vacuous silence that's pervaded this
list over the past several months have I come to realize exactly how tenuous
the Stella list community is.  Coming up on one year of exposure to this
wonderful community, and having witnessed (and perhaps dismissed) some of
the debate over the archives, it's dawned on me exactly how much of a
sustaining force they really are.  Without the archives, this list loses its
power.  Power as a knowledge base and power as a community hub.

I have to admit that when I stumbled upon some archived posts by Jim
Nitchals, I was ecstatic.  I somewhat idolized him and just about every
other machine language programmer for the Apple ][ in the olden days.  He
wrote one of the first Apple games I'd ever played, Asteroid Field, as well
as the Apple ][ port of Archon (which I still play on my Apple //c).  I will
also admit that I wept when I found out that he'd passed away in '98.

http://www.igorlabs.com/jim/jim.html

Not to mitigate the extraordinary talent that's here today, I'm just trying
to illustrate one of the reasons why I think this list is so special... and
why it's so disheartening to see it this quiet.  I think most of us wonder,
perhaps subconsciously, what the point is of posting when there's no
archive.

My Stella project isn't totally shelved, but I have to admit that the bits
are slowly falling out of my brain cells.  I really want to finish that
game.  Honestly!  But "what's my motivation?"  I'm not blaming anyone here,
but if it's not the community that drives us to burn countless hours hacking
on nearly 30-year old hardware, then what is it?

Okay, I'll stop blathering on.  If we're really voting, then I vote for
whatever keeps the list as close to what it is today, but with a working
archive.

And if the lack of a working archive is not really to blame for all this,
then I vote for the planets to line up exactly the way they were around this
time last year, because man, those were some really great days for Stella
development.

Respectfully,
-Lee






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