In the Beginning was the Command Line is a short book by Neal Stephenson that's available for download. It considers the evolution of operating systems over the years and is a great read for anyone who wants to know why computers are so damn hard to use and why that's a good thing. Or something. It's free. Read it.This was the first post to randomWalks, made one year ago. Check out the rest of the first edition here.
I created randomWalks mostly as an excuse to post my links open windows code and expose once and for all my sloppy design skills so that people would quit expecting better things from me. I've had a lot of fun working on it and I hope the dozen+ people I've roped into posting take some pleasure in it too. The most interesting thing I've discovered about myself through rW is that I do a better job keeping the site up when I have steady work -- who would have guessed? Whether that's because applying myself to work inspires me to apply myself to other things, or because I'm being paid ungodly amounts of money to surf the web all day is unclear; further experimentation will be required.
What other trivia can I bore you with on this momentous occasion? In case you haven't noticed (I sometimes forget myself) there's now a parallel blog called randomWalks discourse which was conceived in a fit of confusion but has evolved into a more causal place to stick all kinds of links, comments, snide remarks, untruths about people's mothers, etc which would be out of place on rW proper. I've also invited anyone who's expressed interest in rW to join the fun by posting to rW discourse. If you'd like an invitation, it's yours for the asking. I've also signed up with BlogVoices which lets us have a discussion thread tied to each post here on rW -- the little [discuss] links at the end of each post will pop up a window where you can read comments or add your own.
I'll be re-posting some more of rW's greatest hits from time to time. I'll give a special bonus prize to the first person who identifies each undisclosed re-post as such (rW posters and their immediate family not eligible for special bonus prizes).
