Seán's Computer Interests

I can't remember how old I was when I got my ZX Spectrum for Christmas. I was lost to it for months, first playing games and then learning about the basics of programming. I collected all four volumes of a magazine series called INPUT which taught me loads about assembly language, BASIC programming and writing applications in this little 48K wonder.

Technology has marched on and I now have access to bigger, faster, more complex computers. Here are some of the tools I use and some of the things I like to waste my time on.

Computers I play with
• Perfect is the 486DX2 machine we have at home. A long term project of mine it to track down all the documentation I can lay my hands on for it and eventually figure out why Linux doesn't like it having 48M of RAM (as opposed to 32M which Linux is quite happy with)

The Big Things
• Linux is the only operating system I've ever compiled and installed. Its existence and development by hordes of rabid hackers makes me feel all warm and safe.
• My favourite desktop at the moment is KDE, just because it all fits together nicely and I'd never dreamed of having a file manager under UNIX with the features of KFM. The KPresenter project (KDE's PowerPoint) and indeed the whole KOffice project also looks quite exciting. A holy war is currently in progress between KDE's supporters and fans of Gnome. I don't care - KDE works now, which is when I want it.
• Berlin is an interesting project with the aim of replacing the X Window System with something cleaner (from a programming viewpoint) and easily extensible. Buzzwords like Object Oriented and Corba abound.
• Slashdot and Freshmeat keep me up to date most days. News.Com gives me a broader view of the state of the computer world every so often.

The Smaller Things
• The libwww-perl library is an excellent toolkit for writing scripts which need to interact with the Web.
• X-Accountant helps keep track of your checkbook situation. Its in the process of becomming GnuCash.
• a2ps is the Any to PostScript filter. It's the best program I've come across for producing nice code printouts.
• Yes Virginia, you can run X applications tolerably even when there's a modem between you and the program. The secret is to use the Differential X Protocol Compressor.

I always have trouble finding documentation, so I'm collecting all the software documentation I can here.

• The manual for Perl 5.
• Common Lisp the Language, 2^nd Edition which is part of the CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository.
• I really like this beginner's guide to Cascading Style Sheets and devoured it when putting these pages together. I must admit getting rid of the underlines for anchors is something that tickles me more than it should.
• When you've learned the basics to Style Sheets, you can progress to Javascript and more uderstanding of the power of Dynamic HTML. The Dynamic Duo is an invaluable series of lessons on combining CSS and Javascript to produce web page effects you had only ever dreamed about.
• For a good comprehensive reference to HTML, try Sizzling HTML Jalfrezi.
• Not really software, but Eric's Treasure Trove of Math is something I keep wishing I had a pointer to. Well, now I have one and hopefully I'll use it more. Recent topics looked up are:
  • Eigenvalues