Hotsolder - Electronics & Other Geeky Pursuits: August 2006

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Learn a Human Language

I know upwards of 2 dozen computer languages to some degree of proficiency, but I'm ashamed to say I've always wanted to learn another human language other than English, but have never done so. The U.S. Government's Foreign Service Institute has free public domain language courses for Spanish, Cantonese, Greek, Turkish, French, and other languages.

Someone has taken the time to get these courses on the Web and you can find them at http://fsi-language-courses.com.

Labels: education

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Apollo Project

I often wonder if big projects have become harder to run in the modern world. Surely, I always think, the Apollo project didn't have all these problems and issues that we face every day. Apparently not.

http://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html

Labels: old computer

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Saturday, August 19, 2006

A Square Root the Hard Way

Ever wonder how simple computers compued square roots? Sure you can do the Newton approximation, but for some old computers even that would be hard to code.

Now thanks to http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/mathcomp/bjsdir/ENIACSquareRoot.htm you can read how the Einac computed 2 times the square root of a number using just a few simple types of calculations.

Makes you appreciate a modern computer.

Labels: old computer