You can do ANYTHING!

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I first became interested in computers when I was about 40. In those days a personal computer was practically unheard of. There were people (we call them 'nerds' today) who were beginning to build their own and even to buy what was then essentially a research tool.

Around that time hand held calculators were just coming into the price range of the average man in the street and very soon afterwards Clive Sinclair introduced a 'personal computer' that was less than £100 (quite a sizeable sum in those days).

I didn't buy the ZX-80 but I finally got a ZX-81. It had 1kb of RAM (yes, I am not jok

ing!) but you could expand it to an enormous 16kb (even an empty Word document today is bigger than that!) To make it do anything useful, you had to type in a program using commands in a language called BASIC ("Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code").

Sir Clive claimed in his advertising that, with this little machine (which you had to connect to a TV to see what you were doing) it was theoretically possible to control a power station! I never heard of anyone who did, though I believe that there were people (more 'nerds') who hooked it up to their model railways and made their trains run smoothly. May

be Network Rail or Amtrak could use one of those early machines which are now gathering dust in attics!

After a year or so of playing with this little toy, I finally bought one of the earliest PCs, an Amstrad 1512. This didn't have a hard disk. Instead it had two floppy drives, each of which held a 5 1/4" floppy disk, which WERE fairly floppy in those days. One of these contained the Operating System (DOS) and, often, any program you wanted to run and the other was for storing data. Windows hadn't yet been invented but many programs had a menu system. There was no mouse and you were limited to (I believe) 16 colours - if you were lucky! Many monitors were just white/green and black. With t

his amazing machine, I was able to begin to do many of the things that we use computers for today: Word Processing, storing and organizing information in a database ... and, of course, playing games.

Well, to cut a long story short, I became so intrigued by this new technology that I decided to take a course in "Computer Studies" and one thing led to another. By the time I graduated (when I was 50), I had given up my job selling second-hand books and had become an IT support person ... and had already been made redundant from that! There followed several similar jobs in the next few years until I realised that, though I understood it, the technical stuff wasn't really me and that what I wanted to do - and was

good at - was to show people that 'IT' is not half as scary as they often seemed to think! My last job, before I retired, was spent training 'mature students' to use a computer so that they could get jobs in a world that had gone computer mad since they last worked.

As you can see, I am reasonably 'computer savvy' but not nearly as much as you might expect. There is still stuff to learn (a

nd new things come along every day). The REAL secret is knowing that if someone made something and understands it, then you can understand it too - there is nothing magical about computers! You may not want to bother with all the detail, of course, and that is your choice - you don't need to know the theory of internal combustion engines to drive a car but if you own one, it's a good idea to know something about the way it works, even if it's only so you can avoid being ripped off by a mechanic!

Everyone has a modicum of common sense and the ability to think logically and learn. There are many things that people can do to keep their computers running sweetly that they don't do simply because they are afraid to. Once you realize that fear of the unknown is unreasonable and that it is the ONLY thing holding you back, you can do ANYTHING! (Well, almost, he says with a wink!)

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I wrote this originally as a response to a discussion in MyLot. MyLot is a forum which pays you for participating. If you enjoy discussions and lik e to 'have your say', you can join us at MyLot. It's free to join and fun to meet people at! In some respects it's a 'Social Site' ... you can have a list of 'friends' and can Private Message them. In other respects it's an open 'Discussion Forum'. You can create discussions and respond to them and your activity on the site is rewarded. The site is funded (as many such sites are) by advertising and it shares its revenue with its members based on the quality of the contribution - on the whole, the longer and more descriptive, the better.

There are other factors too, including a rating system which takes into account how other users rate your contribution. It's impossible to say, with this system, how much you are paid for each post but it is of the order of 2 cents for each discussion or response.

Writing - and writing to a discussion - is just one of the things I enjoy doing. I used to be active on Yahoo! Answers and then found that I could do much the same thing on other sites - and get paid!

I have been a member of MyLot for two years and have found them to be a site that has good and sensible rules (and enforce them), a sound business model and a regular and reliable payment system. It isn't ... and I should stress this ... a 'living wage' but a hobby is a hobby and, if one can pick up a few pence for doing what you like to do, then I see no reason not to!

If you are reading this and are not already one of the 145,000 (and growing) members, then do come along and give it a try! Use this link, please ... I get a little something for my recommendation!

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