I’ve been using computer’s for a long time. Longer than I have a clear memory of that’s for sure. When I was a kid and I first saw Penny from Inspector Gadget’s notebook computer, I become obsessed with what computers could do for us.

Computers were expensive and my parents didn’t have a ton of money so I was destined to be behind the curve of technology by a few years. Luckily my father was a obsessed garage saler, every Saturday and Sunday we would be up at the crack of dawn getting to sales before everyone else, even knocking on doors and waking people up before they even started. He was a shrewd negotiator and we managed to pick up PC’s that were usually only 1 or two years behind market at bargain prices.

Coloeco Adam – 1987

This was my first exposure to computers, I was pretty young at the time. I mostly just figured out how to launch games and played Zaxxon on tape. I was always mystified by the tape system Coleco used. The machine generated a “surge of electromagnetic energy” when it booted up and any tapes in the drive could be damaged, so you couldn’t leave any tapes in when you started it. I remember trying to write my first program in SmartBasic and not having much luck.

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

Comodore 64 – 1989

This was the system that really got me into computers. It was the first time I was wowed by technology and I have a lot of great memories with my C64. As I mentioned my father was an avid garage saler and over the many years I used my C64 I collected about 5-6000 disks from garage sales. I could spend days pouring over my library of games, software, and demos trying random programs. It was great fun.

I didn’t do much programing on the C64, I mostly used the system for gaming, and occasionally making cool banners with Print Shop. I experienced my first truly engaging gaming experience on the C64 with Ultima V. At the time that game seemed hold unlimited possibilities, going back and playing it again I can barely play it.

The first digital music I ever heard was on a C64, it’s funny to think now, but at the time it totally blew my mind that you could use a computer to listen to music! I managed to find the demo of kung foo fighting that blew my mind and uploaded it to youtube. Hilarious in retrospect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rN-Mwblqbw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Print_Shop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

Atari ST – 1989

I didn’t actually own a Atari ST, but my best friend at the time Shawn had one. I remember being very impressed by the window based UI, more advanced games, and super functional mouse. I had a mouse for my C64, but support was very spotty and it never seemed to work well. I spent a lot of time with his Atari, mostly playing Dungeon Master.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_%28video_game%29

Tandy 1000 HX – 1990

My first exposure to Microsoft. MS-DOS initially seemed like a step back in computer interfaces. However after a year or so of tinkering and after countless hours of messing around I managed to get MS-DOS 5.0 loaded up on this thing and things started to make more sense. This was a much more business oriented machine than anything else I had in the past, it didn’t even have a color monitor, at the time I thought it was pretty silly that it didn’t hook up to a TV.

One of my best experiences with this system I had involved the DOS version of tetris I has for this machine written by Alexey Pazhitnov and Dmitry Pavlovsky. It was a really weird easter egg where if you hit some key combination I’ve since forgot, it brought up this weird looking russian looking spreadsheet. At the time I was like 9 or 10 years old and thought I had discovered some secret spy shit, documents being transported to america secretly hidden in games. It was pretty exciting at the time. The easter egg is mentioned on a bunch of sites, but it appears as it’s never been publicly recorded.

http://vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000#Tandy_1000_HX

IBM Clone w/ i386SX – 1992

This when things started to get real computer wise for me. This was my first current computer and also the first computer my family ever bought new and current. I’m pretty sure they looked at it as an investment in my future (thanks folks) because it was quite expensive (2000$).

I think it took me 2 or three months before I discovered the local BBS scene and was completely hooked. Using the computer to interact directly with other people was the tipping point for me, I became completely obsessed. This was the point at which computers become a creation tool vs a consumption tool for me. I did a lot of great things with this computer, made a lot of great art, met a lot of great friends, it was a total world opener for me.

Stay tuned for Part II.

So there’s two ways you can go about displaying blocks on your site.

• You can use the excellent contexts module which will allow you to create smart contexts within your site and basically do what I’m going to explain below with no PHP code.
• You write php code in your block display textarea to get what you want to show up. You might do this if you’re doing something simple or you don’t want the added complexity of installing context.

So if you’re writing php code it’s a pain to get all the different conditions right so I’m going to outline most of the major things you would want to do. First off you’re going to want to set up the condition, depending on if you want the block to display by default and have a condition that prevents it from displaying or if you want the block hidden by default and displayed if a condition is met.

//set default no or yes
$match = FALSE;
//condition goes here
return $match;

Next you’re going to want to add some conditions where I indicated above. Here’s how to display a block based on content type:

//match article type
$types = array('content_type' => 1);
if (arg(0) == 'node' && is_numeric(arg(1))) {
  $nid = arg(1);
  $node = node_load(array('nid' => $nid));
  $type = $node->type;
  if (isset($types[$type])) {
    $match = TRUE;
  }
}

Here’s how to display a block based on vocabulary ID on a term page:

//check for a vid
if ( ((arg(0) == 'taxonomy')
     && (arg(1) == 'term')
     && is_numeric(arg(2))
     && ($term = taxonomy_get_term(arg(2)))
     && ($term->vid == 7 )) ) {
         $match = TRUE;
}

Here’s how to display a block based on a URL:

//videos page check
if(arg(0) == 'videos'){return false;}

Here’s how to display a block based on the taxonomy term hierarchical level on a term page:

//is this is a taxonomy page
if (arg(0) == 'taxonomy')
{ $match = TRUE;}

//taxonomy level
if (arg(0) == 'taxonomy'){
  $term_parents = taxonomy_get_parents_all(arg(2));
  
  //highest level
  if(count($term_parents) == 1){
    $match = TRUE;
  }
  //second level
  if(count($term_parents) == 2){
    $match = TRUE;
  }
  //third level
  if(count($term_parents) == 3){
    $match = TRUE;
  }
}

I’ll be posting some more block display rules in the near future.

no two nations with a McDonald’s franchise have ever gone to war with one another – Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention. http://bit.ly/192jYC

Inspired by a post I seen over on Neutron Creations I decided to write about why I love E TextEditor.

E TextEditor is what you would call a clone of TextMate. I personally feel it has a number of compelling features above what TextMate offers, not that it even matters because they are not available for the same platforms. I often get asked what I use as a development environment so here goes.

TextMate Bundles

E TextEditor is compatible with most Textmate bundles. These lovely little bundles are super great. They provide a ton of functionality at the press of a key. Why TestMate? over at Neutron Creations does a great job of going over some of the great bundles that are available. You can install and maintain these bundles from right in E.

Quick Keyboard Based File Navigation

Getting to my files is super important, it’s something I do dozens of times a day minimum. E allows you to jump within open tabs quickly using a great popup.

You can use a very similar interface to jump to any file open or not within your whole project.

You can even find any word within any file in your project and jump directly to it with the Find in Files Addon.

Personal Revision

Want the power of a RCS but don’t want to through the trouble of setting a new repository up for small files and other little things. E has a personal revision control system that allows you to commit any file to revision control, track, revert, use commit messages etc.

Branching Undo

I hate loosing data, I abhor having to re-type anything even one line. Using E’s branching revision history it’s literally impossible to loose any data to your buffer. You can go back in time, traverse down a change set to where you had some data and easily pull it back into your current stream. This was hugely impressive to me when I started using it, I couldn’t imagine living without it now.

Tiling Buffers

And finally this is the thing I couldn’t live without that I think gives E a leg up on TextMate. You can easily tile your files in any configuration you want, allowing you to edit more than one file at a time.

So despite having an incredibly awkward name, I E is an amazing TextEditor, one of the best in the Windows Platform.