Shameless self promotion, but whatever you build, be sure to put Tux Paint on it. (Especially if you've got some cool art-friendly interface like a touch screen.) :)

Oh wait! I've spent over 7 years doing just that, IN MY SPARE TIME: http://www.tuxpaint.org/

Now, if someone would hire me to do it full-time, so I can keep putting food on my family [sic], I _might_ stop working on it in my spare time. (No guarantee, though.) I guess even more important is: who is this Ted person, and why do I give a crap? I've got literally millions of children to worry about. :^P

"a little caricature of Carter that is placed throughout the book"

Man, just like "Atari BASIC: XL Edition" that I learned a ton of BASIC with as a kid. It had "Kilroy" (as in "... was here") throughout it.

I vividly remember reading some of that book while on a trip to the department store with my mom. In fact, not only do I still HAVE that book (surprised? don't be... I was the "Atari vs Dell" guy on Slashdot the other day), it's on the shelf next to me, and just yesterday I happened to grab it when I responded to one of those dumb chainlettery things on Facebook ("grab the closest book, open page X, type sentence Y as your facebook status").

This is starting to freak me out. ;)

About 5 years ago, I was lamenting the apparent lack of programming books aimed at children. I posed the question "what would be a good modern language for kids to learn?" and almost every response I got was "Python." So this is perfect! Too bad I didn't get the chance to (1) learn Python, (2) write a book, (3) get it published. ;)

We've got a "Help Us" page ( http://www.tuxpaint.org/help/ ) that explains how contributors can help in all sorts of ways (code being only one). We keep the latest translation files online for easy download (no CVS needed), along with stats on how complete they are.

One of these days I'll get around to finishing the asset management web application I started working on, to make it really easy for graphics-oriented folks and photographers (and just folks who find usable PD and Creative Comments artwork) can collaborate.

There are numerous videos on YouTube. Search for "Atari Demo" and start following the 'related videos'. :) There are still big parties in Europe, with game and demo contests with big cash prizes. (Well, if you consider 500 Euro to be "big")

See: http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/xwiki/bin/view/APG/Ironman+Atari#HGraphicsModes ;)

Switch into GRAPHICS 9 mode (16 shaded bitmap mode). Use a Display List Interrupt (DLI) to change the colors down the screen. You can arrange it to get a nice grid of 16 hues of 16 shades == 256 colors!

The paletted colors were actually only out of 128 colors. (16 hues of 8 shades)

More useful, though, are some of the software-driven tricks for drawing more colors on the screen. One simple one interlaces between 16-hue and 16-shade pixel modes, combining to give you any of 256 colors (albeit a little washed out), anywhere on the screen. In glorious 80x192 pixel resolution. (Not a typo)

Or cycle between 3 16-shade modes, one Red, one Green, one Blue, and you get 4096 colors, anywhere on the screen. (Or do it at higher horizontal resolution and get 64 colors or 8 colors.) There are GIF and JPEG viewers for Ataris that have been around for _years_ that use these modes.

Even fancier tricks give you 30 shades of grey at 160x192, some obscene number of colors at 160x192, etc.

In fact today (before this post appeared on Slashdot), someone contacted me about the character-set (you know, "font"? :^) ) driven multicolor text mode I came up with a decade ago that let me do cell/tile-based graphics and get 13 colors on the screen. (Simply toggle the font at each Vertical Blank Interrupt -- no need for Display List Interrupt tricks.) I wrote a puzzle game with it.

Anyway, he pointed out that those huge-pixel (80px across) modes can be "applied" to any graphics mode (try GRAPHICS 2:POKE 623,64:?#6;"abcd"), and therefore a similar frame-flickering trick could be made to get lots of large, multi-colored tile graphics on the screen.

Lots of stuff you can get ANTIC and GTIA to do; a few of which are 'artifacts' or 'bugs', but all consistent across the platform. :)

(Heh - I wonder if a single person will care about that braindump I just presented.)

Don't talk like that to your ancestors! (Remember who designed the Atari 400/800, and who designed the Amiga! :^P )

Ooh! And that reminds me... need Contiki and for someone to build a decent Ethernet or Wifi adapter. :)

Thank god Black Ops didn't throw you in "get the crap beat out of you" prison for copying games back then.

Hrm. Tried holding the [Select] button down while you turn it on? That _should_ boot it into Missile Command, if my Google-fu is working for me.

Heh. I _already_ can't seem to get a replacement keyboard from Dell. :^( (They've got all sorts of wireless crap they can sell me.) Maybe I didn't dig around the service section of their website long enough.

"Does it run Linux?"

Sadly, no. But I love it anyway. :) Everything else in the house does, though. (The SmartStor NAS, the Roku Netflix Player, the TiVo DVR, my laptop, my wife's laptop, our toddler... oh wait, not yet.)

Digital in the same sense that a ball-based mouse on a PC is digital. Though the Trak-Ball I have also has a switch to change between trackball and joystick mode, so you can play joystick-based games with it.