Friday, August 12, 2011

30 Years of the IBM PC


via what's new now
“The IBM PC was launched 30 years ago today…”
Read the rest here.

The Old Man of the Lake


pointed out by my son
“About 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, a volcano named Mount Mazama, located in present-day Oregon, erupted, leaving behind a big crater.  Over time, water from rain and snowfall filled the hole, and Crater Lake was born.  And Crater Lake is not like most other lakes.  As seen here from above, it is a deep, undisturbed blue, having no natural rivers leading in or out of it, no fish indigenous to it (although it has since been artificially stocked), etc.  Over the course of 250 years, its water -- cold, due to the elevation (at 6,148 feet, Crater Lake is over a mile above sea level) -- is replaced via an ongoing cycle of evaporation and precipitation. But what makes Crater Lake truly unique is a solitary piece of wood, pictured right, nicknamed the Old Man of the Lake…’
Read the rest here.

The @-symbol


via shady characters
“Like the ampersand, the ‘@’ symbol is not strictly a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a logogram or grammalogue, a shorthand for the word ‘at’. Even so, it is as much a staple of modern communication as the semicolon or exclamation mark, punctuating email addresses and announcing Twitter usernames. Unlike the ampersand, though, whose journey to the top took two millennia of steady perseverance, the at symbol’s current fame is quite accidental. It can, in fact, be traced to the single stroke of a key made almost exactly four decades ago…”
Read the rest here, and a bit more here. Part 2 of the series can be found here.