Got these from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee.
1. What was your first experience with computers?
Had to think back! In the hills above the UC Berkeley campus, there is a science museum with interactive exhibits called the Lawrence Hall of Science. When I was young my parents would take me and my sister there for youth classes. There was one that was called, if memory serves, "Creative Play on the Computer". Well, I don't recall there being much creative about it, really, but it was one or two hours of getting to use the games on their mainframe system. This had to have been something like 1976 or 1977, and the user interface was teletypes stocked with rolls of newsprint paper. Each time something changed in whatever game you were playing, the computer had to print out a whole new page. By the time your session was done, you had a big pile of paper to tear off and then roll up.
I remember playing Hunt the Wumpus, and a Star Trek bridge command game that was way too complicated for me, and a Star Trek themed space war game (imaginatively entitled "Spacewar") that wasn't.
2. What is your favorite bird?
The ruby-throated hummingbird, because I love jewel-toned iridescent colors. Close runner-ups include the red-tailed hawk and the northern mockingbird.
3. What's your favorite comfort food in the winter?
Hm. I'm not sure if I have one, really. I could say chocolate chip cookies, but there's nothing seasonal about that. I've lived my entire life in the east SF Bay Area or in Houston, neither of which gets really severe winter weather, so there's not so much need for winter comfort food.
4. What was the first sf/f book you read?
Assuming you don't count comic books, it was a book in the "Whitman Classics" line called Tales of Time and Space. I still have it, which is fairly remarkable considering I've had half a dozen moves and a fire. It's an anthology with a peculiar mix of stories: Fredric Brown and Arthur C. Clarke, with a couple of stories that would be well above most childrens' heads (the punchline of the Brown involved the phrase "master race" which I'm certain meant nothing to me at the age of five), also Poul Anderson...but also a deservedly forgotten story about a worldwide sleeping plague pulled out of a 1940s issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. The link above has the full table of contents, if you're curious.
5. Who is your favorite underrated historical figure?
Another one I'm not sure I have an answer for. Antoine Lavoisier isn't really underrated. Maybe Bertrand Russell, for his contributions to mathematics and his outspoken atheism, but if I have to think hard to come up with someone, do I really have a favorite?
It seems to be traditional at the end of these to offer five questions to anyone who leaves a comment asking for them, so I'll go along with that.
yhlee.1. What was your first experience with computers?
Had to think back! In the hills above the UC Berkeley campus, there is a science museum with interactive exhibits called the Lawrence Hall of Science. When I was young my parents would take me and my sister there for youth classes. There was one that was called, if memory serves, "Creative Play on the Computer". Well, I don't recall there being much creative about it, really, but it was one or two hours of getting to use the games on their mainframe system. This had to have been something like 1976 or 1977, and the user interface was teletypes stocked with rolls of newsprint paper. Each time something changed in whatever game you were playing, the computer had to print out a whole new page. By the time your session was done, you had a big pile of paper to tear off and then roll up.
I remember playing Hunt the Wumpus, and a Star Trek bridge command game that was way too complicated for me, and a Star Trek themed space war game (imaginatively entitled "Spacewar") that wasn't.
2. What is your favorite bird?
The ruby-throated hummingbird, because I love jewel-toned iridescent colors. Close runner-ups include the red-tailed hawk and the northern mockingbird.
3. What's your favorite comfort food in the winter?
Hm. I'm not sure if I have one, really. I could say chocolate chip cookies, but there's nothing seasonal about that. I've lived my entire life in the east SF Bay Area or in Houston, neither of which gets really severe winter weather, so there's not so much need for winter comfort food.
4. What was the first sf/f book you read?
Assuming you don't count comic books, it was a book in the "Whitman Classics" line called Tales of Time and Space. I still have it, which is fairly remarkable considering I've had half a dozen moves and a fire. It's an anthology with a peculiar mix of stories: Fredric Brown and Arthur C. Clarke, with a couple of stories that would be well above most childrens' heads (the punchline of the Brown involved the phrase "master race" which I'm certain meant nothing to me at the age of five), also Poul Anderson...but also a deservedly forgotten story about a worldwide sleeping plague pulled out of a 1940s issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. The link above has the full table of contents, if you're curious.
5. Who is your favorite underrated historical figure?
Another one I'm not sure I have an answer for. Antoine Lavoisier isn't really underrated. Maybe Bertrand Russell, for his contributions to mathematics and his outspoken atheism, but if I have to think hard to come up with someone, do I really have a favorite?
It seems to be traditional at the end of these to offer five questions to anyone who leaves a comment asking for them, so I'll go along with that.
