History – Page 5 – Ammon Shepherd

A different history of computers and Linux

Wow, two posts in a day…

I just skimmed through this interview with Con Kolivas a major Linux kernel developer who has quite the Linux development world in frustration. What caught my attention was his ‘history’ of computers. His recollection of the computers history is truly different than I had ever learned or thought of. Basically, he paints the picture that computers could have been extremely different if the hardware had ruled instead of software. While computers were in their nascent state, the hardware being developed was ever changing. New and different ideas were used in each computer company. Then a software operating system came out that changed all that. By becoming the default OS, there was no more need to create better, different, new hardware. Instead all of the hardware was built and developed to suit the software.

It makes one think, what would computers be like if hardware ruled? What would they look like, how would they perform, how would they work, if they were not limited to one operating system?

Timeplot and Exhibit

The folks over at MIT’s SIMILE have two new projects that are just mindbogglingly awesome. I used the Timeline Project for my research project a few semesters ago about World War II.

Now they have a new time line type tool called Timeplot. This project uses a plot graph to display numerical data along with historical events. Sort of a mix between numbers and dates. Analytic history, if you will. I love the simplicity of the look, the ease of use, and the way it merges cold, dead data with live historical events. I have always wondered what historical events were happening at the time when I see graphs of data. This is an awesome tool to allow that to happen.

The other project, Exhibit, is a digital historians dream. Do you have lots of spreadsheets of info, perhaps all your dissertation data stored in the old JSON file? Wondering how to show that on the web without creating an extensive database solution? Exhibit takes care of it for you. And it’s dynamic! Sort and search the data automatically included. Crazy goodness! Now I just have to think of where to use this too….

The history of a software application

While doing some work today I stumbled upon a bit of history. The author calls it a story, but that’s what history is, right?

Anyhow, it’s a very entertaining and enthralling look at the birth and death (or retirement) of a software program. It provides a lot of insight into the process of making an application, building a software company, and some intriguing behind the scenes information about the coming forth of major Apple products like iTunes, iPhoto and the iPod.

Read “The True Story of Audion” the application that could have been iTunes. Link: http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

Soviet music

I’m looking for some good soviet music to use as a light background music to the flash timeline. Here are two good sites that catalog and preserve the history of the former USSR in music.
http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/index.php

http://www.hymn.ru/index-en.html

Gonna get my PhD.

I got accepted to the PhD program at GMU recently. I just need to quit procrastinating and send my acceptance letter. The tough part is knowing I can get a stipend, but realizing I can’t take it because I’m a full time employee. Well the benefits (medical and monetary) out-way the stipend, and I love my job. So I’m content.

A time machine…

Or a set of machines (appliances really) to take one back in time (at least mentally).

This post from William Turkel at Digital History Hacks about the history appliance was just down-right awesome.Â How cool would it be, even if just in your browser or on your computer, to have everything (all types of media) display a certain time period or year.

What I thought was most interesting is the immersion effect this would have for historians. It would be a great way to see what was available at that time, what was not, what was popular, what was in the news… Pretty cool.

I'm alive… really, I am…

Not that anyone reads this with any regularity (made impossible by my irregular postings)….

I stumbled upon this cool video explaining “Web 2.0” from http://www.metagrrrl.com/ (I hate buzz words, and Web 2.0 is a huge bloated, overused, ugly buzz word. Oh well..)
Anyhow, it’s really cool…

(If it doesn’t show up, here’s the link.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Paradigms of Humanities and Medicators

Dan Cohen has a description of a recent conference about the humanities and their use of modern technology. In the post he shows that the whole aspect of scholars in the humanities requires a paradigm shift, but also mentions another paradigm shift that happened in the field of medicine. This was the efforts of Dr. John Snow in London during the cholera outbreak in the mid nineteenth century.

Continue reading Paradigms of Humanities and Medicators

A mouse without buttons…

Here’s a whole site dedicated to the study and research of how we interact with the computer via the mouse and clicking. “The Click” says this site, is unnecessary. The whole site is designed to be used without clicking the mouse button but once! I liked it! Check out dontclick.it and see if you can navigate without the click.

The design of everyday things

I’m facinated with why things are designed the way they are. I recently found a blog about the history of the electromechanical button. In class tonight I was introduced to a series of books about the design of everyday things. I’ll have to check them out at a latter date.