Emoticons and Smileys on PLATO
13 September 2002 — The news is floating around the Web right now about the “discovery” of the first online emotion-conveying icon or “emoticon.” What readers and reporters are apparently not aware of is that the emoticon or “smiley” being discussed is the first ASCII smiley.
Like so many things, PLATO was doing emoticons and smileys, online and onscreen, years earlier. In fact, emoticons on PLATO were already an art form by 1976. PLATO users began doing smiley characters probably as early as 1972 (when PLATO IV came out), but possibly even earlier on PLATO III (still to be determined… old-timer PLATO III users please speak up!).
How were these things done? Well, on PLATO, you could press SHIFT-space to move your cursor back one space — and then if you typed another character, it would appear on top of the existing character. And if you wanted to get real fancy, you could use the MICRO and SUB and SUPER keys on a PLATO keyboard to move up and down one pixel or more — in effect providing a HUGE array of possible emoticon characters. So if you typed “W” then SHIFT-space then “O” then SHIFT-space then “B”, “T”, “A”, “X”, all with SHIFT-spaces in between, all those characters would plot on top of each other, and the result would be the smiley as shown above in the “WOBTAX” example.
Casio F91W
Casio F91W image from Wikipedia by Geo Swan
The Casio F91W is an inexpensive quartz digital watch, manufactured by the Japanese firm Casio.
Although none of the captives who remained in detention when the Combatant Status Review Tribunals began in August 2004 were being held solely for possession of this watch, this is used as the main allegation against them, as this link was highlighted in the Denbeaux study compiled by lawyers for two detainees. It is said that having this watch was being used as “proof” of the captives’ status as enemy combatants. Those that say otherwise point to the fact that eighteen captives known to have faced the allegation of owning this watch all faced other allegations as well. However, this ‘evidence’ still remains the main allegation against them.
SoftFloat: A software implementation of the IEEE 754 Floating Point Specification
This program is often used to provide verification sequences when designing floating point unit (FPU) hardware IP blocks:
SoftFloat is a free, high-quality software implementation of the IEC/IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-point Arithmetic. (IEC is the International Electrotechnical Commission, an international standards body.) SoftFloat is completely faithful to the IEEE Standard, while at the same time being relatively fast. All functions dictated by the standard are supported except for conversions to and from decimal. SoftFloat fully implements the four most common floating-point formats: single precision (32 bits), double precision (64 bits), extended double precision (80 bits), and quadruple precision (128 bits). All required rounding modes, exception flags, and special values are supported.
Haberman’s Survival Data Set
One of the standard data sets for use in machine learning research:
Data Set Information:
The dataset contains cases from a study that was conducted between 1958 and 1970 at the University of Chicago’s Billings Hospital on the survival of patients who had undergone surgery for breast cancer.
Attribute Information:
1. Age of patient at time of operation (numerical)
2. Patient’s year of operation (year - 1900, numerical)
3. Number of positive axillary nodes detected (numerical)
4. Survival status (class attribute)
– 1 = the patient survived 5 years or longer
– 2 = the patient died within 5 year
UCI Machine Learning Repository: Haberman’s Survival Data Set
How to compile The Fabulous Logic Analyzer on Gentoo Linux
Linux being Linux, most distributions seem to keep things in different places, something that tends to mess up compiling software (although it shouldn’t!). I wanted to try out a program called The Fabulous Logic Analyzer, which uses your PC’s parallel port as a digital logic analyzer for debugging all kinds of digital circuitry. Unfortunately, the source build didn’t work out of the box, and the only instructions I could find were for Ubuntu. After consulting a Gentoo expert I know from college, we eventually got it working:
- Download and unpack source package: http://prdownload.berlios.de/tfla-01/tfla-01-0.1.4.tar.bz2
- The big challenge was finding the proper paths for these environment variables. Use these two export commands to set the build environment variables.
export PATH=/usr/qt/3/bin:$PATH
export QMAKESPEC=/usr/qt/3/mkspecs/linux-g++ - Use the qmake program to create a standard Makefile for this project:
qmake tfla-01.pro - Build the source:
make - Look in the bin/ directory, and you should have a freshly compiled binary, hot from the gcc oven.
Iodised salt: 1, Goiter: 0
Iodised salt (AmE: iodized salt), table salt mixed with a minute amount of potassium iodide, sodium iodide or iodate, is used to help reduce the chance of iodine deficiency in humans. Iodine deficiency commonly leads to thyroid gland problems, specifically endemic goiter. Endemic goiter is a disease characterized by a swelling of the thyroid gland, usually resulting in a bulbous protrusion on the neck. While only tiny quantities of iodine are required in a diet to prevent goiter, the United States Food and Drug Administration recommends[1] 150 microgrammes of iodine per day for both men and women, and there are many places around the world where natural levels of iodine in the soil are low and the iodine is not taken up by vegetables.
Today, iodized salt is more common in the United States, China, Canada, Australia and New Zealand than in Britain.
In the U.S. in the early 20th century, goiter was especially prevalent in the region around the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest. Goiter began receiving serious attention as a result of the World War I draft pointing to the problem in Northern Michigan and Wisconsin. At this time, many men were disqualified from military service as a result of the public health problem. This raised questions beyond the ability of these men to serve in the war. Many asked: if they could not do this, how useful were they in everyday civilian life?
Graham cracker
The graham cracker was developed in 1822 in Bound Brook, New Jersey, by Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham. Though called a cracker, it is sweet rather than salty and so bears some resemblance to a cookie (American English) / biscuit (British English) (although the term is unheard of in the United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland - a digestive biscuit is the closest approximation). The true graham cracker is made with graham flour, which is unsifted and coarsely ground wheat flour.
It was originally conceived of as a health food as part of the Graham Diet, a regimen to suppress what he considered unhealthy carnal urges, the source of many maladies according to Graham. Reverend Graham would often lecture about the adverse effects of masturbation or “self-abuse” as he called it. One of his many theories was that one could curb their sexual appetite by eating bland foods. Another man who held this belief was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes cereal.
Lycopodium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia“For some reaoson it was bug.” - Boing Boing Gadgets
This is from a little bit ago, but can’t we all relate?
Great Moments in Programming: “For some reaoson it was bug.” - Boing Boing Gadgets
Taconite
Taconite is an iron-bearing, high-silica, flint-like rock. It is a Precambrian sedimentary rock referred to as a banded iron formation due to the typical alternating iron-rich layers and shale or chert layers. The very finely dispersed iron content, present as magnetite, is generally 25 to 30%. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, available iron ore was of such high quality that taconite was considered an uneconomic waste product. After World War II, most of the high grade ore in the United States had been mined out, and so taconite was turned to as a new source of iron. To process taconite, the ore is ground into a fine powder, the iron is separated from the waste rock by using strong magnets, and then the powdered iron concentrate is combined with bentonite clay and limestone as a flux and rolled into pellets about one centimeter in diameter that are approximately 65% iron. The pellets are heated to very high temperatures to oxidize the magnetite (Fe3O4) to hematite (Fe2O3) for further processing. Edward W. Davis is credited with developing this process.
The Mesabi Iron Range region of the American state of Minnesota is a major production area. The taconite iron concentrate is hauled by railroad through Silver Bay, Two Harbors and the Twin Ports of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin, all on Lake Superior. The ore is generally shipped by lake freighters to other locations on the Great Lakes. Many steelmaking centers are located near Lake Erie. From about 1900 through 1992, great machines called Hulett ore unloaders performed the task. Self-unloading ships later made the Huletts obsolete.