Friday 30 April 2010

Useful computers!

I was thinking this morning just as my computer froze on me whilst trying to access the internet how wondefully smart computers are nowadays.

It's wonderful when as a human being we are working on a word processor and it's time to close a document and yes you click on the red X and your smart machine pops up with a message saying "Document has changed, are you sure you want to close it?".

Now if I were a woman suffering from PMT's I could understand a flurry of expletives - of course I bleeping want to close the document, you bleeping, bleeping machine, I pushed the bleeping button you bleeping, bleeping idot!

My own mother talks to the microwave when it kindly beeps to remind her that it has finished cooking something, she also moans at the cooker when something boils over - it's the cookers fault of course, never the human operating the machine.

I look forward to the day when a computer actually answers a human back with speech.
You can only imagine the sorts of Basil Fawlty type arguments that will occur.  That bad tempered tennis player You cannot be bleeping serious can you, I bleeping told you to do that! Do bleeping argue with me.  Right your for the scrap heap then! 

Well for now enjoy using your HID (Human Interfacing Device) or more simply mouse.


Thursday 22 April 2010

The Day of the Dogs

It's finally done, my short story The Day of the Dogs is published.  Here is a brief extract.
 
“And finally the main news tonight!  This is the final broadcast by a human being as something major has happened in the last few hours.  The Dog Liberation Organisation (DLO) have joined together with The Monster Raving Dog Party (MRDP) and taken over number Ten Downing Street.  We go live to our correspondent Howard Stapleton outside Number Ten Downing Street”......................................
 
You can purchase the full story from my lulu store front.  Enjoy.


Computer keyboard Short cuts

Computer keyboard Short cuts

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people including some of my student's who do not know about keyboard short cuts on computers. The very first PC's never had a mouse to navigate the screen easily. For example the control key, located bottom left near the Microsoft key. My Dell keyboard is nicely designed and has two control or Ctrl keys, one at the left side and one at the right.

If you are using an application, say a word processor, then you can save time by pressing the Ctrl key and S together to either save your document to the hard drive or floppy disk. Other examples are Ctrl + P to print your document.

It is well worth checking out the keyboard short cuts, just in case your mouse fails, you will be surprised at what you can do.

Also when using word processors you can use the Home, End keys to get to the beginning of a line of text or the end of a paragraph. Likewise, the Page Up and Page Down keys to move the page, yes you guessed it up and or down.

I dare say that as with the touch screen mobile phones our PC screens will eventually go down that route and we will be able to touch icons to access the multitude of applications our computers are able to run. Unless voice recognition software gets to Star Trek perfection levels then there will be always a need for a computer keyboard.