h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My next quest is to find the meaning, to: Life-The Universe-And Everything!Learning to type?Nooo thats too scary-wheres that pool?


Hey i hope you find time to stretch out on the beach too!?

Oh, that's easy. It's 42. But they still haven't found the actual question, have they? If you find out what it is, let me know

Learning to touch-type seems a sensible mission. I'm a bit of an old crock now and can't do many things very fast any more. The one thing that I can do faster than anyone else I know, is type. They might all be able to beat me to the cake and biscuits, but I can type rubbish faster than any of them

Well, if your pool has dried up for the moment, I'm going to have wait - or think of some way to generate another rosy glow

I have just been playing about with a couple of wordprocessors, trying to do what i just did in "w*rd", , no it is a nightmare doing anything like that in the other two, one is open software one is M$ W*rks .

By the way: i wasnt trying to recreate, or recapture that rosy glow: just interested-in case i had missed something.

Well i can type reasonably fast now with two fingers so does that mean i am a qaurter of the way there? I did try learning to type , i think it would be a very valuable thing indeed30 or 40 words per minute would make be life changing!

ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF ........;LKJ ;LKJ ;LKJ ;LKJ .........

.....................*Now what did i do with my rosy glow.........................


Ive cracked it again:














I found ma wosy grow-..............................

Did I get the wrong impression about the form you were doing? Did I go off on the wrong tack, talking about "ask" fields and macros? It sounds, from what you say, as though you just wanted to make a straight-forward form template where the operator finds their own way round the cells of a table and fills them all manually. No database or anything lurking in the background. If so, sorry to have confused the issue for you. Re the other wordprocessors you're trying out, I don't know them, but they'll probably allow you to do the same sort of thing, if you can just discover how. A friend of mine used to hate MS Excel because she was used to Lotus 123 and couldn't get Excel to do the same things in the same way. Different packages work differently and take some getting used to if you're not familiar with them. Probably saves time if you get to know just one really well, rather than fiddling around with several and not getting to know any of them very well. But it depends how much time you have to spare and how much you enjoy fiddling, I suppose

It'll speed you up in a very pleasing way if you learn to touch-type. You've found the "home keys" okay, so you know where your mitts are in relation to the keyboard. I guess you know about the little bumps on keys F and J, that tell where your index fingers should be hovering? If you're going to do it (and I think you should give it a go), it would be better to do it sooner than later. All the time you're hammering away with two fingers, you're consolidating a bad habit that'll be difficult to break once you start doing it the proper way. If you think 30 or 40 words per minute would be an improvement, just think how chuffed you'll feel with yourself when you get up to 70. You'll be glowing like a beacon

Yes i am sure you are right, and i will have to start sooner; thanks!
I only wanted to do something very simple , so it seemed to me, but as i dont use a word processor on a regular basis( i still scribble away on bits of paper i find it more convenient than using more a two finger tap ( come to think of it i am nearly as quick with my two finger than with my pen or pencil ), i am interested in the history of computing in general and have got a few old bits of software myself, the old ones seem to have better manuals but less features, but ( and i know its out of date now, but ) i would like to get to grips with " Wordstar " i have read of a few and it seems to suite the way i think and write.
Tibley: you are a beacon of hope.

Let me know how you get on with the typing

I can see the attraction of using pen and paper. They don't stop functioning and lose all your work just because of a little power cut or computer crash. There's a lot to be said for low-tech.

Wordstar eh? That rings bells for me. It wasn't the first wp software I used - about the 4th I reckon. Before DOS even. Ran under CP/M. It was lovely. I even taught it for a while, working for a computer retailer. Last time I used it (1988/9ish) was on a dear old Apricot computer with a 20mb hard drive. There was Wordstar, DBase, SuperCalc and Sage on the computer (I think it was still running under CP/M even then). Everything I needed. Never went wrong. Never got an error message or a freeze up. There were no computer viruses. Those were the days of reliable computing. Oh yes, and they came with proper manuals with pages and everything. How nice to know someone's still interested in those solid old packages. What elderly software have you been playing with, apart from Wordstar?

Well i am only just starting; i have collected a few bits of old software, but the one i am starting on is Locoscript (?)on an old Amstrad pcw, i am gonna be playing with cp/m you see(aswell as DOS, one day Linux or some other unixlike).

I love it solid is right, switch on switch off and no crashing or slowing under the strain.

But like i said i am new to even M$ Wind*ws too; really-with all this gui business i find it hard to actually conceptualize what its all about. You know you can sit in the most advanced of modern cars and have at least some idea of what makes th machine tick-without being a mechanic, or being able to build cars : right?
Its kinda like that.
I like the history of the micro, cp/m etc, facinating, but i only have a passing interest in such things , i am no technical whizz-only wish i had payed attention in my physics lessons at school(actually i done computer studies too-boy my mind was surely somewhere else lol).

Yes i will let you know how i get along, i think learning to type will make learning alot of other things easier and fun, so i will get back on that now.Yes i noticed the little bumps on the home row.

asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj
asdfg ;lkjh asdfg ;lkjh asdfg ;lkjh

Will have to get my act together!

Wow, there you go again, taking me on a stroll down Memory Lane. LocoScript. I didn't really use it myself, but one of my old employers bought an Amstrad some time after I left and they called me in a couple of times and give the new secretary some lessons - which just entailed my reading the manual and then sitting next to the young lady and directing her until she got the hang of it. It was a long time ago - must be about 17 years, but I seem to remember it was a pretty good manual and the software was nice and easy to use.

A thing that made the old software so much easier than some of the modern gui/oop stuff, was that it wasn't constantly trying to intuit what the user was trying to do - and getting it way way wrong. You'd have your word-processing, spreadsheet and database packages and their manuals and you'd learn to use them. The software manufacturer wasn't badgering and haranguing you to get the annual upgrade to the next version (that didn't do anything you couldn't already do with the old version) with all the new bells, bugs and whistles. Once you knew how to use WordStar or LocoScript, that was it. You could get on with your job and not have to waste acres of time messing about with nonsense that only added to your headaches and the profits of the software manufacturers. I can't remember ever wishing that I could telephone a software support call centre and navigate my way through a labyrinthine telephone menu, listen to rotten music and adverts and eventually talk to someone who couldn't understand me or didn't, in any case, know the answer to my software question and just resorted to the standard "uninstall/reinstall" non-solution.

As you say, they were easier to understand too. Written in a nice, straight-forward procedural language, line by line, not too far removed from plain English. And they weren't huge, wobbly and unreliable. Those 4 packages I mentioned all sat together on a 20mb hard drive, with plenty of space left on the disc to spare. I doubt you'd find a wordprocessor, spreadsheet, database or accounts package that would fit into that biteage if it had the whole thing to itself today.

You seem to have completed lesson one: "The Home Keys"