Repost! Spread the Lovin: Gacked from Ocean's Edge

C'mon, people... don't be shy!

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done this year.
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost. We can all make stuff!!

(If you're afraid of reposting, comment anyway.)

Writer's Block: Robotic

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R. Daneel Olivaw. Probably the closest thing to a true Deus ex Machina that has ever been written, The "Bicentennial Man" taken to extremes. But wow, what a ride.

Happy Birthday, Macintosh!

On January 26, 1984, Apple introduced the original 64K Macintosh, and nothing has ever been the same. [Edit: Added the year, sorry!]

My company bought a few right out of the gate, and the first real work I did was to create the company logo for use with internal documentation.

By the next year I was designing Thai, Laotian, Burmese and Cambodian fonts - now commonplace, but then an unheard-of boon for those who worked with Southeast Asian languages. Later down the road we worked with Malayalam, and my biggest success was a system that allowed the electronic input of Divehi (Maldivian).

I really got caught up in the possibilities offered - I remember attending the Macworld convention several years in a row - great trips to San Francisco! - and was there when Philipe Kahn had the chutzpah to call the Mac a "piece of shit" in front of thousands of fans. By next year he had repented, and Borland was making sofware for the Mac.

It was often said that the power of the press belongs to whoever owned one. For the first time, anyone could produce professional-looking documents at their own computer. Ready-Set-Go came along, and then Quark Express. I became an in-house DTP consultant and Macintosh trainer.

I remember the day I bought a Mac LC - the first "decent" computer I owned, (although the Osborne that preceded it probably won out in the "antique coolness" factor.) It was painfully slow by today's standards, but a Radius Rocket helped, and color (plus a modem, and NCSA Mosaic) opened a new gateway to the world.

Sadly, I was swept up in the PC tide in later years of my career, but I was thrilled and honored to be present at the birth of this amazing technology. Apple still rocks, and I hope they can maintain their momentum in the absence of their visionary leader. (No, he's not gone yet but there will come a day,) and the company deserves to continue building on its vision - we need alternatives to Windows!

Happy Birthday, Apple!