HavanaTrends home page

Spreadsheets. The best visual programming language.

The history of Spreadsheets is fascinating, from Richard Mattessich who in 1972 wrote the article "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" creating the concept, to Pardo and Landau, who tried to obtain a Patent.But the renowned inventor of Spreadsheets is Dan Bricklin, with his VisiCalc, which was available since 1979 and was, let's say, the first and most important computing tool in the hands of anyone when it was implemented for the first computer that we can call "personal".I kn...

I met Ileana and for a moment I was Don Quixote.

Under Rocinante's helmets I made the happiest quixot of my life.It was the 80s of the last century, and my friend Peter and I, being at a scientific event at the University, we read on a flyer that in "El Bodegón de Bartolo", a nearby coffee bar, from 10 AM it could be consumed with beer At an open bar and we couldn't hold out, we went out there with Peter's girlfriend, Yanai.When we get to the bar they inform us that no, that there is nothing at all until 5 pm, and then Yanai tell...

My current works and ideas

My current works and ideas.Over the years I have been developing a series of works and research proposals that I would like to present to you as a whole for your consideration. For each one you will find here an introduction to the topic and also links to the complete content already more elaborated. Most of the topics are under development and from time to time I add or modify information. Keep this in mind so that from time to time you can revisit the topics that were of interest...

Cats on MEDICID-1

One of the most fantastic things about having a computer in our department in the 70's is that we could do with it what we wanted, literally, without having to go through all the bureaucracy created around the so-called "Calculation Centers", where weeks and even months passed between having an idea and getting a real program to implement it. In other words, we lived through the personal computer revolution years before it even existed.In those years a young researcher, the current...

How we finish the ANFACT.

Well, I didn't know whether to put this article in "Stories" or if here, in "ProgramSolving", but in the end, due to the randomness of the Programming, I decided to put it here.It was between 1973-1974 and a Programmer from the Center's Department of Mathematics, Raisa Cepero Bonilla, was in charge of carrying out a project to carry out a "Factorial Analysis by Correspondence", which is a fairly sophisticated statistical analysis and not very broad utilization even today.It was pro...

POLICIES OF: ONE SERVICE OF FL CORP / HOBBIESENRED.

The articles presented in this space are the authorship of Onelio García Pérez and his friends, © www.HobbiesEnRed.com, based on empirical research, there have been few investigated periods as a result of addressing issues that go beyond the particular objectives of the Author. The historical approach present in the fascicles is the product of the limited bibliography available. The works ca...

Program and fine-tune in assembler binary

It was the years 1973, 1974,...In the article on "CONCATISO my first program" I described in broad strokes the characteristics of the computer CID-201-B compatible with the PDP-8 of the DEC company.Recall that it was 12 bits long, but also only had a 12-bit accumulator register and 1 carry bit.Machine language instructions were encoded in those 12 bits where sometimes another word was used to access groups of 4096 (12 bits) memory words, and thus be able to access all 32 Kilowords...

The Goto. The great forgotten. Not to think structured.

I still remember when I was programming with GoTo. Programming without using it was not conceivable. Until the revolution started by Dijkstra with his note "Goto considered harmful" came to "structure" our minds for program development.The progress made with "Structured Programming" is incalculable, which allowed not only to increase the speed of having correct programs, but also to increase the number of people capable of programming.At that time, "Top to Bottom Programming" and "...

Spreadsheets as a universal computing model.

Any two-dimensional screen can be viewed as a collection of rectangular cells. A point and even the entire screen can be defined as such. Almost all cell phones and computer screens are two-dimensional screens. And some may be three-dimensional. Therefore anything that runs on mobiles or PCs or MACs is seen on a two-dimensional screen as a collection of rectangular cells, or three-dimensional as rectangular cubes. In conclusion, anything that runs on mobiles or PCs or MACs can b...

What Homer Didn't Tell Us...

Troy, a great epic of ancient times. Do you remember? Paris, the Trojan prince, abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus, the Greek king. Menelaus, his pride wounded, but with the true intention of seizing Troy and thus controlling its trade and strategic location, launched a great invasion that resulted in a total siege of Troy for ten years. So, to put it in modern terms, which are also favored by high-ranking officials of the most powerful country on Earth, what do you think was happening in the "re...

The welcome that Dr. Thalia Harmony gave me.

Back in the year 1973-74 I have already told how Dr. Pedro Valdés took me to know the work of the Department of Neurosciences.I immediately met Dr. Thalía Harmony, one of the most intelligent and determined people I have ever met in my entire life, and knowing that I was about to finish the second year of Pure Mathematics, She knew that I had no biological training.I will never forget that he looked at me with those "inquisitive eyes" that he has and told me: "To work here you must...

How I met Dr. Mitchell Valdés.

In other articles I have commented that in 1972 I was studying Pure Mathematics and I coincide with Dr. Pedro Valdés (Peter, as everyone knows him) that he was continuing his studies in Mathematics to increase his working capacities in Neurosciences.We became good friends, we studied together in the University Park, in the Classrooms, in the Library, until one day he told me: "Tomorrow, Saturday, I'll wait for you at my house to continue."Saturday comes, I go to Peter's house, I r...

How I learned Neurosciences... with Björn Holmgren and Ruth Urbá.

Since my arrival at the Department of Neurosciences I noticed that the branch of Neuro Biochemistry was, as I say, very well represented by the brilliant Swedish researcher Björn Holmgren and his wife, the talented Chilean Ruth Urbá.In almost home-like conditions, since in fact we were working in what was known at the time as "The Laboratory House", they carried out intense research using mice as an experimental basis, and their contributions to the study of sleep and its physiolog...

Single link Cluster Analysis and Peter Valdes.

At the beginning of the 70s we had a computer with 32 Kilowords and 12 bits in length each word and to program it encoded the machine language by hand and could also use a posfix notation language called LEAL although it was difficult for us anyway to translate algorithms especially if what prevailed was the calculation, so frequent in the Neuroscience applications that we developed supported by statistics, including multivariate ones.In those years and also in the 60's, it was com...

Real and Fiction Story Telling

You can write, we know. And so do we... You can write, we know. Do you think the influencers knew that by recording videos they were going to have millions of followers? Well, no, they did not know, but each and every one of the audiovisual influencers have been and are sincere in doing what they do, for different variants that exist. Well, writing is easier than making videos, even if it doesn't seem like it, just because it's visually anonymous, which I believe is very importa...

FOCAL. Salcedo the Great.

It was the early 70s of the last century, and in our PDP-8 compatible minicomputer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) there was almost no way to program except by hand-coding machine language. Later, the Central Institute for Digital Research (ICID) developed the assembler and later the LEAL language (LEnguaje ALgoritmico) that I have referred to in other articles and in which it was quite difficult and tedious to program as it was postfix notation, especially when evaluating...

In Honor of Roberto

It was in the early 80's of the last century when a psychologist named Roberto began to work with us, a very affable man, always with a smile, I never saw him annoying, much less bothering anyone. He was welcome in our Neurosciences collective, although he actually belonged to the psychology school of the university. He immediately became interested in using the personal computers we had to design and create applications that would have an impact on psychology. We talked a lot, he...

CONCATISO. My first Program. Second part.

CONCATISO. My first Program. Second part. By reading the first part you will already have an idea of the computational equipment that the Department of Neurophysiology had back in the years 1972... 1973 Now I will tell the other part: Professor Erwin Roy John, head of the Department of Neurophysiology at New York Medical College, donated to Thalía and her Department an analog "Transient Averaging" computer called "CAT" that was capable of obtaining, from synchronized stimuli an...

Reporting 0003

First of all, let us recall the basic idea: let us spread the good news and reject the darkness of the bad... This universe is polar; there are positives and negatives. While opposite poles attract and like poles repel in the realm of electricity, in the spiritual realm, what almost always happens is that the positive attracts the positive, and the negative attracts the negative. That is why it is important to let positive news circulate —and even to support it with all our might— so that toget...

To Galita

Galita's life cycle is over, a cute little dog that my daughter Lissi picked up from the street and who gave us a lot of love and happiness.Galita was very naughty. Being at home made Dolly, another bigger dog, dump the garbage can so that she would then be the one digging for food. And that we gave her a lot of food and other things that she liked. But it seems that her nomadic life led her to try to store as much food as she could find.Galita got along with everyone. She was very sociable. I d...

More In Technology plus Ideas Storytelling Program Solving Documents Reporting