T w e n t y S i d e d
Some days, I’m worried that I sound like these guys:
What idiots.
I mean, they invited that girl to watch Superman without first determining if she was a Marvel or DC fan? Simpletons!
1GB, Twenty Years Ago and Today
This picture has been making the rounds lately:
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That’s one gigabyte of storage twenty years ago and today. Look at that 1987 behemoth. You just know the thing is a spine-pulverizing anchor to lug around.
The comparison above is a bit apples to oranges though, since we’re comparing two different storage mediums. Still, it’s easier to show the memory card than it is to show 1/500th of a modern drive, and I’ll bet the size comes out roughly the same. Someone posted that picture in the FTB forums, and Flaming Penguins posted this in reply:
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Back in 1993 I had a job that involved working with and caring for a dusty old mainframe. It was a hot, vibrating, noisy creature. A cruft golem. It had circuit boards the size of motherboards, and motherboards the size of a ship’s rudder. The hard drives were massive, shuddering engines of storage. Their combined volume approached that of major household appliances, and I’m sure it didn’t exceed a gigabyte. In short, the hard drive pictured above would have been a major leap forward for us. It was a strange system. It had a proprietary inventory / order system that ran on top of a proprietary operating system. Holy double yikes. Our sysadmin’s job was equal parts IT and necromancy.
Perhaps this is where I acquired my love of steampunk. While my job description didn’t require me to shovel coal into the howling iron thought apparatus while keeping an eye on the steam pressure, there were many days when such clarity of purpose and straightforward interface would have been welcome.
Looking forward, it’s interesting to see how the advance of CPU speeds has at last abated slightly after decades of exponential growth. Hard drives, however, still strive to meet the demands of the data packrats of the future: Hitachi promises 4 TB drives by 2009.
Still no robot girls.
The Snarl Tamer
Behold! Otaku taunts me with his snarl-free setup! But apparently I got him back.
Someone requested a picture of said snarl, which isn’t really possible. It’s big and nasty, but almost entirely hidden behind my desk. Still, you can extrapolate. You have a computer? Look at all those wires back there. Now double them, because I have two. Now double them again to include the PS2, the network, phones, lights, and the crazy PS2 -> PC cables. That’s the scale of the problem I’m up against.
You can actually see a panoramic view of my workspace here, if such a thing might interest you. The desk I use has a back wall which prevents nice bundling of wires, since you can’t reach them. I have to just drop wires into place from above or (worse) feed them through. A nice desk with an open back would help a lot, and that’s what I’ll be getting when I replace this one. An odd thing about desks is that, figuring surface / storage space being equal, as the desk gets lighter and and more open it gets increasingly expensive. The cheapest desks are both heavy and bulky, which seems a bit counter-intuitive. Doesn’t it cost money to ship those things? My desk looks like particleboard beneath the faux-wood finish, but when you try to move it you can clearly tell it’s made from depleted uranium, or perhaps a bit of condensed solar mass from a white dwarf.
The Krofft “Super”show
Last year I was ranting about the uniform awfulness of 70’s culture. While writing those posts, I found an old dusty corner of my mind with a pile of memories I don’t use anymore. Behind the memories of putting ice cubes onto the heating vent to melt deep waffle-like atterns into their surfaces, underneath some loose recollections of Bill Cosby’s Picture Pages, and sitting on top of some vague notions of a McDonald’s playset, I found a bunch of disjoined images from some television shows that I couldn’t identify. I couldn’t remember the names of the characters or the show, just situations and plot devices. Some creative googling finally led me to a website that (somehow) has images from those old shows. As soon as I saw them, the whole thing came flooding back.
Lots of people remember kid’s television from the 70’s. Scooby Doo. Lost In Space reruns. Gilligan’s Island reruns. Batman. Spiderman. Speed racer. Wonder Woman. Some of these have enjoyed recent revivals or remakes. But some shows didn’t survive and are not so fondly remembered. The shows I was remembering were Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Dr. Shrinker, Wonderbug, and Lost Saucer. I found out they are all actually just segments the same show: The Krofft Supershow.
Most of us have idealized memories of childhood television programs. Despite this retroactive rose-colored view, there is no way around it: This stuff was crap. Utter tripe. Even at six years old I remember noticing that the thing was kind of lame. Keep in mind that I was at an age where I still thought Scooby Doo and Gilligan’s Island were clever. This show took awful and tacky to new, uncharted extremes.
The show ran two years, from 1976 to 1978. I never expected to see them again. Imagine my surprise.
The Electrawoman and Dynagirl segment left an impression on me. Somewhere in the back of my mind were some features that had not yet been enabled. Some unlockables, if you will. As a little boy I knew there was something about these images of women in spandex and go-go boots. These images were important… somehow. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Not for another few years, by which time the show had been swapped out of active memory to make room for episodes of Wonder Woman.
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Kept that one cached for a few years.
A New Keyboard
I write software for a living. Once in a while, my computer will do something infuriating, such as following my instructions with destructive precision instead of intuiting what I wanted it to do. The scale of the damage ranges from a crashed program to obliterated data, and the punishment for these failures is usually the same: A quick, chiding smack delivered with the palm of the hand to the right side of the keyboard area, usually falling somewhere near the bottom of the keypad. Some might point out that aiming my blow between the mouse and keyboard would be equally productive while sparing my keyboard considerable wear and tear. While I do not disagree in principle, this somewhat misses the point of the act, which is to punish an insolent computer. At any rate, I’ve been smacking keyboards for over a quarter century now and I don’t think the habit is likely to be broken anytime soon.
This is to say, I go through a lot of keyboards.
Normally, I change keyboards an average of twice a year. However, despite my raw, feral hatred for my HP Pavilion, the keyboard that came with it is nigh-invincible. That computer took a savage beating during its term (which it earned, and then some) and the keyboard never faltered. I replaced the computer, and six months later the new keyboard failed as all mortal keyboards do under my cruel and unforgiving ownership. I reverted to the battle-hardened HP keyboard, and the thing is still in working order today. I finally had to replace it because the thing was so old I couldn’t bear to hit it anymore. Anything that survives that long under those conditions deserves a little respect. (Plus, I found a Logitech wireless keyboard / mouse combo for so cheap that, even if I were to smash them tomorrow, I would still feel like I made out.)
But check out the arrangement of the keys on the new keyboard:
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| A Logitech wireless keyboard. The name is somewhat misleading, as I’ll bet it has wires inside. |
Note the section above the arrow keys. The usual arrangement is the one you most likely have in front of you. Two rows, the first with with Insert, Home, Page Up and the second with Delete, End, Page Down.
Despite my voracious keyboard consumption, I’ve never seen this. I’ve been typing on the same layout for over a decade now, so I’m exceptionally resistant to change in this regard, but I have to admit that this is an improvement. It’s one of those things that seem obvious once you see it, and you wonder why it took this long for anyone to come up with it. I see several advantages:
- Home / End are arranged horizontally, with more closely reflects how they are used. Page Up / Down are still vertical, which matches how they are normally used.
- For clumsy typists like me, the Delete key is the most popular of the six. It is now double-sized, thus reducing the chance of making mistakes while correcting mistakes.
- Insert is eliminated. This is going to be a major drawback for people who actually used that key. I never did. On the rare occasions when I needed it, I used the one on the numpad.
- The old setup wasted a lot of space. There was usually a wasteland between these keys and the arrow keys below. That space is now put to use, and the keyboard can be made slightly narrower as well.
I don’t know if this new setup is a coming trend or if this is just a mutant. Still, I think I’ll try to pull my punches on this one until I’m sure I can replace it.
The Snarl
You may remember earlier this week the power supply died on my main PC. I had a spare, but it was missing a plug required to regulate the… CPU… voltage… thingy? Something about trans-phase nanoshear causing problems in the distributed flux suspension core, I’m sure. The upshot being that my PC would run, but it was bad for my processor and slightly risky.
On Thursday the new power supply arrived, I dropped it in, we’re all good now. It’s got 480 watts, which is enough to keep my computer running as well as power a phased plasma rifle (they have a 40 watt range) should the need arise.
I also got myself a wireless keyboard & mouse, because that was a great price for a Logitech and because I’m weak. I now have two less wires under my desk, which is a step in the right direction but still a far cry from bringing the mess under control.
At my desk I have 2 PCs, a Playstation, a pair of phones, and the router which is the connectivity nexus for all of the other PCs in the house. And the cable modem. Plus all of the accouterments for the above, which is not limited to speakers, controllers, keyboards, mice, and a nice lava lamp which is not strictly part of the setup but which I include because I think it’s cool and, not to put too fine a point on it, has a wire which needs to be plugged into something. I cannot peer behind my desk without thinking of The Snarl from Order of the Stick. I no longer see it as a collection of various tangled wires, but as a whole, a dangerous and formidable foe with appendages reaching into all of my electronic devices. I am always eager for the chance to cut down on the size of my homemade Snarl. In an ideal world the idiots at NASA would quit screwing around with satellites and space travel and invent me some wireless electricity. More precisely – since some of them may be reading my website looking for something to invent during their lunch break – I need a way to get electricity from the wall outlet to my electronic devices without using wires and without setting the room on fire. If you could do that for me it would be super-great, thanks.
Make sure it comes in black.
iTheme
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the marketing division of Twenty Sided (a subsidiary of ShamusYoung.com) got together and designed the site theme currently on display. I must admit I’m just a sucker for this “stuff-made-of-iPod-plastic” look. I really like the new Batrock layout, and it’s Orange for crying out loud. You could probably sell me a paisley design if you put a coat of gloss over it first.
Shawn linked to this collection of corporate themes, remixed in the plastic style. It’s supposed to be a joke, but I like them. I realize now that the plastic style is going to be my leisure suit, my paisley shirt, my mullet: It’s going to be the style I cling to when sexier, trendier people have moved on. I’ll still be using it when the look has become so old that it’s synonymous with “old fogey”.
On the web, I think that takes about ten minutes.
From The Archives:
Bethesda NEVER Understood Fallout
Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
Dear Hollywood: Do a Mash Reboot
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
Final Fantasy X
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
Patreon!
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Crash Dot Com
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
If Star Wars Was Made in 2006?
Imagine if the original Star Wars hadn't appeared in the 1970's, but instead was pitched to studios in 2006. How would that turn out?