.IF DSK1.C3 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^TEXTWARE, SOFTWARE, and ELSEWHERE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^TI Articles and Reviews ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Jack Sughrue My daughter Suzi went blueberry picking yesterday, and I decided to get up early this morning and make some fresh blueberry muffins for the five of us for breakfast. I went digging through the recipe box for my favorite recipe. Wasn't there! (It was. I just didn't find it until much later this afternoon.) First, I panicked. How can I make my favorite recipe when the recipe has disappeared? Then, I paused and thought. As a teacher I should know better. I don't teach in the hope that the "recipe" will always be at hand for problem-solving. Hopefully, I teach problem-solving. Next, I asked myself What do I know? and What do I need to know? I discovered that I knew how to make the muffins: baking soda, flour, milk, blueberries, sugar, eggs, oil. And I remembered the logical amounts: 2 teaspoons, two cups, one-and-a-quarter cups, lots, one-half cup, three, and one-quarter cup, respectively. And as I was remembering and doing, I kept recalling more and more of the process. Sift the dry stuff into a bowl. Make a well. Separate the whites and slightly beat them. Add the oil and milk. Stir until lumpy damp (my expression). Add the blueberries. Stir gently. Make dabs into pre-greased cupcake tins. Put on 4250 for about 20 minutes. Make coffee meanwhile. When done, wake family. Have good time with butter melting all over them. When all 18 are eaten, clean up. All of which brings me to a book I've had for a few months and have found useful, exciting, and full of fun: THE TI-99/4A IN BITS & BYTES edited by Remo A. Loreto ($14.95 from Remo A. Loreto, P.O. Box 14781, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45214). It's a book that's loaded with recipes (programs) but so full of other kinds of ideas that you will come away from the experience (if you put a lot of yourself into it) a baker (programmer). You'll learn so many logical, useful, delightful things about your TI that you will be able to create without the recipes and share your goodies with family and friends. Ten different programmers put their best digits forward in this large (8X11, 142 pages) book. The claim is that there are 50 programs in BITS & BYTES. Well, that's not quite true. First, they send you an extra program not in the book (which is quite good); then they don't count the small tutorial programs. There are 37 of these. So, though I bought the book expecting 50 programs, I ended up with 88! Pleasant surprise. Before discussing the 50 (51?) programs for which you buy the book, I'd like to talk about those other 37. The first 21 pages of the book take up these minis. Section 1 is a rather odd tutorial about programming commands made simple. I say "odd" because this is not a rehash of the manual which comes with the console. The tutorial assumes you're intelligent and that you've probably already read the manual. This section shows you ways to use CALL COLOR, CALL GCHAR, CALL JOYST, CALL KEY, CALL HCHAR & VCHAR, DIM, FOR-NEXT-STEP, GOSUB, GOTO, READ-DATA-RESTORE, and even PRINT in ways you may not have thought about. Section 2 is a really simple and good examination of flowcharting, including a more elaborate chart for a program in the back part of the book. Section 3 is a series of hints and tips. I was fascinated by this section and wished there were whole books devoted to this type of thing. Section 4 contains the 50 ready-to-run programs: 28 are in BASIC, 23 are in Extended or require TEII. (If you noticed the mathematical disparity in the sentence above, I am including "Black Hole," the extra program.) These programs give you your money back many times over in pleasure. Although there are some practical programs for you serious types (such as Loan Calculating, Household Inventory, Curve Plot, Message Board) most of this wonderful book is full of games - GAMES! Oh, sure! Educational games are here, too, and there is nothing wrong with that. I'm a teacher, after all. But this book is mostly fun. Things like Space Fury, Trap, Skydiving, Eviel-Eyevil, Byteman, Death Mobile, Baseball, account for most of the 51 programs. If you enjoy typing in programs (which is one of the best ways of learning programming, so I suppose that - at least - is educational) then this book is for you. I thought the programs ran well and were quite good. They were also very easy to modify to your own purposes or tastes. I am very happy I bought this book, which, unfortunately, is not the case with some of the books I've purchased. Section 5 is an appendix that contains things programmers are always looking at: ASCII character codes, conversion tables, music frequencies, reproducible TI graph paper, and even a place for notes (which I find very handy). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here's a small example from the book that shows you how to DISPLAY AT using BASIC: 100 CALL CLEAR 110 A=12 120 B=1 130 A$="TEXAS INSTRUMENTS HOME COMPUTER" 140 GOSUB 160 150 GOTO 150 160 FOR C=1 TO LEN(A$) 170 CALL HCHAR(A,B,ASC(SEG$(A$,C,1))) 180 B=B+1 190 NEXT C 200 RETURN ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ But now for you non-typists, a super special treat. All the programs are available as a package book/disk or book/tape from some of the main suppliers of 99 stuff. While you're waiting for the book to come it, try my muffin recipe. You might enjoy that, too. [Jack Sughrue, Box 459, E.Douglas, MA 01516] *********** If any newsletter editor prints these articles, please put me on your mailing list. Thanks - JS €†€Õ†‹•Ÿ©³½ÇÕÕÕÕÕÕÕ€†