I was very interested in the category clouds or tag clouds that others have on there blogs. Many thanks go to blogbeebe for pointing me to the blog of phydeaux3 who has put up clear instructions and code on how to include this on Blogger. Thanks phydeaux3!
I'm very pleased with the result.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
The way of the computer [2]
Those days saw the demise of the homecomputer and the rise of the personal computer and with it the advent of Microsoft Windows. Writing programs for computers became increasingly difficult. The ease with which it was possible to program an MSX computer (even at the assembly level) was replaced by the awful GWBASIC. The joy of programming and of setting a computer to obey your every whim slowly left the domain of the hobbyist.
Then I came across the Acorn Archimedes. With just a megabyte of memory on board and a mere 4 GHz I was amazed by the raw power of the RISC processor. So, I decided to buy me an A310 and enjoyed programming it in BBC BASIC (with built in Assembler mind you). The fun of computer programming was back within my reach again. I had my trusty Acorn re-fitted with 4MB and later upgraded the operating system to RISC OS 2. When RISC OS 3 was released I traded my A310 for an A5000. And some years later stepped up to a RISC PC.
In those days the Internet slowly came into view. Thanks to pioneers like CompuServe e-mail and newsgroups were becoming common. To get on the world wide web, I'd point my browser to www.cern.ch where HTML was born and get surfing from there. I still remember that you could select a country from a list of countries. From there you were taken to the country's "homepage", where you could surf further to sites of schools and service providers. And so on.
Stay tuned. There's more to come.
Then I came across the Acorn Archimedes. With just a megabyte of memory on board and a mere 4 GHz I was amazed by the raw power of the RISC processor. So, I decided to buy me an A310 and enjoyed programming it in BBC BASIC (with built in Assembler mind you). The fun of computer programming was back within my reach again. I had my trusty Acorn re-fitted with 4MB and later upgraded the operating system to RISC OS 2. When RISC OS 3 was released I traded my A310 for an A5000. And some years later stepped up to a RISC PC.
In those days the Internet slowly came into view. Thanks to pioneers like CompuServe e-mail and newsgroups were becoming common. To get on the world wide web, I'd point my browser to www.cern.ch where HTML was born and get surfing from there. I still remember that you could select a country from a list of countries. From there you were taken to the country's "homepage", where you could surf further to sites of schools and service providers. And so on.
Stay tuned. There's more to come.
Saturday, 1 March 2008
The way of the computer [1]
In those days personal computers were a rarety. Those were the days of the ZX-81 and I was a boy of around 12-13. I had just finished the MAVO and was going to the MTS. In the library I found a book about BASIC and used it to gain a theoretical knowledge about how computers work and how the BASIC language worked. This gave me a headstart in school. My logical way of thinking, I think, was largely seeded during that summer holiday.
Several years later I purchased my first computer: a Sony HitBit 75 MSX homecomputer. With it I furthered my knowledge of BASIC programming and some Assembler and C on the side. It allowed me to understand the nature of bugs, how they develop and how to prevent them. I developed a modular method of writing programs. By adding short pieces of code and then debugging them, it allowed me to deliver almost bugfree code everytime an application was finished. This ofcourse annoyed my (older) colleagues, who kept reminding me that it was absolutely impossible to write a bugfree program everytime their code fell over or when I pointed an error out by saying: "What's that for?"
Ofcourse, I'm no genius and I've had my share of embarrasing moments.
The MSX era was one where programs were saved to cassette-tape. I wonder if there are kids around of about 18 that are aware of that piece of equipment. It's all USB-sticks and terabyte harddiscs nowadays. And you have no idea where the data is going. If you take a disk or a stick apart. Can you point out the part where this program or that is stored? I bet not. But in those day I could tell you on which cassette a particular program was and exactly where on the tape, too. And if a program was loading, you could hear the actual bits flowing into the computer! Imagine that. Wonderful!
Remember the 8" floppy disc, 5 1/4" floppies and eventually the 3 1/2" that stuck around until not so very long ago. They're still used, occasionally. I've handled a PDP-11/44 harddisk. In those days the storage capacity was at about 10MB for a single-layer disk with a diameter of (I'm guessing) about 40cm.
The point to this post I was going to make has eluded me for the moment. I'll come back to it when "it" comes back to me.
Several years later I purchased my first computer: a Sony HitBit 75 MSX homecomputer. With it I furthered my knowledge of BASIC programming and some Assembler and C on the side. It allowed me to understand the nature of bugs, how they develop and how to prevent them. I developed a modular method of writing programs. By adding short pieces of code and then debugging them, it allowed me to deliver almost bugfree code everytime an application was finished. This ofcourse annoyed my (older) colleagues, who kept reminding me that it was absolutely impossible to write a bugfree program everytime their code fell over or when I pointed an error out by saying: "What's that for?"
Ofcourse, I'm no genius and I've had my share of embarrasing moments.
The MSX era was one where programs were saved to cassette-tape. I wonder if there are kids around of about 18 that are aware of that piece of equipment. It's all USB-sticks and terabyte harddiscs nowadays. And you have no idea where the data is going. If you take a disk or a stick apart. Can you point out the part where this program or that is stored? I bet not. But in those day I could tell you on which cassette a particular program was and exactly where on the tape, too. And if a program was loading, you could hear the actual bits flowing into the computer! Imagine that. Wonderful!
Remember the 8" floppy disc, 5 1/4" floppies and eventually the 3 1/2" that stuck around until not so very long ago. They're still used, occasionally. I've handled a PDP-11/44 harddisk. In those days the storage capacity was at about 10MB for a single-layer disk with a diameter of (I'm guessing) about 40cm.
The point to this post I was going to make has eluded me for the moment. I'll come back to it when "it" comes back to me.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)