Find new ways to enjoy your computer: books, foreign TV

When I started messing with computing it was all about fun. The earliest home computers were about as useful as my Uncle Red. But, also like my Uncle Red, they were a heck of a lot of fun.

My first computer was built from a kit along with parts I scrounged. It was an Altair (I think Bill Gates also started out with an Altair, it’s just that his life moved on to tech stardom and I remained a blue-collar jerk). It had a bunch of toggle switches, an old 13-inch GE television for a monitor. If you worked it just right you could display color patterns on the screen or play a game with photon torpedoes.

I thought it was great. Unlike how things are today, I couldn’t use it to order dinner; I didn’t know what email was; the only web I knew about was created in the corner by a spider. But that useless computer was fascinating.

People today seem to think that it’s somehow wrong to have fun with a computer. Sure, they play games on one, but as far as finding offbeat ways to enjoy computing — well, not so much.

It’s natural, of course — computing has matured and it’s no longer considered a marvel (although it still very much is one). Like the telephone, television and microwave, it is part of the normal landscape of life. Just another appliance. For many, it’s a drab technology that must be endured to get by in today’s wired world.

Let’s change that and talk about some of the ways to up the fun quotient of your computer.

Tune in

I love to use the computer as a glorified radio and television. We use it to tune in to television and radio networks around the world. My wife is a Donovan and we spend some time in Ireland. But here’s the thing — when we are back in Atlanta we continue to watch Irish television but the picture is often better on my big computer monitor. I’ll offer this as an example. Just go to www.rte.ie and click on the box at the top that says RTE player.

Again, that’s simply an example. Stations like this are easy to find — let’s say you want to watch Italian television. Just go to your search engine and type: Italian television online. Not every example will work out, some stations can’t be easily viewed outside their native countries. But you’ll find so many that do work that you probably won’t care.

Get free books to read

Ebooks are growing in popularity. I sure buy enough of them for my Amazon Kindle. But there are countless free books available online. One huge resource for them is https://openlibrary.org/. You can read them on your computer or transfer them to your tablet or smartphone.

Give it a try, go to openlibrary.org and do a search for a favorite book. Or go to one of the pioneer online libraries such as Project Gutenberg — http://www.gutenberg.org/ — and try your luck. I’ve ended up going back to some of the books I read years ago and also have stumbled across some that I never read. The nightstand by my bed once was a regular source of a book avalanche — but the pile of books is gone and yet the enjoyment is still right there.

Play old arcade games

Long ago there were a bunch of very simple games that were made to be played on game consoles. A few publishers have released their software for legal use using software that emulates the old consoles. The emulator lets you play the game on your home computer instead of one of the consoles. Or you can forget using an emulator and go to an online site such as http://game-oldies.com/. Also try http://www. playretrogames.com/.

Experiment with time travel

It’s fun to go back and see some of the sites from the early days of the Web. And you can easily do that using a site called the Wayback Machine. It stores literally billions of Web pages from the past. To reach it go to https://archive.org/index.php. You’ll be glad you did since there’s much more stored here than the entry point to the Wayback Machine — you’ll find music, books and other good stuff.

All this is just a start to the fun you can have. Don’t feel guilty about actually enjoying computing — give it a whirl.