Tag: Hardware

macOS Printer System Reset

When I try to print under macOS, the job claims to go to the printers, yet the printer never prints it. After I waited for two minutes, the job still needed to be completed; therefore, I canceled the job. Attempt to rather. The job doesn’t cancel, so I kill the task of printing from the app I’m attempting to use. I still need to print, and this is at the worst time possible.

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(Hardware) Best Inexpensive Monitor Ever

Last year I searched for a monitor with these attributes:

  • 23-inch
  • Great color and bright from all angles easy for all-day viewing
  • Cables: HDMI, DVI, and VGA
  • Inexpensive because of the obvious and also the possibility of building a 2×2 monitor grid

The ASUS VS239H-P 23-Inch Full HD 1920×1080 IPS HDMI DVI VGA Back-lit LED Monitor is my winner: it meets all of the criteria.

It is easy to use and looks great. One year old it still is selling well. It is an easy purchase because 8,299 owners ranked it a 4.5/5 so I’m not alone here.

Now join the club.

The System That Inspired All Of Us Through Emacs

They say that Emacs was inspired by real LISP machines from Symbolics and more. Here are two of those Symbolics machines for sale on eBay:

A Mac with a LISP machine inside of it is pretty cool.

How To Build A USB Puzzle Box?

It would be fun to build a USB puzzle box. Here is how it would work after you plug it in:

  • It would illuminate it’s buttons in an entertaining pattern
  • If you punch in the secret code it would unlock it’s storage drive
  • If you punch in the wrong code it would reboot your computer

It is supposed to be fun. I haven’t thought too deeply about this, but it is supposed to be fun no encryption or anything. The security comes from the device simply not even showing up as a storage device until you “unlock” it.

Since I’m on OS X, this seemed like a good place to start.

Yes, Why You Do Need A Blu-Ray Writer

Today’s Blu-Ray write-once 128 GB BDXL disks

cost only $10USD/disc and the writer

costs only $50USD.

Why do I care?

  • Vagrant, Docker, and VMWare images are ginormous
  • Upload speed is a small fraction of download speed
  • Thrifty portable hard drives are too slow in time
  • Performant portable hard drives are too expensive in dollars
  • 4x drive is 1997 level too slow

Upgrade scheduled.

Vintage Computer Programming Book Market About To Explode!

Last week I was day-dreaming about Forth and vintage computers again. Same old day-dreams. The TI-99/4A with TurboForth seems like the perfect place to start learning about both. TurboForth has lots of features and it runs in emulators and “on the metal”. Cool.

The best way to learn Forth is interactively. How do you do it with Org Mode, though? Can we have the same features you would expect with any other programming language even though it is running inside of an emulator? There must be an easy way to run at the command line, redirect input and output, or maybe telnet into the machine.

V9t9 is a Java-based and open-sourced emulator there on GitHub. If it doesn’t have telnet into it, then it can be added. That got me thinking (daydreaming?) again about the fun of simple computers. Whatever approach you use to access them, using Org seems like a great way to write new books about them.

They are simpler. They are a great place to start. There is tons of great literature out there already. Now add Emacs and Org-Mode to the mix to practice Literate Programming.

It seems like there is a huge opportunity for great new books about old computers and programming languages. Export to LaTeX and publish, and there you go. Very fun and very cool.