My webmaster (aka husband) renovated my site in the last few weeks. I now have a gallery of miniatures that's easy to access and easy to add to. The link leads to a rough draft that will eventually go on my site.
Looking at the programming he did for the project, I was very impressed. On the other hand, he has it easy! I wrote code for a machine, parts of which are pictured here. The computer is now in the Computer Museum! Imagine carrying that in your pocket or even fitting it on your desktop. I wrote my thesis in experimental physics at a time when the grad student did everything, from doing the experiments and collecting the data to writing the program to process the data.
Every time we ran the data with new numbers, we'd have to compile the program. It's the equivalent of installing Word over and over, every time you want to use it!
Programming is tedious and I wouldn't want to do it, ever again. So this is a public thank you to my resident programmer!
Anyone else able to pawn off the tough parts of your business?
5 comments:
It's amazing how far computers have come. My first has a gray screen, 10 megs of memory and no windows. I remember all those DOS commands and the big disks.
It's kind of funny, but th computer in the picture is the opposite of your miniatures.
Been there. Done that back in the Sixties. The other grad students, and the professors, were using great chunks of my code.
But I ported Spacewar to the lab machine, and that was what got used the most of all. Some things never change.
My code never went any farther than my own thesis, Ellen!
Also --my apologies for not posting the winners of my Twisted Family contest. It got buried in my luggage, I guess, on my way to NYC, where I'm now writing, with limited access. More next week!
Ah, yes, the old days of computerdom. As a student library worker, I learned to keypunch. (I also learned where to pick off the cards with mistakes in them before they ended up in the stack.) That machine was as big as a Volkswagen! Also used a portable remote terminal with an acoustic coupler. If you even know what that is, you just gave away your age.
Camille, an FYI for you. The September/October issue of Piecework Magazine is going to be on miniatures. Of course, for all I know they interviewed you for it, but according to the website, it will go on sale Sept. 1.
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