Bold Italics Comic Sans . . . or Word Processors Through the Years

Bold Italics Comic Sans
. . . or . . .
Word Processors Through the Years

Typewriter! Whiteout! Ribbon! Carriage Return! That was MY technology when I was writing term papers back in 1975-1982 at the University of Calgary!

Those late nights AND early mornings, pounding away, literally, on my Smith Corona typewriter – trying to balance SPEED with ACCURACY! There was no such thing as DELETE or UNDO … unless you count going through gallons of whiteout! BUT, I had a very HI-TECH version of correcting mistakes!

Basically, it was a dry ‘tape’, with dryer white ‘chalk’ on one side, and a more inert opposite side. But first, you had to recognize that you did INDEED make a typo, AS YOU WERE TYPING! There were no spellcheckers back then! And then, backspace manually TO THE MISTAKE, insert the correction tape, powder side TOWARDS the error, TYPE THE ERROR AGAIN to literally WHITE OUT the mistake, backspace AGAIN, and manually type in the corrected letter! Good times, good times! All this with a single, ORIGINAL, piece of paper in the typewriter! ARGH! And no automatic page feeds so I often ran out of room on my PRISTINE and ORIGINAL PIECE OF PAPER! DOUBLE ARGH!

And then I took my first computer science course! Although technically NOT a word processor, a massive desk with a punched card reader could be consider an early form of a word processor! Every mistake in code (FORTRAN!) I made, took about 30 minutes to actually DISCOVER from the Punch Card Elders who took my deck and ran it into the giant Punched Card Monsters! Then I had to dig out the SINGLE CARD that had a typo or bad code, and type it in again!

The day I discovered the ‘Function Switches’ feature, which would mirror all the text was like a miracle! I would press the copy button, then STOP, type in the corrected command or typo, then continue with copy and the card would appear at the end! Reinsert, hand over the deck and … ANOTHER TYPO FURTHER INTO THE DECK! Repeat as many times as necessary! Good times, good times!

Commodore SX-64
Commodore SX-64

And then, I graduated, not only from U of C, but onto SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY! Well, at least, at the time, it certainly WAS superior technology! My first teaching gig was not only teaching a Beginner Computer Science course, but DESIGNING IT AS WELL! I earlier posted about Desktop Publishing, but … it was really just basic Word Processing with Apple and Commodore Computers!

Yes, that is the manual for my own Commodore SX-64 that I used for some Grad courses at U of C! And I used the worlds best FREE word processor at the time … SPEEDSCRIPT! A future post will discuss just how amazing the SX-64 computer was! AND IT STILL WORKS!

SpeedScript was free, had a spell checker and even had a PREVIEW of the final page, which was YEARS ahead of anything else out there! And did I mention it was … FREE! YES FREE! And amazingly, it used a markup language that is INCREDIBLY SIMILAR TO WHAT HTML IS NOW! Commodore computers were definitely ahead of their time!

And then a commercial word processor – PaperClip came along and … well, due to budget cuts, only 1 copy was purchased for me! Free is free, right!

And the first ever ‘office suite’ was actually a cartridge based system for .. you guessed it … my SX-64! It was called VIZASTAR and had … EVERYTHING you ever needed for what is now considered an ‘Office Suite’ – Spreadsheet, Database and Graphics … but no word processor sadly!

Why here? A future post will be about my SX-64 AND the cool software I still have, including one of he worlds first ever … LIGHT PEN called Flexidraw! VERY COOL even by today’s standards!

I brought up my Commodore SX-64 to our Systems Open House a few years ago! The theme was ‘Time Travellers – Meet the Team:Systems Through Time‘ Click here to see some photos from a previous post! (Yes, always, more Product Placement!)

And then .. progress marches on. The next generation of hardware and software was WordPerfect on a Commodore IBM clone. What? I bet you didn’t know that Commodore made IBM clones! THEY DID!

And I might start an argument, but I always preferred Corel WordPerfect (MAC) to pretty much any flavour of Word through the years! Okay, so maybe now Office 365 is better! But when I was helping to publish our CALL Proceedings, I made WordPerfect the recommended application. Of course, everyone ignored it, but WordPerfect did Word, BETTER THAN WORD back then! AND IT WAS CANADIAN TOO!

Apple even had their own versions of word processors, including Apple Writer, ClarisWorks, MacWrite, MacWrite Pro, AppleWorks, and now Pages. All good! Used them all for various reasons with great success! 

And then there is another package that I have briefly used, and is free for both current WIN and MAC platforms called Libre Office, which was once known as Open Office. I have only used it sparingly, basically enough to answer basic questions about it, and I am not sure it is installed on any computers at UVic anymore, with Office 365 kinda taking over … for free for students and staff! Which, by the way is a VERY GOOD THING!

And then there are now Text Editors – basically a blend of raw ASCII text with minimal word processing features. So, yeah … they are word processors! There are SO many of them, we all have our favourites and they are quick and dirty to see CONTENT as far as I am concerned. If you are using a text editor for word processing …. then let’s talk! LOL!

Soothsayer Cat
    Old School Cat

And if you think about it, creating a post here on OAC is a perfect blend of word processing AND text editor! I can switch to Text if I want to change some nuts and bolts thing with HTML, or just use the New Post and … see what happens! YAY FOR OAC! Many thanks to “mvh” for his patience whenever I have an OAC question for him!

 

 

Some interesting links to tickle your funny bone or perhaps feel compelled to put pen to paper – in a manner of speaking! Remember, I am old school! 

Enjoy!

  1. SpeedScript – Wikipedia
  2. Speedscript – C64 Wiki
  3. SpeedScript 3.2 for the Commodore 64
  4. Speedscript 3.0
  5. Computer GAZETTE for Commodore Personal
  6. PaperClip Professional Word Processor
  7. PaperClip – Wikipedia
  8. Commodore 64
  9. Commodore PC Compatible Systems
  10. WordPerfect 3.x (Mac)
  11. WordPerfect – Wikipedia
  12. Corel – Wikipedia
  13. Microsoft Word – Wikipedia
  14. On the Origin of the Word Processor
  15. The Evolution of Word Processing – Pencils to Wikis
  16. Vizastar – Wikipedia
  17. Flexidraw
  18. Light Pen – C64 Wiki
  19. Apple Writer – Wikipedia
  20. Everything About Punch Cards
  21. Punched Card – Wikipedia

As long as there are words … and Word Processors … out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!
     
TTFN!

Commodore History – The PET
Part 1 of 8

Remember WordPerfect?
Where Are They Now?

WordPerfect Tutorial
VHS from 1987!

The Oldest Office
for Microsoft Windows

Medieval Help Desk

The History of
Word Processors

Computer Chronicles
Word Processing (1983)

MS-DOS Word Processors

1975 What is Word Processing?

      

I Excel at PowerPoint . . . or Computer Puns and Jokes

I Excel at PowerPoint
. . . or . . .
Computer Puns and Jokes

Taken
Taken

I don’t know who you are or why you stole my copy of Microsoft Office …. but I will find you. You have my .. WORD! I hope I have ‘Taken‘ your attention away from whatever you were doing! Just when you thought it was safe to blog again … COMPUTER PUNS AND JOKES!

CALL Facility Klingon & Sindarin
CALL Facility Klingon

I always try to sneak in jokes, puns or riddles into many of my CALL Facility orientations and handouts too! I once included ‘Klingon‘ in a handout of languages that The CALL Facility had resources for! And it is still at ZOHO!

Soothsayer Cat
Soothsayer Cat

And then UVic goes and offers a course in Alien Languages (Klingon & Sindarin!)! That makes me a soothsayer! I wonder if that means a pay raise or not! My guess …. NOT!

And more ‘Product Placement’ as I posted a previous Bog Blog about … Puns titled ‘When is a Door Not a Door? When it is a Jar“!!

The best part of puns are when they are impromptu and happen instantly! All too often, my eyes widen or roll about and that is an early warning system for colleagues … PUN ALERT! PUN ALERT! People know me all too well! I would be horrible at poker! LOL!

I found one site where a computer was programmed to CALCULATE the funniest puns and it came up with the following….. and …. yeah, NO! Even I have lines I do not cross … and they are often …  lines of code! LOL!

I often say that if I am having fun, then the students are having fun too! There is so much stress nowadays that humour IS good medicine! I won’t bother telling you my absolutely favourite jokes and puns other than …

… it is always my NEXT ONE!

Some interesting links to tickle your funny bone, or perhaps, seek medical attention afterwards!

Enjoy!

  1. XKCD – A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language
  2. Explain XKCD Wiki
  3. 25 Computer Puns That Will LAN You In A Pool Of Laughter
  4. Computer Puns
  5. Com­puter Jokes
  6. Puns about Technology (Misc. Computer Puns)
  7. Fourteen Computer Puns That Only Tech Heads Will Understand
  8. 10 Computer Geek Jokes and Truisms
  9. A Computer Made a List of the 5 Funniest Puns it Knows
  10. Computer Programming Puns
  11. 55+ Best Computer Puns

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!
     
TTFN!

30 Awful Computer Puns
(in Less Than 2 Minutes)

31 Jokes for Nerds

       

XKCD Eternal Flame Explained

Think Different or . . . Apple Commercials Through the Years

Think Different . . . 
. . . or . . .
Apple Commercials
Through the Years

Think Different Albert Einstein
Think Different


Think Different.
As iconic as the ‘1984’ Mac commercial is, this may be one of the most remembered Apple campaigns … EVER! Well, at least for me. I have this poster in my office at home. I uncovered a bunch of them years ago, doing an annual cleanse of some closets we once used as storage! Serendipitous for me!

There is no question that Apple has one of the best marketing programs … in history! This post is predominantly about their ads in video format, which range from poignant and dramatic, to humorous and sometimes silly! They truly do …. Think Different …. all the time!

Kevin Costner - Lisa
  Kevin Costner – Lisa

And at the time, obscure actors might have shown up too! Kevin Costner will forever be linked with the introduction of the Lisa computer, which is a whole different post too!

The BEST ads are cast with actors who don’t take themselves too seriously and actually parody their on-screen presence … and blend it with their off-screen personality!

The Rock x SIRI
     The Rock x SIRI

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson did this perfectly in his ad for Siri a few years ago. I doubt Apple could afford him now!

What Will Your Verse Be?
  What Will Your Verse Be?

My absolute favourite commerical of ALL TIME is probably not what you might think. Oh yes, I do like the 1984 commercial (Directed by Ridley Scott – Gladiator, The Martian, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner, Alien .. yes THAT Ridley Scott!) but my favourite is for the iPad Air with Robin Williams narrating his poetry speech over some amazing world moments. Do you remember which movie this came from? HUDDLE UP!

As a summer project many years ago, I decided to find as many Apple Commercials on YouTube as I could and learn how to create movies and burn a DVD, dedicated to only Apple Commercials!

YouTube was relatively new and it might not have even been bought by Google yet! Still, I learned how to create and edit movies, burn DVDs and improve my knowledge of various video formats, editing techniques and making movies!

iMovie HD 2005
  iMovie HD 2005

A future post, once we return to UVic, will be about using iMovie HD! What? You have never heard of that version? That doesn’t surprise me!

iMovie HD was one of the very first versions (2005!) and can only

MovieBox DV
    MovieBox DV

run under a macOS that is named after a kitty! But it is surprisingly robust, has simple and intuitive editing controls and works with some old hardware called MovieBox DV (2003!) that can digitize VHS cassettes! Sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks!

And one more thing … Apple has long been the target of parody ads! There is one for a new iPhone at the very end of the videos below. But the BEST one is called ‘The Power to Crush the Other Kids”. It is nowhere to be found on the internet and YouTube has pulled it due to copyright infringement concerns, by NBC’s ownership of Saturday Night Live. If you can find it, it is truly hilarious!

Some interesting links below with even more background to Apple’s numerous ads throughout the years!

As long as there are words out there, there will be a site that Google finds for each of us!

Enjoy!

  1. The most memorable Apple ads of all time
  2. 15 Best Apple Commercials of All Time
  3. The 14 best Apple ads of all time
  4. 10 Apple ads that show how the brand has evolved
  5. 289 Best Apple Ads – Pinterest
  6. The best 18 Apple commercials of all time
  7. The best ad Apple produced from each year since its 1984 Super Bowl hit
  8. THE BANANA JUNIOR 6000: COMPUTERS AND COMEDY
  9. The 10 Funniest Apple-Ad Parodies
  10. The 10 Funniest Mac Apple-Ad Parodies

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!
     
TTFN!

Think Different
Narrated by Steve Jobs

What Will Your Verse Be?
Apple iPad Air

1984 Super Bowl Ad

The Real Story Behind
Apple’s 1984 Commercial

Best Apple Commercials 2020

29 Best Apple Commercials
of All Time

Complete 66 Mac vs PC Ads

Best Apple Commercials

Every Apple Computer Ad

Top 10 Iconic Apple Ads

Best Apple Commercials

Best Apple Commercials

30 Years of Mac Ads
1984 – 2014

15 Funny Apple Ads

iPhone Parody
A Taller Change

 

New from Apple, the iCan.