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Showing posts from April, 2008

My Other Project

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Inspired by the Steampunk Keyboard Mod page and a long term crush on Amanda Pays (Theora on Max Headroom , who had an actual typewriter for her keyboard), I put this together:   It looks better in person than it does in the pictures, actually. Ask friends or co-workers of the cheap keyboard that "came with the computer" that's probably in the closet gathering dust. This one's a Dell USB. Use a Dremel rotary tool to chop the edges off the keys - basically draw a box on the top of each key until the "skirt" falls off   Order all the keys you need on eBay - search on " typewriter keys royal ". Note that you'll need 3 complete sets (all of two, a few from one more). Pay attention to whether you want round or rectangular keys for the "special"keys. Expect to pay about $1 per key. If you can, get the logo! To make the non-standard key-caps (Carriage return, Function keys, "1"... none of those were around

Foundation's End

I'm not alone in holding Asimov's Foundation series in high regard. In 1965 it won the Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" and I can't think of another science fiction series that would be a serious contender. Dune comes closest, but is still outmatched. That's not to say that they are the epitome of SF, but they are deeply special. Originally written in the 1940s as a serial and later published as a trilogy ( Foundation; Foundation and Empire; Second Foundation ), Asimov returned to the series in the 1980s with two sequels ( Foundation's Edge; Foundation and Earth ) and two prequels ( Prelude to Foundation; Forward the Foundation ). He also linked in his Robot series ( The Caves of Steel; The Naked Sun; The Robots of Dawn ) and more loosely the Galactic Empire series ( The Currents of Space; The Stars Like Dust; Pebble in the Sky ) as well as numerous short stories. Robots and Empire was explicitly written as a bridge novel. Additional novels wer

Second Life on an Apple II

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... or, "How Josh spends his time when the family is on vacation without him." It's a client/server app for the Apple II and Windows that streams the Windows desktop down to the Apple. So far the communication is one way, so you can't even call it a graphical terminal. Yet. Second Life login screen My pirate ship Billabong My avatar at the International Space Flight Museum The Windows server and Apple client (with the USB->RS232 Serial connector in the middle)