What was your first computer?
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I have to admit that as a child I never really learned how an abacus works. I had one, but I just had fun moving the beads around. When I got older, we simply used numbers and dots and such for counting and calculations.
In 4th standard we were introduced to number line. Then we discover negative numbers. Wow that was real thrilling like meeting your god in this world.
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That shown by search engine.
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4th standard
Channeling @blakeyrat again: WTF IS 4TH STANDARD? WHY CAN'T ANYONE FUCKING DEFINE WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT INSTEAD OF ASSUMING WE ALREADY KNOW.
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4TH STANDARD
That's where you put all the data in xml and store it in a BLOB, right?
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No.
Standard 1 - 4 Primary Schooling.
Standard 5 - 10 Secondary Schooling
Standard 10 - SSE examination.
Standard 11 - 12 Junior collage.
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senior K. G
WHY CAN'T ANYONE FUCKING DEFINE WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT
I'm guessing "senior kindergarten."
Filed under: Last year
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So where is senior K.G.
Is he with Señora K.G.?
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No.
Standard 1 - 4 Primary Schooling.
Standard 5 - 10 Secondary Schooling
Standard 10 - SSE examination.
Standard 11 - 12 Junior collage.
Channeling @blakeyrat: AND WHY CAN'T YOU USE GRADE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE??
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I blame the East India company!
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I had a 20 MHz Austin Computing Systems (?) laptop with Windows 3.11. The hinge was broken so that the screen wouldn't stay in the proper position, I had to prop it up. Yes, I know that I'm young.
I also worked quite a bit on my mother's desktop, I want to say it was a 286, complete with Turbo button. It had Windows 3.11 as well, but it had no mouse, which is a major reason as to why I spend a lot larger percentage of my time using the keyboard than the average user does.
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I also worked quite a bit on my mother's desktop, I want to say it was a 286, complete with Turbo button. It had Windows 3.11 as well, but it had no mouse, which is a major reason as to why I spend a lot larger percentage of my time using the keyboard than the average user does.
I had mouse before I had Windows, but I still spend more time using the keyboard than the average users.Anyway, I mentioned the first computer we had at home, but the first computer I bought myself was a Celeron 400 with 128MB RAM, 8GB disk and ATi All-in-wonder Pro graphics. Over time, that computer mutated into what I'm currently using (never bought a complete computer since then - always upgraded piece-by-piece).
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Yup, they went after Captain Jack Sparrow!
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Yup, they went after Captain Jack Sparrow!
Read some history to get some real persecution in life.
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get some real persecution in life
You mean like we're currently persecuting @mikeTheLiar and @blakeyrat?
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You mean like we're currently persecuting @mikeTheLiar and @blakeyrat?
One of these things is not like the other.
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You mean like we're currently persecuting @mikeTheLiar and @blakeyrat?
I mean perspective.
The East India Company (EIC), originally chartered as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, and more properly called the Honourable East India Company, was an English, and later (from 1707)[1] British joint-stock company,[2] formed to pursue trade with the East Indies but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent, Qing Dynasty China, North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. The company rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly trade in basic commodities that included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.[3] The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1600,[4] making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Company's shares.[5] The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.[6] Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown to assume direct control of India in the new British Raj. The company was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act passed one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete.
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In 4th standard we were introduced to number line. Then we discover negative numbers. Wow that was real thrilling like meeting your god in this world.
Try going to a number plane with complex numbers, or the number hypersphere with quaternions.My brain boggles a bit at octonions though, but apparently that's as high as it goes. What's wrong with 16 number dimensions, I really don't understand…
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Try going to a number plane with complex numbers, or the number hypersphere with quaternions.
My brain boggles a bit at octonions though
My brain is happy with complex numbers, but stubbornly refuses to even consider anything beyond that.
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Abacus? Okay, if you're gonna count toys. My first real computer was one of these:
My parents preferred this:
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I had a Commodore Vic 20 with a tape drive. I had a game on it called Radar Rat Race (cartridge). I got a book from the Library that allowed me create a dragon on my screen that blew fire (along with other things). It was pretty rudimentary but I was excited to program. The code was Basic. I typed out that entire program and tried to run it but I think I had missed something. That was when I was 12...20 years later I would discover what a compiler was. Finally answering that 20 year coding mystery that had burdened me for so long. I also discovered that even if I had a compiler I wouldn't have room to put it on that system. I never figured out how to save stuff to the tape drive either. So I used it to play carterige games.
Edit: it looks like it might have had a compiler built in so then I think it was operator error transcribing. Hmmm. There could have been more than a few problems...
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My brain is happy with complex numbers, but stubbornly refuses to even consider anything beyond that.
I believe that quaternions are useful for describing general rotational systems (having fewer types of crazy about them than the alternatives) but I've never really tried this myself; my code tends towards being more like discrete math. I cant remember if it is quaternions or octonions that are the best thing for describing quantum systems; I'm pretty sure it isn't mere complex numbers.
Filed under: but this is all total hearsay
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I also discovered that even if I had a compiler I wouldn't have room to put it on that system. I never figured out how to save stuff to the tape drive either. So I used it to play carterige games.
The Vic 20 was pretty much crippled by its lack of memory. The C64 was far better (and had some really nice hardware in there) but its BASIC was terrible; it was just a vehicle for carrying POKEs around.The BBC microcomputer had an awesome BASIC for its time. I couldn't afford it.
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I think it was a bad computer to learn coding on. Plus I had no one to talk to/guide me. My dad was a mechanic so there wasn't much help there and none of my friends were interested or curious about programming.
Filed under: A series of bummers stymied my programming growth :)
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My first real computer was one of these:
Wow, now that's a blast from the past! I had completely forgotten about that. My dad had one of those. I wonder what ever happened to it.
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+1
'coz I ran out of likes, plus @blakeyrat and @mikeTheLiar.
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Just to report a minor Whups! in the quote of my post...
this nice piece of kit…
Should point to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81] not to the EG2000
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I cant remember if it is quaternions or octonions that are the best thing for describing quantum systems
My son wants to major in Physics. He's going to have to master math far hairier than the stuff I just barely passed. I wish him luck; he's going to need it.
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The Vic 20 was pretty much crippled by its lack of memory.
The Colour Genie shipped with 16K and could only be upgraded to 32K instead of the more customary 64K (at the time).The BASIC compiler that was available for it needed 16K just for itself, leaving only 16K for any programs... but those programs definitely ran faster! :-)
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Fuck it. Now I am going to find a Vic 20 on ebay with a tape drive and recreate my problem.
Filed Under: Enquiring minds 'still' need to know what happened.
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My first PC was some kind of budget eMachines with some kind of Cyrix "Marketed-To-Compete-With-The-Pentium-2-But-Performs-LIke-A-Fast-486" processor and I think an integrated NVIDIA TNT GPU, running Windows 98. I think it had 64 MB RAM.
Yes I'm young.
You never got the feeling of amazement when first experiencing a computer with a sound card, let alone a graphics acceleration card. Same as I didn't get to be amazed at looking at a color display, I guess.SSE examination.
I think my CPUs are working fine, thanks for asking.
@Nagesh said:12 Junior collage.
My first thought was "human centipede".My brain is happy with complex numbers, but stubbornly refuses to even consider anything beyond that.
Yeah, I struggle with quaternions. Although Blowing up the Death Star helped.
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Yeah, I struggle with quaternions. Although Blowing up the Death Star helped.
Is that... is that a legitimate use of Flash???
See for all the hate I have for it, this is the kind of stuff Flash was made for, and for once, I don't hate having to load it on a site.
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This is a legitimate use of Flash:
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I concede, but this also means I am now legally required to answer this by posting the most epic scene ever captured on film:
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GORDON'S ALIVE!
Ah, well, who wants to live forever! DIVE!
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s that... is that a legitimate use of Flash???
No, it's not. It's a legitimate use of WebGL.(As confirmed by the crashing of Firefox on this old laptop I'm using)
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Weird. I checked with the inspector and I'd swear I saw Flash. But you're right, it's WebGL. Which, interestingly, won't work in Chrome for me (claims my graphics card can't support it), but it works in FF.
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Ugh, two of our largest telcos merged and dropped what IMO were two strong visual identities, and traded them for a weak one. To wit:
Click to expand if necessary:
The ZON logo could be read the same when turned 90° (something they made use of) and the Optimus logo had a sort of a lava lamp look to it, specially when animated.
The new logo:
They also have a color version, but the black one seems to be the one they use officially.Click to expand if necessary (sorry for the whitespace, it's part of the image):
Color version:
And btw, "nós" is the Portuguese word for "us". "Nos" (no accent) is the corresponding reflexive pronoun. Why do they hate search providers and clients?
The reason I'm mentioning this is they're using Queen's "Can't Stop Me Now" in their aggressive campaign. It's been playing everywhere. They've made me hate it!
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That sucks.
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Oh, and they're rather long launching TV ad plays almost the full song. Almost. It's been edited. Hearing something so familiar with parts missing can be very perplexing.
I do wonder how many from the younger generations notice the difference. I'm willing to wager it's a large percentage, as the song is a classic that got some decent airtime already.
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The song's about 35 years old, too... I suspect they cut out some of the more risqué parts.
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The reason I'm mentioning this is they're using Queen's "Can't Stop Me Now" in their aggressive campaign. It's been playing everywhere. They've made me hate it!
Much feels. :hurtrealbad:
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Weird. I checked with the inspector and I'd swear I saw Flash. But you're right, it's WebGL. Which, interestingly, won't work in Chrome for me (claims my graphics card can't support it), but it works in FF.
There's an override for that if you really want to see if it works.
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Yeah, I struggle with quaternions. Although Blowing up the Death Star helped.
I've long known that quaternions were very useful in 3D graphics, that being an interest of mine (not that I've ever done anything worthwhile with it) since college several decades ago, but I've never managed to wrap my brain around them. Thanks for the link. I've just skimmed it, but bookmarked for future reference.
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32 colours? Eh. Most Amigas had two extra modes. EHB and HAM.
Very nicely described, among other things, in http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/future-was-here . Both this and the Atari 2600 one are amazing books which I sadly had to pirate because there's no way you can get them here...
And the first computer? It was one of those toys:
It did have a BASIC interpreter, and a German instruction book which I didn't understand a word from, so I basically taught myself programming at the age of 5 using nothing but listings.
Then, a 486 came, and I finally got around to learning QBasic. There was also C64 at home when I was 4 or so, with a floppy drive and dedicated monitor, but nobody could figure out how to do anything with it.
We also did have (barely working) Atari 2600, and a (much better) Pegasus Famiclone, which I've mentioned somewhere.
Also in the "weird retro stuff" category - my uni has a 8086 and a DMA controller wired to various switches and diodes which basically control the thing by byte-banging stuff into it. You set up the address lines, binary-encode the command code on the data lines, and press a button for the memory controller to write it into RAM. Then you manually clock the 8086 and observe the effects on diodes.
Filed under: i still have a C64 and a monitor, but different one
