The most important update: tons of new content is coming to the computing section in 2018! See below for more details.
Another important update: I now have a Linux-based Aeronix Zipit Z2! I love it! I'm actually writing this from it! It is a great little hackable wireless messenger; it is now a nettop for me. I will post more about it on this page.
Important update (8/28/12): my primary computing tools now are my Lenovo Thinkpad T420 running Windows 7 and my 6-year-old Palm Z22 running Palm OS 5.4.9 (Garnet) - find out more here. I'm programming in Forth and Scheme (Lisp). I really love Forth and am happy to use my Palm once again.
Hello! Welcome to my page about computing! I am an avid programmer and especially like Unix. I have used many systems, such as a 32-bit i386 (Pentium I) Gateway PC running NetBSD 3.0.1, a HP laptop (zt1130 Celeron) running *sigh* Windows, and a Fujitsu Poqet PC Plus running MS-DOS 5.0 (oh, well...) with two PCMCIA slots, full PC-XT compatibility, and..................a 5" by 9" form factor!! Before that, I used a Mac SE, Mac IIsi, PowerComputing Power 100 (PPC Mac clone), TI 99/4A, IBM Aptiva 535 (486 upgraded to 586), and PowerMac 5500 (all-in-one). I've given away many of those machines, sadly. More recently, I've used an Sharp PC-1500A, HP 95LX, HP 100LX, Raspberry Pi 2, Asus Eee PC 900HD, QuickPad Pro, Nextbook Flexx 9, and many other machines I can't remember. I particularly like portable machines such as palmtops and subnotebooks. For me, computers can't be too small. My dream computer would be a novel-sized Linux palmtop with a long (10+ hr) battery life and nice screen. It seems modern Chromebooks are the closest equivalent.
This is a recent shot of my portable computing collection (click for more):
Below is a recent Imgur album of my portable computing exhibit (among other things) at VCF SE 7.0 (April 27-28, 2019) in Roswell, GA. Andrew Kennedy of p.68kmentat.com and Dafne Sanchez, traveling together from Greensboro, NC, not only visited the exhibit but also let me play with their Tandy Model 102, pictured in the gallery. Andrew wrote about VCF SE 7.0 and my exhibit further in his blog. I also met numerous other Atlanta area and southeastern computing enthusiasts, such as Ben Combee, a Dalton, GA native who was one of the developers of the Palm Foleo and is currently an engineer at Roku in Austin, TX. His Foleo is pictured in my Imgur gallery. Unix extraordinaire and pipeline inventor Doug McIlroy also attended and gave a talk on Saturday about his experiences at Bell Labs.
VCF SE 7.0 this year, starting with my
portable computing exhibit
If you want to learn more about my Unix use and other stuff on my computer usage, please go to my blog. That site is full of information on Unix, its variants, ports, and its use. However, I can still tell you some stuff here.
First off, I have a long story behind getting the Gateway and installing NetBSD Unix on it. After using SDF for a couple of months, I got hooked on Unix. I wanted to use it at home on my own machine. After first loving and hating Macs, I was ready for a change. So I scoured the market for a cheap PC. First I realized I had an old 386 that was my father's. It had to be rebuilt, so I spent several weeks working on that. What a pain. After busting my brain messing with floppy drives and reading through a book on PC hardware, I gave up on it. It turned out that on that Saturday I could go to yard sales. At one, at a high school (Talawanda High School if you recognize that name), I rummaged around, looking for a machine. Let's see......books.....ooh, a bicycle...too bad I have a nice one....yes, PCs! And for...25 bucks! Well, too much for a cheapskate like me. So I bargained it down to 12 dollars. A done deal.
Next came the big pain: installing Linux. The machine was loaded with *yuck* Windows 95. First I tried muLinux, a minimalist edition of Linux, but that wasted more time. My faced turned red and burned after partitioning. Time for something new. So I tried NetBSD. I discovered it after reading about different free operating systems. It turned out to be fairly simple to install....but....more partitioning. I finally cleared out the mistaken partitions from Linux. Then, after fiddling with the installation a little bit, I installed NetBSD 2.1. No X11, but I got used to csh and bash. I installed some packages on it, and now the machine is pretty cool. That is story of my Linux quest.
Also, today I am preparing to install NetBSD 3.0.1 on my Gateway. However, things have not been going swimmingly. Stay tuned.
UPDATE 6/23/08: I'm using a scratch-built Intel Core 2 Duo-based PC that runs Slackware Linux 12.0. For more information, click here. It runs fast and well! I'm doing some molecular and C programming stuff with it.
UPDATE 1/1/2011: I now use the homebuilt PC with Ubuntu 8.04 - I will upgrade it soon.
I also really like homebrew computers. I mean *totally* homebrew. I am hoping to make a homebrew z80 machine programmable using switches - yes, programmed in binary. Hopefully I can get it to do something interesting, like act as a clock or something. I am modeling my machine after Donn Stewart's machine, seen here. Here are some cool videos of the 4-bit DUO 128 Elite and a homebuilt z80 computer:
DUO Elite:
Z80 Computer as a Scientific Calculator:
I'm also using my Palm III more again. I've installed LispMe, a Scheme VM and compiler, on it. For information, click the image below. (Note: this page is not active yet!)
UPDATE 8/13/2011: I have updated my computer to Ubuntu 10.04. I have also written a simple complex function grapher in MATLAB, which is available for download through the MATLAB Central File Exchange.
Screenshot:
UPDATE 7/24/2018: I have a ton of stuff I plan to add here in the next year - more on my Zipit Z2 and all I did with it, my DOS portables, OpenWRT router, Forth programming, text-based gaming, command-line web browsing, and much more! Stay tuned.