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James Tauber

@jtauber.com

6.9K followers 4.5K following 2.7K posts

Using computers to better understand languages, texts, and music. Python, Web, Corpus Linguistics, Data Visualization, Philology, Ancient Greek, Music Theory, Tolkien, Space, Health. Perseus DL, Greek Learner Texts Project & Digital Tolkien Project!

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · Nov 3

Intro for new followers: I'm a long-time (i.e. old) Python and Web developer. Now mostly apply that to digital humanities and corpus linguistics with focus on historical languages (especially Ancient Greek) and Tolkien. Also education, data visualization, music theory, and a handful of other things.

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 52m

Of the 12,450 deduplicated disk images of the right size, 7,092 (57.0%) of them appear to be normal DOS 3.3 disks with a regular VTOC.

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 1h

might be time for a new release of github.com/jtauber/a2disk

GitHub - jtauber/a2disk: Read Apple ][ DOS 3.3 Disk Images with Python 3 (and de-tokenize Applesoft BASIC)

Read Apple ][ DOS 3.3 Disk Images with Python 3 (and de-tokenize Applesoft BASIC) - jtauber/a2disk

github.com

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 1h

The type-token-ratio of natural language can vary considerably by text length (and for a given text window it's typically one of the inputs to register analysis).

@willwhim.com called it, though: once you ignore the nulls, it's pretty Zipfian.

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 1h

Good call! I'd say so.

log-log scatter plot, mostly following a straight line until the tail end

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 1h

Every time I think it was a specific thing I did, I check and the person just blocked thousands of people at once :-)

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 3h

Okay, the LEAST COMMON byte value across the current Apple II disk image corpus is $9B.

The top five from fifth most common to most common:

$80
$FF
$A0
$20

and by a whopping amount (the distribution is NOT Zipfian)

$00

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 4h

Even before I extract files from these disk images, make any distinction between code and data, or do any disassembly does anyone want to make predictions about the distribution of byte values, repeated n-grams, etc?

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 4h

gotta do SOMETHING while I should be packing :-)

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 4h

Of those 13,252 I can eliminate a further 803 as having a duplicate MD5 hash.

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 4h

Of the 13,332 files I identified for download, 13,312 successfully downloaded and 13,252 are the expected size: 143,360 bytes.

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 4h

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 5h

Seeing all the names of the crackers in the filenames reminds me that, even though I never cracked any disks myself and certainly never did any network cracking, I decided at around twelve that my cracker name was The Acorn.

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 5h

here's a full list if anyone is interested: github.com/jtauber/CARC...

github.com

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 5h

currently half-way through the download :-)

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 5h

I've identified 13,322 Apple II disk images to download.

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 5h

Thanks! Had a lot of fun with the visuals

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 6h

the 6809 was my first love

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 7h

It's very DH-sounding but I'm currently thinking about extracting and cleaning up machine code files from the Asimov Apple II disk image archive.

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 7h

Z80 is definitely the second processor I'd do

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 8h

I have to say I'm darn proud of that acronym :-)

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 8h

Okay, I've started a repo (and even came up with a Tolkien-inspired acronym)! If you're interested, star / watch the repo. I'll start some discussions there too.

github.com/jtauber/CARC

GitHub - jtauber/CARC: Corpus Analysis of Retro Code

Corpus Analysis of Retro Code. Contribute to jtauber/CARC development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 8h

Okay. I'd going to start with 6502 machine code.

Time to build a corpus!

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 8h

I guess u4a2.com is another site I could move over to Ryland.

Home

disassembly, analysis, and commentary on the code for Ultima IV for the Apple ][

u4a2.com

James Tauber @jtauber.com · 8h

here is my old site analyzing the code: u4a2.com

Home

disassembly, analysis, and commentary on the code for Ultima IV for the Apple ][

u4a2.com

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 9h

I'm dead serious about pursuing this but I did chuckle at it giving a whole new meaning to "register analysis".

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James Tauber @jtauber.com · 10h

I've done a lot of retro computing in my time, from implementing CPUs like the 6502 and Z80 in Python to analyzing the source code of operating systems and games like Ultima IV but something just occurred to me that I'm now very interested in exploring:

Applying corpus linguistics to old code.

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