Another Internet warbler warbling about Easter

Happy Easter!
I hope you guys are having/have had a great day!
Today was the day that Jesus is supposed to have risen from the grave (I think). So to all you religious people out there, double happy face for you guys.
Anyway, I just wanted to say happy Easter!
Bye for now,
Alex

Blogger, only like Percy Jackson

Okay, confession time. (yeah, that's from Percy Jackson. I'm reading them again - out of order). I've totally been a lazy bum on my blog, and on Computer Dictionary. But good news - I'm probably back in the blogosphere. If you're named Zeb, that's an xkcd reference. So, um, just wanted to let you all know that.
Firefox 4 came out recently, which is really exciting. I basically fell in love with it as soon as I found out, which was back when it was still in mockups. I was SO excited, actually, that I did some research (poking around if you like) and concluded that the only way to get it and try it was to get a nightly. As it was still in mockups, there actually was no alpha version. Now, you techy people know that alpha versions are like the very earliest software, right? Before betas and stuff. They're even more dangerous that betas, which tend to be fairly stable, but inherently risky - especially if you're dealing with something like an operating system - and they (alphas) tend to be buggy, weird and often enough not polished software. Well, you would be wrong.
A nightly is often known as bleeding edge code, bleeding edge software or bleeding edge builds. No actual blood, I promise, just as long as the software doesnt have blood in it. Oh, nevermind. This is getting disgusting. Anyway, a nightly is a version of the software that's generally built every night, usually by a script, then published, hence the name. It goes through absolutely no Quality Assurance, and isn't even guaranteed to run. Oh yeah. To represent this status, Mozilla brands the Firefox nightlies (nightlies.mozilla.org) as "Minefield". Isn't that nice.
I followed Firefox 4 for a long time, and I must say it's brilliant. Mozilla has really outdone themselves. Get it at mozilla.com - it's uber awesome. Go on!
- Alex

So what is a computer anyway? - 2ndgen

Hello, and welcome to 2ndgen! This is article 1, so happy cut-the-red-ribbon day? I don't know. Something like that! Anyway, let's move on to the post!

So. We know there are these things called computers. Exactly what are they anyway?

Well, to start, you're using one.

Computers are really complex machines. Instead of using gears or something, they use wires and electrical impulses. At the lowest level, they're zeroz and ones. Binary. Zero represents no impulse, and one represents an impulse. But we're not going to get into that stuff - we're more interested in what that means for us. You can think of a computer as a really fancy extensible calculator. Only one that can do a lot more than process numbers.

Computers are a collection of hardware (computer chips), and software.

2ndgen!

Hello again, everyone! I would ask how you are, but this is digital and we're not actually talking. So... To get to the point.
I'm going to do a little thing on this blog that I've dubbed "2ndgen". It's pronounced a lot like it sounds - second jen. It comes from the phrase "next generation", meaning the generation of technoloy. 2nd replaces next, because it's, I don't know, similar. Genererion is then shortened to gen.
In this series I'll be outlining a bunch of computer stuff in layman terms. We'll advance sequentially, building on what we've learned before. It should be fun.
Expect my frat 2ndgen post soon, called, "What is a computer anyway?"
We will be addressing mobile devices, although not in detail. This is because I actually know a lot more about desktops, so I'm not in a good position to be teaching about mobile devices. Another setback is there is such a variety of hardware and software, and you've got tablets in there too. The structure will basically be that we're going to totally ignore mobile devices, so you could read through the whole thing without sparing a whit of thought for them, but then we'll have little bits that add relavent info to the post that relates.

Hello, World!

Well, as you can probably tell I got a blog. I'll be posting on this from time to time on different subjects and stuff happening in my life. As you can see, I've borrowed the programmer's tradition of Hello World. For those of you not familiar with this, the tradition says that whenever you learn a new programming language, the first program ever that you write in that language is just one that says 'Hello World', 'Hello, World!' or 'Hello World!' or some variation. It doesn't matter if it's in a terminal, it's just text in an interface, or if it's being dynamically rendered (for you non-tech oriented people, you don't need to know what any of this means. Just know that they all will make Hello World appear on the screen, just in different ways), it's all good. This isn't exactly a programming language - actually it most definitely isn't. But since I like programming I figure I'll do it anyway.
So anyway, things that might go on here:

• Stuff happening in my life. This is probably a given, but who knows.
• Technology stuff. This will include new languages, new technologies such as HTML5, interesting software like Firefox 4, and all sorts of other stuff.
• I know this will sound weird, but maybe a bit of philosophy. It's quite an interesting field.
• Poetry. I write a lot of it and may put some on here.
• Other stuff. If there's something I've missed, I'll probably post an entry on it and go from there.

Thanks for reading.

And for my final thing, I have two words to say. This is my...

FIRST P0ST!