Watership Down

Watership Down, Richard Adam's famous story about a group of rabbits fleeing the destruction of their warren to set up a new one on the Down, thrilled me as a child when i first read it. Without a doubt the story was a big influence on my own stories which have often featured groups like the rabbits in the story (though not actually rabbits - well apart from some space rabbits once...) Although its been a long time since i last read the book (and i do not have a copy anymore) i remember the story very clearly.

What i didn't know until recently was that there was a sequel (of a sorts!) "Tales of Watership Down" was written 25 years after the original and has a number of stories of our rabbit heroes in the aftermath of the defeat of Efrafa. There are also some tales from rabbit folklore and the hero El-ahrairah. A very enjoyable book indeed (and my copy only cost me 1p - albiet with 2 pounds postage!) One surprise was that when i got the book i found that it had been signed by Richard Adams!

When i first read the original book i did hope that there would be a follow-up, "Tales..." kind of fulfils that wish though it does leave the ending open. What happens to the likes of Bigwig and Fiver in the end... well i guess we just have to use our own imagination.

A rabbit on Holford Sports Field, Perry Barr

Liverpool

I'm half Scouse though i don't go up North that much, yesterday though i went up to my Dad's home town. Liverpool has changed a lot from when i used to see my Nan back in the 80s and early 90s, it seems very hip and gentrified in the city centre now with the Albert Dock development and so on, of course the suburbs could be a different story as it is with Birmingham. It was so nice to visit and it bought back plenty of memories, i took quite a few photos too of course.

The visit of the Silver King

Now i travel down from Birmingham to London quite often and have taken Chiltern Mainline's loco hauled train quite a few times too (its always my preference). However when i heard that one of these trains was to travel the Severn Valley Railway... well i just had to go and see.

So my third visit to the SVR in a short space of time, but the first time i've been all the way up to Bridgnorth. I travelled up on a steam train but travelled back down on the Chiltern (it was chartered for a rail tour but there were 2 trips along the line open to everyone). It was a very novel experience and most enjoyable. I think i do prefer a bit of Mark 1 coach thrash though but travelling the SVR with wifi just had to be done! You can see the photos i took here.

309

A Peugeot 309 at Coventry Transport Museum. A good car this, my Dad bought a new E reg one and later a K reg one. In fact the 309 was the first car i ever drove, though only very briefly. It was on Dunlop's carpark and after quickly stalling it i decided it would be best if i waited a few more years...

Platform ticket machine

In the past train spotters (and anyone else not travelling anywhere but wanted to be on the train platform) could buy a cheap ticket from a machine like this (which is now in Kidderminster Railway Museum). I remember the machine at Birmingham New Street (which was not as cute as this), i think it cost me 2p!

Severn Valley Railway

The Severn Valley Railway is one of those gems in Midlands' tourist attractions that i have kept meaning to visit but always forget to... until now. I had a few days left on my last train season ticket to Worcester so took the opportunity to visit the SVR at Kidderminster. I have actually been to the SVR once before but that was when i was a cub scout in the late 70s or early 80s. I remember a camp somewhere near Bewdley, and a trip on the train to Bridgnorth but little else apart from earwigs and a sprained ankle.

I didn't go to Bridgnorth this time but instead took the steam train to the new visitor centre and museum at Highley. The journey there was in an old skool compartment coach, such a lovely way to travel. You can see my photos here. Well its taken me over 30 years to return to the SVR but i think my next trip will be soon. Less than 30 years time anyway!

Return of the TwiggyMac

The Twiggy Mac is the stuff of myth surely? Macintosh prototypes up until a fairly late stage in the project to produce the Apple Macintosh in 1984 were going to use the same 5 1/4 inch "Twiggy" disk drive as used in the Apple Lisa. Unfortunately the Twiggy drive was rubbish and often failed. Luckily Sony had just bought out their new 3.5 inch floppy drive format and the rest was history...

But it was assumed that none of the Twiggy drive equipped Macintosh prototypes had survived as Apple had them all recalled and destroyed in 1983. However one was found and later on another one turned up too! After some restoration work the Twiggy Macs now work again and could boot from the original Twiggy system disks which included a beta version of Mac OS from August 1983. This version of the eventual first release of Mac OS included some intriguing differences from the final version including "Steve sez" in dialogue boxes. The whole story is recounted in the highly enjoyable Twiggy Mac website.

I don't have any original Macs but i do have the second version, a 512K, and here it proudly is (serves as a clock stand these days to be honest)...

How one minor decision can affect the rest of your life

Lets talk about teeth, as i'm English i have bad teeth (natch) and indeed lost my fourth on Monday. Considering the state my teeth were in in my late teens thats actually something of a miracle. However this sorry state of dental affairs could be largely down to a decision i made in my mid-teens.

At around 15 and with already poor teeth i was checked by a dentist visiting the school and given a letter to give to my parents telling them i should go to the dentist. Unfortunately the trauma of my previous dental visits (when i was 7 or 8) were still with me and i threw the letter away. Hence my teeth were allowed to get worse until an abyss finally forced me to go to the dentist when i was at university. Then i found that the horrors of fillings actually were not so bad because my mouth was a bit bigger than when i was 8...

But one simple decision so many years ago has probably caused me over 25 years of trouble (and a fair bit of cost too). It could be that if i had gone to the dentist as a teenager i wouldn't have lost the teeth that i have and my mouth would be in rather better shape. We'll never know of course.

But that is something i found interesting. Often people talk about major decisions and events that can have dramatic effects on the future course of history but minor decisions can have significant ramifications too. I remember at college i arranged to meet a fellow student at the weekend, unfortunately there was a mix-up and we didn't meet. I was pretty annoyed but decided to give him a second chance. A quarter of a century later he's still my best friend who i speak to every day.

Its because of how small decisions, forks and changes can have dramatic changes that the genre of "what if history" is entertaining but highly problematic. In some ways i think predicting the effect of small changes on a history time line is more difficult than major changes.

First Dinky

The first Dinky toy i ever had, unfortunately as i was rather rough with it as a child its a bit less than premium now. Though to be honest there is nothing sadder than an old toy thats still in pristine condition. I always wonder if there is a sad story around it, was it bought for a beloved child who died before they could receive it? Or maybe they just didn't like it...

POTD : Alleyway

Perhaps a rather forbidding looking alleyway in this shot but it lies on the other side of the fence that enclosed the playing grounds of the primary school i attended. I remember looking out of the class room sometimes in the direction of the alleyway, also sometimes played on the other side of the fence. It probably hasn't changed a great deal since the early 1980s!

The code for MS-DOS at last!

Microsoft have donated the source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Word for Windows 1.1a to the Computer History Museum. The source code can be downloaded and read. Its fairly interesting but only for historical reasons.

I had a brief look through the source code for COMMAND.COM, my 8086 assembler is a bit rusty (and was never that good to be honest) but it seemed fairly straightforward. Of course these early versions of MS-DOS were far more basic and limited than modern operating systems like Mac OSX but then again the file sizes were somewhat smaller...

I still remember buying MS-DOS 4.01 on diskette to upgrade the Amstrad PC we had at the time, which came with version 3.2. I used to be quite nifty at writing batch files though can barely remember any of the language nowadays! @echo off or something...

20 years of web

Unfortunately the exact date is now lost, never mind any physical or virtual remains, but I started writing my first web page in early 1994. I can't remember much about my first involvement with HTML except that it was purely text based. My computer at the time was a 386sx-33 powered PC and I connected to the internet via dial up at a roasting 2400 baud. I used Lynx to look at my first web pages and hence my first home page.

Little did I know at the time that HTML and the web would be my career and shape my life in such a fundamental way over the next couple of decades.

The first graphical web pages I looked at where probably in OS/2's web browser (my parents bought me a RAM upgrade for my PC and OS/2 Warp as a graduation present - a RAM upgrade up to 8MB that is, but it was fine!) My first job in November 1995 was as a web developer, I got this job with the brief to built web sites that could sell stuff despite the fact I had not seen an actual web page on the web, apart from text based pages in Lynx and the odd locally hosted experiment, before. However by late December I had built the prototype of what would become of the UK's first ecommerce websites and it was demonstrated to an assembled audience of UK computer industry chiefs in a swanky London hotel. Not bad going considering I hasn't even heard of Perl and CGI programming before I got the job. I had to learn while building the site of course, budgets were tight and the development (and indeed the simulation) ran on a web server running on my work PC (OS/2 again, natch). I even had to go into Waterstones one lunch time to look up how to do something in Perl as online resources were pretty basic back then.

Crazy days, everything was so new and I had to make most stuff up as I went along. I've never been a good programmer but I am good at solving problems. Nowadays I am an e-Learning developer (new job, only my third though) and it's all Flash based but we'll be soon switching to a new system which is HTML5 based and the circle keeps on turning...

Christmas TV in 1978

Nothing is as good as it used to be including nostalgia. The glories of the past are often also overblown. However the Guardian maybe are onto something when they compare the variety and scope of the 1978 TV schedules with that of today. TV is much more limited now than it used to be despite the apparent "choice" of the digital TV era. In reality most of the extra channels do not offer anything other than the illusion of choice and instead allow media companies to be lazy and target tiny segments of the market instead of having to show a bit more effort and try and appeal to a wider audience.

That isn't to say that TV today is worthless, far from it, but the talent and budgets are spread more thinly now. There are some excellent programmes still, the documentaries on Pilgrimage for example and most of BBC4. However finding the gems is harder now. Its easy to lose them amid the deluge of bilge.

Or maybe its not, i grew up with 70s TV after all, maybe the younger generations think it was far too slow and dull compared to now...

A level result day

A level result day (a.k.a. girls being photographed jumping in the air day), and on this day i always remember when i got my results. This was back in 1990 which was about 5 ice ages ago in the early Holocene. I turned up at my awful 6th form college (since closed down) to confirm what i already expected that i had failed my Maths and Physics A levels. I got U and N respectively.

More importantly however was my Computer Studies A Level. I needed an E to get into Birmingham Polytechnic to start a HND in Computer Science, in the end i got a D and my polytechnic/university career began at the end of the next month. In hindsight i could have got straight onto a degree course if i had gone through clearing but i always prefer to stick to plan A and that was to do the HND first then do a degree, and 5 years later i had achieved both.

Midlands Today filmed a report from my college though i was not asked by the reporter (David Davies in fact in his pre-FA days) about my results probably because i was not blonde or female. However it probably would have been a bit embarrassing to tell the nation (or the West Midlands at least) how my results read D U N. Incidentally one of my friends got E N D which was mildly amusing.

That was 23 years ago, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. 18 years working in web development and a second academic career with the Open University. Actually thinking about it i should have chosen history for my A levels all of those years ago, i probably would have got to university to study history back in 1990. I could have my own Channel 5 or BBC4 TV career by now...

The regeneration of Shard End

The first place i ever lived (i.e. home from the hospital) was Shard End in Eastern Birmingham, which is where my Mum grew up and where my Nan lived. It was my second home too as i was growing up, visiting my Nan's at least once a week. Since she died in the early 1990s i have not visited the area very often though in May 2010 i took the following photographs.

Everything was derelict and ready for demolition. Today i went there again and was surprised at the new buildings. Although i knew the roads around the church well it seemed totally different now that the old buildings have gone and new build is ongoing.

Shard End Library was very important to be as i was growing up, i visited every week and read so many science fiction books from there. In 2010 that had been boarded up too but now has been replaced by a funky new building. I didn't have time to check if the new library has any books too but you never know...

Old...

New...

The strange beauty of historic computers

Wired have a great article on the sights and smells of historic computing, the strange beauty indeed of the "olden days" of computing : mainframes, minicomputers, line printers and other historic computing artifacts. Many of the computers and peripherals at places like the Computer History Museum in California (somewhere i must visit one day!) still work after being restored adding an extra dimension to the experience. The sound and heat of a punched card reader...

It is a very different tech world to now, a bigger world too. Computers filled huge rooms with printers being the size of small cars, plus tape units the size of wardrobes. That is part of the fascination i feel, its just so different to the computing we use now.

Unfortunately by the time i entered work we were past the age of old iron, though i did use a Prime minicomputer at university which was great fun. The biggest computer i've ever had physical access to is a HP PC server which was the size of a small fridge. Just not the same as a room full of IBM 360. One place i must try and get to this year is the UK National Museum of Computing which includes a fair amount of old iron in it's collection.

Photo from Flickr Commons

Rebuilding the Titanic?

Forget raising the Titanic Australian mining entrepreneur Clive Palmer wants to build a life-size replica of the doomed ocean liner (personally i find building ships to 1:700 scale more manageable than 1:1). Although the ship will be built with an eye for detail with the same style of furnishings as the original and will not have TVs or free WiFi the ship will have some modern refinements such as air conditioning and sufficient life boats!

It looks like the ship is intended to be more a floating theme park rather than an ocean liner built to a retro style. Passengers will be able to dress up in period clothing and party like its 1912. The ship will retain the three separate classes of the original (and classes will not be able to mix) though there could be an option to sample life in all 3 classes. Palmer is hoping the ship, which could begin construction this year, will be ready to recreate the ill-fated Atlantic cruise of Titanic 1.0 in 2016. Hopefully avoiding ice bergs...

Photo from Flickr Commons (State Library of Queensland)

Camera C64

Instagram is one of my favourite apps with its ability to add a layer of faux retro-ness to your photos. Camera C64 takes it to the next level. The iPhone app modifies your photos to the resolution and colour depth of graphics on the Commodore C64 with its VIC-II video chip! The app is free though there is an optional (and very cheap) in-app purchase for extra colour filters for green, amber and B&W monitors. They were easily worth 69p to be honest! An example photo is below. Interestingly since i installed this app i have found there is another similar app too.

All very nice, though i never had a C64, i did have a VIC-20 though and still have a C16 somewhere... Here is a photo i took yesterday (of the canal natch).

The rise of the microcomputer

An interesting video from the Open University discussing the rise of the microcomputer in the 1980s and the great variety of machines as computers became democratised and were within the aim of normal people and not just corporations. Some lovely nostalgia as well here, i remember my ZX-80, VIC-20 and BBC Micro well...

Original instagram

You may have noticed that since i got an iPhone last Spring i have preferred to use Instagram photos for blog posts. This is because i think the format and size works well with the blog, and also looks fairly cool. Before the invention of instagram we had to do photos like that the old fashioned way of course with film cameras. I found a few old photos my Dad took in the early 70s when we lived in Crosby. These were his prized roses that he had to leave behind when we moved to Birmingham! To think that it requires a lot of computing power and software to produce such a photo now...