Daily Archives: 14. July 2012

There’s going to be a movie about “Steve Jobs” called “JOBS”. (everyone should Get a J0b!) well maybe not. Well he should know about the 70′s since he was in “That 70′s Show”. I haven’t been alive that long so I can’t tell you anything about life before I was born in 1960. It is, according to what I’ve seen causing a big stir at Steve Jobs original “Apple” location where they did Apple I and such.

“The film crew working on the movie about the first four decades of Steve Jobs’ life, called jOBS, started setting up at the home today where Apple’s co-founder grew up in Silicon Valley.

The modest ranch-style home in Los Altos, California, already a mecca for tech tourists who journey to visit the garage where Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple, is getting “staged” so that it looks as it would have in the ‘50s – ‘70s during Jobs’ formative years, a member of the production team said today.”

* From – http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2012/06/05/on-location-steve-jobs-the-movie-comes-to-town/

* Maybe Forbes can make some money out of this? and get that yacht that I worked on one time moving again?

* They got a shot of Ashton Kutcher out there …

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/entertainment&id=8699247

hopefully he can do better than he is at “Two and Half Men” replacing “Winning!” – Charlie Sheen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_and_a_Half_Men

* But who cares about all of that media politics? Who started the Microcomputer revolution? And the answer is … A lot of people. Standing on the shoulders of giants as they say. The Pirates of Silicon Valley as some say. It was a lot of (supposedly) magical things … but it was lot of Good Luck on the part of the supposed pirates. “In the right place at the right time” dot com. And apparently taking the right actions.

* I started looking at this whole thing again … because I continue to try and be vigilant regarding the new IPv6 thing and I’ve been looking again at my methods of brushing up on Hexadecimal and such … and I keep going back to my little bit of work on the Z80pack – Imsaisim – Imsai 8080 Sim for Linux and what I did in re-writing Lawrence Wright’s program for that Sim in z80 (vs original 8080) to be re-loadable on that sim. I did a lot more with that – not on the level of Bill Gates or Paul Allen or the guys at Apple in the day or now … but enough to get my brain warm with Hex and such and core programming. A little respect … for what those that have gone before have done. (I did this also in my younger days a little bit with Atari 800/XL assembly language programming)

Anyway I want to appreciate what we’ve got, how we got here, and hopefully know how to go forward (Including IPv5 coming out live now) and be able to handle next-generation networks onboard sail and motor yachts – as well as the occasional project on land.

—

73 de KA4UDX,

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFiYacht.net

+1 954 683 3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

A question came up on Youtube.com – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDGYIUZMbuY about why the old Imsai 8080 Computer used a big power transformer and beer can sized capacitors in its power supply.

Before answering that comment I went looking for Computer Power Supply History and found this:

http://www.arcfn.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-revolutionize-power.html

This seems to be a very good article on Computer Power Supply History even though it starts out countering claims by Steve Jobs that the Switching Power Supply in the Apple II was revolutionary. It goes on to explain that switching power supplies have been around for a LONG TIME … but the bottom line being that the jump to transistors that could handle the Line Voltage (110vAC?) directly without a power transformer was the biggest.

The comments below the article were also interesting (including one back from the article author) – I liked #4 comment about Power Waste as Heat and Efficiency … complete with the pertinent calculations.

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFiYacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

“I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”

%%% Steve Jobs, from Walter Isaacson’s biography.

 * Alan says: That quote from Steve Jobs is interesting to me because of similarities to myself. I had a photo of myself tagged (written by hand on the back or was it the front? I’ve got to find that photo again) by my mother for me as being “A politician”. I don’t remember what got written for my two brothers … but it was supposed to be sort of a prediction of what her sons would become. That picture was probably 30 years ago.

I also liked electronics and communications, and especially electronics that facilitated or performed the function of communicating. I was inspired by my grandfather who had been in the electrical field (Edison Electric Co. Chicago) and radio field (supposedly had his own radio shop and built radios, though I never saw that in person.) My grandfather did give me the radio “bug” and he showed many radio and communications things to me and my brothers. We were fascinated by his reel-to-reel tape recorder among other things. My grandfather gave me an old shortwave radio – it was a tube type receiver with the “XX Meter Band”‘s marked on it. I remember listening to HCJB - Quito, Ecuador among other signals such as VOA – Voice of America. I went in the Navy at 17 as a Signalman (Flags, Semaphore, Morse Code by Light) and also qualified on my own as a Radioman. I did perform a health-and-welfare communications role onboard ship during my last year by activating a SSB Radio based system (Navy MARS) that allowed Radio-Telephone “Patch” Calls for the officers and crew. But I don’t know if I did that more as a humanities thing or for the pure enjoyment of being able to operate the ships powerful radio transmitter and receiver equipment. I did enjoy both the human goodwill and the radio – electronics part of it.

I like to think of myself as a person that, through my work in computer and communications consulting, brings down to earth (in laymans terms)the technologies involved in computers and communications (ala “The Internet” and “Voice Telephony” these days.) I have a love for providing documentation and learning and knowing how stuff works and passing that on to friend and customers. I like to know at least a moderate if not a great deal about how computers and communications devices work. I also like fashioning better ways of doing things, easier to use, and to my benefit easier to support. Anyway I’m not Steve Jobs … but I am Alan Spicer.

—

[end]