Underdogs

Everyone loves an underdog. Except for the people who don’t, which is why we have underdogs. I am a fan of two underdogs. One is mostly overlooked and considered to be not useful, due to the environment it’s in. The other is vilified because of things that happened in the past.

Haiku

Haiku is an operating system. In simplest terms, it is the interface between you and the computer. The best way to understand Haiku is to understand its predecessor and inspiration, which was an operating system named BeOS. Other people have written better things about BeOS that I can, so if you’d like to read about the history of it, please do so. I’m going to rewind a little bit.

I used my Atari Mega ST until it was impossible to continue with it. It couldn’t be networked and couldn’t get onto the Internet easily. I resisted using an IBM compatible computer for as long as possible. I didn’t like dealing with DOS and the weird way it handled memory (do mouse drivers go in high memory, or upper memory?). Or messing around with IRQs and addresses for serial cards and the like. Giving up the Atari was difficult, but necessary.

Along with DOS, there was Windows. Windows didn’t thrill me, either. However, for playing games, it was the only way to go. Macintoshes were expensive and I didn’t much care for the Macintosh operating system, either. One mouse button? No thank you! I know that doesn’t have much to do with operating systems, but it still annoyed me.

Eventually, Windows and DOS gave way to Windows 95, then Windows 98. Games started working better under DirectX. Life got a little better, if you didn’t have to deal with device drivers that much.

Linux came around, also. Which, at the time, was only for people with technical expertise and a desire to overcome all obstacles to get it to work. There was also OS/2 Warp, which had some things going for it. But, since I was a game player, neither of those really worked for me and they weren’t something I wanted to use on a day-to-day basis.

BeOS had been in the works during this time, but I hadn’t heard of it when it was running on Hobbit processors. Then it was released for PowerPC computers, which I also didn’t have. By 1998, it was released for Intel compatible processors, and I was able to try it out. And I loved it. No DOS to worry about, it was fast, it was easy to use. It could play MP3 songs backwards, in real time. It could play videos on all faces of a rotating cube. The part that I loved the most, the title bar for the windows was a tab. A tab that you could move back and forth across the top of the window. Such a simple thing, but it made it easier to lay windows on top of each other and still get to them easily if you moved the tabs to be able to click on them. It didn’t play a lot of games, but I loved using it as my day-to-day operating system. Not that it didn’t have any games. In fact, the only copy of Civilization: Call To Power I ever bought was for BeOS.

At this point, I’ll give an example of one of the reasons why BeOS was a joy to use.

I had bought a new video card. Before installing it, I went into Windows and removed all the old video drivers, which was not an easy task. Some of it could be done easily, other parts meant manually deleting files and then going into the registry, to remove entries there.

Then I installed the card and went back into Windows. The resolution was set to the lowest it would go. I installed the new drivers, which required rebooting. Then I changed the resolution, which required another reboot. Then I tried a game, and it didn’t work. There was a problem with DirectX. I went and manually removed a lot more files, changed more registry entries, rebooted, re-installed DirectX, rebooted. Eventually, I got it all straightened out and it was working again.

Then I booted into BeOS and it just worked. It was the same resolution I had left it at. It still ran the few games that I had. I didn’t have to do a damn thing. It was a beautiful moment.

Be Inc. eventually went out of business. Despite their best efforts (and Microsoft shenanigans), BeOS never caught on like it should have. Much like with the Atari, I used BeOS until it was no longer feasible. Around that time, the Haiku (then called Open BeOS) project started.

Haiku was to be an open sourced BeOS compatible operating system. After twenty-one years of development, it’s gone through a few changes. One of the larger ones being a 64-bit version, which loses BeOS compatibility (the 32-bit version still keeps it). It supports most modern things, such as USB and SSD drives. There are still a lot of things that don’t work, completely, because of closed source drivers, so getting a computer that fully works (sound, networking, etc.) can be an exercise in research. I’m lucky in that I have one computer that is fully supported, and it is now running Haiku full time. I have another computer that mostly works, but I’ll get to that a bit later.

The windowing system has changed a bit, too. I no longer have to manually stack my windows and move tabs about, as it can be done automatically using “Stack and Tile” (Stack places windows on top of each other and adjusts the tab position, while Tile sticks windows together at the edges). It’s the little things that I enjoy the most.

Stacked Windows place the tab for you

Both windows will move when either tab is dragged

Tiled windows can be stuck together on any edge and move as one

At this point, Haiku is good enough to use on a daily basis, depending on what you need to do. Well, for me it is. In fact, I’m writing this using Haiku right now.

When most people think of an operating sytem that isn’t Windows or macOS, they usually think of Linux. One day, I wish more people would think of Haiku, instead. It’s fast, friendly, and easy to use.

Atari

Atari, the fifty year old company that wouldn’t die. The company that made their name synonymous with “TV games” and made a billion dollars, and then lost it the next day due to gross mis-management. Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole. It didn’t take a day, sort of. Well, maybe it did.

Anyway, Atari used to be at the top of the heap. They made arcade games, home consoles, and home computers. Their logo appeared in the movie Blade Runner. When someone wanted to play a home videogame, they said they were going to play “Atari”, even if it wasn’t an Atari. They were the top dog.

And then they lost it. They went from a videogame Godhood, to a struggling computer maker, to a game publisher, to a free-to-play mobile app pusher. As times got more desperate, they survived by licensing out their name and intellectual property to anyone who asked for it (so it seemed).

People who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s seem to mostly hate Atari, now. They aren’t the company they remember. Which I think is a little unfair, given the company they remember wasn’t the “real” Atari, either.

From top of the heap to bottom of the garbage pail, that’s why they’re underdogs, today.

Despite growing up on Atari video games, at home and in the arcade, it was their first computers that really hooked me. Like many other things, it was based on the 6502 processors, but unlike many other computers, it had custom processors for graphics and sound. Arguably, it was the first home computer to have a GPU. But, again, a lot of other people have written more informative and accurate things than I will right now.

When Computers didn’t always look like boxes

Gray but still exciting

Suffice it to say, Atari were at the top of the heap, and then at the bottom of the landfill.

They coasted along for many years and then decided to come out with a new console. Originally, it was being called the AtariBox, but the name soon changed to VCS, in honor of the original 2600. Some people were probably offended by this, but, to be fair, the new VCS is more of a Video Computer System than the 2600 was. This was because of Atari’s promise that the console would also be able to be used as a computer. Which is why I can write this blog post on an Atari VCS with Haiku.

Originally, I wasn’t going to participate in the Indiegogo campaign to raise money to create it, as I questioned Atari’s ability to deliver. But, then I thought, it might be my last chance to own an Atari branded computer.

I’m glad I did. I’m glad I got my unit with the wood grain face. It’s a very nice looking machine, and very welcome in this age of ugly block-like cases.

The Atari VCS 800

A lot of people wanted to compare it to the Ouya, but there is no comparison. The VCS uses an AMD R1606G at its heart. It’s not a massive powerhouse, like the PlayStation 5 or XBox whatever, but it’s a very capable system. Capable, even, of running Windows 11, if you wanted to do such a thing.

If one were struggling to own a computer, the VCS would be the thing to get, especially at the prices it’s been available for, lately. If you wanted to play games and do some computing, this thing can do it. If you needed do to some work using Google Docs, Office 365, or iCloud apps, you can do that, too, without needing another operating system.

So, yes, it’s also a console and it is capable of playing games. Several games are from indie developers. One can also get the full suite of Atari’s Recharged titles, too, among many other things.

Lately, Atari has done an about-face. They’re concentrating more on the game side of things, which is good. I believe the current incarantion is really looking to bring the Atari name back, when it comes to games. Unfortunately, I also think they lost interest in the VCS, which I find sad.

In a near perfect world, I wish Atari would look at Haiku and convince their AMD partners to write drivers for the few things that don’t work on the VCS, such as Wi-Fi and sound. Maybe see how nice, simple, and friendly it is and adopt it as the operating system for the computer side. It’s a fool’s dream, but I’m a fool and willing to dream it.

In a more perfect world, Atari would have been managed properly from the beginning. It’s not hard to think that, had that happened, they’d still be the company everyone likes to remember, probably being in a similar position to where Apple is, now.

In Days Of Yore

Recently, a friend of mine was lamenting the fact that he had a hard time learning programming by reading or watching videos. I suggested he learn like I did: looking at code and typing it in. Then I had a great idea and suggested that he look up an old magazine with a BASIC program and convert it to whatever language he was trying to pick up.

Long ago, back when the world was still flat, a computer in the home was seen as an expensive frivolity. There was nothing particularly compelling about getting one because whatever you could do on a computer, you could do cheaper with a pencil and paper. Maybe it would make sense if you were a company, but not so much for the individual.

Finding software, then, could be difficult and expensive. Luckily, there were magazines and books that contained code listings for various types of programs. Mostly, they were in a language called BASIC.

The thing is, as a child in this computer pre-history time, I didn’t have a lot of money to buy software. It was a lot easier to get the parents to plunk down a lot less money on a book or magazine. It could even be justified as being educational, because I could learn how to program by typing in those code listings.

The joke was on me, though, because I did, in fact, learn how to program that way. And debug. When you don’t have an Internet to search, going through a program you typed in to find out why it doesn’t behaving properly does wonders for figuring out how programs work and where you made your mistake.

BASIC is not a universally loved language. It was designed to be a learning language; something easy for someone, like children, to pick up and learn the basics (get it?) of programming. Many people, then as now, thought BASIC should be buried beneath the Earth and not taught to anyone, much less children in their formative years.

But BASIC was popular among the home computer users because, in most cases, it came built into the computer. You turned it on, there was BASIC. Even if you didn’t have a disk drive, you still had BASIC. It was ubiquitous. Given the choice of, say, dropping $95 to buy Microsoft’s Fortran for your TRS-80 (which would be the equivalent of $318 today) or using the BASIC the computer came with, well, you kind of know who’s going to win that one.

Yes, that Microsoft.

So, it was (technically) cheap, and (generally) available. The other advantage BASIC had was that it was an interpreted language. That meant the BASIC commands were turned into “machine code” when they were encountered. This meant typing in something quick and dirty, like PRINT 27*42, would give you an immediate answer and you wouldn’t have to compile it, link it, and then run it.

What about the disadvantages, then? Why wouldn’t people want this language taught to people? There are probably numerous issues (memory management, etc.) but one of the biggest was that BASIC did not teach structured programming. It was, in fact, very unstructured. It gave rise to the descriptor of “spaghetti code.” This was all most due to one command: GOTO.

The GOTO command allowed the programmer to jump to any line in the program, arbitrarily. Aside from being a great source of bugs (like, maybe using it to jump to the wrong line), it also made programs very hard to read. Given that early BASICs didn’t have, say, IF..THEN..ELSE statements, GOTO was used a lot.

Consider this:
10 IF X > 10 THEN 30
20 PRINT “X is less than or equal to 10”:GOTO 40
30 PRINT “X is greater than 10”
40 END

This simply checks to see if variable X is greater than 10. If it is, it jumps over line 20 to print a message saying so. If it’s less than or equal to 10, it prints its message then jumps to line 40. This may not seem particularly awful, but when you have a program that’s a hundred lines or more, following all those GOTO statements gets to be a real chore.

With a structured programming language (or a more modern BASIC), one could write the same thing like this:
IF X > 10 THEN PRINT “X is greater than 10”
ELSE PRINT “X is less than or Equal to 10”
END

By chance, around the time my friend mentioned his issue about learning and my suggestion of converting a BASIC program, I was reading a post by the CRPG Addict about a game called “The Devil’s Dungeon.” Evidently, there was some controversy about its status, not only as an RPG (or, Role Playing Game) but also about if it could be termed the ‘first commercial computer RPG’ because it was written in BASIC and distributed in a book, rather than being sold on disk or cassette.

“What luck,” I thought. If I could find a copy of this book online, I could try converting it to, say, Python and show my friend just how awesome an idea it was. So I found a copy of the book that “The Devil’s Dungeon” was in and began the task of converting it over. I thought it would be pretty easy.

It was not as easy as I thought it would be. The biggest sticking point was (and you should be completely not surprised by this) was the GOTO statements. It’s not a particularly long program, but following the twists and turns of the GOTOs, used to jump over sections of code and then to jump back into those previously skipped portions was breaking my brain. IF statements had to be reversed in order to get things to flow properly.

As it is, the game sort of works in Python, but I know there are issues all due to how the program executes. I may try to find these problems and fix them, some how.

The Devil’s Dungeon sort of working on Haiku

After the trouble of doing this, I began to re-think my advice of converting a BASIC program to a different language. It wouldn’t, necessarily, be an easy task. But then I thought about how much I learned about Python (take away: I don’t like it) just by having to look things up or working around issues. So, I still stand by it. I still think it’s a valid learning experience. If nothing else, one would learn how not to write a program.

I may fix Devil’s Dungeon. Or, I may move on to another game that was mentioned by the CRPG Addict, called “The Dungeon of Danger.” I found the listing for it, already. It’s a lot longer and a lot more complicated than Devil’s Dungeon. It also re-introduces a long forgotten command, ON GOTO, which is already causing me heartburn. But, I also miss those old DATA statements.

Grab The De-Feb

I was hoping to write at least one post a month. That means I’m running out of time so what you’re going to get is a filler post. A post about nothing. Empty space. Except for this part.

To be fair to me, though (because I am me and I deserve it), I’m actually planning a post. I’m taking notes and everything. It will be a first for this page because, mostly, I just write crap off the cuff.

Hopefully it’ll turn out good because I’m actually putting effort into it. Even more hopefully, I won’t lose interest in it and forget about it.

Hey, I have an idea. So this won’t be a complete wash I’ll tell you all about my computer problem. I have several computers, and they all have a problem in one form or another, but this one is about my main computer. The one that does the heavy lifting of gaming, VR gaming, TV watching, and anything else that doesn’t involved real work.

It is primarily a Windows 10 rig. It’s also old. I put it together sometime around March and April of 2012. That makes it almost seven years old. The only thing that’s been replaced in it has been the video card. Really, it’s time for an upgrade but I’m having trouble justifying that because it still works. Mostly.

Anyway, the problem started about a year ago when I pushed the button to turn it on. It started to whirl to life and then shut itself off. I turned it on again and it briefly started before promptly shutting itself off again. I turned off the power at the power supply, used some canned air on the insides to make sure something wasn’t overheating, and then left it for a while.

When I came back, I turned it all back on and it worked again. For about six months. Then then the same thing happened. I opened it up and blew air through it again and tried to turn it on. It came on briefly then shut down. So, maybe dust wasn’t the issue. I turned it off at the power supply again and left it for a few hours. Turning it back on worked again. For a few months.

So, that was weird. I’d never heard of a power supply going for months on end just shutting down and needing to be turned off. I guess the capacitors need to drain or something.

Then I tried playing a game in virtual reality. It worked for a few minutes and then the computer shut itself off. This was no good. I turned it back on and there was a message saying the CPU was overheating. I checked to make sure the liquid cooling pump was still pumping, which it was.

Then I tried playing a non-VR game. Again, the computer just died after a while. But I wasn’t sure the CPU was actually overheating at that point. On the advice of a friend, I installed some monitoring software that would log the CPU temperature every few seconds, fire up another game, and, after the computer shut off, I’d look through it and see that the CPU was not, in fact, overheating at all.

So I’m guessing it’s all down to the power supply. So that’s going to be replaced, and I’m not looking forward to it. I’ll have to yank out all the wires and re-thread them through the case and it’s going to be a nuisance.

Life In Upgrades

For myself, I’ve never bought a Windows based computer. I’ve always built them, all the way back to the 386 days. I’ve even built a dual Celeron system for BeOS (using the wonky but awesome Abit BP6 motherboard). Back in those days it was usually cheaper to build your own than to buy one already made. The other advantage was that if you wanted to upgrade a part of it, you usually could keep the rest of the old pieces so you were just paying for whatever you were upgrading.

My current Windows computer is getting a bit old. I think it’s pushing five years, now. I’m thinking it might be time to upgrade. Technically, I only need to buy a motherboard, processor, and memory (I’ll call these The Core). I have a case, power supply, drives, and other things needed to complete a computer.

The problem with being me, though, is that once I start pricing components, I start pricing everything. Because, boy howdy, things have changed. For instance, I have a giant monolithic black tower case which had everything I was looking for back when I bought it. These days, I’m thinking I don’t want a giant case. After having the behemoth standing next to me for so long, and having a Mac Mini, I’m kind of longing for something smaller. Also, with USB 3 and Thunderbolt, having internal drives aren’t that important to me.

So… I would start looking for a new case. Also, when I upgraded my video card a year ago I noticed that I was running out of the power connectors for the video card. I also needed an adapter to fit them on. New power supplies have the necessary connections so maybe I should get a new power supply?

You know what? My power supply has lights where the cables fit into it. I thought it was kind of gaudy when I first got it, as I didn’t get it for the lights but because it was the right capacity and the right price. Having lived with it for so long, though, I kind of like the look. So I would want the new one to have lights.

My mouse and keyboard also have lights. It’s ridiculously gaudy. But I love it. New cases are covered in RGB lights. So many, really, that I wouldn’t even need a Christmas tree. I could just light up a computer case and all the computer internals.

So, yeah, any advantage of upgrading in pieces goes out the window when I decide to re-buy everything.

But, I’m kind of tired of building my own boxes. It’s also cheaper, now, to buy an already built system. For a little more than those ‘Core’ components, I could have a fully assembled, warrantied, operating system enabled computer. It may not look as wonko cool as super light-em-up cases going around today, but it would be a lot less of a hassle. For slightly more than that, I could have a super compact system bigger than the Mini but way smaller than The Dark Tower.

It’s a conundrum, all right. By now, you all should know what I do when hit by a conundrum of this sort. That’s right, do nothing but think about it excessively. I still don’t have that 5K iMac I’ve been wanting since it was released.

What If…

I like playing the “What If…?” Game. It can lead to some interesting thoughts. Most of the time it’s just idle speculation because it’s pretty well impossible to know what might have happened in a certain situation.

For a while now I’ve been going through old documents and videos that came from Atari from the 1980s. Atari, if you’re not familiar with the name, was a video game company that spread out into computers. For a short time, Atari was the name in video entertainment.

They were mismanaged by Warner Communications and ended up selling the home division to Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore Business Machines, who also mismanaged and completely gutted the rest of Atari. The other division, the side that did the arcade games, became part of Midway until being sold to Warner Bros. Entertainment (there’s a circle for you).

What a lot of people don’t know is that Atari had bought an engineering company in 1973 and used it as kind of a think tank. Atari had a couple of R&D departments, as well. This is the stuff that I found interesting.

The R&D departments had their hands in telecommunications and were also thinking of different medical devices. Back in 1983 they had a ‘summer computer camp’ going at Club Med that, if I understand it properly, had Atari 8-bit computers networked together. Atari never released any networking product for the 8-bit computers (the 400/800, XL and XE lines).

So I wonder what the personal electronic world would be like today had Atari been properly managed and survived the through the 1990s. Would my iPhone be an aPhone? Would doctors be hooking us up to diagnostic computers wearing the Fuji logo? Would we have had VR earlier?

Who knows? Not me. There’s no tellling what may or may not have happened even with the best of management.

It’s not a total loss. Some people left and went to Apple. Some went off to Intel. It’s probably safe to say that people went all over the technology company landscape and used their knowledge to bring us interesting things. Like USB.

Some places to check out:
Atari Museum
Atari Archives
Internet Archive

 

If I Were In Charge

Apple had their WWDC keynote yesterday. Unlike most of the Internet, I don’t have much to cry over. Evidently, the world is split into three groups: the people who hate Apple and take dumps over anything they do, people who love Apple who take dumps over everything that they do, and the people who neither hate nor love Apple and think some of their products are pretty neat.

I’m part of the third group. I have a MacBook Pro from 2012 and I like it just fine. I have a Mac Mini and, for a while, it was my favorite purchase because it did exactly what I bought it for and never complained. I really wanted a Mac Pro because I love the design but, unfortunately, it was too much computer for anything that I would need it for and I wasn’t crazy enough to spend the copious amounts of money for something I couldn’t fully utilize.

Yesterday I noted to a friend of mine that there was nothing new on the Mini front. He told me that I should just consider it dead because it’s going nowhere. I can’t disagree, really. I mean, the last ‘refresh’ was the first time I’d seen a company downgrade a product and act proud about it.

The Mini’s main claim to fame is that (hold on for a surprise here) it’s small. A bonus feature is that it isn’t an All-In-One design so it’s cheaper than an iMac and you can buy whatever monitor you like. These days, though, there are plenty of smaller desktop computers running around and just about all of them are far more powerful than the Mini.

So, yeah, there’s not a lot of justification for keeping the Mini around if it can’t compete.

But… We know Apple is working on a new Mac Pro because the current one has a design flaw (that being it can’t, supposedly, be upgraded very much due to thermal constraints). So now they have a really nice design that will be discontinued.

But… Yesterday it was announced that there was official support for adding graphic cards via Thunderbolt.

So, what I would do, were I in charge of Apple, is take the current Mac Pro case, remove the two completely unnecessary workstation grade video cards, put in a proper medium to high-powered CPU with a just capable built-in video solution. If people want a better video card, they can now get one and add it in with a Thunderbolt enclosure.

Sell that as the new Mini. Or, since there’s a Mac Pro, iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and now, an iMac Pro, why not brand it a Mini Pro? I would also keep the memory upgradable and put the CPU in a socket. Since it’s easy to get to the internal of the Mac Pro case, it would be negligible to upgrade the memory and CPU. This would also keep the masses… let’s say ‘less unhappy’ since most people just enjoy pooping their diapers over anything, anyway.

 

Forget About Reality ‘Cause Nothing Is The Norm

I’m not a good reviewer of things. That’s why you don’t see a lot of reviews on this blog. I’m not even sure when the last one was and if it was a proper review or not. I tend to think it had something to do with frozen breakfast foods. But, yeah, if you’re here for that kind of thing you’re probably not going to find it. Actually, I have no idea why you’re reading this. I mean, I know why my mom reads ’em, but I’ve got no clue about the rest of you. And I know you’re all out there. I can smell ya.

Anyway… Sometimes I want to review things but I don’t really know how to go about it. I know what I like (usually). I know what I don’t like (usually). And sometimes that changes. Like, almost immediately. I’m mercurial that way.

I mention this because I feel like I should be reviewing these virtual reality things that I play with so other people can get a feel for what they are and what they do. And then I feel like I don’t want to get screenshots together or make little movies or whatever the cool kids on YouTube are doing these days. But, like I said a moment ago, I got mercury in my veins (I’m not crazy) so how I feel at the beginning of a review may be far different than how I feel at the end of it.

Maybe I could just sort of mention things, you know, casually like. So, I was totally playing Duo the other night. It was pretty cool. It’s like Breakout (old folks) or Arkanoid (less older folks) where you hold these two shields and bounce balls into the bricks, which come up from the floor in humorous shapes. It’s pretty fun, even though I punched a wall and got both my hands caught in the ceiling fan (which I swear I turned off) on account of trying to keep the balls from getting past me. But they did get past me, and I’m not sure how or why.

Yeah. That wasn’t too bad. I just watched the video for the game and now I’m kind of annoyed. It shows a woman playing the game (I assume she’s the developer) and she’s barely moving. I’ve got no room in my bedroom but I still move all over the place trying to keep the balls in check (you can  think of your own dirty double entendre) and she’s barely moving her arms. Shenanigans, I say!

Or I could mention Rescuties VR and how I thought it was about catching cute babes that people throw at you but is, in fact, about catching cute (open to interpretation) babies that people chuck at you. And then you have to throw the babies to someone else, or, you know, just toss ’em in an ambulance. It’s an entertaining game and I’ve only gotten to level 2 because, for some reason, I’m deathly afraid of pitching a baby into an ambulance on account of things like walls. And ceiling fans. And expensive monitors. Stuff. It’s not just babies that get tossed your way, either. There’s also corgis and cats and muffins (or cupcakes?) and life preservers. A bunch of junk, really.

I reckon I’ll have to give it some thought.

 

Little Manhattan

I went to get the oil changed in the car today. I had been thinking, lately, of getting a Mac Mini. Mostly because I want something that I can use as a server, leave on all the time, and not have to worry about it catching on fire or shooting my electric bill through the roof. Further through the roof. Unfortunately, I’ve also found a reason to get the 27″ iMac. Even worse, I found out I can buy a 12 bay NAS on the cheap (cheaper than the iMac). Since I was in the area (sort of) I decided to head over to the Apple store.

The closest Apple store is in a place called The Domain. The Domain is marketed as a mall. When someone says the word “mall” to me I think of a big building with lots of stores and fast food places. What The Domain is, really, a small town. The only ‘inside’ is the interior of the shops and restaurants. There are streets and walkways. There are also apartments. It’s big enough that if you park on the wrong side of the place you want to go, or section, then you might find it more reasonable to go back to your car and drive closer. You may as well call it “Little Manhattan” despite being harder to navigate than New York City.

The place is also a concentration of pretentiousness. If you aren’t rich, you don’t belong in this little town. If you aren’t rich you should feel privileged to be able to walk through the place. Which is funny, because you won’t be seeing people all dressed up or a car more expensive than a Porsche. Unless they hide the things.

It seems that living in the apartments there is the way to go. Once you’re in Little Manhattan you can shop for expensive stuff, go to the movies, eat at restaurants that won’t even acknowledge the existence of Burger King, and do whatever it is the super-rich do. Seriously, how many shopping malls do you know of that have valet parking?

After getting lost, I found the Apple store. I walked in and was greeted by a friendly fellow who wanted to help me. I asked about the Mac Mini, got my answer, and walked out. It was a lot less traumatic than I thought it would be.

For the sake of completeness, and because it’s practically next door, I decided to stop into the new Microsoft store. Speaking of the real Manhattan, I’m the type of person who rode the subway, walked the streets with a expensive computer equipment, and even walked around with an entire paycheck in my pocket in cash — all without fear. Walking into the Microsoft store made me nervous. Not because I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong, but because a swarm of MS Drones grouped around me, complete with robotic smiles and pre-taped sales pitch.

One them beat the rest of the drones and asked if I was interested in the Surface. Being an honest person I said, “no.” She assured me that I should have a seat and play with one for a while. It would, she assured me, “blow you away.”

At this point I realized there were two directions I could go with this. I could be truthful and say something like:

“Honey, I’ve been using computers since before they had color graphics. I’ve been using them since before you were born. Computers aren’t sexy, cool, or edgy; they are either useful or not useful. Tablets, pads, laptops are all just computers and I know them. I understand them. They all do the same thing. The only difference between them is how they’re displayed. The Surface couldn’t ‘blow me away’ unless it sprouted arms, unzipped my pants, and did unmentionable things to me.”

Instead I took the polite route and said, “I’m sure it will.” I touched it for about three seconds just to see how the keyboard was. Then I tried the cheaper keyboard and was reminded of the Atari 400’s membrane keyboard, except not as good. For the record, if you’re thinking of getting a Surface you want the more expensive keyboard.

Speaking of Microsoft, I did upgrade to Windows 8. I suspect it’s going to become a large part of my working life so I figured I should go ahead and do it even though I didn’t care for the preview versions.

After using it for a few hours I’d say it’s not that bad. The Start screen is kind of clunky, but it’s got some interesting stuff. There are a number of things that I think are wrong, but that’s not surprising. Microsoft doesn’t care about usability and they don’t appear to have a sense of what would be a good idea or not.

For instance, I have three monitors. After the upgrade it messed around with the screen ordering. I spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to change it (mostly because right-clicking on the desktop caused the ‘circle of infinity’ to spin but not show the context menu until I rebooted). After I got that sorted out, it still decided that the monitor to the right was the main screen. Which it isn’t. You can’t specify where the Start menu appears from what I can tell. You also can’t keep the Start screen up if you’re using the desktop. It disappears, which is kind of a shame. With all the ticker boxes and crap, it would be nifty to have it stay up if I’m not actively using that screen for something. The Time/Date section only appears on the far right of the right side monitor which makes it difficult to check easily. It’s kind of a mess, but Windows 8 was never designed to be used on a desktop, much less one with more than a single monitor. Also, I can’t have something like VLC play in full screen and use a program on a different monitor because when you do that the task bar takes up the bottom edge. Which is why I’m typing this using my MacBook.

In fact, it may be that Windows 8 is the reason why I’m considering getting not one, but two Apple computers in the future.

 

 

Bibbles, Bobbles, and Boobels.

I’ve decided that Windows 8 isn’t so bad. I’ve actually found it to be amusing, for a few minutes at least. This is what I like to do: find someone who has been using Windows for a very long time. Then sit them down in front of Windows 8 and ask them to shut it down. It will give you quite some time of fun watching this person eventually pull their hair out by the roots. If the person is especially gifted, though, they’ll give up after a minute or two and shut it down from the command line. For people who don’t know that method, though, there’s no telling how long the pain will go on. The same is true for Server 2012, by the way.

I’m not a Windows server expert, but it seems to be that things that were simple in the past are now much more complicated. This is the Microsoft way. It’s complicated enough that I’m considering getting it for the home just so I can figure it out. I think we all know by now that I’m a masochist that way.

I’ve been thinking of prostitution later. Not because I’m thinking of changing my career path, or just because I would have to pay someone to even look at me, but because it turns out that Maine is a hotbed of prostitution. Maybe not the whole state, but at least one town.

This makes me wonder, again, just why it’s illegal. People get paid to do things all the time and I’m just not seeing why sex would be any different. Given the large number of people on the customer list in Kennebunk it seems like it was a popular business that was wanted by quite a lot of people.

I’ve never heard a good argument for it being illegal. Diseases can spread without the help of a hooker. Infidelity is not limited to street walkers. There’s crime all over the place with or without the benefit of high class escorts.

So, if you have a really good idea of why it is illegal (aside from the whole ‘sex is evil’ part) feel free to let me know.

I went to Dime Box, TX last week. You might not have heard of the place. That would be surprising because Dime Box, TX has a big dime. It’s in a box. Pretty clever, actually.

Stuff to see when you hit the small towns

So, I have struck it from my list of places to see. One down and… Several more to go.

Manor, TX	Ghost Town (J. Lorraine)
Bertram, TX	Car Part T-Rex
Wimberley, TX	Pioneer Town replica
San Marcos, TX	Mystery Spot
Dime Box, TX	Big Dime in a Box
Kingsland	Texas Chainsaw Massacre Restaurant (Junction House)
Waco, TX	Mammoth Site
Columbus, TX	Confed Museum
Columbus, TX	Santa Clause Museum
Columbus, TX	Industrial Country Market
Helena, TX	Ghost Town
Regency Bridge, TX	Suspension Bridge
Hunt, TX	Stonehenge II
Banderas, TX	Frontier Timex Museum
Thurber, TX	Lonely Smokestack
Grapevine, TX	Gunfight Glockenspiel
Woodson, TX	Bombed by Japanese
Muenster, TX	Fischer Meat Market/Glockenspiel
Carthage, TX	Jim Reeves
Langtry, TX	Judge Roy Bean Saloon
Wink, TX	Roy Orbison Museum
Marfa, TX	Marfa Lights
McLean, TX	Rt. 66 Museum
Valentine, TX	Prada Store
Big Bend, TX	Park
Adrian, TX	Rt. 66 Midpoint
El Paso	Hueco Tanks State Park

Turning Luddite

 

I am the most technologically minded Luddite that I know. I’m becoming more and more disenchanted with technological things as each day passes. Mostly, I think people that develop hardware and software have gone completely stupid. Some people may think that’s funny, but I’m completely serious.

A lot of people dump on Microsoft but, really, they deserve it. If you look at the current Windows OS and Office it becomes apparent that what they try to do is make everything as difficult as possible with each new release.

For instance, Windows 8. After years of trying to shoehorn a desktop operating system into small phones and tablets (and failing), they’ve gone totally stupid and decided that they were going to wedge a phone/tablet operating system onto desktops and servers. I can’t imagine the meetings that took place when everyone agreed this was an awesome idea. I can’t imagine that anyone involved wasn’t near-death drunk or just plain stupid.

I was playing with Server 2012 yesterday and my co-worker needed to shut it down. He looked everywhere for the shutdown option. He used the idiotic “Start” screen, after clicking on the server setup icon that’s located where the “Start” button used to be multiple times, getting angrier every time he did it. It wasn’t his fault; muscle memory takes over and after having that button there for so long, it’s just second nature. Did the server info window have a shut down option? No, it did not. He clicked everywhere, looked everywhere, and finally gave up in frustration and pulled the cord out of the back.

Later, I went back and tried to find it because I knew it had to exist somewhere. And I found it: if you hover over the very tiny ‘-‘ that shows up in the bottom right hand corner, and then very carefully move the mouse straight up, and then click on one of the unmarked icons that appear, then you get another screen that actually has the option to shut down the server.

This could only have been designed by a fucking idiot. After decades of a three step process (Start button, shutdown, yes) they made a system that is completely un-intuitive and utterly unlike anything from past Windows systems. The three step process is now five.

And that’s how it is with them. Every new release means making sure, designing, that whatever you want to do is now hidden and more complicated to get to.

And this is completely opposite of what computers are supposed to do, which is makes things easier and less frustrating.

But it isn’t just Microsoft; it’s everybody. You might want to go to a website and look at something really quick but suddenly these windows start appearing to tell you what you can do, or what you might want to do, or what that widget in the corner does. And all the while you don’t care. You just want to read the damn text on the screen but you’re too busy clicking on ‘X’s to get rid of all the annoying crap that comes up. Who thinks these are good ideas? Who thinks, “Hey, you know what people love? Being annoyed to the point where they ready to punch the screens! They love that! We should make sure we annoy the complete shit out of everyone that uses our software so they’ll love us!”

To me, it just looks like it’s getting worse. Every new generation of developer appears to be way more stupid than the last. And understand this: I’m not using the word ‘stupid’ to be funny; I’m using it because I truly believe that these people are brain dead. Absolutely, 100%, have no intelligence whatsoever. I don’t care what kind of IQ rating these people have, they just don’t think. It amazes me that some of the design decisions they make seem like good ideas to them.

In a way, it makes me sad. And angry. Very angry.

In fact, I have a problem at work. I’m supposed to be testing a piece of software that works with our product. I can’t work on this thing for more than five minutes before flying into a rage because it is a piece of garbage. It’s not written well, it’s way too complicated, and it’s nearly impossible to set up properly. And my boss wants me to talk to these people. I’m actually afraid to talk to these people because I have absolutely nothing nice to say about their product. Nothing. I can’t think of one thing that works correctly.

Just for the record, and I understand that I’m just one person that doesn’t amount to anything in the grand scheme of things, but if someone sends me a link to a website and the first thing that happens when I go there is that a window shows up with useless information, then I don’t look at it. I close the tab and never go back.  The same is true with the games on Facebook. I mean, I’m sorry to all my friends and family that want to advance, but, really, I can’t take the constant spam of bothering other people and the screens, and screens, and screens, and screens of crap trying to get me to pay for something. I can understand trying to make money, but that’s not the way to do it. If I went to a store and a salesperson was constantly in my face trying to sell me something I didn’t want how long do you think I’d stay in the store? How often do you think I would go back?

I am so disappointed in the direction technology is going and what people think would be a good idea.