[Coco] Coco Newby

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 02 December 2003 14:10, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
>At 10:58 AM 12/2/03 -0800, Mike Warns wrote:
>>Unfortunately, if one can't get on the same wavelength
>>as an author the fact that he wrote most of the books
>>on a subject can make it hard, as one keeps bumping
>>against the same barriers.  I had better luck with
>>your book than with Bill's.
>
>Thanks for that.
>
>I knew nothing about computers when I started on these machines in
> late 1977. I hadn't come up through the minicomputer world, or
> through some engineering or accounting programming languages. I
> knew my way around the analog world, but not digital. I kept a kind
> of 'public journal' of discovery that began with my 'Updates' in
> 1979. I mailed the Updates -- things I'd discovered that were
> interesting and not documented -- to people who sent me postcards.
> These Updates grew into articles, and then into books. So my
> readers learned stuff almost at the same pace that I did ... and I
> made my share of mistakes, as well (as those who tried to build the
> first generation of my CoCo video interface can attest). I don't
> think Bill Barden made mistakes like that, because his knowledge
> was so solid; I learned the most from him and Steve Ciarcia. The
> only disadvantage to solid knowledge is that you tend to forget
> what you didn't once understand -- since my writing was so close to
> the moment of discovery, I tended to recall those steps. racing up
> behind me as they were. :)
>
>Dennis

Steve Ciarcia, whose favorite programming language is solder?  I was  
subbed to his rag for well over a decade.  The sub ran out at about 
the time I retired.  It was the one, non-freebie, publication I made 
the tv station buy me.  A very interesting and down to earth person 
he is.  And I still hit their web page every 2 weeks or so just to 
"keep a hand in". :)

We (Steve and I) once got into an email discussion about the percieved 
value of fancy diploma's and such, my argument being that the person 
was at least as important, and often moreso, than any diploma's he or 
she might hang on the wall to impress the visiting frogs.  He 
finished off the last email on that subject to me with "after all, 
the most important sheepskin is the one you sleep on, isn't it?"  I 
had to agree with that one.

He has some quite intelligent authors on staff at the moment, folks 
like Fred Eady for instance.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III at 500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP at 1400mhz  512M
99.27% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.