That's right, it's a barrel computer.  A computer inside a wine barrel.  At long last, here it is online.

Why?  First reason: it was time for a new computer.  I hadn't bought a new system in eight years.  It had gotten to the point where it wouldn't be possible to simply upgrade one or two components; everything had to go.

Second reason: I have a small apartment and the computer will be going on display in my living room.  I wanted something creative and unique.  Lots of people have done wooden computers, but no one has done a barrel computer.

Two Thumbs Up

The fun continues.  Last time I applauded the media for finally calling McCain on his industrialized dishonesty.  Of course, "the media" was the New York Times, a "liberal" newspaper.  (I've noticed that in the media, "liberal" really means "honest and fact-based," whereas "conservative" (a.k.a. Fox News) really means "dishonest propaganda."  Funny how conservatives always blast truthful media sources as "liberal.")

Hewlett-Packard used to be great.  In 1998 my uncle gave me an HP laser printer and that puppy lasted for ten years and something like 6,000 pages.  (And it only needed four toner cartridges that whole time.)  Beautifully designed, and reliable.

Unfortunately, it's not real.  These photos were made using the Church Sign Generator. Here's someone else's contribution to the debate:

And here are my contributions:

In the past few months, something cute has been happening.  Spammers have been signing up for my blog.  I'm sure they hoped that by signing up, they'd be better able to post spam on my blog.  But it doesn't work that way because I already have spam protection in place.  So I get all these people (mostly with Russian emails) who sign up for my blog.  People with names like "Viagra Forever."

Good news and bad news on the campaign.

"If you, in your office, as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a computer display, backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day, and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?"

This is a demonstration of the original Graphical User Interface, given in San Francisco, by Dough Engelbart, a researcher at Stanford.  What strikes me the most is that we haven't come very far.  In fact, when I first looked at this very simple interface, and the ease with which Engelbart was able to do things, I found myself wishing I had an interface that simple and streamlined.  Look how many mouse clicks it takes him to create a new file.  Now ask yourself how many mouse clicks it takes you to create a new file.  Computer interfaces have gotten bigger, but I'm not sure they've gotten better.

The other thing that struck me is how we're still trying to catch up to some of those original concepts.  Engelbart easily shows how he can create a collection of shopping lists for different stores, and then link each shopping list to a map that shows the location of each store.  Click on each store on the map, and the list shows up.   I dare you to do that with modern computers.  In 1968 Englebert was able to do it with a few clicks.

Welcome to a double post.  First I talk about how the largest scientific experiment in the world uses Linux, and then I talk about my own personal experiments with getting family members to run Linux.