Happy Birthday ENIAC
Way back in 1946, ENIAC was unleashed upon the world.
And now, this has resulted in you being able to read my blog! 
Check out a very cool article about ENIAC, it’s origins, and it’s ongoing implications.
The scientists knew that they had created something that would change history, but they weren’t sure how to convey their breakthrough to the public. So they painted numbers on some light bulbs and screwed the resulting “translucent spheres” into ENIAC’s panels. Dynamic, flashy lights would thereafter be associated with the computer in the public mind.
Flashing lights from TV shows & movies, and spinning tape reels from TV commercials — those are among my earliest memories of computers.
-ghp
20 Years of Tetris
It doesn’t seem possible — Tetris has turned 20.
It hardly seems possible, but it was almost 17 years ago that the relationship between me & my (soon to be) wife was solidified over some marathon sessions of alternating games of Tetris on my Mac SE (1MB RAM & 20MB HD). Good times. 
The game that ate away the most time back then, however, was a card game called Klondike. This hugely addictive game (I swear that sometimes I almost got into a trance playing it, and couldn’t stop even if I’d have wanted to…) was, IIRC, the first shareware app that I ever registered! And the registration has served me well, as I was able to contact the author a year or two ago to ensure that my “lifetime upgrades” license was still in effect. Thus, the game that I first started playing on a Mac running System 5.1 is still running on my Mac G4 that’s running OS X 10.4.3! Very cool…
-ghp
(and, yes, I know I’m slack for not posting more — but given my readership/hit-counter numbers, I’m not sure that anyone’s even noticing… 
)
I Want This…
I want a Mac Mini!
This is a seriously cool, not to mention strategically solid (& possibly brilliant), thing that Apple has done. I dare say that this could be more significant in the long run than any Mac since the original. Which is saying something, given the impact that the iMac had a while back. It’s a killer design (but, then, Apple’s always had great industrial design…), and a great marketing concept. Allowing industry standard peripherals (USB keyboards/mice, DVI & VGA monitors, wired & wireless networking, etc…) to be used with a Mac in a seamless plug-&-play fashion, and all at a low cost point — well, that’s the kind of marketing & strategic savvy that Apple should’ve had, but never did! It gets the Mac about as close to a licensed “commodity” computer as Steve Jobs will ever get — and that might be good enough to (if Apple doesn’t screw it up) cause a gigantic stir in the industry.
Apple has become of late a company largely defined by iTunes & the iPod. The strategic significance of the Mac Mini is that Apple is leveraging the impact & cachet of the iPod/iTunes buzz, and using it to help the Mac. The iPod has shown that Apple’s industrial & interface design does appeal to the masses. OS X is THE BEST OS out there, in terms of putting a beautiful & easily usable interface on top of a rock-solidly stable & powerful modern operating system.
I’m running Linux (the Debian-based Xandros 3.0) on my main desktop at home, and that probably won’t change in the short term, as I like tinkering & playing around with Linux. However, I would like nothing more than to be able to replace the Windows XP based PC that is the family computer with a Mac Mini at the earliest opportunity. Getting rid of Microsoft OSes would be such a nice thing to be able to do. Windows works, but I’ve never really trusted it. Neither have I ever developed the affection for Windows that I have for the Mac or for Linux.
-ghp
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