The Command Prompt

Ever since I had a computer, I was typing in commands. I travelled from the Commodore64 system to the Microsoft DOS platform and eventually became lost in the user interface of Microsoft Windows. Commands were soley to run games, start Windows, and change directories. When the MS-DOS command prompt came up one could type:

win

and Windows 3 would start up. When changing directories, there would be tons of files that may or may not make sense to children but I knew that if I messed with the right stuff and typed in the right commands, I could master the filesystem.

I recently recorded a song that started out as an ode to free software and filesystems. After the first thirty seconds or so it was more of an experiment with changing the automatic tuning of my vocals, harmonizing with myself and playing around with simple digital instrument sequencing. There is a lot of pop in the mix, but it wouldn't have ever happened without Linux.

mynight.mp3

 mp3 at http://clarksvegas.com/daniel/mynight.mp3 if flash is not available, which I understand.

Windows 95 had come out and many communities were starting to get on the internet. I had a good friend named Andrew that was into video games, amateur radio and building lasers. He got his first computer after we started hanging out and within a year he was running Slackware Linux and had convinced his parents (We were eleven years old) to buy him an additional laptop so he could network them together in his room and share the dial-up internet between the two systems. It was ridiculous! I remember him showing me a lot of commands and interactivity within the shell, but I didn't really grasp what was going on with those small white words on black screens until years later. What a useful thing the command prompt can be. I'm glad I was introduced to it so early on, but I don't know how kids these days feel about typing in commands (unless it is a part of hacking of modifying some cool new electronic device) to their computers, let alone their portable communication device.

Flash audio player from http://wpaudioplayer.com.
Slackware Linux mascot from Wikipedia.