We now have Visual Basic, but original BASIC used line numbers in front of every line, usually incremented by 10, so program might look like:
10 PRINT “Hello World!”;
20 GOTO 10
Becoming a designer
Boy, it’s been a while. An oxymoronic combination of being lazy and busy, I guess. Anyway, for this post I wanted to talk about design. It’s a topic that comes up a More »
Support for Windows 7 ends today
It is a sad day, as Microsoft is officially ending updates and security patches for Windows 7, the popular OS still being used by a large majority of PCs. Windows 7’s popularity More »
Returning Home: World of Warcraft Classic Comes Online
On August 26th, fans of the original World of Warcraft (henceforth referred to as WoW), and those who are just curious to see what all the hubbub is about, were finally able More »
The Lawnmower Man, and Vintage CGI
Inspired by a couple of Reddit forums to which I am subscribed, VintagePixelArt and VintageCGI, and being a fan of all things historical as it pertains to technology, I uploaded to the More »
Jony Ive leaves Apple
As someone who teaches extensively about design as it intersects with technology, and is also a computer and technology historian, I am conflicted about Jonathan (Jony) Ive leaving Apple. Mainly because he’s More »
Some throwbacks for Thursday
I am knee-deep in a technical specifications review today, so unfortunately I have to be brief, but luckily Disney and the Computer History Museum in Santa Clara, California came through for me. Based on emails I received from them I thought I would make a post about the past, one relating to the Internet and one relating to Operating Systems as we talked about in class.
First, I received an email from Disney Interactive that had the above header image in it, and it said “Join Disney for a trip back to the ’90s!
Well I’m always up for something like that, so I clicked the link and it took me to a webpage that is a glorious tribute to what the web looked like – and it did actually used to look like this – back in the mid 1990s. That’s a picture of it below, it’s completely functional with animated gifs and flashing colors and scrolling text (sadly no dancing babies), and you can get to it by following this link. Don’t miss it!
Write your first program
Way back in the the late ’70s and early ’80s, when PCs were becoming more popular as consumer devices, the programming language of the time was BASIC, which was itself an acronym for ‘Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.’ Ironic, then, that the link is a TIME article lauding fifty years of the language. It’s a cumbersome name, but it was the layman’s first exposure to programming and to what it could do, and it was easier to understand than the Assembly language that was used by serious programmers like those in the picture at the link, and it’s even more understandable than the languages we have today such as C# (pronounced “C sharp”) and Java. If you’d like to experiment with C#, Microsoft makes the IDE, or Integrated Development Environment, free to download and there are really great tutorials at the C# link as well as at learnvisualstudio.net.
They grow up so fast! Windows 9 teased
At the end of this post, I wrote “I’ll update this post as I learn more.” Well boy, did I learn more. You see, this post was written in two parts: I knew the reveal of the new Windows would happen today, and so I wrote up a post ahead of time in anticipation of that and based on what I knew. I was excited about the potential of it and the rebranding of the OS to “Windows,” which I thought would be a nice clean rebranding to avoid confusion as it unifies itself across a wide range of devices such as tablets, watches, PCs, consoles, and many other things.
However, at the unveil today, they skipped the expected “Windows 9” altogether, and instead are calling it Windows 10. That is unexpected, and according to them they are doing it because Windows 9 just didn’t represent the huge jump this version is going to be.
New tile-based Windows 10 start menu (Source: TechCrunch)
Finally, technology put to good use
Halloween is coming soon, and as you can imagine props the you can by at the local Spirit Halloween store become more and more sophisticated every year. I have a few that decorate my house all year long, and as the holiday gets closer we’ll talk a little more about scary technology, both actually scary as well as the stuff used for entertainment.
I made my first pilgrimage to the Halloween store this weekend, and as usual there is a fun selection of animated and battery-powered props – everything from the pretty scary to the, well, not so much.
Although I thoroughly enjoy walking through there, I am mostly intrigued by something they introduced last year; a series of DVDs that can be used in conjunction with a projector and a well-prepared window to project some Haunted Mansion-quality effects for visitors or decoration.
I took a 2-minute video of the display they had in the store (this particular store is in the Best Buy center at the intersection of Marks and Sunset), and surprisingly no one told me to stop. I guess they don’t care of you film or not. Here’s the video, and afterwards I’ll talk a little about data projectors and why you have to be sure to use an appropriate one if you want to try this at home.
The Microsoft Cube
It’s about time the disco ball got an upgrade, and who better to do it then Microsoft? I know, that’s a weird question.
All big tech companies spend billion in research and development, hoping to come up with the next big thing, or just come up with something nifty that may be nothing more than a proof of concept that can be used as a launch-pad for other developments.
Microsoft’s R&D department is one of the biggest out there, and they come up with all kinds of fun stuff that, for better or for worse, never see life outside of the lab itself. Other research does actually lead to consumer products such as the Kinect.
One of the things I’ve always liked about the research done by Microsoft is it uses consumer-grade technology to create some amazing things, and they’ve done it again with what they are calling “The Cube.”
Photo credit: Engadget
As you can see, that’s exactly what it is; a giant, interactive cube. People stand around it, and wave their arms around and dance and move and whatever else you do in front of a big interactive cube, and digital doppelgangers display on the sides (really the inside) of the cube and can do various fun things.
And it’s all built with standard tech. A few Kinects (which need to be put to good use) and Benq projectors in the base, and you’re good to go. I don’t know if it will have any practical application outside of the lab, other than perhaps in a commercial venture of some kind, but it’s a pretty neat thing to see for a start.
Here’s the video talking about it and showing a brief demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jzHcXZFJMw
Apple’s New Headquarters
See that building? That’s a render of the not-yet-built Apple Computer headquarters in Cupertino, California. I think that is a great design, one very representative of what Apple has always tried to do, and that’s merge design and technology.
I’m also partial to it because it’s only about two miles from the house where I grew up – I’ve driven by that corner countless times. The field it’s in used to have this big, old dead tree that my dad thought was the greatest thing he’d ever seen, and even pulled over once so he could get a picture of me standing in front of it, and that was only a few years ago. Now, it’s going to be the site of that great building. Apple headquarters has always been in Cupertino; As a kid I rode my bike, and later drove when I was still sort-of a teenager, past the Apple campus more times than I could ever count, and I even attended Homestead High, the very same school that both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak attended. I grew up in an Apple town.
And that’s why I’m so glad to see this building coming into reality (someone even flew a drone over the construction). As you might expect, a building like that could only have been born from the mind of Steve Jobs, and he appeared personally before the planning committee, who were clearly honored by his presence, to appeal for the permission to build. You can see it below.
Now, Tim Cook, the current head of Apple, has stated that it will be the greenest building on the planet. I’d imagine it would be, considering it’s design and the technology being incorporated into it. Surprisingly enough, there haven’t been a lot of renders or mockups of it, but the CNN video below has some good detail, and it’s worth a look. It might be the first building I’ve ever seen that actually looks like one you’d see in a movie about what a future-y future might look like (a good future, not an Omega Man or Mad Max or Idiocracy future).
It’s still a couple of years before it will be completed, but it would be a nice legacy if this building inspired others to follow suit in design, just like some of their technology did.
A New Oculus Rift
You know, the Oculus Rift is a real Marmite thing to me: On the one hand, I’m really getting tired of hearing about it. Tired of hearing how great it is, tired of hearing about the development kits that are being released, tired of hearing no dates for release, I’m just getting tired of all the in-a-vacuum hype (no-one criticizes the thing, so I couldn’t add a link there).
On the other hand, I can’t [profanity redacted] wait for it to be released. It’s one of the few bits of technology that I believe will be revolutionary, a game changer in more ways than one.
And now they’ve just released a milestone new development kit called “Crescent Bay,” and big surprise, it’s pretty great.
In case you’re not familiar with the Rift, it’s a virtual-reality headset that you wear over your eyes and actually works, perhaps the first of its kind. It supports 360-degree movement and head tracking, so if you spin around, or look up, or down, or wherever, it tracks that and adjusts the view accordingly. From what I’ve heard, it’s so insanely immersive and unbelievable an experience that I have yet to hear a single bad review.
Here’s someone exploring Tuscany using the Rift
But all that is the problem. There’s no release date. They keep releasing development kits, with each one having vast improvements over the previous. Bloggers and journalists keep talking about how fantastic the experience is. They even have legendary programer John Carmack on board as Chief Technology Officer, for which he left his position at id Software, the company he founded and where he programmed the games that made him a millionaire like Doom and Quake, and who also programs software for low-earth orbit spacecraft at his other company Armadillo Aerospace. If a guy like that believes in it, it must be fantastic.
Of course, there was a huge, and I mean HUGE brouhaha when it was announced Facebook of all companies was buying Oculus, the company that makes the Rift headset, for $2 billion. No one knew why a company like Facebook would want a technology like the Rift, who would want to explore Facebook using VR? Exploring the ocean, or outer space, or a (not so) derelict spaceship, now that sounds more like it. In case you think it is no more than a game system, it is also seeing educational applications on the level of teaching surgeons their techniques, and in one instance allowed a terminally-ill woman experience a place she had always wanted to go (warning: the video in the linked article is touching but very sad).
In what may be a threat to the Rift, out of nowhere came Sony with a product called Project Morpheus that actually looks like it will be just as capable if not more so, and likely released sooner. Plus, it looks cooler, in as much you want to look like the person they never let join Daft Punk.
Here’s a video of Project Morpheus title The Deep:
The huge, and in my opinion very bigly huge problem with Sony’s plan is Morpheus only works with the Playstation 4 (for now) and will require the Sony camera and motion controllers. That seems very limiting in many different ways, but the PS4 sales have been doing well so who knows.
The Rift has a lot of potential, I think it’s one of the main future directions we’ll see technology go, if they would just [expletive deleted] release it already.
Bing, HTML5, and Microsoft Office free to students
As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a fan, perhaps the only fan, of Microsoft’s Bing search engine. One of the things I really like about it, which has nothing to do with search, is their use of very nice imagery on their homepage. That was enhanced a couple years ago with their occasional use of HTML5-enhanced backgrounds which provide animation and make the page more dynamic.
Today (Monday) is one of their best, an animated background featuring an Orca swimming off the coast of Alaska, and it loops perfectly; that’s a still of it in the header image, but it is worth seeing in all its splendor. If you are reading this after Monday it will have a new image, however you can still see this one by going to Bing and clicking on the left arrow located in the lower right-hand corner of the page – that will let you scroll through the last week’s images and animations (I’ve circled the arrow in the image below).
Click it!
I mentioned the homepage on the Twitter feed, but since it only has three followers I thought I’d show it here as well.
It was also on this very page that I learned of some exciting and important news that will impact all of you and give you access to some of the most important software that exists today: Microsoft is making Office 365 free for students, AND they’re even throwing in 1 terabyte (TERABYTE!) of storage space on OneDrive, their cloud-storage platform.
Here’s the problem; In testing it, I could only get it to recognize my school address if I used the old ‘nevada.nsc.edu’ extension, as it wouldn’t work with the newly-adopted ‘nsc.edu’ without the ‘nevada’ attached. The problem is that older extension was dropped by NSC (at least for faculty, I’m uncertain about students), and since it no longer works you wouldn’t be able to get the confirmation message allowing you to sign up.
This is such a good deal I’d try it anyway if I were you, and if it doesn’t work contact OIT and ask them if there’s something you, or more likely they, can do. It’s a great deal.
Look inside your CPU
(Important note: The program referenced in this post only works in Windows. I have searched for a MAC equivalent, however the only one there is hasn’t been updated in years and I don’t hold it in high regard).
As we get into our discussions of hardware, we learn that there is a lot that goes on inside our machines that we aren’t normally aware of. We saw in class on Friday the picture of the inside of an Intel Core-i7 processor, saw the different cores, cache memory and registers that were inside the CPU itself, and started to learn about memory including RAM and ROM.
If you would like to see some details about what is actually going on inside your machine as it pertains to all we’ve discussed so far, you can download a very useful tool known as CPU-Z.
CPU-Z can be downloaded free of charge from the previous link, and it provides a ton of information about your processor and memory and gives a good example of what we’ve been talking about in class. To illustrate some of it, we’ll begin with the screenshot below:
CPU tab of CPU-Z
You can see it starts off by indicating the model of processor I’m using, in this case the Intel Core-i5. You’ll recall we very briefly mentioned the Thermal Design Power, or TDP, which is (among other things) the amount of thermal energy a cooling system needs to dissipate, and in the image above you can see it is 15 watts, which isn’t bad for a mobile processor. Some high-power devices can have a TDP of over 200 watts.
It even shows that it is using the 22 nanometer architecture and that it uses something known as a BGA, or Ball Grid Array, in which the CPU is attached directly to the motherboard as opposed to using a socket like we saw in class. Socketed CPUs are either the older PGA, or Pin Grid Array, in which the CPU has pins that are plugged into holes in the socket, or the more modern and common LGA, or Land Grid Array, in which the CPU has metal contacts, or Lands, and they attach to tiny pins on the motherboard socket.
You’ll notice towards the bottom it has a header that says ‘Clocks,’ and you’ll remember our discussion of clock ticks and clock speed where we discussed the electronic pulses the system clock emits. In the window above, it shows that the clock speed of this system is 2595 Megahertz (Mhz), which translates to 2.6 Gigahertz (Ghz). So this is a 2.6Ghz system.
You can also see it shows the amount of level 1 (fastest), level 2 (next fastest), and level 3 (slowest and shared among all cores) cache memory, the memory we talked about that is built right into the CPU. It even divides up the level 1 cache into the sections used for program data and for instructions it is interpreting.
Let’s look at another screen:
Memory tab in CPU-Z
In the image above, we see that this machine has DDR (Double Data Rate) RAM, and the ‘3’ is simply the improvement over DDR2, with 3 being faster and using less power. And yes, there is DDR4 memory as well. Back to the screenshot, you can see there is 8000 Megabytes of that DDR3 RAM, which translates to 8 Gigabytes, and relating back to our discussion of clock ticks and clock speed, you’ll notice it indicates something known as “CAS Latency.” CAS stands for Column Address Strobe, and it is the number of clock ticks between when a request of data is made of memory by the CPU, and when the data is actually delivered. So in this case 12 clock ticks will happen before the data can travel from memory to the CPU to be used.
One additional point while I’m at it: When we think of RAM, we’re thinking of what’s more technically known as DRAM, or Dynamic Random Access Memory. Dynamic means it occasionally needs to be refreshed in order to maintain the data that it’s holding. SRAM, or Static Random Access Memory does not need to be refreshed, and that is the type of memory used for the cache and registers inside the CPU itself. Since DRAM needs to be refreshed, you can see in the window above it tells us how often that refresh happens, in this case almost 800Mhz.
This is all on a mobile device, almost a tablet. Try running it on your own PC, whether desktop or laptop, and see what you can learn about the internals of your CPU and memory.
News for Friday
A lot is going on today, so I thought I’d provide briefs of some of the bigger stories that are happening rather than three gargantuan posts. I’ll put those off until next week.
iPhone 6 finally becomes available
The first, and I suspect biggest, story of the day is that the iPhone 6 is finally being launched, and people are going crazy all over the world. Unfortunately, all that excitement can lead to some problems. For example, here is a video of a guy in Australia, the first person to buy one over there, dropping it on the concrete right after buying it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbehPQfu3K0
Then there’s the guy who decided to perform a drop test of the new phones immediately after buying them. Kids, please don’t try this at home.
Larry Ellison steps down
Larry Ellison, co-founder of business-software powerhouse Oracle and fifth-richest man in the world is stepping down from his executive position at the very company he co-founded. Although he hardly wants for money, there is some speculation as to why he is doing it and if the timing is significant; he’s 70, after all, but you’d never know it. He will stay on as the Chief Technology Officer, though, so it isn’t as though he’ll have no impact, in fact, he’ll better be able to steer future developments and change from the new position.
Larry Ellison
Toonotown Rewritten comes out of beta, opens for everyone
In mid-2003, Disney, wanting a piece of the online-gaming pie, released a kid-friendly yet surprisingly clever online game called Toontown Online. In the game, whose art direction and settings were based somewhat on the cartoon world of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, players created a humanoid, bipedal toon from a variety of animals (you could be a horse, monkey, cat, dog, that sort of thing), and went into the streets of Toontown to fight cogs. Cogs were black-and-white corporate stereotypes such as pencil-pushers, glad-handers, and micromanagers who were trying to turn Toontown corporate, convert all houses and shops into towering skyscrapers, and remove all of its color. Using gags such as throwing pies, squirting water from a flower, and dropping safes, players would have to defeat the cogs and return the color and the buildings to the town.
Toontown Online
Well, Disney being Disney, they shut it down in September of 2013 to focus on other ventures. What’s incredible here is that a team of 20 people located all over the world and led by a teenager in Maryland, recreated the whole thing, even made improvements, supplied their own servers, and are opening it up to the public today under the slightly new name of Toontown Rewritten, with no intent of ever charging for the experience. I’m surprised Disney didn’t quash it immediately, but they’re in a tough place. The whole project is such a labor of love that to do so would foster significant ill will, but I can’t help but think that if it becomes more and more popular they will be forced to step in in some manner.
