Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

The Best Keyboard Ever Made (Updated x2)

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My first computer—at least, my first serious computer (the used Apple II Plus I played around with for a while doesn’t really count)—was an IBM PC-AT I got from my parents when they upgraded to a Tandy 486. The PC-AT had an 80286 processor running at a whopping 6mhz, had 1mb of RAM, and ran MS-DOS 5.22. It was on that computer that I learned many of the skills that stick with me to this day. At the time I longed for one of those fancy new Windows machines, since all my friends had Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), but I am very glad to this day that I cut my teeth on an old-fashioned command-line based system. Being comfortable with telling a computer what to do with a keyboard comes in very handy, especially when working with Linux or utilizing the advanced functions of a Mac or Windows machine.

Even if you’re not an old CLI-jockey like me, the keyboard is one part of the computer that gets nearly constant use. It’s the part you actually touch the most. Despite its important role in computing, the keyboard is often an afterthought—both to the manufacturers who produce them at the lowest possible cost using the cheapest possible components, and to the users that seem content with whatever keyboard came with the machine.

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Obama to be Presumptive Democratic Nominee (Updated)

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Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has won a majority of available delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Obama will likely be facing Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the November general election. McCain has been the presumptive Republican nominee since gaining a delegate majority in March.

The Associated Press reported this morning that Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) would concede the Democratic Nomination in the race for the Presidency to Obama this evening, however Clinton has not yet conceded the race and does not intend to do so today.

Obama is the first African American to win a major party nomination for the United States Presidency and, if elected, would be the first non-white president.

Update 6/9/2007: While I have left the original entry intact, as a matter of policy I will no longer refer to Senator Obama as an ‘African American’. Obama is, in fact, biracial. His father is Kenyan; his mother is an American of European descent. Thus, Obama is properly neither ‘white’ nor ‘black’. He is both. This does not change the historic nature of his presumptive nomination, as he remains the first minority or biracial person to win a major party nomination and, if elected, he would still be the first non-white president. That said, referring to Senator Obama as ‘black’ or ‘African American’ is at-worst inaccurate, and at-best incomplete.

[As an aside, this issue is fairly important to me, since Melissa and I are a biracial couple and any biological children we may have in the future would be biracial—half European American, half Chinese American. The media should not favor one part of a person’s racial makeup over another, and neither should biracial or multiracial individuals.]

Photos from Harrisburg, PA

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Hello from Harrisburg, PA! Melissa and I are celebrating our third anniversary by visiting the Pennsylvania state capital and nearby Hershey, Pennsylvania, for an extended (4-day) weekend. We drove up yesterday to the hotel (which is in Harrisburg) and have enjoyed a day of visiting Indian Echo Caverns, checking out the sights here in downtown Harrisburg, and having a fancy-schmancy celebratory dinner at The Forebay.

Tomorrow we’re planning to visit the Hershey Gardens, the Hershey Museum, Hershey Chocolate World, and finally the Hershey Park amusement park. Should be fun. In the mean time, read on to see bunch of pictures from here in downtown Harrisburg.

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Remembering ‘Black Tuesday’ (and the ‘Right of Return’)

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Today was the anniversary of one of the most vicious conquests in history—the fall of Constantinople (and the Byzantine Empire) to the Ottomans on May 29, 1453.

On this day in 1453, the conquerers were extraordinarily brutal. Historian Steven Runciman notes that the Muslim soldiers “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit.” (The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.)

What’s incredible about this, if you ask me, is the Muslim double-standard. One of the central arguments of the Palestinian side of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that Palestinians who left (willingly, mostly) during the foundation of modern Israel should have a ‘right of return’ to come back to the property they abandoned in the 1950s. Okay; I’m willing to entertain that notion. But then the Christians descended from those who left the Byzantine Empire when it fell to Muslim invaders in 1453 have a ‘right of return’ too. Turnabout is fair play, right.

Read more about this history, and its modern context, via this informative entry at Jihad Watch.

Firefox Download Day 2008

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I blogged last week about the Haiku Code Drive 2008, which was a cool way to support a great open source project but, as much as I love Haiku, it’s not a production product today. If you’re looking for a way to support an open source project that provides an immediate benefit (without opening your checkbook), then maybe Firefox Download Day 2008 is for you instead.

Firefox, of course, is the excellent open source web browser from Mozilla and it has been my primary web browser for some time. It’s fast, reliable, standards-compliant, extensible, and compatible with almost every platform you can imagine (even really obscure ones). For a few months now, I’ve been using betas and release-candidates of the upcoming Firefox 3, which will be released in the coming weeks.

So how does the Firefox team intend to celebrate Firefox 3 (and get some media attention)? By attempting to set a world record for downloads over a 24-hour period! Click the link, pledge your support, and when the release date comes give it a download (or six) to help them set the record.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.