Greetings from Lankhmar

[fafhrd]

It's sometimes hard to find new usernames. Fafhrd is a character from fiction, from the pen of Fritz Leiber, in the swords and sorcery genre.

 

I haven't re-read his novels for some time now, I should make time to do so. The Lankhmar (albeit spelt and pronounced differently) I live in is a large town on the south coast of England, about 55 miles south of London, populated by a large number of senior citizens, of whom I am not a member just yet.

 

I arrived at Hypography on the Google Road, following a quest for origins of the thinking that leads to the supposition that the core of the earth is iron and nickel. On my way here, I learnt that Edmond Halley (A principled atheist who never attained high office because of this, despite his brilliance, of eponymous Comet fame) proposed a solid core, with several outer concentric shells, to explain the origin of the earth's magnetic field. I guess that part of the theory has stuck. Of course there is much more to be said about this.

 

My background, Molecular Biology and Database development.

 

My OS of preference is SuperOS, a derivative of Ubuntu, and I use Firefox and Chrome, and run Windows occasionally under VMWare when I want to run Access or SQLServer apps, or enjoy the keystroke shortcuts of MSWord when writing essays.

 

After years of despising laptops, I now could not be without them. I have always loved computer networks, and the concept of the internet, although not necessarily what it has become.

 

One prediction, which I made many years ago, is that computers will be given away with breakfast cereals, energise themselves via the environment (radiation from the sun, microwaves, radio, heat, therefore never off!), process information as a networked system (everyone on the network can process threads for anyone else if their processor is available at that time), would be portable enough to fit in a pocket, have distributed storage (holographic, optical, biochemical - I doubt that now!), would project a virtual keyboard on any usable nearby horizontal surface, and a virtual display on any useable nearby vertical surface, or selectively, any available nearby viewscreen. Broadcast entertainment would merge with telecomms and advertising revenue would pay for it all.

 

We are part of the way there with current mobile technology - the kit is virtually free, the mobility is pocket-sized, advertising pays for a large part of it, everything is networked, it is never off, with much free storage, peer-to-peer and distributed computing are available, but the energy is not environmentally free, and usable virtual input and display technology have not yet been optimized, but both are available. Soon:p

 

I abhor fixed ideas and schools of thought as much as nature abhors a vacuum, or twisted magnetic fields;)

 

There are some sharp minds here, so I thought I might join in the fun.:hihi:

 

Regards,

 

Chris

[maikeru]

Cheers for Fritz Leiber. Great, swashbuckling writer. Like his stuff much and welcome to Hypography. Where is your companion, the Grey Mouser?

[sanctus]

Welcome! Very nice introduction. i just started wondering if you are a big fan of an Ubuntu-derived OS, howcome you prefer to write in word? I mean, the shortcuts in emacs are sooo much cooler and LaTex looks nicer...in my view at least ;-)

[fafhrd]

Thanks to maikeru, and sanctus for the welcomes. As far as the ' Mouser is concerned, he was lured off by a female of dubious pedigree, as far as I can remember, never to return. I miss him.

 

Why Word? In a word, familiarity. No, let's be honest, laziness - I can't be bothered to learn something new, just for letting the words flow! OpenOffice is fine for most things, but if I really want to feel comfortable, I slip back to OfficeXP.

 

Word and I go back to 1989. In those days, it was cross-platform between MS-DOS and Macintosh platforms, and I could work on my essays and dissertation on a PC in the computer room of my department (Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK) during the daytime, and in the computing centre in the evening, where often the only free machines were Macintoshes, with tiny screens.

[sanctus]

I agree between OpenOffice and OfficeXP , the latter is also the one I prefer. But between emacs and LaTex and anything else, it is anything else that loses ;-).

 

When in comparison to word the plot here shows why it is worth to get familiar with LaTex even when already familiar with Word.