code & carrot

code & carrot

  • QWERTY

    QWERTY

    Tech wars for dominance go way back.  One dust-up still impacts the modern world – QWERTY.  When typewriters were first developed, there was no standard keyboard layout. One of the first keyboards was like a piano and had 28 keys arranged alphabetically.  Another had all upper case keys.  Another had keys for both upper and…

  • Return of the Electric Typewriter

    Return of the Electric Typewriter

    For half of my senior year of high school, I was without the family computer as it had moved to Colorado with my family.  I had to use my mom’s  electric typewriter and lots of whiteout.    I’d take it out of its hard plastic case and set it up on Grandma’s dining room table and…

  • Pizza & Pac Man

    Pizza & Pac Man

    My first arcade game was at Pizza Hut and it was a cocktail table Pac Man game.  It sat by the emergency exit door, on the path to the bathroom.  It was a treat to play it.  I wasn’t good at it but played it with my brother or family friends.  On Friday nights, we…

  • VCR Machine

    VCR Machine

    My parents got a VCR for the family one Christmas. We weren’t earlier adaptors like some folks in town. Some family friends across town always had the latest tech.  They had at least two VCRs and had thousands of tapes.  Tapes were everywhere with handwritten labels. The quality varied wildly.  You had to watch one…

  • The Clicker

    The Clicker

    I have two in the living room – one for the rarely used DVD player and the other for the Roku tv which is constantly misplaced.   Most of the televisions and media devices I’ve purchased as an adult all came with remote controls.   The remote that came with our sound system had a…

  • The Magical Musical Thing

    The Magical Musical Thing

    It might have been a Christmas gift or it might have been purchased at one of the many garage sales my mom frequented back in the day. The details of its arrival are fuzzy, however I remember its departure from our lives with great clarity. It sounded like an off key dying wildebeest from  Mutual…

  • TI 99/4A

    TI 99/4A

    Our first home computer was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It looked like silver typewriter with white letters on black keys.  The keys were cube like and could migrate painlessly to an adding machine. It was set up in the family room in the front corner right by a window. Games and accessories would magically appear.…

  • Old Dotty

    Old Dotty

    Back when we have an old HP clone PC,  my dad got the family a dot matrix printer.  There was always a box of continuous paper with perforated edges sitting on the floor tucked under the computer desk. My brother and I would raid the box for sketch paper or writing paper or paper to…

  • The Little Professor

    The Little Professor

    I didn’t have one but my friend did. I remember the bright golden yellow color and the red LED screen. I was jealous. It was so cool and fancy. The Little Professor was a backward functioning calculator that was released in 1976 by Texas Instruments. It would ask a question and you’d answer. 3 +…