barrettchase.com

barrettchase.com
obey the rules. often enter. organize your material.

Tue, 03 May 2011

So not only did I respond to Christa in that last post, but Jodi also weighed in on her blog, listing various reasons why she isn't quite ready to start reading books electronically. She makes a lot of good points, but what I want to talk about is this sentence, which really grabbed me:

I never look at Enid, my laptop, sigh dreamily, and think "wow that reminds me of a really good post I read."

About a month ago, I was searching for something online — I can't remember what — and I came across a photo of a computer that I used to own in the late 90s. It wasn't my computer, but it was the same model, an IBM Aptiva E-Series. It was just a plain, off-white tower, with a CRT monitor, ugly speakers, and a "rapid access" keyboard that had a lot of useless-but-colorful buttons that were just shortcuts to various IBM websites. The keyboard also had dedicated CD player controls on the upper-right-hand side, which was actually kind of nice.

Anyway, I saw this photo and immediately I felt a pang of nostalgia for the old machine. I've owned a lot of computers, but this one was special. I learned a lot of things from it, and did a serious amount of creative stuff on it. It was on this computer that I first learned HTML. I created not only my first website but also my first blog on it. I also wrote the code for the blog that eventually became my most successful internet endeavor to date.

I paid $150 for that computer. Its list price was something ridiculous, like $1500. But I remember getting all these deals and rebates. There was money off for buying all the components in a package. Each component had a mail-in rebate. If you signed up for internet access at the point of purchase, you'd get a huge chunk of money off. I had to shell out a lot for it at the time, but almost all that money trickled back to me eventually, which was great because I was really poor in those days.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want the damn thing back. It had a 4-gigabyte hard drive. (I have USB sticks that are way bigger than that.) The monitor broke three times. It didn't come with a CD burner, but I installed one and eventually wore it out. I still have those ugly speakers for some reason. They're in the garage. Recently someone broke into our garage, rooted around, and didn't take anything. No one wants enormous, 90s-era computer speakers. Not even me.

I don't feel nostalgic about any of the other computers I've ever owned, except maybe for my 15" G4 Powerbook, which was my first Mac and cost more than the car I was driving at the time I bought it. That computer's logic board crapped out during an electrical storm. I still haven't recovered from the loss, and dream of one day restoring it to its former glory. This is not actually feasible, since logic boards cost like $900 and are incredibly tricky to replace.

I think the hardware I use, for some reason, is capable of helping or harming my creativity. Is that stupid? I don't mean this in a superstitious way. I mean that certain machines work for me as extensions of my creative mind. There are computers I want to use to their fullest. I want to open them up and dig around inside of them. I want to fully learn how they operate. Others computers, they don't intrigue me. I don't feel comfortable with them.

When I replaced that dead Powerbook, I replaced it with a decent enough laptop that started a creative low point for me. I did almost nothing with that thing. I didn't write anything noteworthy. I didn't organize the files I saved on it. Even my music collection ended up being a mess when that was my main machine.

Some computers do it for me, others don't. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with price, or power, or the way they look. It's almost like the whole thing is trial and error.

I wish I knew the formula.

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