Christmas is coming, it happens every single year for those who choose to celebrate it.
But yet, we still need those little calendars to count down the days, and make sure we don't
miss it.
Advent Calendars, that's the one.
Originally first used by German Lutherans in the 19th century (and not always starting
on the 1st of December), it's now ubiquitous throughout the Western world.
But I don't care about that, because I care about Windows, and specifically Windows 3.1.
It was the OS I grew up on, and therefore it should be as much a part of these festive
celebrations as I am.
Enter, Advent Calendar for Windows, and a video where I try and eek out this simple
endeavour for about 5 minutes.
Hold on tight.
Let's begin with the Advent.txt Readme file.
Advent Calendar Ver 1.0
An Advent Calendar has been used in our house every year as a way to count down the days
until Christmas, from December 1 to December 25.
This year I decided to draw one up for Windows and share it with you all.
I hope you enjoy it.
Basically you just click the numbered squares to reveal a hidden picture.....[blah blah],
it seems our creator can eek out a text file as much as I can eek out a video.
The program is written in Actor, an object oriented environment for Windows, and i Used
their Object Graphics Library to help with the bitmaps.
Ahhh, ok, let's talk about Actor briefly.
Created by Charles Duff and released by the Whitewater Group in 1988, this was an Object
Oriented programming environment based on the Forth language.
It was only released for Windows 2.1 and 3, but was one of the first to make use of an
object framework instead of native Operating System calls.
This allowed applications created using Actor to look like a typical Windows application
and to interact with Windows DDE and DLL files whilst still incorporating an somewhat familiar
and approachable Smalltalk programming environment.
Anyway, the author of Advent, Paul Gyugyi also writes that "The pictures are 16 color
bitmaps generated by Paintbrush, a little less than 640x480 in size", I think we're
in for a treat folks.
We need just over 600k of Free memory to run this, so I think we're ok, and if we want
next year's version we'll need to send $10 to Paul.
I might actually do that, I wonder if he still lives there.
So, a swift double click opens up Advent Calendar.
Right, instructions.
"Click on the numbered boxes, one for each day in December, to count down until Christmas.
Click on more... to display the next screen.
Have a Merry Christmas"
Seems simple enough.
So, I guess as it's the 8th of December, we'd better open up the first 8 doors.
Maybe if we maximise this first, oh, god, no scaling features here folks.
Like most applications of the time really.
Number 1.
Can you tell what will be behind the door?
Yes, it's the face of the sun, just willing that snowman into his grave.
Number 2.
It's a Christmas tree, so small that you can hardly see it.
Lovely stuff.
3.
I can't even find 3, where the hell is 3!?
Is that it on the chimney?
Ah yes, a lonely little reindeer.
I presume he's lost, or just frozen to death.
4! Ahhhhh, candy canes.
I like how the images build on the image already there, it's a nice touch.
5...I bet it's going to be bird, sitting on the branch.
HOLY CRAP, look at the size of that bauble.
That's mental.
SIX....
That's one creepy looking squirrel.
It looks like he's been caught in the act.
I'm not sure what act, but he's definitely up to something.
SEVEN!
What?
What..?!
A star? in a cloud.
This is going down hill drastically.
And...
EIGHT.
HAHAHAHAHA
Oh my god, there's a rabbit on drugs.
Just tripping the night away.
Well, there we go, that's the first 8 days of advent.
Now, you remember I said I was eeking this out?
Well, I really am.
The next, errrrr, what is it?
16 days I will be doing every day on my EXTRA channel.
Yes, not only is this a way to promote my extra channel, but it's also a way for us
to celebrate this time of advent day by day, with horrifying images of rabbits and no good
squirrels.
So, I hope you'll join me each day, for a very short video, where we excitingly open
the next door on this calendar.
But for now, thanks for watching so far.
If I had my act together I could have done this from the 1st of December, but y'know.
Laziness.