al9000.com

Keyboard Basics There's a few things to know about keyboards you plug into your computer: They have little computers in them. When you press a key, the little computer in the keyboard sends a signal to your actual computer telling it what key you pressed. The little computer in your keyboard is programmed with a map that defines which keys send what signals to your computer (i.e. when you press the "a" it sends and "a" signal). Some keyboards let you reprogram the map to change the signals each…

I started moving my site from alanwsmith.com over here to al9000.com earlier this year. I started with basic pages. The first blog post came in April. That post is called I'm Not Ready to Start This Blog1. One of the reasons I wasn't ready was I hadn't built an RSS feed for the site yet2. As of yesterday, the RSS feed is operational. There's still work to do. Things like adding a little header to posts that feature JavaScript based features that won't work in most feed readers. All that stuff…

This is a fun concept. Folks who set aside a little time each week to take calls with whoever about whatever. unoficehours.com I've got a bunch of traveling to do. Setting up calls with some folks is on the list for when I get back. -a Endnotes I'll totally be using this to talk with techy folks about bitty to get feedback from them. For the non-techy folks, we'll play the conversations by ear and see where they go.

The sonic foundation of computers is the DAC, or Digital-to-Audio Converter. It's the hardware that turns digital files into the signal that goes down the wires of your speakers to make them make sound. What if we made a Digital to Analog Enlarger for photographs? I mean, this already exists in some ways. Any time you get a digital photo printed there's a process that does it that can output to various sizes. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one that looks like this: Ones…

I need to write something. Notice I did not say, I want to write something. I need to. My brain has been offline for a couple weeks. Not too bad. Not full on depressions. I expect it might have been if it weren't for the meds. Or, if I had to go to a day job. That's maybe the most interesting thing for me. How much less do I get impacted by the swings of bipolar disorder without having the pressure of a gig. I don't think there would be a difference on the mania side. The depressions side? It…