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A8-AN INTERLUDE- HOW I STARTED USING THE COMPUTER

 

By pragyansharma polavarapu

After a few months of trial and error and own “research”  I could create my own “Blog”. Earlier I created only “files” and “folders”  and kept them locked in the D and E drives---like locking good book manuscripts  in a cabinet without publishing! 

 The  "Memory Estates" , the D  drive  and E drive, are  like well protected  rock forts  in side  computer for storing  both unpublished manuscript files  and copies of even bulky printed books( of the famed authors we liked)  in electronic form .  For example the great Tolstoy novel WAR AND PEACE  may just occupy space of a small shirt button in the computer’s memory chip ! The DRIVES  are   like huge libraries of  books well indexed.  A “FOLDER” is like a labeled partition in a cabinet or a labeled  box   to keep a particular category of books. 

My first science and history articles for children(the rough work) lay  locked up for months in the  D and  E  forts !  After a few weeks  I started my “Blog” and published  “Posts” in them (along with a few photos taken by me with my  digital phone). I felt I had my own publishing house and printing press! All this experimentation was like a new job into which I joined after retirement from long government service! It was simply thrilling. In course of time, I started using the Yahoo e-mail , Yahoo Answers etc with ease.

But my knowledge of computer facilities like e-mail was  abysmally low. My passwords were approved by Yahoo and MSN only after a dozen trials and after several modifications suggested by them. I treated acceptance of my password as a big technical victory achieved by me! The password was my individual key for writing  in the Internet sites .  The  IT giants like WordPress and Google  securely lock our  Blog.

 I was thrilled when I joined the Facebook.  I could not believe my eyes after seeing in Facebook the site of NASA( the Administrative  body for US space programs APOLLO program , VOYAGER programs etc).  I closely followed the dazzling achievements of US space programs of 1960s and 1970s  through the newspapers and radio. So it was most enjoyable to follow them in FaceBook

The  NASA  videos in  FaceBook give a feeling like  watching the space rocket launchings right at the launch site. Reading about the launching of space rockets by NASA was always a thrill for me since decades.  Such launchings of space rockets, both by US and USSR( now Russia) are unsurpassed feats of adventure  in the whole history of man. During college days (decades earlier in 1960s)  I could not  imagine ever seeing technical videos. But now I was seeing them. The times have changed since last 50 years. Every thing is now available in TV,Computer and digital phone. Even we prefer digital editions of newspapers and journals.

 The  Facebook was for me like a club of intellectuals, scientists and engineers. The technology and science I saw in the FB posts was like science lectures in a university. The FaceBook was for me like a virtual “officer’s club” in the air. In the FB posts and  chats we could come across highly qualified  scientists, engineers ,professor etc . The scientists are  not only of the West but also of India .When some FaceBook user  in a faraway country clicked my comments in approval   I felt elated .I could carry on  long chats through the textual posts with a few users all over the globe. However I have since opted out of the FaceBook.

 Watching  famed science /history /travel sites on the TV and computer made the mind fresh as if I visited  a  club after a day’s tiresome work at office.  I could watch on Internet the videos of  old historic  universities  like Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard and great Indian universities like  BHU (Varanasi, India), IISc,Bengaluru( south India ) . I greatly enjoyed watching other sites relating to  aeronautics, oceanography, orbiting space telescopes  etc  on TV, computer and the iPad .  

Nowadays we are able to see the   live videos of  the orbiting International Space Station (ISS)  in Internet sites. It is  a really thrilling and  unbelievable experience. The astronauts talk to us while floating near their chairs, being not  able to sit in the chairs!  Their books also float and fly . The astronauts swim from room to room like fishes .

The astronauts take window-side seats and broadcast to us ,viewers on earth, live videos of  Planet Earth slowly rotating 250 miles below! They  show , the live world of   floods, cyclones , dazzling reddish sunrises and sunsets and also the shining  ribbon of blue(earth’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere ) merging into the endless darkness of space. The views are absolutely breath taking. We are quite in the space age!   We also see the  pink colored curtains of “Aurora Borealis” of the northern polar regions.

 

 

 

 

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