---
title: Learned computers at summer camp
date: 1984-07-01
week: 538
geo: [38.79315,-89.99792]
type: school
---

In the summer of 1984, I was enrolled into a summer camp at SIUE. It was a hybrid soccer-computer curriculum that a friend of my mother was sending her son to. I imagine the motivation was to keep me active; I was not a slim 11-year-old.

I don’t remember the soccer. But I do remember the classes writing simple programs in [Applesoft BASIC](https://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/) on Apple II computers. Our capstone project was animation of an image in the [lo-res graphics mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_graphics?wprov=sfti1) which offered 40x48 resolution and 4-bit color. I was very proud of my rendering of the St. Louis skyline, with a blinking light atop the Gateway Arch, twinkling stars, and a steamboat moving upstream with a moving paddle wheel.

It ignited a lifelong passion for software that led me into a [secret room](/2015/04/21/mad-tony.html) until we got [a computer at home](/logs/events/1985-apple/).
