The Broke Tech

One thing that people know about me is that I rarely throw out anything that has anything to do with technology. Old hard drives, DDR2 RAM, an old computer tower from the Windows 98 era…I keep it all. Partially because I don't want to make the e-waste situation worse, but also because you never know what will come in handy in the future. Most of it doesn’t work, and keeping it doesn’t really do much other than take up space and cause dust, but I can never quite bring myself to throw out old tech. Call it a quirk of mine. A few days ago, I decided to go through my old USBs and see what I could find on them. I have a small container full of them; well over twenty. Some simply refused to respond after plugging them in and one’s casing came apart as I made to do so. I found plenty of old photos (some of which embarrassed me greatly!) and some early writing works which, honestly, made me cringe something horrid. And then I came across a folder full of ISOs I’d previously downloaded on a...

When working with Linux, there are some terms and abbreviations that you may come across that, to a novice user, may seem confusing. To help you on your Linux journey, I've compiled a brief list below of terms that you may come across while working with the system, and their corresponding meanings. A Apt  - Advance Packaging Tool; a package management system for Debian based systems that allows for a user to manage software packages B Bash  - Bourne Again Shell; the default shell for Linux that allows users to communicate with the system via typed commands (think MS-DOS) Binaries  - A non-readable file that can only be interpreted by machines Boot Manager  - A software utility that is shown during startup which allows the user to select which operating system, or distribution, that they wish to boot C CD  - Change Directory; allows the user to navigate to a new folder within the file system via the terminal Config -  Configuration File; refers to any file t...

Open Source  You may have already heard the term open source in relation to technology - but what does it mean? Everyone has heard of software such as Microsoft Office. To obtain and use such a program, users must pay a fee, and the program coding is not something that anyone other than those who developed Microsoft Office is privy to. The act of copying the program without the licence key and distribution it could result in legal trouble. Conversely, open source software is the opposite: the source code is available to anyone to use, modify or distribute it at no cost. We can trace open source software back to the early 1980s, when computer scientist Richard M. Stallman launched a project called GNU. At the time, the goal was to provide a replacement for the UNIX operating system, a system that was developed in the late 1960s. Furthering his cause of allowing computer users technological freedom, Stallman then went on to start the Free Software Foundation in 1985. Stallman’s missi...

I've always loved technology, though I must admit that, as a child, I didn't really understand it. There was just something about tech that drew my interest. In the 90s, tech was very different to how it is now. My first computer wasn't a computer at all, but a word processor. No, that wasn't anything to do with Microsoft Word, but rather, a device that was dedicated to that function only . Think something like MS-DOS, a command line interface with nothing else. The second computer my family had boasted only 32mb of RAM. Yes, I am that old. Even though I had absolutely no clue how any of it worked, I was interested. Not just in computers, but technology on the whole. How did the VHS player know how to read the VHS? How did the TV send and receive signals? I remember, when I was around 10 or so, my uncle took apart my grandparents VHS player and I saw the circuit board. I wondered how this strange thing made it all work!  My professional journey, however, didn't star...