We’re back in OPML editor using its outline interface, a feature which first debuted, I think, in ThinkTank and More, outliner software that debuted in the late 80s and early 90s. I was introduced to it in the Frontier scripting-cum-databse programming environment on Macintosh.

I lived much of my computer life in Frontier for about 5 years in the early 90s, while I was building and maintaining a homebrew workflow and content management system at the (then Hearst-owned) San Francisco Examiner.

It’s oddly comforting to be using this, by modern standards, dated interface. It is, like many old and familiar tools, (think UNIX command line) quite useful if you have the knack for its small, swivelling triangles (which you see to this day in some MacOS and Windows file system UI) and eccentric menus (it made sense back then). I still have the Frontier manuals, and an O’Reilly ‘animal’ guide on my bookshelf.

What I don’t have, close at hand anyway, is a copy of my Frontier.root file, the database that contains nearly everything I wrote from the early 90s until mid-2006 (I used Frontier, or a a product built on Frontier, called Radio, to run this blog for its first 11 years).

Now we’re using Wordpress, with it’s very nice browser-based editing interface (a feature that I first saw in Frontier and hacked into a UI for gulker.com, before Radio’s more refined browser-based interface debuted). Now there’s a Wordpress connector in OPML Editor that’s got me back, working as I would have in 1995. We think we know where there is a copy of our root file… it’s on our retired, but not discarded, Mac Cube…

Found the Cube (in the spare bedroom), found its power supply (in the garage), found a replacement power supply (also in garage). Hoping to get it on the network without dredging up its monitor, keyboard et al., but it’s not booting… 4:41:44 PM

Tuned into Oscars long enough to make sure Wall-E won best animated picture. Should have been nominated for best picture, period… 7:21:42 PM

Finally: the G4 cube is booting, after trying 2 different power supplies (the Dr. Bott replacement is working) and minor surgey – replacing the PRAM battery – I can’t believe I had a spare. But it’s not showing up on the network. Probably, after a hard PRAM reset, alll services are off. Next up, find monitor and keyboard and mouse… 7:32:13 PM

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