Paperclip Computer

Posted in retro, technology on January 29, 2009 by Jason Wells

The story of the CT-650, a computer built out of paperclips and other household items. It includes directions on how to construct old-school technologies like core and drum memories and front panel displays. The book, How to Build a Working Digital Computer, gave away all the secrets to nerdy schoolboys in the late 1960s. It’s inspiring to think about. Maybe a hobby project in the works?

The parts list for core memory (see below) include paperclips, scrap wood, a tin can and adhesive tape. Before there was Make, there was paperclip computer!

Read the story here.

Direct link to the PDF book here.

paperclip

The LEGO Turing Machine

Posted in retro, technology on January 29, 2009 by Jason Wells

Via Make, here is a video of a Turing machine built from a LEGO Mindstorms kit:

Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science, conceptualized the eponymous machine to demonstrate the theoretical limits of computation. He did it so well that his work is relevant these many decades later and his work continues to be memorialized in LEGO form.

More generalizations on Millennials

Posted in millennial, technology, theology on January 29, 2009 by Jason Wells

There’s good statistics and some broad generalizations on Christianity.ca about the no-longer-upcoming Millennials. I did enjoy the remark, “They have no problem believing in God; their problem is believing in Christians.” Hopefully the Church is up this generation’s aspirations.

Read it here.

Video documentary: Programming your PDP-11

Posted in retro, technology on January 26, 2009 by Jason Wells

DePauw University put together course materials on programming a 1970′s-era PDP-11 minicomputer. The materials fit into a larger course on computer organization and design. While the acting is sometimes corny, the technology is true. They demonstrate how computer programs were made thirty years ago: paper tape, toggled-in loaders and two-pass assemblers.

Read their article and papers here.

The videos, via Youtube:

Marcus Yallow makes confession

Posted in technology, theology on January 26, 2009 by Jason Wells

From Chapter 16 of Cory Doctorow’s book Little Brother:

It was easier to tell, the second time. The secret was getting lighter. I didn’t embellish, I didn’t hide anything. I came clean.

I’d heard of coming clean before but I’d never understood what it meant until I did it. Holding in the secret had dirtied me, soiled my spirit. It had made me afraid and ashamed. It had made me into all the things that Ange said I was.

A little over halfway through the book, Marcus tells everything to his dad: his tangles with Homeland Security, his role in Xnet and what happened to Darryl. The description is a familiar one to anyone who has come clean with a secret or for anyone who has made a confession in church.

Is church architecture a user interface?

Posted in Uncategorized on January 26, 2009 by Jason Wells

Las Lajas Cathedral, Colombia

Just playing “catch up” with long unpublished items in WordPress:

This short article on Blogos remarks on Lifeway’s study on preferences for cathedral-style churches rather than contemporary buildings:

Here’s one conjecture about their finding: systems and devices that have familiar features also tend to be more usable. There are lots of ways you might imagine to control the direction or transmission of a car: but most people have learned to use steering wheels and console-based shifters, and consequently you can get into most any car with no confusion about how to operate it. (in UI design, these features are called affordances) I suspect many people prefer Gothic-style buildings, not because they work better, but simply because they present a more familiar user interface that matches their expectations of how the outside of a church “works.”

Well said! Of course, looks can be deceiving. The City Hall in Manchester, NH is gothic in style and looks “churchy,” while being a public government building.

Affordances are cultural, not universal. In terms of UI, the reason affordances work is that the user typically has expectations about how they should work. Mac OS X and GNOME make sense because the user is already trained for Windows XP (and vice versa). The differences between these three and a UI like Ratpoison, ion, or screen are much bigger and don’t offer the same cultural expectations (menu bars, icons, pointers, etc).

If past experiences, training and culture effect how computer user interfaces work, surely the same goes for churches as “user interface.”

Is Freeware Free?

Posted in freedom, technology on January 26, 2009 by Jason Wells

The blog gemini_alternative has a not-too-bad article on the distinction between freeware and free software. Without falling back on the terminology of “free-as-in-beer” and “free-as-in-freedom,” the writer talks about the basic GNU freedoms. In some places the article feels clumsy, but it explains the question sufficiently without falling into too much GNU jargon.

From the article:

Freeware is software developed created by volunteers, and distributed for free. Most of the time, freeware is developed by a single programmer.

To list the very best software which is completely free for non-commercial use. Freeware programs listed do not time-out, are fully functional (though they may be ‘lite’ versions of commercial or shareware programs) and the author does not demand payment for the continued use of the program.

But freeware cannot be modified it is proprietary software but the author gives the user the authority to use it for free. The user is restricted to improve the program and release the improvements to the public with its own version of codes. It is said that, “retain control of the source code”.

In the web we can see a lot of available software that we can download without paying for it like movies, songs, books, or other software. It is just a click away from hundreds of existing site we can search in the web. Most of us are relying on “free” available software including games or software applications.

Read it here.

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