Paperclip Computer

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.

The LEGO Turing Machine

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

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

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

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 Freeware Free?

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.

John Calvin supports file/scroll copying and distribution

The wide-scale copying and distribution of the Scriptures is a benefit to our spiritual lives:

The law of Moses was wonderfully preserved by heavenly providence rather than by human effort. And although by priests’ negligence the law lay buried for a short time, after godly King Josiah found it [II Kings 22:8; cf. II Chron. 34:15], it continued to be read age after age. Indeed, Josiah did not put it forward as something unknown or new, but as something that had always been of common knowledge, the memory of which was then famous. The archetypal roll was committed to the Temple; a copy was made from it and designated for the royal archives [Deut. 17:18-19]. What had happened was merely this: the priests had ceased to publish the law itself according to the solemn custom, and the people themselves had also neglected the habit of reading it. Why is it that almost no age goes by in which its sanction is not confirmed and renewed? Was Moses unknown to those who were versed in David? But, to generalize concerning all sacred authors, it is absolutely certain that their writings passed down to posterity in but one way: from hand to hand.

John Calvin, trans. Battles, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.viii.9

Here’s the relevant quote from Deuteronomy 17:18-20:

When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the levitical priests. ¹⁹It shall remain with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, ²⁰neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.

Thank God that Moses didn’t copyright the Torah! Without an interest to copy, duplicate and distribute, the scroll Hilkiah found in 2 Kings 22 would have been worm food.

Clay Shirky talk: Where do people find the time?

Below are the two YouTube videos of Clay Shirky’s April 2008 talk, Where do people find the time? In it, he gives the basic premise of his new book Here Comes Everybody: Internet technology, especially email, enables easy group participation that was never achievable before.

A few of the points that I want to remember:

1. At the onset of the Industrial Age, mass urban migration resulted in a generation stupefied by gin carts from the stress. After this generation, we saw the benefits of urban development: public libraries, museums, theatres, sanitation etc.
2. At the onset of the Atomic age, mass suburban migration resulted in a generation stupefied by sitcoms from the stress. After this generation, we see the benefits of new technology: email, wikis, social media, etc.
3. Roughly: “Did you ever see that Gilligan’s Island episode where they almost got rescued but then Gilligan screwed it up and they didn’t? Yeah, me too. A lot.”
4. Roughly: “A screen that ships with out a mouse is broken. Media that doesn’t involve me isn’t worth sitting still for.”
5. Roughly: “Anyone who works in the TV industry doesn’t get to ask, ‘Where do people find the time?’”

Watch it here:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Bishop Gene Robinson blogs again

Bishop Gene Robinson will blog his experiences at president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration events in Washington, D.C. He will be using his old blog, Canterbury Tales from the Fringe, again.

Bishop Robinson last used this blog while at Lambeth Conference in 2008. Although uninvited he appeared at many “fringe” events there and wrote about his experiences. Hopefully this blog will show us what happens behind the cable broadcasts and media events.

Harry Porter’s Relay Computer

Ever since taking Digital Logic Design in my freshman year of college, I’ve toyed with computer hardware and processor design. Harry Porter has taken my idle thoughts and built them into a reality. He has made an electromechanical computer just about entirely out of relays.

Like its ancestors, the machine has virtually no processing power by today’s standards, yet consumes wall space (and most likely electricity) almost beyond measure.

See it here.