i find binding capslock to control more convenient both for vim and shell work (i use set -o vi in bash anyway)
typing ^C ^D ^M (so no need to reach for enter) are a lot easier, and using ^] for escape is faster than escape-button (IMO)
Take a glass cilinder, then take SBC with memory, cables and all stuff mounted, and place it inside small asbestos bag. Then push that bag into bottle, bag mouth hole to cylinder bottom. Then heat up cylinder mouth, and fuse it into bottle neck. Asbestos bag will protect board from the heat. Now you just pull asbestos bag through bottle neck, pull the wires attached to it through bottle neck, and voila - you have intact bottle with SBC inside, and cables to connect outside.
No air flow inside a bottle though, so you need to choose fairly cool CPU for this.
To bad i don't have any friends with glass blower skills and facility to try it;-)
I can tell from my experience what people fear computers when they don't understand them (the same applies to many other things). You need to teach them first, and fear will be gone then.
Your question post particularly interested me, because i had the same idea, and actually i was quite successful in explaining all the essentials about the functioning of a computer to my wife, in about 8 'lectures', and i had an idea about writing a book based on it. Me and my wife both studied biology at university, although i pursued programming career - I've done programming way better than biology;-). My wife was an ordinary computer user, knowing only how to use MS Office, and sometimes i had difficulties answering questions like "what's you working on now ?" So i worked out a lecture plan, and invited her to study a computer in depth.
We started from how information presented in computers, from bits to bytes and words, then to CPU - about the addressing, the registers, different number formats, then to CPU instructions, how instructions organized to function as a whole program, and finally, we discussed I/O, and I/O devices.
Next section was about higher-level concepts: how data is organized on external storage, what is a file, how files organized to form a filesystem. Next i explained what is computer program, how programs created (assemblers,compilators,interpretors), and then, based on previous concepts (instructions, files) i explained how program presented on disk and in memory. Then we talked about the OS, about the core, dynamic libraries, standard programs, and what is OS distributives. And finally, we talked about the processes, what they are, their properties, and how processes interact with the OS.
She also done some hands-on exercises i prepared to better understand the concepts.
As i said, it doesn't took overly much time - 8 or 10 evening lessons ( 2-4 hours each ). I recorded most of our lessons in mp3, but promised not to give it out to anybody;-)
I can say what I'm satisfied with result: now i can discuss my work with her, knowing what she at least knows what I'm talking about, and explaining new concepts like 'how viruses propagate' is fairly easy. She also claims what new knowledge gave her much more confidence when working with computer programs.
This lessons gave me valuable information on things which is hard for novice to understand, like what all what is digital is made out of the same digits, and the difference is how something interprets this digits.
The reason what i said i 'had' the idea to write a book is because then i analyzed my experience on teaching my wife, i realized what it is the live discussion, the communication, quick answers to questions what made this possible. If i gave her some book to read, i think she will abandon it after a hour of reading. The problem with books is what you can't get the answers quickly, and then you don't have a clear picture in your mind, you become bored.
So i suggest what before you starting to write book, you make a plan how to teach someone about computers, and then do that - teach, head-to-head. It will give you comprehension of what you really need to explain to novice.
And talking about how to teach someone about computers without live teacher, i suggest this should be a multimedia application with a lot of graphic/video examples to guard user from boredom, and in the ideal, there need to be a large button , 'Question', and it should provide _quick_ answers, so i think such multimedia application is best organized as a (paid) web service where someone will answer user questions (well, semil-live teacher;), and this questions will be very various, so FAQ just will not help.
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i find binding capslock to control more convenient both for vim and shell work (i use set -o vi in bash anyway) typing ^C ^D ^M (so no need to reach for enter) are a lot easier, and using ^] for escape is faster than escape-button (IMO)
http://www.cliki.net/Parenscript http://www.cliki.net/jsgen looks like parenscript was there before october 2005
Take a glass cilinder, then take SBC with memory, cables and all stuff mounted, and place it inside small asbestos bag. Then push that bag into bottle, bag mouth hole to cylinder bottom. Then heat up cylinder mouth, and fuse it into bottle neck. Asbestos bag will protect board from the heat. Now you just pull asbestos bag through bottle neck, pull the wires attached to it through bottle neck, and voila - you have intact bottle with SBC inside, and cables to connect outside.
;-)
No air flow inside a bottle though, so you need to choose fairly cool CPU for this.
To bad i don't have any friends with glass blower skills and facility to try it
I can tell from my experience what people fear computers when they don't understand them (the same applies to many other things). You need to teach them first, and fear will be gone then.
Your question post particularly interested me, because i had the same idea, and actually i was quite successful in explaining all the essentials about the functioning of a computer to my wife, in about 8 'lectures', and i had an idea about writing a book based on it. Me and my wife both studied biology at university, although i pursued programming career - I've done programming way better than biology ;-). My wife was an ordinary computer user, knowing only how to use MS Office, and sometimes i had difficulties answering questions like
;-)
;), and this questions will be very various, so FAQ just will not help.
"what's you working on now ?"
So i worked out a lecture plan, and invited her to study a computer in depth.
We started from how information presented in computers, from bits to bytes and words, then to CPU - about the addressing, the registers, different number formats, then to CPU instructions, how instructions organized to function as a whole program, and finally, we discussed I/O, and I/O devices.
Next section was about higher-level concepts: how data is organized on external storage, what is a file, how files organized to form a filesystem. Next i explained what is computer program, how programs created (assemblers,compilators,interpretors), and then, based on previous concepts (instructions, files) i explained how program presented on disk and in memory. Then we talked about the OS, about the core, dynamic libraries, standard programs, and what is OS distributives. And finally, we talked about the processes, what they are, their properties, and how processes interact with the OS.
She also done some hands-on exercises i prepared to better understand the concepts.
As i said, it doesn't took overly much time - 8 or 10 evening lessons ( 2-4 hours each ). I recorded most of our lessons in mp3, but promised not to give it out to anybody
I can say what I'm satisfied with result: now i can discuss my work with her, knowing what she at least knows what I'm talking about,
and explaining new concepts like 'how viruses propagate' is fairly easy. She also claims what new knowledge gave her much more confidence when working with computer programs.
This lessons gave me valuable information on things which is hard for novice to understand, like what all what is digital is made out of the same digits, and the difference is how something interprets this digits.
The reason what i said i 'had' the idea to write a book is because then i analyzed my experience on teaching my wife, i realized what it is the live discussion, the communication, quick answers to questions what made this possible. If i gave her some book to read, i think she will abandon it after a hour of reading. The problem with books is what you can't get the answers quickly, and then you don't have a clear picture in your mind, you become bored.
So i suggest what before you starting to write book, you make a plan how to teach someone about computers, and then do that - teach, head-to-head. It will give you comprehension of what you really need to explain to novice.
And talking about how to teach someone about computers without live teacher, i suggest this should be a multimedia application with a lot of graphic/video examples to guard user from boredom, and in the ideal, there need to be a large button , 'Question', and it should provide _quick_ answers, so i think such multimedia application is best organized as a (paid) web service where someone will answer user questions (well, semil-live teacher