27 April 23

Here's a cable-tailed mouse jumping (with cheese) near a keyboard to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the date (in 1981) often said to be the introduction of the computer mouse, as part of the Xerox 8010 Star system. The history of the mouse is quite complicated, with attempts to use all sorts of materials and motion-detection technologies. But it was the combination of the mouse and the graphical user interfaee that made the Apple Macintosh so revolutionary with its introduction in 1984. I like my happy mouse.

29 October 21

This is the 52nd anniversary of the first successful transmission of a text message through a computer network. That message was the letters "l" and "o." As told in Wikipedia, “The first successful message on the ARPANET [a precursor to the Internet] was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 pm PST on 29 October 1969 (6:30 UTC on 30 October 1969), from Boelter Hall 3420. Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word 'login'; on an earlier attempt the l and the o letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was 'lo.' About an hour later, after the programmers repaired the code that caused the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full login.” The computer terminals used in 1969 had no mice or color monitors; those developments would take another 25 years.

27 April 20

My calendar shows 27 April 1981 as the date for the introduction of the computer mouse. What's true is that Xerox PARC marketed a personal computer in 1981 with the novelty of a cable-connected mouse. It's difficult to click on a precise date for the invention of the computer mouse, because the historical tale involves several different approaches and mechanisms. My tie shows a cartoon mouse holding a chunk of Swiss cheese near a computer keyboard, and the mouse has a very long tail that looks like a cable. On the monitor atop the desktop box, the display shows a round of cheese floating in midair, and above the monitor is a long row of 3-1/2 inch "floppy" diskettes.

29 October 18

Today is the 49th anniversary of the first successful electronic message! It was sent from a computer at UCLA to a host system at Stanford. The word being sent was "login" but the first attempt failed after the first two letters. An hour later, after fixing the programming, the whole word was received. The handwritten log shown below records the triumphant result. The mouse on my tie clearly likes the cheese on the monitor, but I'm not sure he cares about the floppy disks floating overhead.

23 August 17

Happy Birthday, World Wide Web! On this date in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee opened to the public a computer network that used "URL" addresses and "HTML" protocols to transfer data. Your Firefox or Chrome or Safari browser depends on what Berners-Lee and others started 26 years ago. At our home, I believe our Amazon Echo® is the smallest device connected to the Internet, which is the backbone for the World Wide Web. My tie shows a very happy mouse (with a cable for his tail, plugged into the keyboard) watching cheese floating in space on his computer monitor.

26 October 15

With no special occasion for 26 October, I'm taking the chance to wear a computer-related tie that hasn't been seen since 2014. I'll also mention that October is National Toilet Tank Repair Month, National Window Covering Safety Month, Rhubarb Month, and Spinach Lovers' Month. See a "complete" (?) list of such celebrations at http://nationaldaycalendar.com/.

26 June 14

On this date in 1284, the "Pied Piper" lured 130 children away from Hamelin, Germany, when the city refused to reward him for removing rats and stopping a plague. At least that's how the legend goes! I like this happy rodent on my tie.

8 October 13

Just another day in Information Technology . . . Time for another tie not worn since 2010!

23 March 10

Today I am part of a panel presenting details about EKU's information infrastructure to a philosophy class! The course is based on the theme "EKU After People," and is taught by Dr. Laura Newhart. The class was inspired by the History Channel's series "Life After People," which traces through imagination the events that would ensue if people disappeared. Our own panel's focus is to describe how long various components of our infrastructure would survive, and what choices might be made "now" to affect what we will leave behind about ourselves. While clearly far-fetched, thinking about "life without people" brings up powerful questions about many personal and social decisions about living here and now.

27 April 09

Wikipedia reports that it was on 27 April 1981 that Xerox PARC introduced the first computer mouse. Other mechanical input devices had been around since 1965, but it was Apple's first Macintosh in 1984 that proved the commercial success of letting people drive rodents around their desktops. Today I'm at a statewide conference on learning management systems where I'm supposed to wear a name tag.

9 July 08

Time for yet another computer-related tie. July 9, 1971 marks the birthday of Marc Andreessen, the primary developer of Netscape which was the dominant Web browser from 1994 through about 2000. Although the Netscape brand name has now disappeared, Andreessen's fundamental technology lives on in today's most robust browser, Mozilla Firefox.