Posts from the Past. The Death of HyperCard. Staff and Volunteer Reactions. And a Magellan Deep Sea Base?! The First Mention of Intolerance. Wow Big Ideas Back in the Day! Imaginarium.

Posts from the Past.  The Death of HyperCard

September 1, 2000. From the Space Center's First blog, the YahooGroup Spaceedventures

Hello Voyagers,
I spoke to Apple Computers today and was given disturbing news about Hypercard. Hypercard as we all knew will no longer be  supported by Apple. It, like so many languages, will soon be dead and forgotten. The new Mac operating system 10 will not be  designed to run Hypercard - even though Hypercard will operate in
system 10 Apple will not promise glitch free operations.  All Macs will ship with system 10 next summer. Over the next several years we will be forced to abandon Hypercard as we upgrade  our computers. This is a sad day indeed.

The Apple rep told me that, in his opinion, the Center should begin full scale training in MacroMedia's Director 7. He said that  Director will do everything Hypercard can do. He also said it can run on any computer Apple and PC. Another advantage is that All computers will run Director programs without needed Director itself. Any computer out of the box will be able to run our  programs. I see great potential in this. All of our bridge programs
can now be burned onto CD and sold in the gift shop or to schools and organization wanting simulators of their own. They can pop our programs into their computers and they will run just fine.

The handwriting is on the wall. We must make a switch. Apple suggests MacroMedia Director. Is there anyone out there in our Egroup that has worked with Director that can shed some more light on this program and can post your opinions? The time for a final decision must come for me. 

THERE WILL BE NO HYPERCARD PROGRAMMING CLASS. WE WILL NOT DESIGN ANY FURTHER SHIPS IN HYPERCARD UNLESS THEY USE OLDER MACS. UNTIL WE SETTLE ON A NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE ALL PROJECTS ARE ON HOLD PENDING FURTHER REVIEW. 

If we settle on Director then we will need a new group of programmers. We will arrange a Director class. We will need Director instructors. 

Your opinions quickly so a decision can be made. We have the Magellan Deep Sea Base waiting...............

P.S. Anyone in this group familiar enough with Director that you feel you could do some sample programs for us? 

Mr. Williamson

Landon Hemsley's Reaction to the Death of Hypercard

September 1, 2000

(Trumpet plays taps)

 

Fellow mourners, we are gathered here today to say farewell to our beloved friend and closest aquaintance at our beloved center,  Hypercard.  All though her sons and daughters will be familiarized for a time at our center, they too will also pass on to the great big Hard Drive in the sky.

 

Hypercard was a good program.  She served for many years.  Until the evil abomination which is a former friend, apple, decided that she was just too "out of date".  We mourn her loss and ours.  She provided for the scares, and joytimes of myself, and more than 100,000 others.  We will all miss her.

 

But let us not stop now, the show MUST go on.  We shall find one which is compatible and use her.  Although she is a novice, we will train her. Although she doesn't know how to be used, we will work her.

 

So I urge you fellow vols, lift up your heads and look to better days.  Amen.

 

(The preacher uncerimoniously drops the disks and manuals in a pit and starts digging.  The crowd mobs the preacher, and a moment of silence is observed.)

 

(Taps ends, lights dim)

 

An eerie silence sets upon the audience, save for a few crying women and children.  The audience quietly filters out of the theater, stunned by the bad news.

 

Landon Hemsley

AKA "Judge" Superhemzz

Soren Seibach Reacts

It is my firm belief that, albeit HyperCard shan't be the CMSEC's programming language, It would be rather drastic to make the complete switch all in one go. Clearly, it would be more effective to slowly make the difficult transition from our friend called HyperCard to whatever
that other one is called. If Riven was made in the other one (from now on I'll refer to it as program X) methinks that it must be a more than slightly complicated language. I'm sure program X has its qualities, but let's drown ourselves a little at a time, rather than just diving in.

-S�ren Siebach

Revolution First Mentioned as an Alternate to Hypercard

Here is yet another email from the group of people that are beta testing Revolution. This is one of the Beta Testers themselves, not a programmer. I have never seen Director, but plan to download the trial of it today and try it. I have to say: That program has pretty hefty system requirements.

Scott Slaugh

Soren Seibach Receives his Blue Supervisor Shirt. Intolerance, The Mission That Never Dies is Introduced for the First Time

September 4, 2000: People Mentioned: Soren Seibach, Allan Stewart, Stephen Porter, Pat Bown. 

Congratulations to Soren,

I happy to report to all staff and members of the Voyager Society that Soren Seibach, a member of the Volunteer Voyager Society has been promoted to staff and will receive his "Blue Shirt". 

Soren started at the Center as a patron coming with his school on missions. Last year the offer to come to our Hypercard programming class was extended to his ALL class at Lakeridge Junior High. Soren accepted the offer and took the class. He excelled 
and was named top future programmer by Allan Stewart, our chief programmer. Soren applied to become a volunteer and was accepted. He completed his first volunteer mission on April 24, 2000. He has accumulated 640.5 points (at the time of this posting) and therefore in first place in the Voyager Society. 

Soren began programming for the Center this summer. His current projects include:

1. A Space Center Database of campers with the assistance of Stephen Porter.
2. A hypercard stack for the new Intolerance mission, this school year's primary mission.
3. The hypercard programming for the Galileo conversion to submarine. 
4. Assistance with the new Chiron simulator in the Granite School District operated by Pat Bown. 

Welcome Soren!


Mr. Williamson

Our Field Trip Staff for Fall 2000.

Hello Voyagers!
I'm finished booking schools for the school year. I'm surprised to find that 90% of the classes coming this year have 30 or more students. This is a 180 degree turn from the direction our groups have been taking over the last several years. Last year our average class size for our daytime field trip was 26. 

This will require hiring another staff for the 2nd semester to come in and help when we have classes of 30 or more. This semester we have Lorraine, Aaron Yeager, Kyle Herring, David Merrell, and Fred Olsen working. David Merrell starts UVSC next semester and will not be able to work 9:45 A.M. to 1:45 P.M. We will need to hire a high school or college student (to take David's place) that can get work release time for the 4 hours of the field trip. Another idea would be to hire 2 students, one to work the morning shift 10:00 A.M. to noon and 1 to work the afternoon shift Noon to 2:00 P.M. 

High schools have work release courses where you can get time off for work and you get credit for it as well. If any of you in the egroup are interested in this see your high school counselor and then talk to me.


All the Best!
Mr. Williamson

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