Hello all!
We hope you had a decent first month of classes! To start off the week, we have a couple of announcements regarding our next event as well as our open lab hours.
Updated Open Lab Hours
Open lab hours have been decided for the semester! You can find them further down in the newsletter, where they will continue to be listed in each email. They’re also listed on the front page of our website for ease of access.
The Princess Bride Screening
This upcoming Thursday, on February 6th at 7:00p.m., we will be collaborating with the Games and Media Library to screen The Princess Bride!
We thought we’d celebrate Valentines’ Day a bit early with this classic movie. Just like the previous semester, this screening will be happening at the Games and Media Library’s room, located at ATC3.705. Make sure to bring your Comet Card, since you will likely need it to sign in.
Demo of the Week
Our highlighted demo for this week is Oregon Trail on the Macintosh SE.
Stop by the lab to experience this classic video game on a classic machine!
Object of the Week
Our object of the week is the NeXTSTEP Operating System!
A screenshot of NeXTSTEP version 3.3 from the infinitemac.org online emulator.
The NeXTSTEP Operating System may be something you have never heard much about, if at all, unless you’re invested in Apple computing history, because the machines that ran this operating system, the NeXT Computers, were incredibly expensive commercial failures, developed by Steve Jobs during the brief period in the late 80s and early 90s when he had resigned from Apple to create his own company. Despite this, it is somehow the foundation behind every modern Apple device you have used (Apple Insider).
This operating system was used to create the World Wide Web and the original Doom (which I found out from this HowToGeek article). It also had the first App Store, it was the originator of the macOS Dock, and it was one of the first major GUIs to feature “large full-color icons” for various applications (you can read more from this DigitalTrends article).
If you’d like to learn more about the history behind the NeXT Computers or the operating system, in addition to the great writeups already linked, I’d also highly recommend reading this Apple Insider article (it is very interesting and explains a lot of the history behind these machines).
Lab Hours and Room Number
We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:
Monday: 1:00p.m. – 4:00p.m.
Tuesday: 12:00p.m. – 4:00p.m.
Wednesday: 1:00p.m. – 8:00p.m.
Thursday: 12:00p.m. – 4:00p.m.
Friday: 1:00p.m. – 8:00p.m.
Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.
Sincerely,
The Media Archeology Lab
The University of Texas at Dallas