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Corrin and I dropped some stuff off at Goodwill the other day, and when we were looking around inside I made an amazing find.  For only two dollars, I purchased a pop-up book describing the internals of a 1980’s PC!  I’ve uploaded pictures of most of the book.  I left out a few of the more boring features, such as opening a floppy disk to see the mylar disc inside.  Sorry about the datestamps - I always forget to turn them off.

This pop-up computer greets you when you first open the book.  The text on screen says “Insert disk and close door.”  When you do, the text changes to a welcome message describing the purpose of the book.

When the tab at the bottom is pulled, the M key is depressed and the binary signal sent by the keyboard is shown.  The next two pictures are a binary and an ASCII decoder that are also on this page.

This page doesn’t have any interesting interactions.  There is a chip in a pocket on the opposing page that can be placed in the slots on the lower right.

The disc can be slid in, showing how it lines up with the read/write heads.

This is one of my favorite pages.  The electron ray is made of string, and pixels appear behind it as it shoots down the scan line.

This is the last page of the book.  Pulling the tab on the right moves the print head across the screen to reveal the word “Goodbye.”

Inside the Personal Computer: An Illustrated Introduction in 3 Dimensions on Amazon

Books by Sharon Gallagher - This Amazon search might find you some better priced copies than the one linked to above. It is only sold through Amazon partners, and they all seem to enter it in a little differently.

Welcome, StumbleUpon, reddit, Gizmodo and anyone else who ends up here!  If you liked this post, you might like the Most Expensive Pop-Up Books post I just made.

jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ echo “test” > blah
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ echo “foo” > “-v”
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep foo *
test
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep test *
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ echo “foo” > bar
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep test *
bar:foo
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep foo *
blah:test

Now try fixing it.  -v is the verbose flag for pretty much anything.

If you buy Hello Kitty computer accessories, they will break. I discovered this while helping Corrin build a Hello Kitty computer. (Pictures are coming soon, I swear!)  Even though I’m writing a terrible review about how they’ll break, feel free to buy them on Amazon anyway!  I earn referral fees! :)

	Speakers: The speakers were incredibly cute, and didn’t sound terrible, but one of them didn’t work so we had to return them.Hello Kitty Speakers on Amazon
	Keyboard: The keyboard was a bit flaky for quite a while, and eventually completely failed.  Unforunately it failed outside of the return period.Hello Kitty Keyboard on Amazon
	Mouse: The mouse looks great with the decorations on the case.  However, it was poorly manufactured so a spring in the battery case doesn’t touch the battery.  If I cant pop it to where it needs to be, we’ll have to return it as well.  However, the mouse does have a decent warranty, unlike the other products.  Repairs in the first 90 days are free, and after that are $10.Hello Kitty Wireless Mouse on Amazon

I recently set up a few Ubuntu servers at work, and for some reason they would ask for the Ubuntu CD instead of looking online for new packages.  The fix is easy, but there aren’t any good hits high on Google so I’m putting this out here to help other people looking to solve the same problem.

All you need to do is edit /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the entry for the cd drive.

This file contains a list of all the repositories apt-get will check for packages.  The top entry is will look something like “deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server….”.  Comment it out by adding a “#” to the front of the line.

Corrin’s keyboard for the Hello Kitty computer I built her has been acting really flaky.  Wiggling the cable would make it work better sometimes, but not always.  I opened it up today, and found out just how cheaply it had been made.  Instead of the traditional rubber membrane backing the keys, it used two sheets of flimsy plastic with traces on them, and individual rubber pieces for all of the keys.  There were posts designed to prevent strain on the cable, but whoever assembled it didn’t actually wrap the cord around through them properly.  I recommend staying away from this keyboard at all costs.  Corrin is probably going to have to replace hers, and if she can’t get a warranty replacement, we’ll probably just look for a pink keyboard that can be decorated with Hello Kitty.

I don’t see that keyboard on Amazon any more, but there are a few different styles out there, so maybe you can find one that works better.

I’ve been helping my friend Corrin build a Hello Kitty computer. Once it is complete, I’ll post pictures of the whole setup.

The keyboard:

It is hard to tell from this picture, but the keys have Japanese and English characters on them. It has a bunch of buttons for controlling media playback at the top.
Hello Kitty Keyboard at Amazon

The speakers:

You need to see these in person to realize just how cute they are. The computer isn’t all put together yet, so I haven’t been able to test the sound quality.

Hello Kitty Speakers at Amazon

The mouse:

The only Hello Kitty themed mice seemed like they would be awkward to use, so we picked this mouse instead. All of the clear parts glow white, and it looks really cool.

Glowing Pink Mouse on Amazon

The case:

There aren’t any Hello Kitty cases, but Raidmax makes this great looking pink case. We replaced the cheap power supply that came with it. The case itself seems really nice, with plenty of room inside. It has covers that go over your optical drives so you can use any color drive you want and still have it look pink. The picture looks a bit lighter than the case really is. It is actually closer to the color of the mouse, so everything matches pretty well.

Pink Case on Amazon

Decoration:

To make the case Hello Kitty themed, we’re considering using these stickers. They are designed for walls, but should look great on the case as well.

Hello Kitty Wall Stickers on Amazon

Once we get everything together, I’ll post pictures of the final product. Right now we’re waiting on a replacement motherboard. The one we bought was dead on arrival.