DOS Software: free!

I've written some software for DOS machines, mostly long ago in the days known as the "90s".

 DosPP - Two programs; a CD replacement app that accepts unix style slashes, and also works with wildstars. Nice if you use unix as your other command line OS. Also includes "forline" a program to execute a user-specified command for each line of a file.  Full C source to both included. 

Steps to installing Windows 95OSR2 on a machine with no CD-ROM drive

I've got a few machines with no CDROM drives that need OSes put on them (mostly laptops).  Here's how I do it.

Required materials:

• 1 floppy disk
• Win95B CD
• PC with CDROM drive and serial port
• null modem cable (cheap on ebay)

Note that it would be faster if you used a parallel transfer cable. I've never used one but I've been told it's called a "null parallel cable" and you  can get them on ebay. The performance could be as much as 10 times higher, so it might be worth looking into if you do this a lot.

Steps

Prep files:

• From the Win95 CD, copy the folder with all the cabs in it to your hard drive
• Delete files we won't need (remember serial transfer is slow):

setup21i.exe
setup32.exe
wowkit.exe
cs3kit.exe
(these files just allow you to install AOL or Compu$erve)
• You should end up with a folder that has less than 50MB of data in it.

Prep target machine:

• Make a Dos bootdisk (format a:/s), and copy format.com and fdisk.com to it.
• Boot target machine with floppy.
• Fdisk its hard drive "fdisk"; delete old partitions, make a new one. Note that drivespace3 does not support fat32 drives so if you want to compress your disk you need to make an old-fashioned fat16 partition. Keep in mind that Fat16 maxes out at 2GB per partition, and at that size each file takes a multiple of 32k. 

Transfer (with Zip2.2):

Zip2.2 is a nice, more or less free, program for Transferring files between win9X machines and DOS machines. It does not work with XP or 2K. As an alternate option (if you can find it) Lap Link 5 can be used in place of Zip22; it's faster, more fault tolerant, and more user-friendly. But it's commercial and long ago taken off the market. Doesn't mean you can't find it; try looking for ll5.zip...

• Download a copy of Zip 2.2 ("zip22.zip", a null modem transfer app by Eric Meyer (search for null modem on this page) and place it on the boot floppy as well.
• Connect two machines with null modem cable.
• Format its hard drive "format c:".
• Start zip on target, make sure it is set to the right port, and put it in server mode.
• Start zip on host, set it to create folders (under options), and Send the contents of the cab folder to the target machine.
• Wait a while (about two hours) for transfer to finish. Did I mention that serial transfer is slow? But it's better than floppies, folks.

Transfer with Zmodem:

If you use a WinNT based OS you can't run zip. Instead use HyperTerminal (which comes with all versions of windows I've used) on the Windows size, and a DOS based Zmodem client on target machine. I recommend Conex (local download here). I would the windows install files it as one large zipped file. The comm settings I used which seemed to work well were 115200 8-N-1, Hardware Flow Control.

Install:

• Change directory to the folder where you copied the files and type "setup".
• Setup takes a while; about an hour on a P200, for instance. Near the end of "copying files…" (98%) setup will try to install AOL and Compu$serve. Since you deleted them, you will have to tell Windows to skip those files.
• Windows still manages to install some online services even after we deleted them from the setup folder; feel free to delete them as well after the install concludes. You should be able to get Win95 to install in less than 100MB of space fairly easily given these steps.

Note that if you already have Windows on the machine, you will need to delete or rename its win.com file in order for OSR2 to allow itself to be installed.

Conclusion

Now that you have Win95b installed, use Ethernet to share your other machine's CD-ROM drive and install the rest of your software that way. It's much quicker than serial networking.  But if you must, you should know about the DCC option. That's Direct Cable Connection, which allows two Windows boxes to share folders and drives over parallel and serial cables, much like if you used a Ethernet connection. It can be tricky to set up; be sure that both machines have netbui installed or it will fail mysteriously. Do a google for direct cable connection windows for websites with lots of info on just how to get it to work.

IBM Thinkpad 755CSE Review

This high end machine once cost $5000 from your local IBM dealer. Your not-so-local ebay dealer has them for less than $50. Yes, it's a steal from a historical perspective, but what does it have to offer you, today? Here's a preview of comming posts on this topic: 

IBM PC Dos - If you buy one with software, you are likely to find it comes with PC DOS. You are free to replace with MS DOS, but should you? 

Running Win95b - If you like to be productive, you might enjoy a relatively modern OS. But will your ThinkPad enjoy it too?

Gaming with the 755CSE - That's why you really bought it, no? Disappointment awaits, my friend. 

Conclusion: this machine works better for productivity than fun. But it's from IBM so did you really expect any different? Still, as a word processor on the go, it's price and performance can't be beat. 

REVIEW: IBM ThinkPad 755CS - DOS Gaming

IBM ThinkPad 755CS

DOS Gaming

I tried playing some old DOS games on the 755CE. Turns out it's less than perfect for that, mainly due to sound issues. But briefly, let me first cover the track point issue, and the screen quality.

The trackpoint, simply put, doesn't work too great for twitch games. It's just not as responsive (at least by my hand) as a trackball or mouse. For slow paced games it's fine, but for things like Populous, it's not much better than using the keyboard. Perhaps with a lot more experience this preference would go away, but I'm sure it would take some training. Beyond control issues, it's just plain fatiguing to use the trackpoint for long periods of time. This is even true on my modern Dell laptop, which I use a lot, so I doubt that issue will go away with training. 

As to the quality of the screen, it's quite good. I didn't get a chance to play anything that used a 640x480 mode, but all the mode 13h games looked and played great, whether fast twitch or slow and lush. In short, the LCD on this machine cannot be beat. It's ever so much better than trying to use a passive matrix display, like what my Twinhead 550S has.

Now, on to the main problem:

The sound chip IBM uses to simulate a sound blaster doesn't work too well. It's not all that compatible, and requires some hefty DLLs too. I managed to run with more than 600k free conventional memory only by booting with just emm386/himem, and the sound card drivers (ie, no smartdrive, drivespace, ect) under Dos 6.22.  Even with plenty of free ram, it didn't work with everything. There were two versions of the emulation software, 2.24, and 1.09, I tried both, in general I didn't see a big difference, but here is what I did see, for a few games I tried:

Xargon: could play with just music under the 1.x drivers, would not load with any sound at all under 2.x

Lemmings (Xmass 94 version): title loads, but no sound, and game exits whenever you try to load a level.

Spell Casting 201: didn't work with 1.x, appears to work, but poorly with 2.x (ie, it complains, but seems to be fine)

Warlords 2, Populous, Power Monger, LGOP2, Lure of the Temptress: all work fine.

The Incredible Machine: fully playable, but seems to have some display issues, draws part of the screen double. I've seen this on my other portable, the Twinhead 550s.  Looks odd, but really doesn't cause a problem. I suspect this has to do with TIM using a "mode X" VGA setting, which means non-standard resolution, and is something LCD display's just can't accommodate.

REVIEW: IBM ThinkPad 755CS - Installing and using Win95B (OSR2)

IBM ThinkPad 755CS

Installing and using Win95B (OSR2)

Remember, this is a 486DX4-100 with 24MB of RAM; so the critical question is how well it will perform with a potentially demanding OS. 

Disk Space:  With a minimal install and after deleting the "online services" (AOL, etc), the OS footprint was just over 70 MB.  After installing diskspace 3, the compression ratio was 1.5 to 1 on a fairly full hard disk; though it was not possible to find out how well it compressed individual folders. The disk had a good number of .wav and .avi files, so the compression ratio could probably go higher.

Screen: 640 x 480 is too small for modern apps, but it the screen is physically large, so I experimented with using Arial and small fonts at 7 or 6 points; this helped a lot; the start menu can hold more items, the title bars can show more info, and not take up as much horizontal space.  Plus, shrinking the menu settings (be sure to adjust both active and inactive settings) makes the start menu fit lots of items on the screen. It's not as good as having a 800x600 screen, but it's a lot more useable. 

Boot: before I compressed the drive, it took just under 45 seconds to boot to the windows desktop. After compressing the entire drive (including the win95 folder) it took just under 10 seconds longer to boot.

Speed: Just doing normal windows things (managing files, opening the built in apps) felt very snappy at 8bit color; and only slightly sluggish at 16bit color (so slight it may have been imagined). For more demanding tasks, it also held up well (see next two paragraphs).

Web browsing: Well, Win95B comes with IE 3.0, so I tried surfing the web that way for a while on a 14.4 modem. Wow, 14.4 modems suck. But we can't hold that against the IBM, since it would be easy and cheap to upgrade to a 56k modem. But what of the browsing speed once the page is downloaded? It's not bad, in that pages redraw relatively quickly, and scroll smooth enough. It's not nearly what a modern desktop can do, but it's certainly useable, even if you have two or three windows open (this was even true when I had a copy of Word95 in the background). More of an issue is that web pages are no longer designed for 640x480, and IE 3.0 can't handle many modern web sites (including google!). So it would be worth upgrading, though I'd be careful to find another browser with low resource requirements (perhaps opera?). Also, running in small font size made a lot of improvement for some web sites, though images were still too big for my tastes. Perhaps this is where the small screen resolution really comes to the head. Summary: useable, but not nearly good enough to make it a replacement for a real computer.

Office 95: Office 95 works great on this machine. Word loads in a mater of seconds, and runs perfectly once loaded. I'd say it's easily competitive with Office 2k on my 433 MHZ desktop Celeron. Plus, Office 95 is so much more spartan and refined than 2k; aside from the file interop issues, I'd almost call Office 95 an upgrade over Office 2k.  Call me crazy, but that's how I feel.

Sound and Modem: The 755CE has an "mwave" DSP, which can support both MIDI, WAV, and 28.8k functionality, though not all at once. Supposedly you can connect to the internet and play some "wave" content at the same time. I was unable to test this, since installing MWAVE drivers for Win95 required a new bios update, and I couldn't get it to flash the bios. This stems from IBM deciding that you are only allowed to perform a flash if you have a fully charged battery; mine is long past dead. I suspect you could hack it to get around this issue, but it wasn't worth it to me.

"Mouse": the built in track point control worked great, when windows booted. Sometimes, though, it would freeze before loading all the way; eventually I decided it was a problem interfacing to the track point gizmo, and tried loading a real mode DOS mouse driver before windows; this seemed to fix the problem every time; though I suppose it could just be luck too. As a mouse, the trackpoint takes a bit of getting used to, but is clearly much better than the alternative of having no mouse. With time you might even enjoy using it, though I never got to that point. Certainly it's fine for moving windows around and managing your files, but I wouldn't want to game, or draw with it.

REVIEW: IBM ThinkPad 755CS with PC Dos 6.3 and SuperStor/DS

IBM ThinkPad 755CS

PC Dos 6.3 and SuperStor/DS

Some stats about the machine, as it was when I got it:

Running PC Dos 6.3, the machine had 611k of free space in lower memory.  This was with EMM386, HIMEM, some IBM utils relating to the power management and PCMCIA slots, Smartdrive, mouse, and doskey installed. No drive compression though.

Time to boot to DOS: 32 seconds. Time to boot to Windows 3.1 after that: 20 seconds.

PC Dos 6.2 uses SuperStor/DS for disk compression; it was not enabled; but I wanted to see what it would do so I tried it out.  Running SS/DS dropped the free conventional memory by 41k,  to 570k.  I tried running RAMsetup, PCDOS's version of memmaker, and it only improved things by 4K, for a total of 574k free conventional RAM. Then I used SS/DS to compress the drive; however it complained that the machine's 800 MB drive was too big to compress. Instead I made a 300MB drive out of the disk's remaining free space and copied over the files to find out what the true compression ratio was. After copying over a random selection of the hard disk it achieved a miserable 1.3 to 1 ratio. Concluding that a lot of .wav and .avi files had been copied, I tried again, just copying MSOffice 4.2 and Windows. This produced a ratio of 1.6 to 1, only slightly better than the 1.5 ratio I usually get when I use MS drvspace. Considering I didn't do a direct comparison on the same files, this difference may not actually be significant.
  

How to succeed at a small liberal arts college (Hampshire College, specifically)

Succeeding at Camp Hamp

I feel like I did pretty well with my Camp Hamp education. I enjoyed my time there and I was engaged intellectually with interesting ideas and work. And after graduation, I got into almost every grad school I applied to.  I realize this is not the experience of many Hampshire students, however.  I think that is really a shame.  There is no one way to do Hampshire right, but here is my take on how to come out happy and successful:

Complete four classes every term up to Div3

Look, Hampshire classes really are not that hard.  Especially if you only put in the amount of work you want to. You will need 12+ completed classes for your Div2. Also, the rest of the world seems to believe that learning happens in classes, so you need to have some to show for your four years in college. 

If you really don't like a particular class, you can try to switch to another class. But if it's too late for that, don't just drop the class. Instead, carefully limit how much time you spend on the class.  Just set aside X number of hours to finish everything assigned. It's a good skill to learn how to finish any given sized project in 2, 4, or 20 hours.  Of course, the quality won't always be as good as you like, but you'll at least have completed something. Remember that even an OK evaluation usually says nice things and complements your Div2.  Besides, if you handle things well, you won't have to take more than a few classes you don't like. The trick is to follow the next piece of advice:

Audit at least 8 classes for the first two weeks

Ideally, you don't want to get stuck in classes you don't want to finish.  The true quality of a class is not clear until you've spent some time in the class. So don't shortchange your options. Go to twice as many classes as you need for that term until the work load becomes an issue. Many classes don't have work due for the first few weeks. Take advantage of that to feel out your options.

Treat your advisor as such

Your advisor gives you educational advice. They are not your boss. If you don't like their advice, seek other people's advice to complement theirs.  If everybody agrees with your advisor then you are most likely wrong, not them.  On the other hand, if your advisor is giving you bad advice, either convince them of your point of view, or switch to somebody else.

Keep in mind your advisor is probably smarter than you are. There is no harm in asking them lots of questions. In fact it's a really good idea to get advice from your advisor. Just don't let them run your academic life. They care about turning out a well rounded individual. You care about following your dreams. Your dreams more important. Just be sure that your dreams involve doing good work, and enough effort that you actually learn something.

Also, be sure to switch advisors at least once or twice in your Hampshire career.  Look, you take a lot of their time, they won't mind if you swap them out for another person. And it will be good for you to try out somebody else for size.

Turn your work in on time

Even if its crap, it's better to get it in on time, and keep up with assigned work than to get lagged behind the class. Deadlines are real in the "real" world. Get used to doing as good a job as you can in X hours, and then moving on. Of course, Hampshire makes it easy to push back assignments, and you should take advantage of this when it allows you to do significantly better and more interesting work.  But only rarely does pushing work back really do that without significantly reducing the amount of time you will have to devote to work later in the semester. 

Push yourself

People got away with almost anything while I was at Hampshire. That has some good sides. But really, why are you paying what will soon be close to $40k a year for? The chance to do what you want, in a supportive environment. You can't get an education without working for it. Aim for making it fun, and be ready to spend a little time on the non-fun work, and a hell of a lot of time on the fun work.

Conclusion

Hampshire is really pretty easy to get through. Spend some time in the outside world, and other places of higher learning and you will have to agree. The point, however, is not getting through. The point (should be) doing what you love and learning a lot from it. And if you want that, Hampshire can let it happen better than most places.

Bio...

I've written longer bio's, and more funny ones, but at least this one is up to date.

Part 1: Floyd (1979-1995)

I grew up in Floyd, VA, a rural area of south western Virginia.  To give you an idea of just how rural, Floyd had one stop light, and I lived 30 minutes away from it (though Floyd does have a quite spiffy web site!??).  My parents decided to home school me, for a variety of reasons, but as I got older I took over most of the control of my schooling.  Unlike most home schoolers, I stuck with it for the entire way - it felt like the right way to learn, and I had no interest in going to public school in Floyd.

Part 2: College (1995-2002)

At 16, I took a class at the local community college.  I found that not to be of my liking, but decided to give college one more try before giving up on the idea entirely. I then signed up as a non-degree seeking student at Virginia Tech, liked my first, seven credit semester, and spent two and half years taking a light load there.  Never really interested in being a full time Hokie, I also spent part of one year working at software lab that was part of the VT ISE department.  After amassing 42 credits at Tech, I transferred to Hampshire College so that I could focus my time on Cognitive Science (mostly Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology).  In my final year at Hampshire I did  research on Genetic Programming, producing a 127 page thesis on a range of topics, as well as maintaining active research in other areas of CogSci.  After graduating in 2001 I accepted a one year paid research position on the Hampshire faculty to continue on the topics in my thesis, teach a class, and research graduate schools. 

Part 3: Graduate School (2002-2008?)

Hampshire was a fine school, but it had no graduate program. After applying to 16 graduate schools, visiting 9 of them, and spending months agonizing over the decision, I decided to attend UC San Diego's PhD program in Cognitive Science. Ah, sunny southern California. Actually, it's too sunny for its own good. 

Part 4: The future (~2079)

My life's only 1/4th over, assuming a reasonable life span. There is much left to do..

companies I will not do business with

Maxell	Rebate's don't always get fulfilled, even when every care is taken to make sure all instructions are fallowed. I believe they have a polity of rejecting a fixed percentage of requested regardless of validity.
ZipZoomFly	This company has very poor control over its inventory (They shipped out a refurbished hard drive instead of the brand new drive ordered), and then hopeless customer support that actively tries to make you unhappy, so long as it saves them money.

Annotated Music File draft standard

Goals

The Annotated Music File (AMF) standard is designed to allow the distribution of audio files (music, etc.) with additional media types embedded in the package. Particularly, the goal is to allow artists to distribute their works works in such a way that consumers who wish to compensate said artists will have an easy venue for doing so. AMF does not concern itself with copy protection or Digital Rights Management; rather, it is designed so that downloaders who wish to become customers have a minimal number of barriers to overcome.

The secondary goal is to allow content creators to enhance the presentation of their audio; it is assumed that the proper use of this capacity will encourage listeners to become customers.

The third goal is to make the system simple enough that playback software can easily support it, and artists can easily make content for it.

Core Technology

An AMF file consists of a .ZIP file with the .AMF extension, which includes the following files:

audio[00..N].ext	Required: The audio portion of the file; may consist of multiple files numbered sequentially, as in audio00.mp3, audio01.mp3, etc.  The format of the audio file is up to the artist(MP3, OGG, etc); but if the playback software does not support the format no playback will be possible.
amf/lyrics.html	Optional: a file containing lyrics or transcription of spoken material.
amf/about.html	Optional: a file with content intended to be shown when the AMF file is being played.  This might include a picture, or song notes, or anything which doesn't fall into the category of lyrics or ordering information.
amf/order.html	Optional: a file which should specify how to buy this music, or other artist compensation instructions.
amf/creator.html	Optional: information about the person or group which created the file, including info on where to obtain a catalog of their work.

The audio files should be stored as uncompressed data in the .ZIP so that music players with a simple translation layer can treat them as normal input and perform functions such as seeking without dealing with uncompressing .ZIP bitstreams. Since all annotation files are html, they may contain references to any sorts of additional media the creator whishes to include; those media may be included in the archive (pictures, etc.) or on the internet.

If multiple audio files are stored in the AMF, the annotation files may optionally include anchor tags who's target corresponds to the number of the audio file. In this way, multiple sets of lyrics or order forms can be included for each piece of audio data, if necessary. The format of the anchor is audio[00.N], such as #audio00. The player will jump to that tag when it starts playing back that file.

Speculative Technology

It would be advantageous to provide creators a way to sign the content digitally (say, with RSA), so that the downloader knows it is unmodified. For instance, if the creator has an audio file which the user is asked to pay for, the .AMF file could specify that, any anybody who wished to intentionally avoid piracy could do so. Particularly, if P2P technology was used to share AMF files, then an AMF aware program could chose to not share "paid content" (files would be marked with a 0-length file called paid content.tag in the AMF folder). Of course, the end user could easily remove that file, however, they would not be able to resign the AMF file with the creator's signature.  Any AMF file which truthfully reports its creator could be checked independently to assure it was legal to share.

The goal here is not to prevent illegal sharing, but to allow AMF aware software to intelligently select what should be shared. Fair use is important, and users should be allowed to use what they have purchased.  Any limits on the technology should be designed only to help users who wish to adhere to fair use standards without any extra effort. The emphasis with AMF is trusting consumers to do the right thing when it's made easy for them.  It is, then, perhaps questionable whether any restrictions should be placed on the format, hence this section being labeled "speculative".

Implementation

Currently, all the software needed to create AMF files exists in the form of HTML editors, audio compression software, and .ZIP file tools. Playback software has not yet been implemented, but would not require that much new code. At the minimum the requirements are:

• a barebones implementation of a .ZIP reader which can read the .ZIP header to find the location of the uncompressed music file, and then extract raw bytes from that location, to be streamed into the audio playback routines. 
• a external hook to a .ZIP reader to extract all non-audio files from the .AMF
• glue to an external web browser which is directed to show the appropriate html file(s).

Ideally, all of these features would be integrated into the player's UI, which would require an additional amount of effort, but would still not be that hard if 3rd party .ZIP and .HTML libraries are leveraged.

Great, Big, Dark, Cold, Round, Small, Rubbery

One of my more fun classes at Hampshire was a fiction writing class. Here is one of my more enjoyable, if twisted, short stories from that class.

--

Hari waited outside of the dining hall until it was close to, but not quite, closing time. He didn’t have any gripe with the students eating there, the fools! Let most of them leave. Then he turned his back to the door, and pushed through, holding his handgun before him. Passing through the inner door, he spun around and shot the woman who deducted dining dollars from your account.

Wham! It was louder than expected. It had been a while since he had shot indoors. Now he moved fast towards the staff area. An old man popped his head out of an office door, and Hari let him have it. Pushing open the door, he fired three well-placed shots from the doorway, and then spun around and ran on down the corridor. Ten feet in front of him, a student wearing the dining uniform stepped into the hallway. Hari paused, struck with doubt. Was this student really to blame for last night? Did he deserve to die?

The food had been livable last night, nothing really good, but edible. He had chosen some fish and a small salad. It was Tuesday, so it had been exactly one week since he had eaten a cake. The chocolate cake looked good, so he took one of the four remaining pre-cut slices and added it to his tray.

One of the tables in the far corner of the main dining hall was empty, and he sat with his back to the wall, observing the action though the salad and fish. The cake was special, however. It was there to lift his life, and he put his full attention too it after finishing everything else. First he nibbled around the sides, and then, holding it in both hands, took a big bite, chopping down on something rubbery in the goo of the cake. He jerked back from the cake, and pulled out a slimly black object with his teeth. “Phhth.” He parted his teeth and exhaled, letting it fall to his plate.

The rat lay there for a second. Then it pushed itself up, and rubbed goo from its eyes. Said it, “Lucky you didn’t bite my nose off. I’d have to kill you, otherwise.” Belatedly, Hari swallowed the cake, and opened his mouth. The rat interrupted the silence just before Hari could make a sound. “I think, how nasty those people, them doing that to me. Can you believe it? Harm I wasn’t doing to anybody and they yet just dumped me in the mix to rot away. Would you do that to me?” Hari twitched. The rat seemed to take the jumble of motion as negative. “Hari, you I find a good guy. You and me, let’s do friendly stuff. Friends do things for each other, right? I’ll do things for you, you’ll do things for me... Like making sure killing happens to those rotten bastards that dumped me in the mix.”

The rat remained with him for the rest of the night, and each time he appeared, Hari tried to lose him. Hari thought each time that he had lost him for good, but then the rat would whisper in his ear. Hari would turn his head, and the violet and orange little specs would stare back. When he tried to sleep all he could hear were the rustlings of things in his room, shuffle, shuffle, and crash! as something fell to the floor. In the morning, he and the rat formulated the plan, and never had Hari been so excited to carry out a set of actions.

Now, he wasn’t sure. Did the student deserve to die? The rat had deserted him when he entered the commons. He had nobody to turn to now. Nobody to tell him what was right, what was wrong. Only a gun and a fading plan. What loss would one more life-one more student- mean? He bit down on the hot steel, and pulled the trigger.

The List (of CDs) that I like(d)

A list from the past...

Men At Work - Business As Usual

My first recording ever purchased, it still has some staying power. Down Under is a pretty cool song. In fact there is no song on the recording that I really do not like, rare for anything I own.

Michael Bolton - Greatest Hits

Lots of good songs (I said I loved You But I Lie, Steal Bars, How Can We Be Lovers, I Found Someone) and a few sucky ones, like Georgia on my Mind. I didn't realize I was a MB fan until I bought this one.

Mike and The Mechanics

I bought it for Silent Running, and found that I really liked about half of the other songs on recording, too! Interesting fact: The slower songs sound much better played back sped up...

The Moody Blues - Time Traveler

It doesn't get much better than the last 3 CDs in this boxed set. The Moodies rock.

Rod Stewart - Story Teller

Another Boxed Set. The first 2 CDs suck. The last 2 Rule. It only cost me 16 bucks, but I am sorry I bought this one, I should of just bought ROD's newest 3 CDs for the same amount. (Note, I am a member of BMG, hence the low price).

David Lanz - Skyline Firedance

Awesome! The best piano work I have ever heard. The orchestrated works also rule. If you like Lanz, you own yourself this CD, Right Now! The Nights in White Satin cover defies words.

Micheal Jackson - Bad

His best CD, I like every song on the CD. Smooth Criminal and Bad are the best, but like I said, the are all worth listening too.

Genesis - We Can't Dance

Another CD that doesn't suck. Every song is good enough to play, altho I can't Dance, No Son of Mine, Jesus He Knows Me, and Dreaming While You Sleep are head a shoulders above the rest.

Vangelis - Direct

His best work, IMHO. A mixture of hard hitting new age (pop?) and smooth new age. Every second of it is pure magic.

Laura Branigan - The Best of

The Night is my world - You make me loose my self control. The first time I heard this song (called Self Control) I knew I loved it. Many, Many years later I finally found out whose it was. A few days later the CD was in my greedy hands, and I found out much to my pleasure that the first 3 songs on the CD also ruled, along with track 12, Self Control.

Ace of Base - The Sign

I only bought this one because I needed to select 6 free CDs when I joined BMG. What luck, it has many cool songs, and no bad ones.

Ace of Base - The Bridge

A real flop on the market, I didn't know this when I bought it. After my smashing success with The Sign I was ready to try anything with their name on it. More refined than The sign, this has some kick ass tracks, and some sucky ones too. Too many references to god, over all.

Enya - Watermark

Sail away, Sail away, Sail away. The first time I heard this, those where the only lyrics I could remember, but I knew I loved the song. I only heard it one more time on the radio. Then one day I was looking thru the BMG catalog, and noticed this cool picture. Just below the picture I saw the words Sail Away. Instantly I was on the hunt. Could this be the song I had heard 5+ years ago? I found a .mid file of Sail Away, and sure enough! The rest of the CD is good, too, but much more sleepy.

Biography

For those of you who can't stand a story with out end....
Alan was born young. As he got older, he aged. After a while, he got old enough to call it maturing, since he didn't like the
term ageing. Before long (relatively speaking), he got even older. Then he died.

If you don't mind a little uncertainty, you might like the following biography better....
I was born young, and then got old. I didn't remember much at first. My first memory was around 5 years old, when I watched our carport being filled in with concrete. You see, we were building our own house out in the country. When my parents had me they needed a place to store the little guy, and for some reason, decided that an unfinished house was better than a 30 foot airstream. Or maybe they moved in before I was born. But the fact remains that they moved into the house, and ever since work on it came to a standstill. I can still remember, at age 10 or so, when I got a door for my room (at least they put doors on the bathroom a few years before that).

But I was already on my way to becoming different, without the help of an unfinished house. At an early age, and just in time to keep me out of school, Virginia passed laws allowing parents to home school their children. This was big stuff, and many people moved into Virginia just so they might have the chance to keep their kids away from all those nasty (insert something non religious , and sinful here). Lucky us, we already lived in Virginia ( I had all my life), so we could take advantage of the law with little work.

Mainly home schooling was an exercise in avoiding work. My parents wanted me to learn math. I didn't. They made me do math problems, I faked the fact that I did them. They wanted me to read, I faked the fact that I had done my reading for the day. This pattern followed most of my home schooling life, and I think they knew it, too. At 14, I decided math was just no fun, but since I had to do something, I would do 5 math problems a day from my algebra workbook, the only work book I even bothered to do at all.. 3 years later I finished algebra 1.

While I wasn't doing math (and math was the only school work I did at all), I was doing one of a few things:

• Telling myself stories. If you haven't done it, you don't know just how much fun it is to make up a story that has no real point, no real plot, and no suspense at all. It was all very ritualistic, which just goes to show you that I really like rituals. I had story places where I would walk around, while making up the story. We had 70 acres, but I liked streams, so I usually messed around those. I spent so much time with this endeavor that I actually managed to change the path of our pitiful stream, sometimes drastically, much to the dismay of my parents. To this day you can still see the paths I wore, and the rocks I moved while coming up with the latest and greatest story about nothing.
• Reading. Not that you can tell anymore, but I loved to read, and did it all the time. I would go to our little library, and when I left, could barely carry all the books I had checked out for the next two weeks.
• And most important, playing with the computer. I liked computer games, they usually had much better stories than I could come up with (ouch!), and they were kind of interactive. My parents thought I spent too much time doing such stuff, so I branched out, and started programming, at first in C, and later in C++. I found out that anything computer related was interesting, and pretty much enjoyed my hobby to the extreme.

Quite the hard working and brilliant kid I was. Barbara and Howard (I never called them Mom and Dad) wanted me to do something productive, maybe even college. So at 16, I took a single class at the crappiest campus (it was an old bank) of the local community college. The campus was a true representation of the class I was about to take.

It was American history. History has never excited me, and I just didn't care to learn about it. Specifically, the dates that things I didn't care about happened. And the teacher was pretty much an example of what I had been missing all my life; she was a high school history teacher, night watchmen, and for the first time, community college night class teacher (all at once, too). Miss Dowthat (or however she liked to spell it) was boring, dumb, and condescending. Not that I really dissevered better considering my attitude, but a better teacher could have changed it.

But as much as I hated the class, I hated working on putting a new roof on our house even more (it was the 3rd one in 15 years, 1st one I helped to put on). Somehow doing anything indoors was preferable to working on a hot roof, pounding nails. So I got an A in the class, and hightailed it away from New River Community College (Christainsburg Bank Campus) and on to Virginia Tech.

Tech, you gotta love it. I do. And they seem to love me, judging from the number of A grades I have received (100%). I guess that goes to show that you don't really have to formally study anything before age 16 in order to be ready for college. Chew on that, and consider all the wasted time of the poor kiddies in grade school. Tech may not be the best university in the world, but it is damn good, and I certainly did not have any problems there after my minimal education. Lack of problems or not, I did not stay at Tech. Like most students, I went to college not knowing what I wanted to do, but that was 2 years ago. Now I know for sure, I want to major (or, as we say @ Hampshire College, do a DIV 2) in Cognitive Science. Tech did not offer this new age major, so I left. Now is that any way to treat a place that has given you an A in ever course you have ever taken there? Actually, yes, if you think that college should be challenging.

For those of you who might doubt it, everything written here was done so for a well crafted reason. What fine reading :-) And for those of you who think this is even slightly accurate, buzz off. Perhaps all the events recounted really did happen, but not quite the way I have explained them, above. I really believe that there was nothing wrong with my home schooling, or how I grew up. But just saying that would not be very interesting, now would it? Finally, the prose was written with the expectation of jumping about, back and forth, with lots of useless detail added. I like it that way, so there. Read some of my college application essays for examples "good writing".

more about keyboards

Getting back to the theme that this page was started with, lets talk about keyboards. This time I would like to take a look at the PC's keyboard, but if you don't have a PC, read on, because there is more to it than that.

Back when IBM designed the PC, they also designed a keyboard for it. This was nothing unusual, because at the time there was no standard keyboard, and every type of computer had its own slightly different style. Of course, they were all QWERTY keyboards, the power of old standards had just as strong a hold then as it does now. However, the QWERTY design was old, and didn't specify where all those "newfangled" keys that IBM (and many other computer manufactures) wanted to put on their keyboards.

So IBM came up with it's keyboard, with it's own placement for the keys like Esc, or Print Screen. I suspect that the keyboard designers at IBM were over exuberant upon being given this "demanding" task, because they came up with 2 keys that are never used. The Print Screen key has written on its lower side the letters SysRq. This key had no purpose when the PC was released, and never has. Yet almost all PC keyboards still have it. I can't even imagine what they thought it was going to be used for when they put it there.

Even better is the Scroll Lock key. This is a real key, not just some writing on the side of some other key, and also didn't have any function on the IBM PC's. The first known app to ever use the key was MS Flight Simulator. It was also the last. However, I was able to put my Scroll Lock key to some use, when my B key started to fail, I swapped the switch with the one under the Scroll Lock key, thereby extending the life of my keyboard.

Ok, so the PC keyboard has 2 extra keys. Interesting, but not that much you say? Well it gets better! The PC was such a hit back when it was introduced, that the IBM keyboard layout has become a standard, and even non PC type computer have these keys. I have seen several MACs with the extra keys, and even some workstations with the unwanted keys! And on all, just like the on the PC, they have no function. Yet another standard that carried on for no reason, for years and years. We may never see the day when most keyboards don't come with the Scroll Lock and SysRq keys.

RIP: the gravis ultrasound

This post only makes sense in the context of being written in the late 90s...

If you have a PC, and don't have a wave-table synth built into your sound card, then you need to take a look at the UltraSound line of sound cards from Advanced Gravis.

They are not perfect sound cards, but in many ways they are the best out there. If price rates high on your list, then you will really like the UltraSound (aka GUS). I have seen the GUS-ACE for $80 mail order, and it is a kick ass card. Half a meg of ram, (can be upgraded to 1 meg) and a 6 meg patch set that can be changed and replaced as you like. The PnP has even better specs, but it is more expensive. However, the PnP (the Pro version, stay away from the standard version) supports up to 8 megs of ram on board! It also has a InterWave chipset, and can use a more advanced patch set.

Ok, so you don't understand what all that means? Then the UltraSound may not be the card for you. It can take just a little more understanding of computers than the average sound card, if you are a DOS user. But if all you use is Windows95 programs, then have at it, it's a great sound card for Windows.

But you still haven't talked about how it Really sounds! Ok, in short, it sounds great. Most of the instruments in the Gravis Patches sound great, and because of this the Midi is very nice. If you want to hear for yourself, check out the UltraSound Experience CD from Gravis. I don't know if it is free, or if they charge you shipping and handling, but if you still have an FM-Synth based card, you owe it too yourself to get this CD, and find out all that a wave-table sound card has to offer.

1-800

Have you ever been put on hold when you called a company? Should I even bother to ask? Of course you have been put on hold. In this day and age, you often spend more time on hold than you do talking to a live person.

Not that I am complaining, too much. With out the ability of being put on hold, you would have to keep on re-dialing the number, until a line became free. No, the on hold system is better than nothing at all.

I do have one big complaint, though. When ever you are on hold for a few minutes, a message comes on about how This call is very important to us, please stay on the line and somebody will get to you shortly. In the history of time, has this message ever made anybody stay on the line, because after hearing it, they know that somebody will get to them shortly? Hah! All it really serves to do is mess up speaker phone users. When played on speaker phones it often makes you run back to your phone because you think somebody has finally picked up!

Even better is when you hear the message while on hold on a 800 tech support number. Sure, this call is real important to them, they just love helping irate customers who have been on hold for half an hour (costing them big money in phone bills every second they have been hold).

NeXtStep and UNIX

Lets talk about Unix for a second. What is UNIX? UNIX is the first multitasking, multiuser OS. UNIX is getting very old now, but it is still one of the best OSes out there. Its biggest problem is that there are so many different types of UNIX. I have heard of each of the folowing: HP UNIX, IRIX, SUN OS, AIX, A/UX, NeXTSTEP, ULTRIX, OSF UNIX, SYSTEM V, LINUX, FREE BSD, BSD 386, XENIX, and many more. And they are all different in some way, sometimes big sometimes small. But, if you have used one, you have used them all.

So why do I like UNIX? Because it is a very powerful OS. It has a very rich batch language, and if that isn't good enough for you, almost every versoin comes with a C compiler! Plus, X windows is a very nice GUI in some ways, I thinks that all GUI designers should use it for a week to learn how neat and useful some of its querks are.

My current favorite UNIX is a toss up between NeXTSTEP, and IRIX. Both are pretty good, but nether are perfect. NeXTSTEP is a joy to use, and program, but there are no cool programs for it. IRIX is very nice, and as it runs on SGI computers its main strength is the software writen for it's powerful hardware. What I want: a SGI POWER CHALLENGE, running NeXTSTEP, with binary computability with IRIX! It will never happen.

Keyboards

Look at your keyboard. If it says QWERTY on a row of keys near the top it is laid out in a completely nonsensical way. Why is it laid out like that? For no good reason, that's why. It started out that way because that is how it made sense to lay out early mechanical typewriter keyboards. With the keys laid out in that order it took longer to type, and common key combos were farther apart, making typewriter much less likely to jam.

Almost all keyboards are set up this way, because it is harder to change a standard, than just use it forever. Just because 99% of keyboards are of the QWERTY type, doesn't mean that there aren't other types of keyboards out there. The type call Dvorak is the most popular of the nonstandard keyboards. It is laid out for typing speed, with letters that are most often used on the home row.

Just think, how often do you use the j and k keys? Not near as often as the e or o keys, yet your fingers have to move farther for these often used keys, than for those other little used keys.

Despite knowing how much better the Dvorak type keyboard is, I still use QWERTY keyboards exclusively. Why? Because I learned on QWERTY keyboards, and even if I changed every keyboard I own to a Dvorak keyboard everybody else's keyboard will still be in the QWERTY mode. What a nightmare to switch back and forth. It is hard enough to switch from MAC keyboards to PC keyboards and back, and the only difference is where the place keeper marks are.

I suspect that the QWERTY style keyboards will stay the most popular types of keyboards until something replaces the keyboard as the most used method of text input. Then, when learning keyboarding is optional I suspect that people that bother too will learn the Dvorak keyboard (or some relation).

What is a species

I took the safe route here, and didn't try out any non traditional ideas. As it stands, it is a nice intro to the definition of a species.

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What is a species? This is not an easy question to answer to everybody's satisfaction, except in a very non-specific way. Generally speaking, species is a word that biologists have defined to refer to specific groups of populations, in which all the members of the group are closely related. Like most definitions, it loses much of its value when the people who use it can't agree on its exact definition.

Formally stated, the definition of a species that I like is a group of organisms that can, and do, interbreed to produce offspring that can continue to breed successfully with the rest of the group.

This definition is valuable because it is definite, and leaves less room for speculation than other definitions. However, not all biologists agree with this definition. Other popular ways to define a species are based on morphological aspects, likelihood of mating, and genetic traits.

What techniques can be used to distinguish between species? With a concept that is as broad as species, all organisms must be considered of the same species until proven otherwise. Sometimes it is easy to tell that organisms are of a different species due to great levels of differentiation between them, but this is not always the case. Simple tests related to appearance can be useful for drastically different animals, such as birds and fish, but quickly lose usefulness when comparing animals that are somewhat related. The same is true for plants, a tree is easily differentiated from a fern, but when comparing plants of similar types much more care must be taken.

It must be remembered that not all samples of a population are a good representation of that population. When comparing a pituitary dwarf to a human with gigantism, it would be easy to think that you had two species, based on physical dimensions alone. It is also important to compare your organisms when they are of the same age, since many animals, and even a few plants, can be found in drastically different physical and behavior stages over their lifetime. Clearly, the numerically larger your sample (and the more diverse), the better your results.

Even with a large sample, physical appearance can fail to identify different species. Evolutionary pressures of an environment can shape two different species in a common environment so that they look and act alike, while still being separate species. In another example of evolution muddying the waters, distinctive markings of some wasps are mimicked by other insects that can't sting. By sight alone they look closely related, and possibly of the same species.

A more time consuming method, but a generally more successful one, is attempting to interbreed the organisms, to see if they produce successful offspring. (An unsuccessful offspring can be defined as not being able to successfully reproduce with the same groups of organisms that created it.) If the organisms are of different species, they must not interbreed when they are both placed in the same environment, or when they do, not produce successful offspring. The reason for inability to interbreed can be diverse for animals, such as different breeding seasons, different methods of attracting a mate, or on a simpler scale, inability to breed due to different physical anatomy. For plants, common reasons for not interbreeding are mostly related to types of pollinators being different between plants.

It is the simplicity, and the fact that the outcome is fairly easy to judge, that makes me choose interbreeding as the basis for my definition of species. By this definition, there are no murky issues related to different species that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. If they can interbreed, with success, then they really are all part of the same species.

Labeling People

was only 16 when I wrote this, and while I still think the thesis is correct, I would word it slightly differently now. But perhaps it has more value (at least to me) as a record of how I thought and wrote at that age.

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When you label somebody you are setting up a schema with which you will try to process (and understand) their actions. This can be a very useful tool, letting you make decisions about somebody quicker, and with less info. Consider judging advice on a subject that you know little about. If you have labeled a person as generally knowing what they are talking about, you would pay more attention to what they say. You would most likely pay less attention to somebody whom you have decided always claims to have some sort of answer, whether they know what they are talking about or not. Labels are also easier to store in your memory than a copy of somebody's complete personality. Once you have labeled them, you can store that label for future use, and probably be able to recall that label with ease next time you meet them.

Like all useful tools of the mind, labels can be over used. The biggest danger with labels arises when you incorrectly label somebody. Whether the label is incorrect from the start, or if the person changes, making your label incorrect, you will most likely make more wrong decisions regarding that person than if you had never labeled them. This is a bad thing, but it isn't so bad if you have no power over the person that you are labeling, and are only hurting yourself. The real problem arises when you have any level of control over these peoples' lives. Slavery was a good example, and to a lesser extent, racism is a continuation of this.

Labeling has another downfall. Because labels make it easier to make decisions with less info, when you don't understand somebody/something, there is a strong need to label them, so that the little information that you do have will seem to be sufficient.

A person can be labeled in many ways, ways that we don't automatically think about, such as man/woman, boy/girl, old/young, strong/weak, and so on. Most of the time labels such as these are applied correctly, but not always. I have an example of this based upon myself.

When I was a middle-school aged kid, I was labeled as a kid that went to middle school by many people when they first saw me. They would see me in the supermarket and other places, during times that school should have been in session, label me as a truant, and would ask me why I wasn't in school. The answer was that I was home schooled, so, in a way, the whole world was my school. This really wasn't a problem for me most of the time, because none of these people had any real power over me.

I can remember one time someone did have power over me, and was able to cause some trouble. I was running, for exercise, with my parents one day, and since I was young, I couldn't keep up with them near the end, and was alone on the road when a police car came along. The policeman pulled over and started asking me questions about why I wasn't in school. I don't know if he believed my answer, but he slowed me down for such a long period asking me questions that my parents finished running, became worried, and came back looking for me.

Labeling can be useful, but its downfall is when the label is attached to somebody incorrectly. Because of this we should try not to permanently label anybody until we really know them, and even then we should review our labels every now and then.

The Ethics of Research on Animals

This essay starts out a little rough. But it is a good explanation of my feelings on this issue and the like, even if it could be more smoothly presented. What do you expect of a 16 year old? I feel pretty good about this essay, considering.

If given the choice of dying, or having a rat killed, most people would have the rat killed, rather than die themselves. If given a choice between having a chimp killed, and themselves being killed, most people would have the chimp killed. When it comes down to it, most people value their own life more than a non human's life.

Medical experiments on animals that involve life threatening conditions are really the same thing, if only on a different scale. There isn't as direct a connection, because there is no guarantee that the research will ever bring to light any new information. In addition, not everybody will come down with the condition that is being investigated, so it isn't as personal, but it still holds true that animal lives are being sacrificing for human lives. Still, in these types of cases animal research is a reasonable option to me. If this weren't such an emotional issue, I think that most people would understand that, while this sort of research may be unpleasant to think about, it is acceptable.

What about other types of research that don't involve life or death problems? When is it okay to harm, hurt, or kill an animal when the outcome of the experiment doesn't relate to saving human life? A very good example of this would be many psychology experiments. Because we want to understand behavior better, is it okay to deprive an animal of its natural life? Very often I think the answer is yes, if simply because being a research subject can have some advantages:

• Many of these animals would not have been born without the need for them in experiments.
• A life as an experiment subject doesn't have to be that bad, in some cases it can be much better than in nature, with no worry for things such as getting enough water and food, and no worry of predation and parasitism.

There are also reasons why being a research subject is less than desirable:

• Some experiments can expose subjects to unpleasant/harmful things that they would never have to deal with in natural life, such as electrical shocks, possibly harmful chemicals, and stress inducing things like loud noises and bright lights.
• While they may not have to worry about such things as food and predation (unless those are things that the experiment is trying to explore), they also lose out on living a natural, and much more varied life in the wild. Do we have the right to take this away from them when all we are seeking is better understanding of behavior? Remember that there is a good chance that they wouldn't have had this life anyway, if it weren't for the experiment. Also, most have no idea what they are missing since the majority are raised as experiment subjects for their whole life.

For many experiments, there really aren't any big ethical problems. The hard part is with the cases where severe harm, pain, and suffering are brought upon the animal. How important does the research need to be before it becomes ethical to perform the experiment? In my opinion, most animal research should be okay, but, emotionally, there are many types of experiments that I would rather not think of being performed.

It is very hard to decide where to draw the line when such emotional issues are involved. It would be a mistake to try to legislate something like this when the line between necessary and unnecessary is so hard to define that it can be hard to decide even on a case by case basis. The simplest, and perhaps the best, idea is to just hope that those who perform the experiments are just as human as you and I, and would not do an experiment that is truly cruel to animals for a project that is of little importance.

AIDS and Chaos

AIDS is an interesting virus. But I suspect that there are many other interesting virri out there, I just happen to know a little bit more about AIDS than the others, since it is so much in the spotlight. Virri in general are intriguing, and well worth a little study by anybody who finds science interesting. What follows attempts to prove that AIDS is chaotic, something which I agree with, but have a hard time explaining in words. Read it anyway for a quick overview of both subjects. You may just find yourself wanting to find out more!

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The AIDS virus is very resistant to attacks from the human immune system. One of the reasons for this is a by-product of the method of replication used by HIV. HIV is a retrovirus, which means that its genetic code is stored as RNA. After this RNA is injected into a cell, it must be converted to DNA, so that it may then be integrated in the host's DNA. Unfortunately for the host, the process of converting RNA to DNA is inherently prone to miscopying, and on average the resulting DNA code is different by one base pair. When the new DNA is used as a blueprint to produce the virus, some of the resulting HIV molecules are not viable. However, those that have a mutation in a non-crucial area, such as the surface proteins, survive, with an important advantage. These surface proteins are the target of the antibody mediated immune response, which only works well against non-changing antigens to which it has been exposed for a long period of time. Thus the rapid mutation of surface proteins renders ineffective a major immune avenue of attack.

Chaotic systems change in cyclic patterns, with each cycle always somewhat different from the previous cycle. Small changes in a system early on can make large differences later. Often it is hard to see any pattern in chaos unless the entire system is examined for a long period of time. A simple example of chaos is the shoreline of a river. Just about any part of the shore looks very much like any other part, but no two areas are exactly alike. Small, but long lasting changes in currents upstream will make larger and larger differences downstream. This is because the direction of flow at any point is strongly influenced by the direction of water flow just above it. Over long periods of time, the path of the river will change, producing a recognizable pattern that will never be exactly the same twice.

I believe the mutating protein coat of HIV is an example of chaos. The proteins do not change completely, since they remain functional, yet they do change enough to evade the immune system. The changes are not very large between generations, and over time the proteins maintain the same basic pattern, since the radically different structures that arise do not survive. These mutations may seem basically random, but when considered in the context of the entire system, they produce a reoccurring pattern of the body getting ready to battle a virus, only to have that virus effectively become invisible.

When I’m 21

I wrote this for an english class. The assignment was to record a memory, and then analyze it. As essay assignments go, this was pretty interesting.

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I was about ten years old when we made the trip. At the time we lived in Floyd, which was, and still is, a very rural county. Besides groceries and farming equipment, there was not much to buy in Floyd, so every week or so we would make a trip to one of the nearby towns, either Blacksburg or Roanoke. Since Blacksburg was closer, and we didn’t have any unusual things to purchase, my father chose to go to Blacksburg that day.

I, of course, didn’t have anything to buy. I had to go because my mother had a full time job, so there was nobody to watch over me at home while my father went out and bought things. So I went with him to Blacksburg, not particularly happy about it, but not that distressed about it, either. After all, I had to go with him whenever he left the house and my mother was not home to watch me. Since I was home schooled, I was usually home, which meant that I often had to go with him when he bought things in town, or when he went to visit his friends.

Even though the trip was unremarkable, that fact did not keep me from feeling a little resentful. After all, before my mother got a job, she stayed home most of the time and I didn’t have to go on boring trips at all.

I don’t remember all the places we went on that day, but I do remember one store distinctly. It was the K-Mart which, at the time, was located on Main Street. This was before the Walmart, or even the New River Valley Mall had been built, so K-Mart was the only real general store in Blacksburg. Even without all the competition that it was to face in the near future, the store had already become somewhat rundown.

They did not have much that was very interesting to a young boy, but there was one thing of interest, something I could go look at while my father bought things in the store. A year or so previously, my parents had bought me a video game machine. While I was not bad at video games, I was not as good as some of my friends at playing the games I owned. At the K-Mart they sold a “Game Strategy Guide”, which wasn’t a strategy guide at all. It was much more of a set of instructions on exactly how to play the game featured, so as to be able to beat the game without needing a lot of skill. It was very long (or so it seemed to my young brain), and was way too long to memorize. When we visited the store, I would read a little of the guide, and when I got home, use what I remembered to get a little further. Then the next time we were in the K-Mart I would read a little more and repeat the cycle.

So when we got to the K-Mart I went to the video game section and read for a little while. Before long I had reached my limit and got tired of reading the book. I stopped reading, but hung around and looked at the other items on display. Some time later, a boy much older than myself entered the aisle and went to look at the book. I suppose he was a college student, although at the time I didn’t really have any concept of college, or the students that would be enrolled there. I guess he was slightly self-conscious, with me being there, for he muttered under his breath, as he looked at the guide, “Geez, I’m 21, you’d think I wouldn’t need this to beat a video game”. The comment wasn’t really aimed at me, or anybody else, he just stated it, sort of as though it was amazing to think that at 21 he would need help with anything. He hastily flipped through the guide and then left, without really reading anything.

I clearly remember thinking that the student was quite wrong to think that his age should have any effect on his skill at a video game, or any thing else, really. Sure, how good you are at something is related to how much experience you have. But it is the experience in that area that is important, not just the total amount of experience you have from life. There are other important issues too, like how smart you are, and how good you are at other basic skills. It seemed perfectly plausible that a 21 year old might be no better at a video game than I, or more precisely, that I could be as good, or better than somebody twice as old as me, if I wanted to devote the time.

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Looking back on this memory, the thing that is most interesting to me is the fact that I remember it at all. There is nothing at all remarkable about any one of the things that happened that day. And yet, just a few days ago, it popped into my head, not thought of for many years, but always there if I had wanted to retrieve it. Why had this little event stuck in my head, if the only events of significance were not very unique?

My mother had, after all, been working for perhaps as many as 5 years before this memory took place. While her taking a job and leaving me with my father all day was a very traumatic experience, I only have a few memories of it affecting me. And while this one may be one of the few, it is certainly not the best remembered, or the most telling. So I don’t think that is why I remember this trip.

As for the trip itself and the K-Mart, I went on many day trips to town with dad, and visited the K-Mart many times. Writing this memory down, however, has made me think about other memories from day trips, and I have been surprised to realize that I remember very few of them in detail. What I do remember from other trips does, however, indicates that there was nothing especially notable about this trip. As for K-Mart, spending time reading the video game strategy guide was what I always did there, so there is nothing memorable about that.

This memory focuses the most on the college student, and his comment on how he should be skilled at video games at 21. This was not the first time I had heard the idea that older kids should be better at things just by the virtue of their age. It is a common idea, and seems to be generally true. Certainly, it was expressed in many various forms throughout my childhood. But this simple and common memory may be the reason I remember this trip at all.

When I was writing this, I started out with a very basic memory of being in a store during one of our many shopping trips, reading a video game guide, and then hearing a much older kid complain that at his age he shouldn’t have a need for the guide at all. Yet when I wrote the memory down, I recorded much more than just that one part. In recording those details which came naturally, but were not directly related, I think I found the reason why this memory still survives.

As I said in the beginning, I had to go on this trip because my mother was not home to take care of me. I was too young to stay at home alone so I had to go with my father, and be where I could be watched. Almost 10 years later, I can accept the idea that I was too young to be left alone for extended periods of time. When I was 10, however, I know I did not. I very much resented being dragged along when I felt, however young I might be, I was mature enough to watch over myself for the day.

While perhaps not in the forefront of my mind that day, I am sure that I was feeling those thoughts when I heard the student in effect admit that age didn’t really have any effect on a skill I could easily relate to. If I could be as skilled as a person twice as old as I in one area, was it such a big jump to think that I was also mature enough to stay home alone?

While I don’t at all remember thinking such thoughts after I heard the student’s comment, I am pretty sure that this is the reason why I remember this unremarkable event. The combination of the things that happened resulted in feelings strong enough to remember long after the fact.

Writing down the memory, and then discussing it, was very helpful in figuring out its meaning. I think without the freewriting exercise at the beginning I would not have put down the thoughts that I needed for later. Those unrelated thoughts were important building blocks for determining why I could recall the event with such clarity. It was only after trying to connect the recorded thoughts together many times that their greater meaning emerged. Perhaps this meaning is not the original reason that I remembered the event, but I feel fairly strongly that it is, and whether I am correct or not, coming up with this has helped me understand my childhood in a way that previously I only vaguely grasped.

I think Hampl is right. We write in order to know ourselves. While trying to record the truth was important for completing my memory in a useful way, the truth about this one little memory was not the final goal. Much more important is the fact that through writing it down, I now better understand an issue in my childhood in a way I barely did before.

edlin humor

Even Microsoft gets into the act. This is not strictly Edlin humor, but it was included in the tutorial in the MSDos 4.1 manual so I think its fair game. Something tells me that Microsoft would never put such a text excerpt in any modern manual!

Sharpe Office Supplies
The World Leader in Office Sharpeware
Our motto: "You oughta be Sharpe too"

Dear Mr. Dimm,

I was sorry to hear of your recent
hospitalization due to electrical
shock from our X-1000 Automatic
Pencil Sharpener.

As a result of your accident, we
are redesigning our manual to
warn our customers against trying
to sharpen metal objects.

Sincerely,

I.R. Sharpe, President

How I hacked edlin

Well, the problem was this: Like most MS-DOS programs, EDLIN checks to make sure that the version of DOS you are running is the same as the one your copy of EDLIN comes with.

All I had to do was find out what code was being used to do this, and fix it so that it would run under any version of DOS. I got out my PS/2-PC Assembly Language book, and looked in the interrupt list for a function that told you what version of DOS was running. Surprise surprise, it was a function of INT 21H (funtion 30H to be exact.)

My first attempt was to DEBUG EDLIN.EXE, which initially looked promising. After hitting U forty times, I discovered that the code I was looking for wasn't near the beginning of the program, and even worse, that DEBUG wouldn't let you write to an EXE.

Ok, so how as I going to edit that file? I decided to try hexediting it. First I needed to know what instructions I was looking for, and what those instructions looked like in HEX. I broke out my dssembly book, did some research, and wrote down the results.

Then I loaded my DOS freeware hexedit program and searched for the instruction group that would return the version of DOS, MOV AH,30; INT 21H (B420 CD21 in hex). Sure enough, I found this group. Then I looked for a CMP AH, 6 (3C06 in hex). I couldn't find this instruction, but I did find a 3D06 in the right place. After than I found a JNE (Jump if Not Equal) instruction, and decided that I had found the right place, even if it didn't look exactly like I had expected. So I changed JNE to JE, and tried it out. It loaded up a file, without any problem, and let me edit it. Success!

Well, not quite. There was still a problem: This hacked version of EDLIN would work with DOS 7, but no longer with DOS 6.x. So I went back to my hex editor, and replaced the JE that I had hacked in with a pair of NOPs. Now the jump code was no more, and no matter what version, EDLIN will run. Of course, I can't guarantee that EDLIN doesn't use something that only DOS 6.x and later have, but in my tests it has had no problems at all. You should be able to use it with DOS 3.x and above.

They could have paid for my education

I like the idea of vouchers, and I wish we had them now. Maybe before I die...

The issue of whether public funds should be spent on vouchers for private schools is very complex. As with almost any complex issue, there is no perfect answer. I do, however, think vouchers are a good idea in the overall, despite any initial problems they would raise.

Our school systems face fundamental problems. While many public schools are good, many are not. Short of moving, parents have no control over which public school their children must attend. Private schools do offer an alternative, but they are often too expensive and parents still have to pay the taxes that provide funding for public education. Vouchers would help with this problem, lowering the cost of a private education by allowing parents to pay part of the tuition with state funds formerly set aside for public education.

Those against the voucher concept say that vouchers will only make things worse. They think that vouchers will take money away from public schools, hurting their ability to teach, and worsening the education of the students who continue to stay in the public education system. They also think that many parents will not take advantage of vouchers because private schools do not offer enough choices and often have a strong religious element.

While these arguments may be valid in the short term, I feel the school landscape will change once vouchers become available and render these arguments obsolete in a few years time.

First, even though most private schools are church affiliated, there is no fundamental reason why this must continue to be the case. It is only currently true because that is the type of school which is most in demand. Because vouchers will allow many more people to choose private school, I believe the market will change. Schools that teach in different ways, and concentrate on different goals, religious or not, will be created because the free market will want them.

Second, while public schools will see a drop in funds at first, the new competition should be good for them in the long run. The best schools will grow in both students and funds, and the worst will shrink, and perhaps even close. While the loss of some schools may not seem positive at first consideration, I think it may well be. If too few children are sent to a school to keep it open, then why waste funds on that school at all? The money could be better spent on schools that already provide a quality education.

Clearly the free market has worked well for the quality of education in our nation's college and university system, considered to be one of the best in the world. While there are a wide variety of private schools offering many different opportunities, there are also many public schools of very high quality. To a large extent, a very reasonable education is available for people with a wide range of interests and skills. The system’s main downfall is high price, precisely the issue vouchers try to address for private elementary and secondary schools.

In summation, I think that vouchers would cause some initial problems for public schools, but the public school system is, by some accounts, getting worse on its own, without the influence of vouchers. Something will have to be done to fix this. Why not do it now, and start improving the education of students around the country, before it reaches intolerable levels on its own!

WinKey bindings

Useful hotkeys under MS Windows:

• WinKey + R = Opens Run
• WinKey + E = Opens Explorer
• WinKey + F = Opens Find
• WinKey + Pause = Opens System Properties
• WinKey + D = Maximize / Minimize all windows
• WinKey + M = Minimize all windows
• WinKey + Shift + M = Maximize all "WinKey + E" minimized windows
• WinKey + Tab = Flip between open apps in the taskbar

Review of IBM AT keyboard

In Short

Standard keyboard with clicky, tactile keys.

In Depth

The key click is real. The keys have a snap-action that provides a mechanical hysteresis effect. Reducing the key pressure, or wiggling a pressed key can't cause extra key closures. The key must travel upward to release the key closure, and then travel back down to make another key closure. The mechanical clicker is also the switch actuator. On any other keyboard, the tactile/audible click is mechanically separate from the switch actuator, and only coincidentally connected to key closure. The best of the rest are fakes. The IBM keys work right. Yeah, it's loud.

This is the standard 84-key keyboard layout. After using a 101-key standard keyboard on the job for two years, re-learning this layout was a snap. With the F keys on the left, only one hand is needed for any combination of Ctrl/Shift/Alt/F1-F10 while the right hand is free to run the mouse. The CapsLock doesn't get bumped accidently.

This layout is similar to the XT, minus the XT features that seemed radical relative to the IBM Selectric typewriter. This was a unique moment in computer history: a new version that actually had less useless crap than the previous version.

The original purpose of the 101-key layout was to make more room for the plastic cards fit over the F keys for MultiMate (the 'Microsoft Office' of the time). The extra key on the Win95 keyboard may eventually work like the apple key for ported Mac applications, if anyone still cares to do such things.

Price: Flea market Special

Review of the Zeos keyboard, made by Nan Tan Computer Co.

In Short

Standard keyboard with clicky, tactile keys.

In Depth

This is a clicky, tactile keyboard. Good resistance, with almost immediate buckling. This keyboard has a very nice feel, if a little to noisy for its own good. The layout is classic AT style keyboard with over sized enter key, and small backspace. There are no Windows 95 keys in the two I have, but the newer models may have them. These keyboards hold up well, I both that I own have lasted 4+ years with very few problems.

Review of the Focus Electronics FK-5001

In Short

Standard layout keyboard. Keys are clicky, tactile, and programmable. Has diagonal arrow and dual F keys.

In Depth

The keys are very clicky, but the keytravel is a little shorter than I like. Over all the keys are very nice and solid. It has a built in
calculator (the numeric keypad is used for input). Both horizontal and vertical sets of function keys are present, as well as 8 arrow keys - including diagonals! It also has a turbo button. You hit ctrl+turbo and then use an arrow key; the ctrl key is locked down (logically speaking) until you tap it again - so you can zoom around with the arrow keys with ctrl on without having to hold it down (same thing happens with shift or alt). The stickiness applies to all keys after turbo has been activated. I don't know, but I guess that this keyboard is fairly old

Review of the BTC 8110M

In Short

Ergonomic Win95 keyboard with soft touch keys.

In Depth

Best Damned Win95 ergonomic I have ever found. It has soft touch keys and an excellent configuration. The space bar is split in half, left side BackSpace, right side SpaceBar. It has arrow keys on both extreme edges, as well as win, context, alt, and ctrl keys on both sides. The feet on the bottom front and back are fully adjustable by as much 2" height in the back, and about 3/4" in the front. The whole overall design is very appealing; both modern and stylish. The keyboard plug-in is a standard type, (not PS/2)! This keyboard is not flimsy or light weight ...overall a most excellent design!

Review of the Focus FK7200

In Short

Standard keyboard with clicky, tactile keys. Includes Windows95 keys, and has a built in trackball.

In Depth

Keys

The keys are in the standard 101 enhanced key layout. Notably, the backspace is large, as is the enter key. The backslash key is to the right of the right shift key. Three Windows 95 keys are included, one windows key on the left, and a windows key and a context key on the right. Altho the control and alt keys are a reasonable size on the left side, they are each the size of an alphanumeric key on the right, due to the space taken up by the Windows95 keys. The most notable deviation from the norm is the oversized spacebar, which is rounded on the bottom. The keys have one other unusual feature; the status LEDs (caps lock, etc.) are set in the keys that change their status. Most of these features are going to appeal and distress people based on their personal tastes, but I think everybody will decry the small alt and control keys. They are so small that I have yet to learn to find them constantly with my hands without looking..

Key feel

The keys are slightly tactile, but in the over all feel as tho they are attached to non collapsing springs. In another words, they lack the highly marked change of position between pressing of the key, and the end of the key travel that marks a highly tactile keyboard. On the other hand, while the keys may not be tactile, they are noisy. I have heard worse, but for the level of tactlessness there is no excuse for the amount of noise. Further contributing to the cheap feel of the keyboard, some of the keys (most notably the space bar) do not feel very well attached, and rattle very noticeably when slight sideways pressure is applied.

Pointing device

The high point of the FK7200, the built in trackball is well designed in may ways. It is located halfway into the oversized space bar, positioned so that your right, (or left, in some cases) thumb naturally rests on it. Nice and big, the trackball is high profile enough that you can rest your entire hand on it, and move it around, without dragging on the space bar overly much. On the other hand, you don't have as unimpeded access to the trackball as that needed to play a high energy game. You will not be playing quake with this keyboard (or at least I haven't managed it yet)!

The mouse buttons are located around the trackball, one each side, both extending in theory to the far edges of the space bar. In truth, pushing farther than a few centimeters away from the trackball does not offer enough leverage to toggle the button state. But when you do use the approved area, the buttons are quite easy to click. Clicking and dragging can be another story. Since each button is on the other side of the trackball, clicking and dragging envelopes both thumbs. If you are dual handed, fine, but for me, moving the trackball with my left thumb is quit difficult. A better design would have placed both buttons (or even better, three buttons) on both sides of the space bar, so that you could always use the same hand to manipulate the buttons, and always the other to move the ball.

Misc.

The keyboard comes with a detachable wrist rest (pictured above), which is great for me because I don't like such things and can discard it. For those of you that like wrist rests, a warning: the chunk of plastic only loosely attaches to the keyboard, and only stays put on a flat surface. With no solid support below the wrist rest will fall off.

One small, but really nice feature is the grove along the back of the keyboard, where you can tuck in the keyboard cable so that instead of coming out in the middle of the back it can exit either from the far right or left. Of course, without some tape to secure the cable in place it will fall out within a few hours.

While on the subject of cables, I must say the keyboard cable feels too short, especially since I have a tower case, which sits a few feet away from my desk. The mouse cable exits from the keyboard cable at the keyboard plug and is only about a foot long, so you may need to purchase a mouse cable extender if you already use a keyboard cable extender.

Closing

No, it is not perfect. There are many distressing problems, but in addition there are some really good design ideas that went into this keyboard. Given that it costs as little as $20 from the cheapest sources (+$10 shipping), I think anybody considering trying an integrated keyboard on cheap would be well advised to try one out. Be warned, however, that after a few months, you may be unwilling to give up the integrated style keyboard, but ready to junk the FK7200.

Review the of IBM 101-key

In Short

Highly tactile and noisy keyboard. Standard layout 101 keyboard, lacking windows95 keys.

In Depth

The best keyboard in the entire world has to be the IBM 101-key keyboard (which was actually manufactured by Lexmark for IBM). I am not saying this because "it's IBM" or "It's the original!" or anything lame like that-- it truly is a fantastic keyboard. The keys have excellent tactile and audible feedback -- when I switched to it (I specifically purchased mine from Best Buy when they still had them for $89), my typing speed sped up by about 10 wpm because I heard/felt when the key had registered instead of having to watch the screen constantly (now I watch my copy instead of the screen). It registers so nicely that my hands no longer cramp up during long hours of typing.

When most people think of "clicky" keyboards, they think of the original IBM 87- and 101- key keyboards, because yes, they do make a louder noise than most keyboards. But most people make the mistake of dismissing keys that click as *cheap* -- when, if there's a great tactile response from the key, the click is incidental and just adds to it registering in your head. The faster it registers, the faster you can process the information -- and the faster you type. With my old keyboards, I was pressing too hard on the keys because they didn't make a click (and their "give" was too soft). As a result, my hands started to cramp about 10-15 minutes into a long session and I had to rest for a while. I NEVER have to rest with an IBM keyboard.

They are HEAVY, too! This is greatly appreciated when you want to sit at a distance from the screen with the keyboard in your lap. The heavier it is, the less it slips around in your lap while you type. Its weight also contributes to its durability -- I've never had an IBM keyboard go bad on me. This is evidenced by the fact that my brother is still using our IBM 87-key keyboard from 1985.

I really don't get it when people talk about "that old, clunky, heavy, 'clicky' IBM keyboard" because if they would just sit down with it, they'd see they're missing the point completely. The click on cheap keyboards comes from a little peizo speaker that chirps when the key hits completes the circuit. The click on a IBM keyboard is 100% mechanical. The keycaps even come off nicely for quick and easy cleaning!

Just so we've got this nailed down, the keyboard I'm using right now is the most recent one I bought from Best Buy (they no longer have them, sadly) called simply "IBM" (in the top left corner). It's got a long ENTER key, and an even longer left and right shift key. There are no "Windows 95" keys to get in the way. On the back, it says:

Manufactured for IBM by Lexmark Copyright Lexmark, 1984 (odd, I bought it in 1995) Part No. 92G7483 ID # 0001299 Date: 5/26/95

BTW, I just ordered one of these from Tiger Direct-- Part number D55-1014, for only $29!!

Review of the GW2K Anykey keyboard

In Short

Programmable standard keyboard, whose keys silent but tactile, and has diagonal arrow and dual F keys.

In Depth

The keys very much suit my tastes. They are tactile with almost too much resistance, giving way at the right point for a satisfying amount of travel. The keys are also very quite, about as quite as you can hope for in a tactile keyboard. Overall a very solid, pleasing feel.

Since the Anykey is a programmable keyboard, it many extra keys to program, including a strange diagonal arrow key setup. You can use the programmability of the keyboard to make the arrow keys act more like those of a standard keyboard,
but it is still harder to find your place without looking than with a normal layout.

The programmability is a very nice feature. You can program something on the order of a total of 1200 keystrokes and each key can be set up to trigger a different macro (ie the F keys along the side can be programmed separately from the keys along the top). The only downside is that the keys are always played back at a fast typing speed, no faster or slower, so in today's slow windows environment you can not always depend on your keys being entered correctly. The trick is to toggle the scrollock button a few times in between steps that take a while for the computer to finish, which in effect is like adding a delay between the real keys (unless the program you are using makes use of scroll lock)!

If you want a programmable keyboard with a standard layout I strongly suggest this keyboard.

Review of the Keytronic Lifetime Series

Keytronic has been in the keyboard business for a long time, and during that time they have developed a reputation of building quality products. Of their wide range of products, only the lifetime series is intended mainly for purchase by the public. This is a review of the entire lifetime product line including the wireless and integrated trackball versions, but excluding the touchpad design.

The basic keyboard

The keyboard itself couldn't be much nicer. The keys are, when they work right, silent, but very pleasantly tactile. It is difficult to classify exactly how they feel, but the end result is a the best I have seen so far. The keys feel very solid, and do not wiggle. The keys toggle from the up to down state with only a little pressure, but definitely enough that you don't push keys by mistake. When the key finishes collapsing, it is cushioned, just slightly at the end of its travel. The result is the keys are nicely tactile, but not overly stressing on the fingers. Another words, you know you pushed that key, and you can do it again for a long time if you want to. In contrast, the Gateway Anykey, while still nice, now feels a little too "hard", I miss the slight cushioning of the Keytronic.

The layout is pretty classic. Large backspace and enter with the corresponding smaller right enter key (but not near as abbreviated as with the Focus 7200). This keyboard has the two windows95 keys, and the W95 context key. They were, however, smart enough to not include these keys at the expense of the other function keys. Control, Alt, and shift remain easy to find, and you usually don't have to group for them.. Of course, they still are not as easy to find as on a keyboard without W95 keys at all.

The Wireless option

Keytronic offers wireless versions of the lifetime series. In all cases the system works the same way. The keyboard has an IR. light instead of a cable, and you get a large box to put next to your monitor. Since they communicate using IR. the keyboard and the box in the line of sight to work with an efficient draw of power. You choose just how much power the system uses: low, which only works at distance up to 4 feet, or high, which works over long distances, or much shorter distances, if the line of sight between the light and the receiver is not a perfect line. In either case, the keyboard automatically goes into snooze mode when the keyboard or pointing device is inactive for 15 minutes.

While all that sounds reasonable, the actual use of the lifetime wireless leaves much to be desired, for many reasons.

• When the keyboard goes into snooze mode, the only way to wake it is to turn it off and then back on, or push a key. Using the pointing device doesn't work.
• On many computers, the keyboard doesn't go active until late in the boot process, which usually means you can't get into your BIOS setup with this keyboard attached.
• When in High power mode, the battery is doing well to last more than two weeks.
• The keyboard status lights are on the receiver unit, not the keyboard, so you have to look in an unusual location to see them, and you can only do so if the receiver is unobstructed. On the other hand, for the best use, you really need to keep the receiver in unobstructed view anyway.
• One of the reasons I wanted a wireless keyboard was to no be tied to the desk anymore. Mainly, I wanted to be able to lean back in my chair, resting the keyboard in my lap. While this could be managed with the wireless device placed under the desk, it meant that you could never store the keyboard on the table, and still use it. And if you wanted put the keyboard on the table most of the time, it means you will always have to keep the keyboard at or above the top of the table. Pesky IR.!

I would only recommend the wireless option if you want to be use the keyboard for some unusual task, where a cable just isn't possible, like roaming presentations. If you just want wireless for the supposed convenience, I think you will be quite disappointed.

The Trackball Option

One of the main reasons I was interested in the lifetime series was because of the version that offered an integrated track ball. While it has some very nice features, it also shares some of the problems of the Focus FK7200 design, and has a few that are unique to itself.

First the good; having the trackball right there at thumb point is a joy. As a person who writes a lot, be it code, or prose, I find the mouse pointer to be an invaluable tool in editing text, but only so when I can reach it within seconds, and without the added fatigue of reaching for the mouse stored away in some far corner of my desk. For such situations, an integrated pointing device cannot be beat, no matter how mediocre its design.

On the other hand, other pointing tasks, from file management to Photoshop and even Quake are not well suited to integrated trackballs, at least in the designs I have seen. The Keytronic trackball is particularly bad. Its biggest problem is that the ball is just too small. Because it has such a small surface to touch, too much tension is required to move the ball. The result is sore hands, and lack of precise pointer control. Also a problem, altho much better than for the FK 7200, is using both the left and right mouse buttons, or even worse, both at the same time. These buttons are located around the bottom of the trackball assembly. Simply put, whether you are a lefty or rightly, you will have problems clicking or dragging with one of the buttons. And while on the subject of buttons, there are only two. Three (placed in a more sensible locations) would be ever so much better for those of us running X Windows.

Cleaning the trackball is also painful. For some reason, Keytronic chose to make it very hard to unscrew the track ball retaining ring. You almost have to use a paper clip to get enough leverage. In all the track balls I have used, I have never seen a ring of such a design, purposely made almost impossible to remove. The worst part is you will be removing it often. To keep the trackball in its most useable state, I usually have to clean it after every few hours of use. At least with the focus trackball, the cleaning was only necessary daily.

Another universal problem with the trackball mechanism is shared with the Focus FK7200, that of wimpy rollers. Both of these keyboards are having problems with the pointer cursor getting stuck because one of the roller gets stuck. It's like the ball is really dirty, but this isn't the case. This is easily proven by taking the ball out, and trying to move the roller with a finger, and not getting it to budge in one direction. This is probably a manufacturing defect, your Lifetime Keyboard will probably not exhibit it.

The mechanical problems with the trackball in the Keytronic don't stop there, however. On my first Keytronic, the mouse buttons were literally hard to click. A very significant level of pressure was required to complete a mouse click. Happy, this problem is not evident on my second keytronic. Hopefully it was just bad luck on my part.

On a final note regarding hardware problems, after a few months of use my spacebar has started to squeak when I press it. It isn't too noisy, but it is annoying.

The touchpad option

The Lifetime Keyboards are also offered with touch pad, located just bellow the cursor keys. I have had no experience with this design, but I do think it has at least one cool innovation going for it. My biggest complaint against mush pads is having to take my finger off the mush pad, so I can move it to another part of the surface, especially while trying to drag something. The Keytronic design deals with this quite elegantly, by acting something like a joystick along the edges of the pad. Just place your finger on the edge, and the cursor starts moving in that direction until you take your finger away. A little ways away from the edge, the surface acts like a normal mush pad. This is a very cool idea, at least on paper.

Conclusion

Of the four products reviewed on this page, I feel I can only strongly recommend the Lifetime Classic. It is, with out a doubt, a high quality keyboard, and almost completely devoid of flaws. I wish I could say the same of the other products in the Lifetime Line. On the other hand, they do have redeeming qualities. Now that you know what you are in for, I hope you will be able to evaluate their suitability to your needs. Personally, I expect to continue to use my Keytronic Trackball Keyboard for a long time, despite all my gripes with it.