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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...

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...

A doctor and a monkey overboard!

It was the year 1977-78 and by then Dr. Mitchell Valdés had already made much progress in psychophysiological experimentation using MEDICID-1 and MEDICID-2 as reported in other articles, even using cats as experimental subjects.Then he is visited by Dr. Erwin, who had managed to create a vervet monkey business on the island of Saint Kitts. It is important to clarify that the vervet monkeys, brought to Saint Kitts by the conquerors from Africa, are compatible with man in many respec...

How I became Section Chief of the Computing Center.

It was the early 70's and as I have commented in other articles, our Neuroscience Department had a 12-bit 32 Kilo Words computer, a punched tape reader and an extended typewriter to punch tapes.In those days, computers were scarce, very scarce, and that meant that their use as such was in the hands of large ministries or large companies, but it was very rare for a small department to have one. The self-sacrificing work of the Department staff that prior to my entry into it and usin...

My fellow operators.

{loadmoduleid 135} In other articles I have commented that in the 70s our Neuroscience department had a CID-201-B minicomputer compatible with the PDP-8 of the DEC company and that the CID-201-B had only a typewriter teletype, a perforated paper tape reader, and a paper tape printer.In order to use this equipment, after developing and fine-tuning each program, it was necessary to "punch" the tapes with the data, or, for example, use the CONCATISO program (see article) to convert t...

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...

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...

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...

The novel of Time.

I am Time. And I am more than the Time you know. I have always been and am in Everything, even before Him. I am not linear, as you think; I permeate everything from top to bottom and from front to back. I see everything to the same Me, because I am Time. I am always passing and always compacting. They measure me but they do not see me. Nor do they hear me. They cannot move me and yet I define the destiny of everything. In due time I become aware and I see. I see Everything, even Him. But I am no...

With Variables everything, without Variables nothing.

I have said on many occasions and in various audiences that what we call variables in Programming is what frontally separates Mathematics and its language from Programming and the problems it solves.It is that it is well known that a mathematical variable is like a being without a name, which can be called X, Y, or Z interchangeably and the meaning of the mathematical formulas where it appears does not change. Also the mathematical variable is like a being without its own personali...

Speaking of robots in 1977.

One afternoon of the many in which the programs we developed took hours and even days to produce results, several colleagues were meeting near our computer and the topic of robots came up.Some of us talked about the distance between the human being and the automation of processes by computers, which by the way is currently maintained, others about the development of Neuroscience itself, others the development of mathematics and computing itself, in short, almost any topic fit into...

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...

Main Motorcycle Agencies between 1940 and 1950 in Havana

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 li...

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...

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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...

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 "...

Human Facebook.

Yesterday walking and walking I went to repair a fan where a technician who has been repairing electrical appliances for more than 20 years, has a lot of experience, is fast and accurate.Upon arrival there was a "return at 2:30" sign and waiting for it a Mrs. arrived with a rice cooker. Well, we started talking and talking, and I said to myself, why wait until everyone has internet to use Facebook? Facebook we have it within reach...Well, without meeting each other, exchanging pho...

Pedro Valdés from Neuro found me... and I was looking for the same thing!

I will tell how I started working in the Department of Neurophysiology of the National Center for Scientific Research. It was the year 1971 and I was studying Pure Mathematics at the University and it turns out that a doctor, Dr. Pedro Valdés Sosa, better known as "Peter", also began to study Mathematics as a second career. Peter and I were together for almost two years, we became good friends, we even studied together. Peter was already a worker with many obligations, he skippe...

To be a Programmer... without mathematics?

Programming... There are so many work and development opportunities for the Programmer and the Entrepreneur... Smart houses, the internet of things (IoT), websites as varied as the world is, mobile applications (Android, IOS), Security in communications and in business, PC applications (Windows, Mac, Chrome OS), are some examples of how varied and necessary for Programmers to do their work. Artificial intelligence? And who programs, trains, and maintains it? Programmers first. A...

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