Tag: Computers

WELCOME BACK TO UVIC September 2022!

! WELCOME BACK !
! to UVIC !
! September 2022 !
! … and The CALL Facility too !

A full week has  passed since classes started at UVIC! That would cover every day that has classes! It has been extremely busy on campus, especially outdoors with so many orientations, booths, tents and activities like Thunderfest for all students, especially new students! WELCOME TO UVIC!

The  Computer Help Desk had tents up at Thunderfest as well as the day before classes started last week. CHD had a brand new PRIZE WHEEL to give away prizes! YAY CHD!

A couple of photos of the tents for all the activities and staffed by ALL kinds of CHD staff from new Coops to Consultants to Supers to Full Time Staff to our Associate Director too! GREAT TEAM EFFORT FROM EVERYONE! Those tents DO require team effort to setup and take down! YAY CHD!

All sorts of exciting stuff will be happening throughout September
& all upcoming semesters!

Did you know you can reserve Student Study Spaces, including the desks at the back of The CALL Facility? There are Project Rooms in BEC, Group Study Tables in Clearihue (CALL), Virtual Reality (VR) Studio in BEC and a Digital Media Studio in HSD! ALL from THIS WEBSITE! Photos below!

A few more Dual Monitors

CALL now has DUAL MONITORS ON ALL COMPUTER WORKSTATIONS! And that is on all the Macs and WIN computers! I was able  to re-purpose a bunch of monitors heading towards recycling and they now have a new lease on life in CALL! And it did not cost a penny! I used all available cables,  monitors, dongles and power bars! BONUS FOR BEING A GREEN CALL FACILITY! Here are many UVIC Green Recycling Sites to check out too! These and the best of my Pages are always at the right hand side of each of my Bog Blog Posts. 

I am always tinkering with my CALL Facility orientation, starting as a PowerPoint and with the goal to be under 5 minutes TOTAL as a presentation! I have tweaked my BETA version  and now have what I think  I will use as my file! And as a YouTube video as well!

CHD Jeopardy Greg's Playlist II
                     CHD Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist II

AND I have the next CHD All Staff Training Jeopardy ready!  Greg’s Playlist II and all new questions, answers, prizes and lyrics and CHD questions to try and answer! I even have NEW TYPES OF QUESTIONS TOO! But you will have to wait and .. also be staff at CHD to get the invite to the training! Come for the training … but stay for the food … and CHD JEOPARDY!

And huge HUGE NEWS THAT … I can’t really tell you about …  but WILL! There are new computers coming! Wait, they are ALREADY HERE! But wait, they are not yet ready to deploy! YES NEW  COMPUTERS! CHD staff unpacked them and we have to store them for now, as classes have started, so maybe  by Reading Break I will  let everyone know where they will be deployed! YAY NEW COMPUTERS! Stay glued to my Bog Blog for that and any other breaking Computer Help Desk news!

And how about a new feature every so often – a Throwback Link to topics … somewhat close to this one! LOL! And even some parting advice at the end of this blog, if you read that far!  I sure hope you do!

The best feature of the CALL layout (thanks to rolling desks!) is distancing to make sure everyone has enough room, should they want it. There are lots of open workstations for students and of course, all new computers from last August 2021 too.

CALL has  hosted many mid-terms, Finals and special workshops including a Chat Café with Korea! Really! So come on down and see what you  have been missing out on as a study space for yourself and fellow students!

Thanks to EVERYONE for all your help and support over the past 2+ Covid years. Without my colleagues support and friendship, I have no idea how I would have fared! THANK YOU ALL! And hey, to quote one of my favourite  TV shows of all time …. Hill Street Blues ….. and I have to mention St. Elsewhere too. AWESOME SHOWS! ENJOY!

CALL Towering Tech Arrivals

CALL Computer Refresh Deja Vu .. All Over Again

The Recycling of CALL … and HSD!

Early Computer Help Desks!

TTFN!

My Favourite ‘Favourites’ at OAC!

! MY Favourite ‘Favourites’!
! AT OAC !

It occurs to me that …  I really like blogging here at OAC! I published a daily blog in the initial months of remote computing and all of a sudden, I had published almost 230 Posts! And a handful of Pages too. What is the difference between a ‘BogPost‘ and a ‘BogPage‘, welPages and Postsl, I wrote a Post about that called “Pages and Posts … What Gives?“

And of course, that led me to think about which ones were my … favourites amongst them all! Yeah, not fair, but … I make the rules here! So I will now attempt to list, in no particular order, my “Top 10 Favourite Posts”

I will  have one ‘filter’ though … the Post had to have the word “favourite” in  it somewhere – preferably the title! So that will sub sort it quite a bit! So,  HERE GOES!

TOP 10 FAVOURITE POSTS
AT MY ‘BOG BLOG‘

  1. “Think Different or . . . Apple Commercials Through the Years” would be a favourite at anytime, simply because of the sheer imagination of Apple Commercials. A long ago summer project was to learn how to create a DVD and what better source than … Apple commercials! And I think my favourite Apple commercial is for an iPad … “Your Verse Apple iPad Commercial – What Will Your Verse Be?” Watch it and try to disagree with me!
  2. “I’m Sorry Dave or . . . My Favourite Computer AI Voices in Movies and TV” easily makes my Top 10. A gimme if ever  there was one as we reference many phrases and moments almost DAILY at CHD! In other  words, Make it So,  Bogman!
  3. “1, 2, 3, . . . . or My Favourite Language Lesson of All Time!” and to this day, it is STILL my favourite language lesson of ALL TIME! My first ever TEACHING job was in Calgary,  teaching  basic computing  skills. Including BASIC as a programming language! Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code! Literally … BASIC!
  4. “Open Book Exams . . . . or . . . . My Favourite Textbooks“. How can anyone LIKE a textbook much less make it a Favourite? Well, I did! I have kept many of my favourite textbooks throughout the years! Why not! They helped me get through many a tough course and … that I enjoyed them was a side bonus!
  5. “CART2D2 – There is no try! Do or Do Not Young Skywalker!” THIS is a favourite because CART2D2 is a favourite! We are still playing around with this to find some great uses and the next big use will be at our first IN PERSON  CHD TRAINING SESSION on May 28th! YAY! There is no try … Do or Do Not!
  6. “Comparing Apples and Oranges but not actually ….. Oranges!” Recycling is HUGE at UVic and I try to recycle as much as I possibly can. And when CHD had quite literally a MOUNTAIN OF TECH show up last summer, CALL was used as a staging area for so much tech! And with so much PACKING AND CARDBOARD TOO! So any chance I get to promote recycling, I take it! And we are in the beginning  stages of a new refresh so … warm up your Blue Bins, UVic!
  7. “Throwback Thursday . . . or . . . Language Quotes! (and a bit of nostalgia!)” Who doesn’t enjoy a quick quote as a comeback or as a poster in their office! I probably only have a few stored in my long term PRAM that could be ZAPPED at any moment! So quotes about computers, life and especially Languages, is right up my alley in CALL!
  8. “Bold Italics Comic Sans . . . or Word Processors Through the Years” One of my first ever Computer  Science assignments, on punched cards no less, was to write a program to replace 3 words (that my Instructor had set in a paragraph (read from a mainframe!) with 3 other words. THAT WAS VERY HARD! But now, Gmail docs, Office, Pages … all have keyboard SHORTCUTS for Find and Replace! And none of them use punched cards as source code! Only shows that I correctly guessed that my future career … was NOT to be a Programmer!
  9. “I Excel at PowerPoint . . . or Computer Puns and Jokes” What would any Top 10 List be without including a post about my favourite jokes and puns! I never let an opportunity to ‘pun’ go unpunished! And I am usually RESTRAINING myself too!
  10. “CALL CHD JEOPARDY OPUS“. How could I create a Top 10 and NOT include Jeopardy! Okay, a bit of a cheat here as this is actually a PAGE that can be accessed anytime from any of my Posts. AND is always updated to the most recent version of JEOPARDY! In fact, the first IN PERSON CHD Training will be on Saturday, May 28th and I will have a brand new Jeopardy – Greg’s Playlist! And it will have new elements such as Fill-in-the-Blanks, Multiple Choice and even some Scavenger Hunts for prizes!

So many Posts/Pages … so little time! I am not writing at the same pace, but reserve my Posts/Pages for my remote day, unless something comes up.

It might take awhile, here’s to my next 230+ Posts and Pages and Randomness at UVic! YAY!

TTFN!

New CHD Staff Training
Coming UP
… and a new Jeopardy too!

Video Playlists at OAC – COOL!

! VIDEO PLAYLISTS!
! AT OAC !

I discovered a feature of WordPress here at OAC that can create Video Playlists in a post! I have used Photo Gallery quite a bit, once I learned how to use them, and published some of my favourite photographs I have taken at this post, Photography Gallery.

This feature allows you to build a .. Video Playlist .. as the name indicates. Very much like a YouTube Playlist, but for OAC purposes, based on media you have at your own OAC Media Library.

The Online Academic Community has some great Tutorials on Organizing Content and the using The Dashboard too!

All you have to do is have some video media (MP4/M4V work best) uploaded to your Media Library. Then in your new or already existing Post/Page, click on the “Add Media” button. Under “Actions“, click “Create video playlist“.  All the videos that are in your Media library will now appear. Click on the ones you want to be in your playlist and a Blue Checkmark will appear on each one.

Then in the bottom right hand corner, click on “Create a new video playlist“. Then click “Insert video playlist” …
et voilà …your video playlist is inserted into your Post!

You can change the order if you want by editing the Video playlist quite easily, if you want to change the order from how you  uploaded them.

If the OAC Media Library does not want to upload your video, use Handbrake to convert to either MP4 or M4V. Free software for both Mac and WIN and works like a charm for converting SO MANY FORMATS! 

A few more helpful links for creating a Video Playlist at OAC. Not all the features mentioned  will work at OAC but there are many hints and images at these sites to help create your Video Playlists at OAC. ENJOY!

  1. Tutorial: How to create a WordPress video gallery
  2. Insert an Audio or Video Playlist
  3. How to Create a Video Gallery in WordPress (Step by Step)
  4. How To Make A Playlist On YouTube (2022)

TTFN!

New CHD Staff Training
Coming UP
… and a new Jeopardy too!

CALL Dual Monitors

! CALL DUAL MONITORS !
! NOW INSTALLED !

CALL Instructor Stations #37 & #38
                            CALL Instructor Stations #37 & #38

The CALL Facility now has dual monitors on each workstation! Well, not all of them. The Instructors stations (#37 & #38) are connected to the VDP and can project to the entire room. And room is needed for laptops and materials at each station. 

The idea to install them came from a Poster Session for Linguistics, described in an earlier post! It was so successful that the monitors at HSD (in storage) that were headed to be recycled, a box of HDMI-DVI dongles and some DVI cables were found …. DUAL  MONITORS! And at absolutely no cost at all! I joke that I found a penny under a station, so my budget not only came in UNDER budget .. but showed a profit!!!!

There are combinations of Portrait and/or Landscape and relatively easy to switch around. I will survey students throughout the summer to see what combination might be preferable. 

Most students are away for the summer and fewer classes are actually scheduled so it will still look like ‘new’ equipment for September!

Thanks to colleagues T, H and G for helping me set them up! Those cable trays are heavy, awkward and filled with .. cables! LOL! And a very green mini-project, saving tech from a landfill too!

Some previous posts on recycling are “The Recycling of CALL and HSD!“,  “CALL Computer Refresh Deja Vu ….. All Over Again” and “UVIC Recycling Links“.

TTFN!

BE READY!!!!

READY!

CALL me Bog Stats

! CALL ME BOG !
! OAC STATS !

I recently found out just where my ‘CALL me Bog‘ blog … ranks here at OAC at UVic in terms of number of Posts and number of Views! NOT that anything I write here is ‘earth shattering’ but … it might just be able to kick up some dust from under an old serial port keyboard some days! LOL!

So, the Top 5 OAC websites at UVic for number of Posts are:

#1 – Centre for Youth & Society’s Community Resource Hub – 1801 Posts
#2 – My UVic Life – 1358 Posts
#3 – UVic Teach Anywhere – 820 Posts
#4 – Scholarly Communication @ UVic – 588 Posts
#5 – The World From Here (Gustavson School) – 586 Posts
#17 – CALL Me Bog at …. 230 Posts!

 

 

 

Yeah,  okay,  comparing Apples and Oranges and … WINDOWS! But all the rest are all Faculties, Departments, Groups, Organizations, etc. so … maybe I am the #1 individual blog! But each of those sites are amazing and I have actively followed My UVic Life and UVic Teach Anywhere. I recommend them all!

CALL Me Bog Page Views
                                 CALL Me Bog Page Views

And one more stat is the number of Page Views and with that I rank a bit higher! CALL Me Bog is #7 in Page Views at 13,624!! Always room to improve, grow and get more Views and more Posts and Pages!

The  gap to move up is fairly significant so I doubt that I can move up too much with Page Views! But you never know when one of my Posts will go viral at UVic! To Infinity and Beyond! LOL!

And some more mini-updates in CALL – almost done putting in .. TWO MONITORS AT EACH WORKSTATION! Only 5 left to go! I will update the next post, next week with a photo! YAY DUAL MONITORS! Many thanks to my colleagues T, H and G for helping me out and setting them up!

PS: I have a new laptop and monitor and .. added another one too!

Trio Grande
                                                                            Trio Grande

Stay tuned for when all the monitors are installed! .. SOON!

TTFN!

GOOD LUCK
ON ALL YOUR  FINAL EXAMS!
This is the last week of Finals!
BE READY!!!!

READY!

CALL Poster Session PLUS!

! POSTER SESSION !
! The CALL Facility !
! NEW-ish !

More of a ‘Back to the Future‘ vibe as CALL hosted a Poster Session for Linguistics near the end of the semester! A poster session might sound boring but … never in CALL and this one was QUITE UNIQUE!

7 groups needed to present a digital ‘Poster‘ on a computer, with a monitor that could display in Portrait … literally! So SK (Instructor) came down a day ahead and we literally FLIPPED the new monitors (from last August refresh) in CALL  …  et voila … PORTRAIT MODE! I had to change the preferences to Portrait but that was a few seconds on each computer!

SK had a sample .png  file, copied it to the desktop and it worked perfectly with the basic viewer software on each platform (MAC/WIN)!

All the groups had  to do was login  with their Netlink credentials, copy the  file to the desktop and view it as Full Screen and it worked perfectly!

Larger Photos are here and here.

And I am going to recycle some older monitors (from HSD! Thanks H!), slowly, and try to outfit as many workstations in CALL with DUAL MONITORS! That will be very useful and welcomed by all users of CALL! I will have a mix of Landscape and Landscape/Portrait for students to try!

The CALL Facility will  be the first and only drop-in classroom/lab that has both Mac and WIN computers, webcams and dual monitors! And so much much more too!

CALL New Layout
             CALL New Layout

For a quick recap of many new additions and updates, go to this post.

 

 

 

Hidden Gems of Clearihue
      Hidden Gems of Clearihue

For a quick recap of why  The CALL Facility is a ‘Hidden Gems of Clearihue‘, go to this post.

 

 

Stay tuned for when that happens!

TTFN!

GOOD LUCK
ON ALL YOUR  FINAL EXAMS!
BE READY!!!!

READY!

NEW CALL LAYOUT !

! NEW !
! The CALL Facility !
! LAYOUT !
! NEW !

All the new furniture has arrived in CALL! Okay, that is not necessarily ‘new‘ news! But I have repositioned the furniture to allow for better distancing, better sight lines and better viewing of the entire CALL Facility, at least from my perspective. The old layout is after the new layout photos below.

The best feature of this new layout (thanks to rolling desks!) is distancing to make sure everyone has enough room, should they want it. There are lots of open workstations for students and of course, all new computers from last August too.

You might notice that the LARGE rolling whiteboards are not at the back of the room. I have moved them into strategically ‘hidden‘ locations in CALL!

They are still IN CALL,  and can be moved anywhere quickly. I just found that some students (not all!) were using them at the back to hide that they were removing their masks and eating in CALL. Masks must be worn at all times and no food or beverages in any classrooms at UVic. There are also 2 smaller rolling whiteboards too!

Thanks to EVERYONE for all your help and support over the past 2+ years. Without my colleagues support and friendship, I have no idea how I would have fared! THANK YOU ALL! 

And how about a new feature every so often – a Throwback Link to topics … somewhat close to this one! LOL!

CALL Towering Tech Arrivals

CALL Computer Refresh Deja Vu .. All Over Again

The Recycling of CALL … and HSD!

GET – THE COMFY CHAIR!!!


TTFN!

 

Throwback Thursday . . . Language Quotes!

Throwback Thursday
. . . or . . .
Language Quotes!
(and a bit of nostalgia!)

Learning another language is like becoming another person. One of my favourite quotes, ever!

Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami

You can take the boy out of The CALL Facility, but you can’t take The CALL Facility out of the boy!

I have been around for a few days … since October of 1989! Whoa, that seems like yesterday to me! A future post will have some slightly grainy images of what CALL once looked like  … well before numerous renovations (scheduled and unscheduled!) and before The Great Flood of 2015! That was some kind of day! There are a few images in a previous post, which includes a pdf of exactly what CALL is!

CALL Jeopardy: REBOOT VERSION

And the most recent version of my CALL Jeopardy file is here. ALL of the files are there too, including old photos of CALL, the Great Flood and the rebooted CALL!

 ‘State of the Art’ in 1989!

An earlier post mentioned the 30th Anniversary of The CALL Facility! Technology certainly has changed!

And changes are still coming! Just AFTER we started working remotely from home, NEW FURNITURE ARRIVED FOR THE CALL FACILITY!

I was VERY BRIEFLY back at CHD earlier this month, to upgrade my remote laptop, and went in to look at the new furniture … AND IT LOOKS FANTASTIC! I sure hope we can get back to using our facilities, classrooms and ALL OF UVic soon, but in a safe, VERY SAFE manner!

A fairly busy day today, so some quick quotes about learning languages. I also include quotes in each slide when I give my CALL Facility orientation, so you can click HERE to see those too! They are current to January 2020!

Mostly, these are new, but there are a few favourites in here too!

And some Albert Einstein quotes too! After all … on the Quantum Level … everyone speaks the same language … and other magical things like that! Yeah, too many Marvel movies clunking around my head! But that is a GOOD THING!

All the usual  Daily Links and YouTube videos are after the language quotes below!

Enjoy!

  1. Language Learning Quotes – GoodReads
  2. 50 of the Best Quotes to Learn a Foreign Language
  3. 25+ Inspirational Quotes About Language
  4. The 5 Best Inspirational Language Quotes
  5. 10 Inspirational Quotes for Language Learners
  6. Light Up Your Brain with 10 Quotes About Language Learning
  7. Inspirational Quotes for Language Learners
  8. 42 Awesome Inspirational Quotes for Language Learners
  9. Language Learning Quotes

As long as I have words at my disposal … … and Google, there will be
Throwback Thursdays!

 

ENJOY!

 TTFN!

 

Top 20 Quotes
About Language

Inspirational Quotes About Learning
A New Second Language

Quotes About
Learning Languages

Learning Quotes About
Learning a Second Language

Language Learning Quotes

Inspirational Quotes
for English Learners

Language Quote #9

The Best Quotes From
Albert Einstein

Top 20 Amazing Quotes on Patience
From Famous People

 

 

Pandemic

 

Where Are My Keys . . . or . . . Forgotten Computers and Software

Where Are My Keys
. . . or . . .
Forgotten Computers and Software

Where are my car keys? I can just ping them, right? Ah, if Life were that easy. Wait a minute, some car keys DO have bluetooth and only need to be close to the car to open and start it! Remember when car keys were actually … KEYS! LOL!

Full  Disclosure – I still have car keys that look, act and FEEL like car keys! Most now have bluetooth and all you have to do is be NEAR the door, NEAR the car and the keys open and start the car! Ah, the good old days of fiddling with multiple keys … good times, good times.

So how many computers have YOU worked on and have … forgotten about! I had a post awhile ago about just that topic, ‘Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL“.

Whether you bought them or used them at school or work, there are probably a dozen or more … Forgotten Computers and Software over the years. Me? Maybe a couple of dozen computers and many, many more software programs or applications!

ENIAC
ENIAC

Remember when the ENTIRE COMPUTER was one huge modular unit! And the very first computers I worked on at U of Calgary, were either hidden from site and you presented your punched cards (FORTRAN!) and waited for  the output!

Then when I started taking ‘Computers in Education’ courses, I was handed the keys to The Vault! I had access to the ‘teletype’ room where I could code in BASIC and run the output on rolls of newsprint! Good times, good times!

ENIAC
 ENIAC

The first program I worked on was for Probablity with a simulation of pulling coloured balls out of a ‘Greecian Urn’. And it even printed out an ASCII Greecian Urn! Yeah, I have a printout, somewhere in  ‘The Garage’ and will look for it one day! LOL!

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a lecture given by Grace Hopper. And you might rightly say … WHO? Well, she was a TITAN OF COMPUTER SCIENCE! And she gave us all a … NANOSECOND at the  end of her lecture! Wait, what?

She concluded her lecture (best lecture of all time!) with how  she explained to her Non-Techie Supervisor, how fast light travels and how that impacts any lag or delay with satellite communications! She brought out lengths of ROPE to demonstrate how far light travels in a second and working her way down to a NANOSECOND or a BILLIONTH OF A SECOND! Turns out, it is about a foot!

Grace Hopper Nanosecond
    Grace Hopper Nanosecond

And she pulled out about 100 small lengths of multi-coloured wire and spread them on the desk for us to take as we walked out. Well, I have never seen such a rush of people to get their ‘Grace Hopper Nanosecond‘! Fortunately I was able to get one for myself! Unfortunately, it has disappeared in my many moves over the years! But what a memory for me!

And I bet I can name a MASSIVE computer related piece of ‘software’ that almost everyone will have forgotten about … Y2K! And if you have NEVER  heard of that term … then you are probably not much older than 20 years old!

Y2K refers to a software ‘glitch’ that did not take into account the calendar year 2000 in most computer code developed between 1980-1999. Basically, EVERYTHING!

Typically, amongst other problems, only 2 digits were used to indicate the calendar year, thus ’89’ and ’99’ were used for ‘1989’ and ‘1999’ in databases, calculations, spreadsheets, banks .. YOU NAME IT! So when the decade ended and we entered the year 2000 … uh-oh! Right back to the year 1900!!!!

I remember staying up, hoisting a glass of champagne and welcoming … ‘The End of the World’!!! But, or more punny, ‘Byte‘ nothing happened! LOL!

So that brings up … Y3K! LOL! I sure hope I am still around to toast 3000!

Grace Hopper Bug
Grace Hooper Bug

And this post quickly turned to Grace Hopper, didn’t it! I love telling people this story AND most people have never heard of Grace Hopper! AND an even BETTER Grace Hopper story! She is credited with the first EVER case of ‘debugging’ a computer …. LITERALLY!

She  crawled into a computer …  it  was that big! And she found a relay switch, an actual MOVING PART INSIDE A COMPUTER and a moth had become ‘trapped’ beneath the lever! She then proceeded to ….’debug’ the computer and documented it! That document, moth and all, are in the Smithsonian now!

I found SO many articles, images, cartoons and resources while doing my usual bit of research for my post, I have more links below than ever before!

Articles on ENIAC, UNIVAC, Personal Computers, COBOL and most especially, Grace Hopper. Take a trip through time, wax nostalgic, and think back to when a computer took up an entire room, if not an entire building!

Oh, and if you see an old, really old, Apple Computer at a garage sale … maybe think about buying it! It could turn out to be this one! worth almost HALF A MILLION DOLLARS!

What you hold in your hands now is not just a phone – it is the FUTURE that visionaries like Grace Hopper could only DREAM of would eventually be possible!

And as Arthur C. Clarke described in ‘Clarke’s Three Laws” at Wikipedia:

    1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
    2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
    3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clarke's 3rd Law
                                                     Clarke’s 3rd Law

We truly live in a Magical Time now!


Enjoy the Magic!

Grace Hopper
         Grace Hopper

 

  1. Personal Computer – Wikipedia
  2. Grace Hopper – Wikipedia
  3. Five Fast Facts About Technologist Grace Hopper
  4. Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992): A legacy of innovation and service
  5. Grace Hopper To Programmers: Mind Your Nanoseconds!
  6. Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper
  7. Untold History of AI: Invisible Women Programmed America’s First Electronic Computer
  8. 10 Oldest Computers in The World
  9. 10 Colossal Old Computers That Changed History
  10. Timeline of Computer History
  11. Computer History Museum – YouTube
  12. 11 Mind-Blowing Collectible Computers That Will Make You Nostalgic!
  13. Acorn, Sinclair, Amstrad and Epson: 10 computers that time forgot
  14. Rare Apple Macintosh prototype up for auction
  15. Ultra-rare Apple-1 sells for the price of 8 Mac Pro computers
  16. The Vintage Mac Museum – Rare Items
  17. Computer Collectibles
  18. Andrew Booth and the Forgotten Computers
  19. Forgotten PC history: The true origins of the personal computer
  20. The forgotten software that inspired our modern world
  21. PC Pioneers: The Forgotten World of S-100 Bus Computers
  22. The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems
  23. Alan Turing’s Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science
  24. 10 Ancient computers that are still in use today
  25. How Forgotten Legacy Systems Could Be Your Downfall
  26. If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today
  27. Avoid the Trash Heap: 15 Great Uses for an Old PC
  28. I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer – And it was awesome!
  29. What Is the Oldest Computer Program Still in Use?
  30. COBOLed together: the oldest legacy systems still in use today
  31. Meet the world’s oldest computer program that’s still in use today
  32. Brush up your COBOL: Why is a 60 year old language suddenly in demand?
  33. 5 ancient software programs we refuse to give up
  34. The 10 oldest, significant open-source programs
  35. Legacy systems: Too old to die?
  36. How Government Agencies Walk the Line with Legacy Software
  37. We care about old computers
  38. Candorville – Comics

As long as I have ‘The Garage’ there will be forgotten and old computers stored there . . . and magical OAC posts!

 

ENJOY!

 TTFN!

 

Computer Pioneers – Part 1

ENIAC – The First Computer

Apollo’s Forgotten Computer
The LVDC

Forgotten Fun
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

Tano Dragon 64
Unboxing

Panasonic JR-200U

1983 Radio Shack TRS80
Color Computer 2

Tandy 1000

Sinclair ZX81 – British Computer

Why Apple Products
Use 30 Year Old Software

Evolution of Laptops
1975 – 2020

Top 10 Horribly Outdated
Technologies Still in Use Today

Quantum Computers
Animated

      

“Then the hard drive says to the floppy, 110010001110011…”
‘This is what people had to use before they got antennae.’

        

Pandemic

 

Daisy Daisy . . . or . . . Songs About Computers . . . kinda . . .

Daisy    Daisy
. . . or . . .
Songs About Computers
. . . kinda . . .

Daisy Daisy … on a bicycle built for DU  –  PLEX? Well, the HAL 9000 never could carry a tune! This might technically be cheating, as HAL is singing a song, but I prefer to think that this was part of his diagnostics and it truly is a song about a computer. A very lethal computer! LOL!

Full  Disclosure – I  have never taken ANY music lessons and …  it shows! And on my iPhone, I don’t have a single track of music. Not one. I have some movies, but not a single song! 

So why songs about computers? Why not! It is my OAC blog and I try to combine computers, languages, words, programming, learning, pop culture and legacy technology …. all in one place! Hit and miss, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes …. it rains! Can you name the movie line came from? No computer songs, but a great movie and soundtrack!

Surprisingly, there were not too many actual songs ABOUT computers ‘out there’. Lots of soundtracks geared towards the computer content of a movie, but a little digging and found a few things.

I consider the soundtrack to ANY movie, more like a character IN THE MOVIE! I bet that if I just mention movies with famous soundtracks, you can instantly bring to mind, some of the tunes that are part of that movie – The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pulp Fiction, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, Guardians of the Galaxy … you get the idea! At least, that works for me! LOL!

So, after this, I just might put some tracks onto my iPhone! I will probably start with the soundtrack from … Guardians of the Galaxy – Volume I! LOL! Yeah, probably bent my rules a bit to include songs sung by computers, songs written by computers and just plain old … favourite songs and soundtracks! Thus and hence and therefore …. KINDA!!!!! All those data bits gotta end up somewhere!

And the usual YouTube videos to follow with some BRILLIANT and HILARIOUS computer parodies of popular music videos! I was … amused by them!

And especially weird and wonderful – how to make a huge array of floppy disk drives actually perform in concert …. POP MUSIC! Definitely Weird and Wonderful today!

Enjoy!

  1. Top 10 Songs About (or to) Computers
  2. Songs About Computers and the Tech Industry
  3. 12 songs inspired by tech
  4. The top 10 songs about video games
  5. Listen to These Odd Pop Songs Composed by a Computer
  6. Now computers are writing perfectly acceptable pop songs
  7. Songs about computers music
  8. Songs About Computers or Technology
  9. The Best Songs About Computers
  10. Computer Songs – Lyrics
  11. The 50 Best Movie Soundtracks of All Time

As long as I have an old iPhone with literally NO music on it … there will be OAC posts! Seriously.. no music!

 

ENJOY!

 TTFN!

 

Database Skills
Sia Cheap Thrills Parody

Sia – Actual Cheap Thrills

Call Me Maybe – Parody Video
Sys Admin Song

Call Me Maybe – ACTUAL Song

Lady Java

Lady Gaga – ACTUAL Poker Face

Seven Databases in Song

Pikotaro – PPAP
Pen Pineapple Apple Pen

THUNDERSTRUCK
on FLOPPOTRON

Bohemian Rhapsody
on FLOPPOTRON

Sheldon Allman
Univac and Humanoid

Wintergatan – Marble Machine

        

‘No one does research with such flair. He’s the Boogie Woogie Google Boy of Division B.’

Mozart on a computer,

Pandemic