Hey, Hey, 16K

Computers have become an integral part of our society.  We communicate with them, keep up on the news with them, find the answers to questions of all kinds with them, view pornography with them and exchange ridiculous quantities of cute cat pictures with them. We use them in our work and in our recreational activities.  They've created a whole new class of time vampire called social media.  I'll bet there are a lot of people who, if they had to go without facebook, twitter or any other form of social media for even just one week, would be at a loss for what to do with themselves and might even begin to experience withdrawal symptoms, not unlike those of my loyal readers who have been checking blogger.com for a new Halmanator post since last August.

Today, most everybody uses some form of computer on a regular basis; if not an actual laptop or notebook computer, then a tablet or a smart phone.  In fact, it seems to me that desktop computers are on the wane, as opposed to being on the desktop where they belong.  You hardly see them anymore outside of office environments.  Rather, they tend to be inside the office environment, where they do belong.

I personally am still sitting at a desktop computer as I bang out this blog post.  I still prefer desktop computers to laptop or notebook computers or tablets for two basic reasons; for one, I like to play games on my PC (as opposed to using a game console, which I do not own) and, when I play games, I want a full-sized screen and speakers to help immerse me in the experience in a way that a notebook computer or tablet simply cannot do.  The other reason why I prefer desktop computers is because, being a basically introverted personality type, it gives me an excuse to shut myself away from everyone for a while, up in my attic den,  That's where I keep my desktop computer, so that's where I must go when I need to use it for anything.

Getting back to my original point, though, computers today are commonplace and are used by pretty much everybody.  Even my technologically-challenged sister-in-law, who once changed her mind about enrolling in a college program because registration had to be done on-line, (in hindsight, probably just as well) now has a smartphone.  It was not always thus (meaning almost everyone using computers, not my sister-in-law owning a smartphone, although that was not always thus either).  I recall (fondly sometimes, I must admit) the late seventies and early eighties, when the first personal computers, like the Commodore VIC 20 and 64, the Radio Shack Color Computer, the Atari ST or the early Apple and IBM PCs were strictly the domain of geek hobbyists, like myself.

Back in those days, only real geeks used computers!  The personal computer industry saw to that.  To begin with, there were no namby-pamby point-and-click, GUI interfaces!  No-sirree!  Back then, if you wanted to use a computer, you had to type arcane commands like:

DIR C: /S|MORE (meaning "please give me the directions for making s'mores") or...

LOAD "$",8 (load eight dollars into my bank account).

Back then, if you did not know the correct commands to get the computer to do what you wanted, all that you typically got out of the machine was the dreaded SYNTAX ERROR message which was almost always unhelpful except for those rare occasions on which a syntax error was exactly what you were looking for.

Because most people were too busy having actual lives and interacting with members of the opposite sex to bother learning the arcane commands necessary for using a personal computer, those of us who did learn them felt the smug sense of superiority that comes with belonging to an elite secret society, much like the Freemasons only with a dorkier secret handshake.

Of course, even back then, those of us who used computers tended to spend a lot of time playing games on them, and this is another thing that set us apart.  You really needed a strong interest in gaming, of the sort that defies all logical explanation, to enjoy computer gaming back then.  Today's games are multimedia smorgasbords with Hollywood style production values.  I can easily understand why a game like the one below would appeal to a wide audience.

It's a little bit harder, though, for most people to understand what kept us early gamers playing games like the one below for any amount of time.  I should note that the narrator is definitely "one of us" - I can just tell, even without his giving me the dorky secret handshake.

And yet, countless nerds like me spent countless hours tanning their pale complexions by the light of the CRT, late into the night, playing this game for hour upon hour, usually unsuccessfully as it was actually a surprisingly hard game to win at!

Incidentally, the comments following the above video on YouTube included this one:

"I LOVED this game!  I used Norton Tools to hack it and change attributes.  Give myself unlimited armor, strength etc...   I tried to download it for my MAC but it said unsupported CPU :(  I want to play this again!!"

Yup. He's "one of us" too!

I'm most gratified to learn that I am not alone in looking back on those pioneering days of personal computing with a fond sense of nostalgia, as the video below, which celebrates those halcyon days of nerd-dom, aptly illustrates.

Unplugged

I must have been one of the last hold-outs when cell phones started to become omnipresent.  This may seem strange, considering that I work in the technology sector.  The thing is, I don't agree that being reachable at all hours wherever I happen to be and no matter what I happen to be doing is necessarily a good thing.  Even back in the day when cell phones were still considered "car phones", I didn't particularly want one.  For one thing, I was never much into status symbols (which is mostly what they were back then) and my attitude was "Anybody who's trying to reach me will simply have to wait until I get to where I'm going".

I finally did cave in and got a cell phone, when I decided that having one in the car, for use in emergencies, might not be such a bad idea after all, but my cell phone is a very basic one.  It's not a "smart" phone.  I have no texting plan.  I have a minimal plan that gives me 60 minutes of calling time per month and I never use all of those.  The phone stays in my car at all times; I don't carry it around with me.  If I'm not at home or at work or in my car, then I'm out doing something and I probably don't want to talk to you (unless I happen to be with you, of course).

The first cell phone that I bought had no camera.  My current one does because it's impossible to find a cell phone these days that doesn't have a camera.  But I'm a simple soul.  I don't want to take pictures with my phone, or shoot video, or play music, or send or receive e-mail.  I just want a phone, plain and simple.  If I want to take pictures, I have a camera for that.  If I want to play music, I have an iPod and a CD player for that.  I just want my phone to be a phone.

I'm particularly irritated by people who constantly have their noses in their smart phones or iPads.  The implication is that my company isn't quite stimulating enough so they need some other distraction to stave off the boredom.  I know people who can never seem to just sit and watch a show or a movie on TV.  They always have to be texting or e-mailing someone at that same time.  Some call this "multitasking".  When did doing three things at once become a good thing?  I think there's a lot to be said for focusing all your attention on one thing at a time. 

I've noted before on this blog that I refuse to be assimilated into the Facebook continuum, and I continue to resist.  I don't need to know what every passing acquaintance is up to at every moment, and I don't need everybody knowing what's happening in my life.  In a world so outwardly obsessed with privacy (even your garbage collector probably has an official "privacy policy" for you to review if you only ask him), we sure do willingly surrender our privacy pretty easily these days. 

My daughter once posted on her Facebook wall that, on her birthday, the first thing that her grandmother did was to call her a slob for not brushing her hair.  I didn't read this myself.  It got back to me via an in-law who heard it from a second cousin.  I couldn't for the life of me understand why Jessica would want to broadcast that sort of thing to the world.  It reflects poorly on both her grandmother (who comes across as an insensitive nagging harpy) and herself (a slob who apparently doesn't brush her hair, not to mention a whiner).  I feel justified in mentioning it on my blog now, considering the whole world apparently already knows anyway (yes, I know you what you were thinking!)

The internet and wireless technology have made the world a much smaller place.  Global communication can be almost instantaneous.  This has its advantages.  But, in such an environment, we need more than ever to be mindful about what information we're broadcasting to the world.  There are some things that are best kept to ourselves, or at least within intimate circles.  And there's something to be said for unplugging from the collective (at risk of overusing an admittedly nerdy Star Trek analogy) from time to time and taking time for some reflection, meditation or even just some intimate one-on-one time with a close friend or loved one.

Games Unplayed

I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm a computer gamer.  Well, actually, I used to be more of a computer gamer than I am now.  Somewhere along the way I became halfways responsible and I spend a lot less time playing games on my PC than I used to, mainly because annoying distractions such as work, family and my home (i.e. the maintenance thereof) tend to place demands on the time that I used to spend playing games. 

But I still do like to tinker with them from time to time, and I'm a pack rat when it comes to computer software.  I keep everything!  Others play games and then, when they've finished them or they tire of them, either throw them away or give them to friends or sell them or something.  Not me.  I keep 'em, and collect 'em.  Incidentally, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool PC gamer.  I own no gaming consoles, nor to I plan to get any.  "Give me a game that requires a keyboard and mouse!" I say.

Even when I used to spend a lot more time playing computer games, though, I failed to finish them, more often than not.  Over the years, I've collected a lot of games.  There's a post on this blog entitled "Clutter" which shows some pictures of my little attic retreat, whence I go to play games, post to my blog or just get away from the world for a while.  Said pictures include a shot of my main computer game shelf (I say "main" because that's not all there is by any stretch of the imagination).  Click here for a look.  As your eyes scan the boxes and their various titles, know that I have not finished most of those.  Know too that, some of them, I haven't even started!  I picked them up because I'd heard good things about them and/or they were being offered for what seemed like a bargain price, but I just never got around to trying them.

I also used to read computer gaming magazines fairly regularly.  My favorite was the now-defunct Computer Gaming World (or CGW for short).  I found a really cool web site called The CGW Museum, where you can view or even download almost every issue of CGW that was ever published in PDF format.  Being the nostalgic fool that I am, I'm gradually downloading the whole collection.

I was browsing through the October, 1986 issue this evening (the pleistocene era using the computing time scale).  The inside cover featured an ad for a game called ROADWAR 2000.  "Hmm," I mused, "I think I might have that in my collection somewhere".  I seemed to recall purchasing a copy of something called "ROADWAR" several years ago, at a small computer store that was moving and therefore selling off their older inventory at bargain basement prices.  So, you see, ROADWAR was already dated even at the time!

I scanned my gaming shelf and, sure enough, there I spied a pale yellow box with the title ROADWAR emblazoned on its spine.  Interestingly, it said only ROADWAR, not ROADWAR 2000, so I pulled it down for a closer examination, in order to determine whether this was the same game that was being advertised in CGW back in October of 1986 or something different.  Well, it turns out that what I've got is ROADWAR BONUS EDITION, which includes ROADWAR EUROPE, ROADWAR 2000 and something called WARGAME CONSTRUCTION KIT.  Inside the box are three 5¼-inch floppy diskettes for IBM PC-DOS or MS-DOS PCs.  Yes, I said 5¼-inch and, yes, I said DOS.  And, yes, you guessed it, I have never tried these games even once.  And, yes, I still intend to someday.

P.S. - For those of you not in the know who are now protesting "But today's PCs won't run those games anymore!" I say, that's what DOSBox is for!

What did we ever do before the internet?

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Update - September 25, 2012

Somebody out there appears to have created an online game especially for people like me who never finish games.  It's called You Have To Burn The Rope.  Click the link and have fun!  That's one more game that I've actually finished. 

WOO-HOO!!!

Time Travel

"Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell."  - Dr. Who, The Androids of Tara

Since the days of H.G. Wells (and probably before that) dreamers, idealists and lovers of science fiction and fantasy have speculated about the possibility of travelling backward in time; revisiting people, places and events that have gone, or at least changed. 

The very concept immediately raises several questions.  If it were possible to go back in time, could we only do so as passive observers or, as Charles Dickens put it, "shadows" that could watch history unfold without being able to affect it, or might we be able to interact with the past and possibly change the outcome of events?  If this were possible, all sorts of paradoxes come into play.  If we could change the outcome of historical events, would it not also change the future?  Might we find, upon returning to our own time, a radically changed world?  What if we were to meet an earlier version of ourselves, or somehow prevent our parents, grandparents, or any of our ancestors, for that matter, from conceiving the children that they did.  Would we suddenly disappear?

These questions have been amply considered by a myriad of fictional works (and that's only counting the Star Trek series!) but it's still fascinating to ponder on the nature of time, and how it works.  This is not just the province of dreamers and science fiction writers.  Much less fanciful and more learned intellects, such as Albert Einstein and Dr. Stephen Hawking (to name but two well-known examples) have theorized on the subject.

Einstein put forth the remarkable premise that time is relative to each of us, and is affected by speed.  The faster we go, the more slowly time passes.  If you could travel at, or near, the speed of light, theorized Einstein, several thousand years might seem as only a single year to you.  You could traverse the galaxy for one year (or, at least, half a light year's worth of it, allowing for time to return) and, upon returning, you'd find that the Earth, and everyone on it, had aged considerably more than you.

Dr. Stephen Hawking agrees with Einstein's theory and concedes that it makes it possible to travel forward in time if we could only go fast enough.  He asserts, however, that it would not be likewise possible to travel backward in time, because it "violates a fundamental rule that cause comes before effect."

I realize that I'm going out on a limb here, disagreeing with an intellectual giant the likes of Dr. Hawking, but I'm going to do so anyway.  I suggest that travelling backward in time would not violate the "fundamental rule that cause comes before effect", because there is no direct relationship between time and events.  Allow me to explain using something that I like to call the "Garden Hose Analogy".

Using a garden hose as an analogy to explain what time is and how it works is by no means an original idea of mine.  It's been used before, often to explain the concept of "SpaceTime", which brings physical space into the equation, suggests a relationship between space and time, and generally makes the whole concept very weird and confusing. 

My analogy is a simpler one, focusing only on time and leaving space out of it, in the interest of simplicity.  Think of time as a garden hose, and events as the water running through it.  The hose itself is always there, and certainly it's possible to travel through it in either direction (assuming you're small enough), but the water passes through it but once, and is gone.  You could certainly go from the hose's end to its source (effectively travelling "backward" through it), but you'd never find the water that had passed through it before.  It's gone.  There is no connection between the water and the hose, save that the hose acts as a conduit through which the water flows.

By the same token, I believe that we make the mistake of mentally linking time and events when, in fact, there is no direct relationship between the two.  Time, like the hose, is a conduit and it may be possible to traverse it in any direction, but events, like the water, come and go.  You might be able to revisit Kittyhawk in 1903, but you'd never meet Orville and Wilbur Wright.  They're not there anymore.  They have passed through the conduit of time, and are gone.

But what if the water is still flowing?  Surely we would still find water there.  True, but it wouldn't be the same water, it would be new water, which brings us to the ironic possibility of future events unfolding in the past; a strange concept at first blush, but not so strange if you accept the premise of there being no direct link between time and events.

And what about travelling forward in time?  What if we were to move down the garden hose in the same direction as, but faster than, the flowing water.  Then we would find nothing, because the water hasn't arrived yet.  We would be in a void, of sorts, until we slowed down and waited for the water (or events) to catch up to us.

And how do I reconcile these concepts with those of scientists much more learned than I?  Well, let's apply my analogy to Einstein's theory.  If a bit of the water suddenly flowed much faster than the main body, it would travel down the hose more quickly.  In so doing, it would arrive at the end of the hose long before the rest of the water.  Put another way, the main body of water would "age" much more by the time it reached the end of the hose, than the bit which sped up.  So the analogy still works.

These are the sorts of thoughts that flow through the inscrutable mind of the Halmanator, as he stands in his back yard, idly watering his flower bed, on a midsummer's evening.

"But surely it's late October!" I hear you protest.

What can I say?  Apparently the water flows through my hose somewhat more slowly than through yours.

Lego My Tie Interceptor!

My nineteen-year-old nephew, Jonathan, was doing a little spring cleaning in his bedroom recently. While cleaning out his closet, he came upon a model of a TIE interceptor (from Star Wars for you non-geeks) made out of Lego. He had bought the miniature starfighter when he was twelve years old, had patiently assembled it, and it had adorned his bedroom for several years before finally being relegated to the closet. Now, he decided that he had finally outgrown it, but it seemed a shame to simply throw out the replica which he'd spent so many painstaking hours assembling and which, for that matter, had been not inexpensive when acquired, especially for someone with the income of a twelve-year-old. But what else to do with it?

Why, give it to his forty-seven year old uncle Andy of course! It would look right at home next to his voice-command Artoo-Detoo, his die-cast Titanium series Millennium Falcon, his Darth Vader chopper toy, his AT-AT walker, his vintage battery-operated tin airplane, his latex Batman cowl with matching Batmobile and his large collection of Simpsons paraphernalia, too numerous to list. And indeed it does!

Truth be told, I don't really have an appropriate place for the thing myself, especially considering that it's not exactly small! It measures about 15 inches long by 10 inches wide by 11 inches high. The only place that my wife will let me keep it, of course, is in my already cluttered attic but, what with all that other stuff, I've run out of free surfaces. Still, my inner nerd absolutely refused to allow me to turn it down.

On a slightly more serious note, let me say for the record that I've always liked the look of the generic TIE fighter ever since they were first introduced in the original Star Wars movie (now commonly known as Episode IV: A New Hope). It was refreshing to me to see a spaceship design that abandoned the stereotypical rocket ship or flying saucer look. Heck, it doesn't even look aerodynamic which, of course, is completely unnecessary for a space vehicle. The large solar panels are a semi-credible means of collecting energy for power generation (at least within reasonable proximity to some kind of star) and its small size and unusual shape gives it a tiny profile, making it a tricky target to hit, at least from the front or back.

Of course, I do see some practical problems with the design. Between the forward-facing-only window and the huge panels on either side, the pilot's field of vision would be extremely limited. If you're anywhere other than right in front of him, he can't see you. I wonder how many TIE fighter pilots have died, never knowing what hit them?

The Empire seems to have some kind of hangup about limiting their soldiers' field of vision in general. Those stormtroopers probably don't have much of a peripheral vision inside those helmets of theirs either. That's probably why none of them can seem to hit the broad side of a bantha with those blasters of theirs. Darth Vader himself could sympathize with their plight, since his helmet and mask caused the same problem. I've worn a Darth Vader helmet and mask (a confession which I'm sure hardly shocks you at this point) so I know whereof I speak! The Dark Lord of the Sith needed his Force powers just to figure out who was standing around him!

Anyway, practical design flaws aside, I still think that TIE fighters are cool and, dammit, one way or another, I'm making room for my new toy in my attic. Thanks Jonny! You're my favorite nephew!