Apple II Bits

In my freshman year at a predominantly male tech college, our glee club trekked to a liberal arts women’s college for a joint concert. As the two choirs mingled, our high school experiences and summer travels still fresh in our minds, I overheard a young woman ask one of my classmates, “What languages do you know?”

Unabashedly, he answered, “Oh — C, C++, Java…”

He was being utterly sincere and unironic: even if he didn’t suss that his ladyfriend was more interested in tongues than code, his enthusiasm for computer programming was something he was eager to share.

Since starting college and discovering the world doesn’t run on BASIC, I’ve not shared my classmate’s confidence. I approach programming with an understanding of the fundamentals but with uncertainty that what I input will result in the desired output. I’ve not learned many language since my first seven:

https://twitter.com/kgagne/status/765622932571844608

Last week introduced me to a situation I’d never before been in: speaking French to a native French speaker. I’ve never learned any of the Romance languages, leaving me sure of only my ability to mangle them. For several minutes before launching Skype, I rehearsed: “Bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?” I realized a person would be more forgiving than a computer, but I was still uncertain of the output: what if the answer was “Non“? Would I, like a nervous 9-year-old, hang up the phone?

I found the whole prospect intimidating.

Hesitating for several moments, I finally dialed. The other end picked up and greeted me in French — words that came so swiftly and surely that I found them incomprehensible and intimidating. I nonetheless steeled myself and in my best American accent responded: “Bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?”

There was a moment’s silence, during which I imagined a computer terminal processing my command before deciding whether to accept it or return with a syntax error. Then, much to my relief, I heard the sound of a successful reboot into a more familiar environment: “Yes, sir. How may I help you?”

Whether it’s FORTH or French, I doubt I’ll ever be as fluent with a foreign language as my college classmate was, or that I’ll be able to speak to someone in or about other languages with the confidence he did. But perhaps, as with my attempt to major in computer science, my grasp of the fundamentals will be enough to get me by.

On July 2, 2014, I launched the IndieSider podcast. This biweekly show pairs gameplay footage with developer interviews. It’s a unique combination that allows me to interview indie game developers while experiencing their creations. I try to focus on games that are doing something unusual, such as This War of Mine, which simulates the reality of being a civilian in a war-torn country; or developers working in uncommon situations, such as Dan Dujnic, who releases a new version of his twin-stick shooter, Breakers Yard, to the web every week.

Recently I discovered the puzzle game Cubot and was charmed by its calming aesthetic, uncomplicated gameplay, and challenging levels. I reached out to developer Nicolas Pierre-Loti-Viaud of Nicoplv Games for an interview. He liked the IndieSider format and wanted to participate, but his spoken English is as good as my French — which is to say, nonexistent. On those grounds, he regretfully declined.

Fortunately, I don’t take "no" for an answer! I figured if I could just get a translator, then the interview could proceed. Who did I know who could serve as a bridge between these two languages?

I didn’t have to look far.

Vive le Juiced.GS!

Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe recently translated an entire issue of Juiced.GS into French. The resulting special edition was mailed for free to all the magazine’s French-speaking subscribers. I asked Nicolas: may we conduct the interview via email in French? And Antoine: would you translate to English and provide me an audio recording of the translation?

All parties were game. The interview was on!

IndieSider #16 went live last week and is available in audio and video editions, with French and English transcripts. The voice you hear is Antoine’s, but the words are Nicolas’. Antoine and I recorded our tracks separately, which made for a fun time editing, since he never heard the exact tone or phrasing of my questions and responses until after the show had aired!

While the content of this interview had nothing to do with the Apple II, it nonetheless would not have been possible without the Apple II community and this unique collaboration. My thanks to Antoine for lending his expertise and for being willing to play such an unusual role!

Arnaud Cocquière and the team at <a href=”http://www.ctrl-pomme-reset.fr/french-touch/” title=”French Touch “Control-Command-Reset”>French Touch have released a new 8-bit demo: Scroll Scroll Scroll. Below is a YouTube video of the program, which you can download and run as a disk image.

Although I’d not previously heard of French Touch, this demo is not their debut: previous demos include Unlimited Bobs and Ibiza, among others.

The demo scene is more fascinating and storied than I can detail here: it already has its own documentary and deserves a complementary Juiced.GS feature. While I do that digging, enjoy Scroll Scroll Scroll.

(Hat tip to Antoine Vignau)

This past weekend, a handful of Juiced.GS subscribers received a surprise in the mail: a French language edition of the September 2014 issue. The content was translated from the original English not by Google Translate, but by Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe, a polyglot contributor to the magazine.

This collaboration was inspired by Andrés Lozano, who travelled from France to attend KansasFest 2014. While there, he hosted a live Google Hangout so that his fellow patriots could attend KansasFest virtually.

It was during that video chat that I spoke with Antoine Vignau, who I’d previously interviewed for an audio podcast but had never spoken to in video before. Seeing him, Andrés, and many other attendees in the chat reminded me what a presence the Apple II has in France. A few hours later, I emailed Antoine with this unsolicited proposal: "If you’re willing to translate the entire September 2014 issue of Juiced.GS, I’ll see about publishing it in French. Just as a one-time special — not every issue!"

The result is Juiced.FR, which shipped a week after Juiced.GS. The timing was tricky, as I had to wait until the English edition was done in its entirety before handing it to Antoine to translate. While an issue may be assembled piecemeal, it isn’t until every article is laid out that the staff really pulls apart the draft, looking for typos or clarifications. I wanted to have that level of quality in place before Antoine began translating. Even then, Antoine had his work cut out for him; given the technical nature of some of the pieces, it seemed some of the content might be "untranslatable"! But Antoine persevered, producing an issue that I can’t read but which I assume is excellent.

While Juiced.GS again met its deadline of shipping in the month listed on the cover, French subscribers’ issues were not mailed until a week later, in October. I felt bad about delaying the receipt of their product, but the feedback I’ve gotten so far is that it was worth the wait.

I don’t expect to repeat this promotion in French or other languages — it was a fun but unique experiment, akin to the 5.25" demo disk of Drift that we shipped two years back. It might be fun to translate each issue of a volume into a different language and then package it as the "Babel Bundle", but the audience for such a product would be small.

If you are a French speaker who isn’t a subscriber to Juiced.GS, or you’re someone who just wants to practice a foreign tongue, you can buy this individual issue of Juiced.FR. We’ve never sold single issues before, and I expect this one will never be back in print after the original run is sold out, making it a truly limited edition. Show Antoine your appreciation by making sure we sell out!