9 December: The Computer Mouse

On this date in 1968 Electrical engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the use of the computer mouse at a demonstration which came to be known as "The Mother of all Demos" because he demonstrated a whole raft of computer things at the same event, which went on to influence the creators of both Microsoft and the Apple Mac. Here are some thing you might not know about your computer mouse.

1. Should the plural of computer mouse be "Mice" or "mouses"? The Oxford English Dictionary says you can use either, but if neither sounds right to you, you could refer to them as "mouse devices".
2. That wouldn't have been an issue if they'd gone with an early name for the device - the Turtle. However, the cable attaching it to the computer made it look too much like a mouse and that was the name which stuck.
3. While the word for a mouse the creature is different in other languages, for the device, the word is the same in many of them, including French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.
4. Douglas Engelbart experimented with a few ideas before coming up with the mouse. One was a device people wore on their heads which tracked head movements, but the hand-held mouse proved more practical.
5. Engelbart's patent on the device expired before the mouse became widely used on all computers, so he didn't make any money from it at all.
6. The first computer to come with a mouse as standard was the Xerox PARC in 1970.
7. The track ball in a mouse was invented over ten years before the mouse itself and was a top secret military project.
8. Mouse Rage Syndrome or MRS is a thing. Akin to road rage, it's when a person takes out their computer related frustrations on their mouse by banging it on the desk or throwing it against the wall. It's common among gamers.
9. There is a unit of measurement to calculate the speed and direction of movement of a mouse. It's called the Mickey Mouse.
10. What did people do before the mouse was invented? They'd have to type everything by hand, and correcting mistakes was a pain. Otherwise they'd need to use an object like a pen to point at the screen.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

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