General Chat

That nice Mr Heidelburg.

I am glad that you found a niche. I assume with photo typesetting of the kind that eventually turned the British hot type industry upside down. A revolution.. "Mainframes" were very few and far between in the UK of the 1970s and 80s, far more often once encountered the "mini computers" (which still filled a room or two and weighed a ton) of DEC PDP and VAX, IBM 43x and the rest of the 7 dwarves. The PDP was a special favorite of the print industry.

I cut my teeth on letterpress as one of my rellies owned a printshop. I found it all a bit too deja vue. It was strange then that a while later I was busy with bleeding edge software to a large scale color printer in SW England. What goes around...

Offset litho printing is interesting, a sailing clipper technology that for the moment is still with us. Note though that Murdoch has cancelled the next generation of newspaper "presses". When they are done that will be that.

Print will become a highly desirable art form. Indeed this is already happening. Folio Society come back, your time has come. It is interesting that long lost letterpress machines have risen a lot in price, even for what are mostly restoration projects. Luckily the skills are still with us.

Please pass the cucumber sandwiches.

England have taken their lucky rabbit to Wembley are winning 1-0.
bye 4 now

I can't get my head round the jargon Bob. Interfacing??? That's what I put in collars and cuffs! :-S


Coo eee Wend :-D :-D

LOL My first introduction to the computer age was around 1975 where my firm had an engine tracking computer system,

but when the firm built a engine test facility,in1980 ish, was my baptism of fire..
26 test cells driven by 7 satellite computers reporting to a main frame, which in turn was governed by a big brother in the headquarters offices........
no meeces then......whats hardware? or software? an 8 inch floppy? where did that come from.......????
Bob

Evenin' all. All I can say is I couldn't cope without me friendly lickle mouse. He plays havoc with me carpal tunnels now and again and doesn't hoover up me biccie crumbs, but I'd still be lost without 'im :-D

Julia, go girl :-D

Julia, I've just re-read my post.... c&p on old typewriters???? :-S

That wasn't what I meant at all - naughty typing fingers! :-| LOLOL

I meant to say with the touch pad and mouse you can do so much more than just type, I'm sure someone will beg to differ though ;-)

You can copy/paste to your hearts content now :-D and use emoticons :-D the new adventures are endless all thanks to a lickle mouse :-D

Rollo, I think you are being very rude and bad mannered. I find you post offensive
I put this post up to show I was having a laugh at myself, and of my ignorance of such things as a mouse, because I had never been shown how to work one.

However, my backwardness of modern technology did not stop me from earning a very lucrative living using the technology of the day, a main-frame computer to calculate a specialy devised programme for working out the wages of the print industry.

Julia in Derbyshire

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LOL well that's good. Microsoft internal documents suggest that the next rev will do away with the mouse altogether in fvaour of yr finger(s). Enjoy.

Word processing aka the typing pool started the switch to computers in the late 70s with smart semi-programmable electric goldball typewriters and dedicated machines with screens such as Xerox CBT from 1980. The 1981 Xerox had a mouse!

By 1986 Wordstar on the PC was in full swing, soon to be joined by Word Perfect and MS Word.

So far no need for a mouse though it was a CBT/Xerox option.

Windows 2.x and 3.x failed to catch fire but in 1995 Windows 95 arrived and all of the popular wp programs shifted to Windows and of course needed a mouse!.

Within 5 years just buying a new electric golfball was pretty difficult and now of course typewriter manufacture is near non existant.

So for most of the last 20 years it would have been somewhat difficult to produce documents and never use a mouse.

Let''s say you started 50 years ago ( Underwood mean anything ? ) that is 1963 then by 1998 you will have been 53. So for around 10 years your employer / clients were happy with steam typewriters or ancient text editors? Carbons. typex and all the other apparatus.

One imagines an ancient lawyers in the fusty dusty nether regions of the Middle Temple ...

Things I have seen done with a computer mouse:

hold it in the air and wave it around ( prescient of the Wee )
glide it across the screen
throw it with some force into the wall OR smash it down on a desk
drown it in coffee
cut off the wire and hide the cut ( object: 30 mins no work while waiting for tech support)
hide the battery ( modern form of cut the wire )
hold it up to the mouth and shout at it ( seen during a Dragon speech course )

but I have never seen a cat show any interest in them. Mine does like to chase the on screen cursor though. He is big and strong (9.5 kg) so I have had to beef up monitor support though any excuse for a snazzy new screen is always welcome.

so it goes

If anyone is interested I have a small (free) programme that teaches you how to use a mouse

Yes Budgie, I well remember the horrible carbon paper, but unless you typed the passage yourself, there was no scanning then c & p of large swathes of Wikki or Google. LOLOL


Julia in Derbyshire

Piglets Pal, I often wondered what it was like for left handed people, with the mouse. So, it has to be right handed for you. Keep at it

Can only use my computer with a mouse - just cannot manouvre the cursor on its own.

So for my laptop I have a wireless mouse which connects up via usb port. fantastic.

Oh and I am left handed and can only use the mouse with my right hand, tried with my left (went through the ballyhoo of sorting out the buttons to suit left hand use) it was useless, my co-ordination was all over the place. Back to right hand use and all ok.

Well done Julia...good for you hun :-)

Typewriter / No Copy & paste Jules ?.. what about that horrible messy carbon paper... :-D

Island Dahrlink. There was no such thing as copy & paste in the days of ye olde typwriter. It had not been envented.
That is why 'you know who' uses it as if it was going out of fashion. LOLOL

Julia in Derbyshire

Well, and here's me thinking all the time I had my computer, that I was the only one not using a mouse.
I had thought that when folks took their computer out the box, the first thing they did was set up the mouse, and hey presto. Well, you live and learn.
Ann, I hope you soon master the stitches, and get as many hours enjoyment from it as I do. You will be making items in next to no time.

Julia in Derbyshire

I love my little rattie even if he does have a cat nap now and again :-D

Not being a a life long typist, do the touch pad and mouse not do things that weren't available back in the days of the olde typewriter? Like copy and paste etc?

Julia, your cyber world will be your lobster now that you have trained your new pet :-D :-D :-D

I never learned to touch type (being more arty inclined) but I can crochet, does that count? :-D :-D

Ann there are some wonderful inspiring crochet blogs, websites and video tutorials to find, mid, you will spend more time looking at them than crochetting. Enjoy :-D

I always use a mouse, hate the touchpad. But I can't touch type as I am sure that you can.

AND I can't crochet, have now bought a how to book and when I have mastered an easy stitch (Oh I can do a chain), I shall feel as happy as you do. Well done <3

I wouldn't dream of calling you a dingbat Julia not a young girl like you.....when's yer 7th birday? ;-)......but I know I feel good if I can do new things on the pc and I bet you could show folk lots of stuff you can do with ease

Mau xx :-D

Just make sure your cheese is locked away when your using the mouse :-D

I have to use a mouse, Just cannot get on with these stupid touchpad on the laptop, what take the blink of an eye using a mouse takes me forever using the touchpad, god damn things got a mind of its own :-|

Roy

Well done Julia. You have mastered something I have never done! Clever lass! :-D <3

Julia i have only used a mouse a couple of times..........and it didn't seem to do what i wanted it to do or go where i wanted it to go.

It felt like my hand movements were seperated from my brain!!

:-D :-D