Text and images by Ladybird Books. Remix by Rob. Wormholed from the archives of BBG. Original scans from davidguy.brinkster.net

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How Computers Work

This piece was originally published on a now-defunct website for general audiences. It now lives on here in vaguely inappropriate perpetuity My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum , most likely bought at Dixons in Worthing, England, circa 1986. But that’s not the one I’d like to talk about, because it was defective and went right back to the store. Dad, convinced by Clive Sinclair’s legendary quality control that you get what you pay for, opted for the expensive Amstrad CPC over a replacement or a Commodore 64. Together, these three machines were the ruling triumvirate of 8-bit home computing in Thatcher’s Britain. The Amstrad wasn’t much different to the Commodore — brighter graphics, tinnier sound — but came with a built-in tape deck, a crisp color monitor, and a decent warranty. I got my parents’ money’s worth over the next few years, but their value was not my value. The rationalization my folks cultivated was that I’d use the computer “for school.” It was to be educational, not fun. This once-common parental delusion fostered a generation of unmonitored, pre-Internet computer use. The result: lots of gaming. As soon as I had the boxy charcoal-gray Amstrad hooked-up and powered on, it was to the “free fun pack” that I went. The machine was a good nanny. Immersed in pixelated classics like Elite and Jet Set Willy , I found friends with the same platform to share gaming war stories with. We copied one anothers’ games with double-cassette decks, and bartered them in schoolyards like seasoned day traders. It wasn’t long before the idea of using computers to learn geography or math slipped into the guiltless lapsed duties of being a kid, like taking the dog for a walk every day: solemnly promised, but only ever performed on demand. It didn’t help that the Amstrad’s free educational titles were the most boring things on Earth. There was Animal Vegetable Mineral , a text-only knockout pill that tried to guess what you were thinking of. Then, Wordhang , a version of hangman that now sounds like a Mitchell & Webb joke. Particularly disappointing was Timeman One , whose name suggests a gripping existential sci-fi drama, but which turned out to be a method of learning how to read analog clocks. All of these horrors were produced a company called “Bourne Educational Software,” whose impact on software history was insufficient to earn a Wikipedia entry. So, games. The important thing to know about games, at least back in the olden days, was that the machine schooled me anyway. By owning my own computer and having free reign to do with it as I pleased, it cultivated an interest in how complicated things work — in this alone, it offered more of an education than anyone ever got from those terrible ‘edutainment’ packages. Perhaps it was just the general cultural and technological impact of home computers in the Eighties. Perhaps it was the relative ease back then of flipping up the hood and tinkering around: the real rules emerge from the system, not its creators’ intentions. When you give a kid the power and the freedom to explore a system, they’ll discover unexpected ways to manipulate it, faster than most grown-ups will. Youngsters are selfish and impatient, refusing to defer gratification for arbitrary or social reasons. It’s a learning strategy that works well, even if sometimes favors people who don’t work well with others. Moreover, games offer particularly engaging systems to play with–especially oldschool ones where technical limitations forced a creative minimalism onto their developers. Show-stopping bugs in titles, often too-quickly translated from other computer platforms, encouraged us to seek our own shortcuts. You could fix it yourself . Facilitated by the fact that old computers were open as pie (many loaded a programming language as soon you turned it on and exposed access to the entire system) enormous creative power was at the user’s disposal. Computer mags served as the gateway. In the old days, magazines printed short programs which screwed with games’ internal logic, to increase the number of lives, say, or reduce the damage inflicted by enemy weapons. Almost all such programs were essentially the same, a loader that would run the game as usual, but sneakily edit variables after they’d spooled off the tape into RAM. These “pokes”, named after the BASIC command for directly inserting data into memory locations, were often completely opaque–think 50 lines of hexadecimal nonsense–but framed by more easily-read code that hinted at how it worked. The reward system was perfect: learn this and you beat the game by legerdemain, impress your peers, and experience the power of creation. The universe has sneakily taught you the basics of algebra, and you didn’t have to complete a single line of homework. Compared to traditional education, that’s an intoxicating thing, at least if you’re a geek. Even screwing computers up builds a confidence often lacking in our dealings with the machines. The delicate thing loses its intimidating mystery and is revealed as a blunt tool, easily reset to its factory settings. Letting yourself fail makes everything better. I doubt that Lord Sugar knows much about computers. Unlike Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, he was a business opportunist who moved on to other things when the market for 8-bit computers faded. But in its hands-off approach to technology—Amstrad released much of its intellectual property under a free-ish license after the system’s withdrawal from the market—is a permissiveness often lacking at today’s anxious market-grabbing tech titans, whose ostensibly open products tend to come in curiously horselike shapes. So that’s how Amstrad founder Lord Sugar inspired me to do strange things to boot sectors. I was never any good at it, but it ultimately got me interested in making tiny chiptunes on the Commodore Amiga, and I was pretty good at that. Thanks, Sugar!

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How Lord Sugar taught me to hack stuff

A company called Senseq has developed a functional prototype of a TV/computer screen that allows you to actually feel textures on the screen. They’re calling it the Touch Feel Screen (presumably because Grope-Box was already taken). The technology works using electrostatic fields and could be available for widespread use in as early as two years. Coooooool — I’m gonna start sleeping with my hands in socks so they’re extra sensitive! When you touch different areas on the screen the field produces varying degrees of friction — which is what creates a high fidelity sensation of texture. The sensation is delivered regardless of whether your fingers move or not. The feeling could project contours and edges of things in front of you, and creates the sensation of everything from silk to rough terrain. Impressive. Or at least it would be if I haven’t been RUBBING MY NOSE ON TELEVISION SCREEN SINCE I WAS A KID. Just sayin’, I’ve known about electrostatic friction for like 25 years now. You know how many times I’ve shuffled my socks across the carpet and touched my wiener to a metal door handle?! Just the one. (It caught fire) Prototype creates feeling of texture on flat screens [dvice] and Senseg demonstrates new technology that creates textures on flat screens [gizmag]

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Flat Screens: Soon With More Touchable Textures

As every blog and news site everywhere has already reported ( including Boing Boing ), the definitive biography of the late Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson , is out today. Actually, it’s out today in paper , but was released yesterday for download via Amazon and iTunes . I’m willing to bet it breaks some sort of download sales record. Last night’s edition of the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes was devoted entirely, 100%, to stories on Jobs and his products . As Mike Godwin noted on Twitter , Steve Kroft asks during the segment how Jobs, “who dropped LSD and marijuana,” goes off to India and returns to become a businessman. LOL @ “dropping marijuana.” The show sure does know their demo. At least they didn’t say he smoked acid. Snarking aside, the 60 Minutes pieces are worth watching. Here’s part 1 , here’s part 2 , and here’s 3 (!), on iPad apps for autism. In other news this week, Obama says we’re bringing troops home from Iraq, and Qaddafi’s dead. Related : Dan Lyons, former Fake Steve Jobs, on the backlash .

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Steve Jobs bio out early for downloads; "60 Minutes" devotes entire episode to book

Walter Isaacson’s definitive biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is out Monday. All week long, excerpts have been leaking out, with little snippets of the late Apple CEO’s reported thoughts on alternative medicine , Android , Bill Gates, being strategically mean to people , Obama , what apps Obama’s staffers had on their iPads , cancer , teachers’ unions and labor rights, Issey Miyake turtlenecks , the adoptive parents he loved and rebelled against, and the biological parents who gave him up for adoption (whom he is said to have referred to as “sperm and egg donors”). The first real review, by Janet Maslin in the New York Times , is out today. You can read all 630 pages of the book for yourself soon. [ Amazon ].

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The Steve Jobs biography.

Blogto’s Derek Flack went spelunking in the Toronto Archives for photos of old computers in situ, from the days when installing a monsterscale computing engine was cause for bringing in the photographer for a bit of posterity. I remember my dad taking me to some computer rooms in this era, though his facial hair was far more glorious than this gentleman’s. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best parts of digging around the Toronto Archives is the stuff you find that you were never looking for. I’d guess that at least a third of the ideas I’ve had for historical posts about the city have come via some serendipitous discovery or another. Today’s installment is certainly fits this bill. When I was putting together a post about what banks used to look like in Toronto, I happened to stumble upon some spectacular, Kubrick-esque shots of an unidentified computer room that got me wondering if there were any more like them in the City’s digitized collection. As it turns out, there are though not as many as I’d like. Vintage computers and technology in Toronto ( via Super Punch )

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Hulking computing engines of Torontos yesteryear

Apple Computers : grossly overpriced since at least 1996. This is Best Buy ad from 1996 (the year some of you were born but the year I lost my virginity . JK JK MOM — I’VE STILL GOT IT). Because it would take me forever to resize the pieces into something decent because of the resolution, you can see the weekly ad in its entirety HERE (not hosted on Geekologie). Some highlights: Warcraft II $20 A CELLULAR FLIP PHONE 4, 8 and 16MB Memory upgrades: $30, $60 and $130 2.5 GB Hard Drive: $300 3.1 GB Hard Drive $400 Damn, we’ve come pretty far in the past 15 years, haven’t we? “Well I certainly have, I don’t know about you , GW.” WHAT THE F*** IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?! “You know, like your mental development.” Oh right, THAT. *trying unsuccessfully to flick booger off finger* A Best Buy Flyer From ‘96 [consumerist] Thanks to MIRV, Geek Squid (I see what you did there!) and Dan, who don’t shop at Best Buy because they’re convinced those sensors that go off if you try walking out the door with something you haven’t pay for give you ball cancer.

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1996 Best Buy Ad: We’ve Come So, SO Far

So IBM was awarded a (surprise!) DARPA government grant to more or less create Skynet computer chips and, what do you know, they’re making progress. BUT NOT FOR LONG! *pulling wires out of back of computer* “Why’d you do that?” I DON’T F***ING KNOW, I GET EXCITED! Hey — why’d my monitor go black? The announcement comes nearly three years after IBM and several university partners were awarded a grant by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to re-create the brain’s perception, cognitive, sensation, interaction, and action abilities, while also simulating its efficient size and low-power consumption. “What I hold in my hand as I speak,” Modha told CNET by phone Wednesday, “is our first cognitive computing core that combines computing in the form of neurons, memory in the form of synapses, and communications in the form of axons…[and] in working silicon, and not PowerPoint.” Brain chips: wonderful news, really. So here’s the plan. You might call me crazy, but future generations might call me the savior of humanity . This is it: we use zombies to fight the robot apocalypse for us. Get it?! They love brain chips — they’ll gobble those robotic f****ers up! Then we nuke them and earth will make me its king. IBM says new chip mimics the human brain [cnet] Thanks to Sgt Rebel, Drew, bsmorrow and Mike, who have all kicked zombies so hard their penises fell off (the zombies’, not theirs).

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IBM Creates Brain-Mimicking Computer Chips

It’s 9PM and you just finished downloading your 2,000th bootleg movie when you hear a a siren. Holy shit, the cops are coming for you. What do you do? Well if you’re anything like me you don a fake beard and Italian accent and dive out the nearest window crapping your pants. Other, much more prepared individuals might try drilling their hard-drive to destroy any incriminating evidence. Which is where these handy-dandy laptop stickers come into play. You just place them on your laptop over the hard-drive (see your computer’s schematic for exact location), that way you know where to put the drill when the time comes. Just a heads up though: if the po-po bust in while you’re still making holes they may shoot you after mistakenly confusing your drill for a plasma pistol. And another heads up: if the po-po bust in while you’re still making love to yourself you 100% will be made fun of before you can even zip up. Even worse if it was anime or furry porn. Which brings me to my next topic of emergency preparedness: cyanide capsules. Media Artist Contingency Plan (with the sticker design to print out if you want. Alternatively, make a big X in Sharpie with the words ‘X MARKS THE SPOT’) via Protect Your Hard Drive Secrets With a Simple Sticker [technabob] Thanks to Kev, but not Kevin Arnold from “The Wonder Years’ (trust me, I emailed him to make sure), who wants to know what you’re supposed to do after you realize the cops weren’t coming for you after all and were just chasing a speeder but here you are with 10 drilled holey hard drives. Don’t look at me — you were the one that was all high and paranoid!

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Laptop Stickers Show You Where To Drill To Destroy A Hard Drive In Case Of Emergency

Space isn’t actually colorless , I just made that up so people who only read the headline go spread misinformation and hopefully lose bets. But for the rest of you, nothing but the facts . My penis could feed an entire village for 18 months. Plus NASA uses Photoshop to manipulate shots from the Hubble Space Telescope to make us think space is actually cooler than it really is (SPOILER: I’ve been there, it’s a shit-ton of nothing). This time lapse shows how the image of NGC 3982–a spiral galaxy 68 million light-years from Earth, in the Ursa Major constellation–was made using seven grayscale images captured using three of Hubble cameras. The processing job took 10 hours of scaling, rotating, aligning, color processing and missing pixels and artifacts restoration. Scientists have to choose how to represent this information in a way that we can observe directly. Sometimes they will use a natural representation , which is very close to what we would see if we zoomed there inside the Enterprise. Other times they will choose representative color , which helps them see invisible features of the object–like those that can only be captured in infrared or ultraviolet light. And sometimes they show the image in enhanced color , a hyperrealist mode that brings a lot of hidden, subtle details. There’s 10-hours of edting packed into a 2-minute video after the jump, that talks you through the process. Basically the style of Photoshoppery depends on a particular photo’s intended use. Which, to the best of my knowledge, ranges from ‘look cool’ to ‘look really trippy’. Unfortunately, for those of you who were hoping for some insight, there was little talk of how they faked the moon landing, but my guess is in a giant underwater tank. “Like…the kind with a cannon?” *kicks you in the nuts so hard you cry sperm* Hit the jump for the informative video.

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Because Space Is Actually Colorless: How NASA Uses Photoshop TO CREATE LIES