Off-topic: Happy things

[Lia S]

What is nicer to have than well-shaven bare legs under a pretty and comfortable skirt?

The fact that the store I work at now carries my favorite kind of cheese?

Sorry, thought I was at the riddle thread. Congrats, dear, that sounds lovely!

You're lucky I'm lactose intolerant, or I would be acting like a goat now.

(Goats will eat your clothes)

[Doc Harleen]

Happy thing for the week: heading off to Vegas! Waiting to board the plane right now. See you guys in a few days!

[Lia S]

Happy thing: repaired/upgraded big computer will arrive tonight. After some testing and hopefully finding out that it is now reliable again, I'll get convenient use of a big screen and real* keyboard again. And it will be crazy fast.

*) Only IBM model M keyboards are real keyboards. Neighbours complaining about the noise these things make are just envious.

[sgtrock]

Happy thing: repaired/upgraded big computer will arrive tonight. After some testing and hopefully finding out that it is now reliable again, I'll get convenient use of a big screen and real* keyboard again. And it will be crazy fast.

*) Only IBM model M keyboards are real keyboards. Neighbours complaining about the noise these things make are just envious.

You do realize that probably only 4 or 5 of us will remember seeing a REAL IBM model M back in the day, right? And most of the rest will have a blank look right about now?

[Bo Lindbergh]

Model M is just newfangled nonsense when compared to Model F.

[Mr. Brightside]

Happy thing: repaired/upgraded big computer will arrive tonight. After some testing and hopefully finding out that it is now reliable again, I'll get convenient use of a big screen and real* keyboard again. And it will be crazy fast.

*) Only IBM model M keyboards are real keyboards. Neighbours complaining about the noise these things make are just envious.

You do realize that probably only 4 or 5 of us will remember seeing a REAL IBM model M back in the day, right? And most of the rest will have a blank look right about now?

Terrifyingly, they're now antiquated enough to have become a hipster thing, like vinyl.

[Lia S]

I'm actually a bit young to remember the Model M from when it was considered a normal keyboard. I read about them somewhere at a time I had some wrist problems, decided to try one, and that solved the problems.

What I do remember is dot matrix printers. The sound of them brings back happy memories.

[sgtrock]

Model M is just newfangled nonsense when compared to Model F.

I'll see your Model F and raise you a Selectric and a manual Smith-Corona!

[Captain LeBubbles]

Today I bought myself a brushable-mane Fluttershy. (This is going to make up for the rest of my shit day.)

Fluttershyyy~ <3

edit: Okay, this is my happy thing for today- {link}

[konaa]

One word: Funkytown.

It's getting me in the groove ~

[Muttley]

Model M is just newfangled nonsense when compared to Model F.

I'll see your Model F and raise you a Selectric and a manual Smith-Corona!

I'll see you

IBM 029 card punch
Teletype ASR33
Creed five-hole tape punch

I remember playing Star Trek on a Selectric terminal connected to an IBM 360/67, Adventure (aka Colossal Cave) on a Data General Nova and Dungeon (the Fortran version of Zork) on a DEC VT100 connected to a Vax 780.

Nowadays I can emulate the whole lot on a little black box that I can pick up and take away with me Finding a USB card punch might be difficult. Hollerith card archives are read by dedicated scanners these days. You can still get paper tape reader/punches, with a serial interface you could connect to a pC. They cost more than your laptop.

[Otaking]

Model M is just newfangled nonsense when compared to Model F.

I'll see your Model F and raise you a Selectric and a manual Smith-Corona!

I'll see you

IBM 029 card punch
Teletype ASR33
Creed five-hole tape punch

I remember playing Star Trek on a Selectric terminal connected to an IBM 360/67, Adventure (aka Colossal Cave) on a Data General Nova and Dungeon (the Fortran version of Zork) on a DEC VT100 connected to a Vax 780.

Nowadays I can emulate the whole lot on a little black box that I can pick up and take away with me Finding a USB card punch might be difficult. Hollerith card archives are read by dedicated scanners these days. You can still get paper tape reader/punches, with a serial interface you could connect to a pC. They cost more than your laptop.

Wow I haven't been impressed in a while but that surely is an impressive list. I played ADVENT (Yes they originally truncated the name of it) but I did it on Apple IIc. I also tweaked games in BASIC out of Rainbow magazine printings which I then saved to cassette tape drive on my TRS-80 (with a fabulous 16k of extended RAM). I loaded mag tape reels into a VAX in jr. college where I also (pointlessly) studied COBOL. I had an Amiga and Atari 400 at one point also. Just check out the keyboard on this baby, like the soothing bruising, callusing effect of typing on a flat glass table:



When you're ready to step up from cuneiform tablets and papyrus though, mine is pretty sexy. The wife and I both have one because pwning noobz in MMOs is fairly happiness inducing & we love these.

[Muttley]

ADVENT - yes, the vaguely religious result of having to truncate all your file names to six characters or less. I seem to recall that RDOS had the same limitation.

The five-hole tape days were on an Elliott 803, after school at the local technical college. That was really basic. The tape punch had a mechanical typewriter keyboard but no printing head, so you couldn't see what you were typing. You took the tape to a separate verifier, with a platen, paper and a teletype print barrel, which read in your tape at one side and punched out an edited copy on the other side. Programs were small.

The computer had an electro-optic reader, and the program you'd spent ages crafting was read in one quick zzippp. The 803 had a speaker that made different noises to indicate run states, and we soon got used to the noises associated with failure

Punched tape has had a surprisingly long life, outlasting Hollerith cards. In its more modern form, using Mylar rather than paper tape, it is durable, relatively easy to store, and completely immune to EMP. Military systems have used it until quite recently.

Mylar tape is hell on the punches though, blunting them after very few rolls of tape.

My Atari was a 1040STf. An excellent machine in its day, but couldn't keep up with the IBM juggernaut once they entered the market. Early IBM PC's were rubbish, though. Windows 3.1 is where they became ubiquitous.

The Atari 400 "keyboard" is the complete antithesis of the IBM Model M (which is where this nostalgia all started). Trying to use the no-feedback flat torture device shows just why the Model M and its ilk are so well thought of, and why tactile feedback is so important to getting sensible typing speeds on a Scholes keyboard.

I'm using an old Microsoft keyboard,a KU-8933, which has a USB connection and full-travel keys, but not the positive feedback of a Model M. I keep looking out for them, but expect I'll have to shell out for a modern version from Unicomp.

[Lia S]

I wonder which is worse: the Atari 400 keyboard or the virtual keyboard of a modern tablet/pad/thing?

[Artemisia]

WOOHOO!

Tomorrow, I have skirts arriving at the house, and Ranma 1/2 vol 8. . .got vol 7 today