Ah, <marquee> tag, how I don’t miss you.
Zach Holman takes us back to edgy HTML techniques that ruled during the 90s in his humorous article. Mr. Holman, you missed framesets!
Category: Coding and Computers
My Dell Inspiron 15R
I recently ordered and I am now enjoying my Dell Inspiron 15R laptop. I had been in the market for a latop for some time now (my first and only other laptop still has Windows 95 on it — so, let’s say it underperforms for my needs). I made a list of must-haves then looked at different manufacturers and models for the right fit.
I knew a 15-inch screen was a prerequisite as well as 4G RAM and a speedy processor. I had purchased desktops from Dell before and when I had found the 15R came in at the price point I wanted while also matching up with my list, I knew it was right for me.
The screen is gorgeous, the touchpad is capacious and the speed fabulous. I like the feel of the touchpad and that the keyword has a dedicated numeric pad. The island-style keys is new for me, but I took to it in no time.
What I have noticed the absence of when using the15R is heat. The machine runs comfortably cool, even after hours of continuous use. It is also quiet. Battery life is close to 6 hours, I believe, though I have not run it that long.
The machine has HDMI and Bluetooth, though I have not had use for either yet.
All in all, a great package. I cannot think of what could be added to make it better for the price. I highly recommend it.
First Impressions of WordPress
It’s very easy to get started with the WordPress blogging platform. I can’t compare it to Blogger or others as I’ve not tried those yet. I’ll be sure to comment later when I do.
One recommendation to WordPress developers: on the initial sign-up screen where a username is to be provided, please have the field run a check to see if the username is already being used by another. You don’t find out until you’ve submitted the form. Just a quibble.
Once you’re signed up, it’s very inuitive, at least for me, to add, edit and remove posts and the other basic tools of blogging. And choosing among different templates/designs is easy. I’ve not explored customizing them or creating your own from scratch.
Now on WordPress
I’ve set up a Wordpress blog account today.
I’ve set up a WordPress blog account today and copied my own blog posts here. So all posts prior to this one are copies of those found on my own website. I’ve matched the dates as well. I’ll maintain the blog both here and there for a bit, but soon will post in one place and feed it to the other.
Punched Cards
A colleague handed me a book that belongs to his father: Automatic Data Processing: Principles and Procedures by Elias Awad. It’s about data management circa 1966.
Update: I will continue Coding related posts and articles on my other site.
A colleague handed me a book that belongs to his father: Automatic Data Processing: Principles and Procedures by Elias Awad. It’s about data management circa 1966.
Fascinated, I borrowed the book and made some scans. It begins with an overview of historic data processing like Roman figure counting, Venetian bookkeeping and Pascal’s calculator. The majority of the book describes data theory and the modern methods of programming and processing data. The appendix covers Fortran and COBOL among others.
What interested me the most was the chapters on punched cards — the two leading card types (Hollerith/IBM and Powers/Remington Rand), how they’re written, read, sorted and duplicated. I can imagine the game of 52-card pickup was not considered very fun in those days.
Awad provides illustrations and photographs such as those below.
