Another reflection on computer hardware and software stretching back 35 years. Most of it is still in my possession. This follows on from My Computer Museum, Part 1: The Amstrad PC1640. The Amstrad PC1640 that I bought in 1988, along with loan PCs from various places where I worked, was good enough for my needs… Continue reading My Computer Museum, Part 2: a 486
A reflection on computer hardware and software stretching back 35 years. Most of it is still in my possession. I bought my first PC (“personal computer”) in 1988, over 35 years ago. It was an Amstrad PC1640, the first IBM compatible PC for sale here in the UK for under £1,000. (It was not the… Continue reading My Computer Museum, Part 1: The Amstrad PC1640
Over the last couple of years I have caught up regularly with a handful of guys I was at school with over 50 years ago. There have been meals out, nights on the beer, weekly games of football. Some of my old classmates have come to see my monthly live performances at a local pub.… Continue reading Unfriending Dead People
Take a look at these two beauties, a pair of rotary telephones that we had stored away for many years. They were out of sight but have recently been brought back into the open. The one on the right is the phone that we used throughout my childhood. I don’t remember any earlier ones, so… Continue reading Rotary Telephones
I have had the same phone number all my life. It reflects the fact that I still have the same dialling code, and the same postcode, that I had when I was growing up. We rarely use this number (our landline as it is now called) and we get very few calls on it. One evening last month the phone (the… Continue reading A Telephone Tie-break
Ever since my family acquired a radio-cassette recorder in the mid-1970s I have been in the habit of recording radio shows. I acquired a VCR in the mid-1980s and since then I have also recorded thousands of hours of TV programmes. I have spent too much of my time doing this, and have recorded too… Continue reading The man who recorded too much
“Word Perfect” is a book by Susie Dent published recently here in the UK. Unfortunately the initial print-run was based on an early version of the text and was full of typographical errors. As you can read in this piece from the Guardian (“Susie Dent ‘gutted’ after new book Word Perfect printed with host of… Continue reading Word of the week: WordPerfect
Have you noticed how frequently characters in films and on TV open and close their laptops? Often, if someone is working away and is interrupted by another character, however briefly, they simply close up their computer. They don’t save their work, they don’t have to deal with any prompts onscreen, they simply flip the screen… Continue reading Flipping laptops
Here’s a picture of my Sony MiniDisc Walkman which has just celebrated its 22nd birthday. As you can see, it’s an MZ-R30, and it still works perfectly. So do the hundreds of discs that I have bought for it over the years, examples of which appear in the following picture. The original charger continues to… Continue reading Word of the week: MiniDisc
Earlier this month I wrote this piece about The Elephant Parade, an event that took place exactly 10 years ago here in London. Streets, parks, squares and indoor spaces were populated by life-size models of baby elephants, painted by a variety of artists. It captured our imagination, and I took photographs of all 250+ elephants.… Continue reading More Elephant Pictures, and reflections on photo albums
The Compartments 