ANTIC Interview 387 - Claudia Cohl, Editor-in-Chief of Family Computing and K-Power Magazine

06/16/20 • 49 min

Claudia Cohl, Editor-in-Chief of Family Computing and K-Power Magazine Claudia Cohl was the editor-in-chief of Family Computing Magazine for its entire run. Published by Scholastic, the magazine ran for 49 issues, from September 1983 through September 1987. Then it published 11 more issues, though August 1988, as "Family and Home Office Computing." Finally, it was rebranded "Home Office Computing". Claudia remained editor there until a new division was formed, and she moved to the Professional Publishing department to focus on magazines for teachers. In a 1983 New York Times article "Children's Magazine for a Computer Age," Claudia is quoted: "Our magazine is primarily for parents. Parents feel confused about computers and software and they feel they have no place to turn. We think parents will be using our magazine themselves or with their kids. Children will be picking up the magazine too." Claudia was also editor-in-chief of K-Power magazine, a computer magazine for kids. Only eight issues of K-Power were published, running from February 1984 to November/December 1984, after which it was merged with Family Computing. Our interview took place in two portions, on June 29, 2018 and December 11, 2019. Read Family Computing at Internet Archive Read K Power at Internet Archive Wikipedia on Family Computing New York Times article "Children's Magazine for a Computer Age"

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ANTIC Episode 68 - What SIDE Are You On? With Jonathan Halliday

ANTIC Episode 68

In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast... Jonathan Halliday joins as we discuss his amazing work on the SIDE loaders for the Incognito and Ultimate 1MB and the work going on for the SIDE3 cart.

READY!

Recurring Links

Floppy Days Podcast

AtariArchives.org

AtariMagazines.com

Kevin’s Book “Terrible Nerd”

New Atari books scans at archive.org

ANTIC feedback at AtariAge

Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge

Interview index: here

ANTIC Facebook Page

AHCS

Eaten By a Grue

What We’ve Been Up To

plotter ink https://twitter.com/KaySavetz/status/1258830441320079360 But steve bowsell @A8bit working on 3-D printable solution
Kay’s old Atari games https://twitter.com/KaySavetz/status/1259569122364407808 ; https://github.com/savetz (Scavange, boggler, rats, testtube, hubcap of fortune, Komix Creator)
Carrington and Kay play Scavange at Eaten By A Grue http://monsterfeet.com/grue/notes/35 play it at https://archive.org/details/Scavange
Catalina broke Altirra under WINE and Xformer, Kay got them both fixed https://atariage.com/forums/topic/286036-altirra-on-macos-update-thread/page/2/#comments and https://atariage.com/forums/topic/289510-xformer-emulator-running-on-macos/?do=findComment&comment=4544143
Updated firmware to Jonathan Halliday’s for Incognito in 800 - https://atari8.co.uk/firmware/incognito/
RetroPie on Pi4 - https://retropie.org.uk/
8Bit Classics - https://www.8bitclassics.com/

News

Retro Format is a physical print magazine covering computers and game consoles from the 1970s to the early 2000s; including Atari - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/8bitmagazine/retro-format-magazine-issues-1-to-12
PaperCraft - Rocky Bergen: “I've been working on an entire Atari 8-bit tradeshow display. But it may be some time before I can finish. I have an 800XL at home so that may actually show up before I finish this display.” - http://rockybergen.com/ ; https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158054518491047&set=p.10158054518491047&type=3&theater
MicroProse is back. Seems that one of the original founders, Bill Stealy, and a new partner have purchased the company back from whoever had it last (Infogrammes/Atari?) https://www.microprose.com/#; Kay’s 2017 interview with Bill Stealy - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-263-bill-stealey-co-founder-of-microprose-software
Compute magazine disk image depository - Allan Bushman - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/307591-compute-magazine-disk-image-depository/
Break Into Chat, Josh Renaud's blog about BBS history, retro computing post “Unearthed: My Atari 8-bit cassette tape” - https://breakintochat.com/blog/2020/05/30/unearthed-my-atari-8-bit-cassette-tape/
Atari Portable Project -

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ANTIC Interview 388 - Henry and Nancy Taitt, Creative Learning Association

Henry and Nancy Taitt, Creative Learning Association Henry Taitt was founder of the Creative Learning Association, which created books and classes about how to program computers in BASIC. Henry, along with his wife Nancy Taitt, ran the company from 1982-1988. The book series, TLC For Growing Minds — TLC means Thinking, Learning, Creating — delivered self-paced lessons about the BASIC programming language. Versions of the series were available for Atari 8-bit, Apple II, IBM PC, TRS-80, and other platforms. Each platform series had seven books with color-coded covers: the red cover was level 1, orange for level 2, yellow for level 3, and so on down the rainbow. Another series offered platform-agnostic microcomputer projects. The material was used as the bases for in-person classes at computer labs around the United States. Creative Learning Association also published a newsletter and a "national registry of computer programers" highlighting students who had progressed in the book series. I have been able to find and scan some of Creative Learning Association materials and upload them to The Internet Archive. This interview took place on April 14, 2020. TLC for Growing Minds book scans

Nancy Taitt died in 2022. Her obituary.