Open Apple #45 (March 2015): Mark Kriegsman, FastLED, Transwarp GS Clone, and Newsapalooza

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Mark Kriegsman, author of Star Blaster, and a modern Apple II hacker. He has ported the awesome FastLED driver library to the Apple II, so you can drive many hundreds of 32-bit RGB LEDs with your Apple II.

Meanwhile, we browbeat people into attending KansasFest, we rationalize our shame at developing on emulators, we talk dead tree easter eggs, we make terrible awesome BASIC & Twitter puns, we talk about post-mortem collecting, and Mike generates hate mail. Just in case you’re not completely over movies about Steve Jobs, we talk about one of those as well. Yawn.

More importantly, help us convince Mark to build a lo-res display from FastLEDs and bring it to KansasFest.

Once again, in case you missed it, the dates for KansasFest 2015 have been announced. July 14-19! Go to http://www.kansasfest.org to register. Then pull up a comfy chair and enjoy this super-sized episode of Open Apple. Apologies for some audio quality issues in this month. Quinn had some equipment difficulties and Mike has been under the weather. Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned until the end of the show for a special treat (not just Mike’s usual cheeky outtake)!

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

* Star Blaster – The game you probably know Mark Kriegsman for.* FastLED6502 – If an Arduino can do it, the Apple II can do it better.* Inside FastLED – More info about Mark’s project.* Space Cadets – In case you’re a boardgamer, like Quinn.* BASIC Source – Microsoft’s original code found its way into the wild.* Jobs filming – The celluloid is finally rolling on the Sorken film.* Jobs cast – Photos of the cast of the upcoming Jobs biopic.* Apple II Web Server – A mysterious Dave Schmenk project.* PLASMA – Dave’s awesome Apple II programming language.* Lawless Legends – The incredible game that uses PLASMA for mission scripting.* CiderPress 4.0 – A long awaited new version of the best disk image tool.* <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/5251478676/permalink/10153624487013677/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="ex...