computoman

Most computers started with a command line interface. Then eventually migrated to a pictured interface Every computer now has some kind of desktop environment that allows to to interact with the system. The first gui (graphical user interface.) first came from Xerox.  Not going to show every desktop, but I will show the ones I think important. Then came the copy cats such as apple with the Mac and Microsoft with windows. You had to use their gui environment. Linux did not lock you into the desktop, but their were two major variations that sort of stems from the original environments. Gnome was a sort of gui that was like the apple interface and then there was kde which stemed from the mswindows interface. Then things soft of changed. Developers thought that a tiled interface would be easier I call them the Fisher-Price interfaces. Not fond of the tiled environment as you seem to lose some control over the desktop.  To each his own. There...

At a place where I used to work, one of my duties was to see that client testing software worked with the local systems. Most of the time this was no big deal. But this one day the client software (which always word before) did not connect to the host's server. Student could not take their exams.  Everyone seemed perplexed as allegedly everything was set up right. One tool you can test a connection is traceroute. Not only can you test the connection, but you can find some interesting information about the connection. Having done that, became disappointed when we could not get the traceroute to work, Then I thought it could be an internet problem. There are sites that will let you run traceroute externally from your your network. Used the internet to find such a site. There are many. So the plan was to first test a site near the source to see if the connections there were foobarred. Then we tried doing the same thing to the destination site, All was fine. Still perplexed, W...

Blinking lights have been used on computers for years. What they mean varies from system to system.Manuals for the systems will hae documention on what all the variations mean.  Even on the home computer they most all have an led that signifies whether the power is turned on to the machine Maybe we could attach led to a local computer and then they are lit could mean one of ervera things depending on how ht e system is programmed.. You could start off with just two leds that you give you four possibilities.  Back then there were no computer screens to get information.  You could even add even more light for more possibilities.The traditional way was to add led]s to the parallel port. Eight leds would give you 2^8 or 256 possibilities. Possibly more than you would ever need. First setup we did like this was for the Atari ST computer. The picture is using a 32 bit computer. One could go a step further and instead of lights being on or off, a message could be s...

Make room for Daddy's stuff. Table of Contents Make room for Daddy's stuff Intro: Make room for Daddy's stuff Step 1: The plan. Step 2: Pieces to craft for base unit Step 3: Change of plans Step 4: The drawer pieces Step 5: The drawers Step 6: Done. (Before and after) Intro: Make room for Daddy's stuff. There was so much clutter and even worse was the fact the nice stereo speakers were being blocked.Became a tremendous make over for just a few bucks. Actually the drawers are empty and I need to fill them and then the clutter will go away. Step 1: The plan. We originally planned to have the unit on the second shelf. In fact would really make that shelf reall compact. We also imagined what the unit might look like all together. Step 2: Pieces to craft for base unit. Outer case parts. 5 x 28 x 12 1 back 5 x 28 2 sides 5 x 12 2 top and bottom panels 12 x 28 Inner shelves trimmed to fi (sizes before trimming to fit). 1 level 28 x 12 2 su...

Using the imagination is good. You should not always be spoon fed your dreams.  Using your imagination does not have to anything spectacular thing. You even do something as designing a chair.  Even a medieval chair was quite simple.And they are both quite portable. If at first you do not have a lot of ideas you can try to use what is available around you to learn possibilites of what can be done. That is what Michaelangelo did. Here is an example of a bed mattress frame I saw and decided try to build it. After that there was nothing stopping what can be done. If nothing else a child has a lot of doll house furniture.  Some things on their own may not seem like much, but if you combine them you can make some wonderful things.  Just using meat, flour, milk.tomatoes plus etc. and viola you have a pizza. You could say the same thing about electronics.  Items on their own may not do much, but of you combine them you can do wonderful things....