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All the little touches Look at your computer. Does it have a generic beige case and the most popular mouse and keyboard connected to it? Would you say there’s anything extraordinary about it? If not, did it ever bother you? Playing with one computer’s “look and feel” is probably something similar to car tuning and everybody has their own private reasons – either they want their machines to be faster, or more efficient, or less boring, or simply... different. I’d place myself in the fourth group. I wouldn’t go as far to call it “personal connection,” yet I’ve always wanted a little piece of me present in my machines – and I’m talking not only different wallpapers or on-screen colours. Obviously, I was too scared to do it with my first machine, 8-bit Atari (although I eventually became brave enough to take it all apart), but I’ve done much to customize my next computer, even if compared to the beige blandness that flooded the computer market in the ‘90s, a good old PC/XT clone with its partially black front and big red switch already looked nicely different. I don’t know if any of you still remember those small black cone-shaped arcade buttons so popular 20 years ago? Those with the small, red, illuminated top? Those used to start a game in, for example, “Asteroids” or “Missile command”? I had one of those mounted instead of the usual reset button and I was immensely proud of it, because not only it was an original idea – it also just looked cool, because the button doubled as a power indicator and lit only if the computer was on. And it actually made a process of rebooting a little bit more bearable (and if someone played with assembler as much as I did at the time, they obviously needed the reset button a lot). The second thing I’ve done was to add a “volume dial” to my speaker. It was just a simple potentiometer, and in reality my father – knowing far more about electronics than me – did all the hard work, but that didn’t stop me from taking all the pride in it. And, being the originator of the idea, and seeing how no one else ever came up with anything like it, I sort of felt like a pioneer, because in addition to being innovative, it was also simply quite useful, allowing me to mute the sound whenever I wanted and – in result – play some of the games at night (remember that it was eons before sound cards!). Actually, some 15 years later my Ericsson phone still can’t do this, beeping at me on various occassions even if I have it in silent mode. But I digress. Those two simple alterations (and I’m pretty sure that there was something else that escaped my memory) were enough to make my computer *my* computer and I can’t still forgive my father throwing away the old case without asking me first. So some time later I painted my keyboard black and gray. It was as simple as it sounds – I just bought two car sprays and coloured it all over – but the overall effect wasn’t up to my expectations. Sure, it looked different and – with all the keys seemingly the same – somewhat professional (plus it had an additional bonus of my sisters not trying to play with my PC anymore for they didn’t know which key was which without the caps), alas, the paint started to wear off and the whole thing pretty quickly turned plain ugly. But the keyboard soon broke down anyway, saving me the dilemma of choosing whether to repaint it, or get rid of it (it must be said at this point that a cousin of mine later came up with a far better idea – he just randomly moved around most of the keys on his keyboard, and I imagine it must be pretty damn funny for him to observe the non-touch-typists trying to use it). Anyway, the months flew by with me sticking with just a regular, right-off-the-shelf computer. It was only earlier this year that I accidentally stumbled upon a website dedicated to modifying computers (or “modding,” as I have learnt) and during the next two hours of surfing, I discovered that what I was doing earlier was nothing spectacular at all. I soon got to know dozens of webpages dedicated to people adding case windows, additional sets of fans or even completely new liquid cooling systems, changing their BIOS logos, installing LCD screens or neons inside, and even putting their entire computers into VCR and old radio cases, or... frozen LEGO people in their mouses (and being a big LEGO fan I truly loved the idea!). Looking at all these radical changes, for a while I felt I was long gone out of the loop. But then again, did I ever pretend I was in it? Not really. Leave all the above extremisms for hardcore “modders,” and let me continue with the little touches... Like changing the original green LEDs on my new Natural Keyboard to blue ones, which are rather rare and which I always loved very much. I must admit it was far easier than I suspected – I didn’t even have to dust off the soldering iron and the whole process took me about half an hour. Sadly, that can’t be said about my floppy drive, which next day I quite literally fried, trying to do the same. Still, it was fun, and even if was a beginner’s mistake, the day that happened I stepped into the legions of “modders” myself? by Marcin Wichary

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