Retro gismo flashback

My previous post got me thinking about having lived through the dawn of this digital age ... cue fuzzy flashback...

I was first in my class to have a calculator and when I started work (as a mere child) in the early 80s computer programs were loaded manually from reels of tape with holes in. The 'computer' was actually just a terminal linked by a modem to the bank's national computer centre. I worked there on the staff help desk after panic set in when they introduced terminals with screens!  The actual computers took whole rooms to house the sort of memory you now get in the average mobile phone.

(An avant garde friend had an early mobile phone as big as his head - and that was pretty big! When he went to the bar we'd run out to the telephone box and call him to ask for crisps.)

Our home's first remote control device was for a video recorder, but was attached by a lead! I used to carry around a cassette recorder (pictured above) before the Sony Walkman, and can vividly remember the first time I heard a CD - Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega.

Apart from a brief foray with a Commodore 64 and flirtation with an Amstrad wordprocessor, I first saw a home PC in about 1990, but as late as 1995 at the local newspaper we sent stories via an Olivetti keyboard and modem. At the printer, stories were quite literally 'cut' and 'pasted' onto mockups and the lines between them were put on manually using teeny tiny rolls of sticky tape with a line down the middle.

By 1996 I had a  PC (a 256 with 4MB memory) and an email address - but I only knew 2 other people with emails! You couldn't imagine in those days that one day you'd own something like an iPad. It is not only music player and recorder, calculator, word processor, camera, means of communication, publishing device and video player. It's also camera, movie studio, orchestra, art studio, reference library and GPS.  I've just been using Facetime (Skype for iPads) to talk to a friend working in Azerbaijan. And it used to take 6 months for a letter to reach my missionary uncle in deepest Congo but he has a satellite powered laptop now and I can wave to him on Google Earth... up to a point.

Care to share some of your 'old tech' stories - what was your most exciting new gadget in the 'old days'?

Zombie Wombles and the Keywords of Destiny

Just to COMPLETELY change the subject: Do you ever look up in Blogger stats or Statcounter to see what search keywords brought visitors to your blog?

Zombie Womble. That's what brought someone to mine*.

Now I've posted about Wombles and I've posted about Zombies, but not in the same breath... until today.

Over at Cultural Snow, the erudite Tim Footman was saying just the other day (in this post: Jammy Helen Mirren) how many people stumble across his blog when searching for semi-clad ladies, just because he may have mentioned them in passing. Similarly, Army of Dave is struggling to cope with being associated with a contemptible racist politician following the runaway success of his Nick Griffin Question Time Drinking Game.

It's a sobering lesson in being careful what you post about - these things can come back and bite you... A bit like Tobermory here.

... but on the other hand (and I wonder what Tobe did with the other hand?) it could point the way to a GAP in the market. Maybe, I thought, there ought to be somewhere people can go for a zombie womble if they want one?

By the way - what do you think at my first attempts at image manipulation? It was done with a free programme GIMP 2.6 which I am told has much of the functionality of Photoshop without the price tag.

So, who would like a poem then?..

Zombie Womble

Underground, overground, back from their tomb
The Wombles are Zombies and lurk in the gloom
Munching the brains of the people they find
Great Uncle Bulgaria’s eating mankind!

Underground, overground, up from their graves
Nothing is wasted, everything saved
Matted with black and malodorous mud
Lumbering Wombles are hungry for blood!

And in their foul burrow there’s always a store
Of bits of old bodies all covered in gore
Where Madame Cholet, her apron streaked red
Is cooking up something to feed the Undead

Bumbling, stumbling, Wombling free
They want to recycle the best bits of ME!
Oh no! Orinico is coming to get me!
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common all ATE ME!!

Library Assistant - Week 2

In case you're wondering how my first two weeks as a library assistant went, here are some highlights and thoughts:

1. Not in those shoes! (left)
2. I was actually given the job of cleaning the sticky books - a job made more repellent thanks to this story on an earlier blog. 
3. I even heard a worse story - about a lady who brought books back which had been in the same carrier bag as a dirty nappy. The lady had to clean those books herself. 
4. When a large number of overdue Doctor Who books were returned (which would presumably never happen to a real Timelord) I failed to find a shelf bigger on the outside than the inside to put them back on.
5. The whole 'shelves bigger on the inside than outside' spiel is best not gone into with people who have only just met me. Some fall on stony ground.
6. The same goes for listing my previously harvested list of hysterically funny songs about librarians. They're just not ready for that yet.
7. Everyone in my library is shorter than me. It is possible I was hired to dust the top shelves. (I'm no giant by the way - standard 5foot4)
8. Talking of going back in time (yes we were - keep up!) it's like going back to the 1980's when I worked in a bank - days spent in protracted silences with the distant artillery of date-stamps, sorting things into alphabetical and/or numerical order. And nobody comes running at you with a health and safety manual if you try and remove staples from a wooden board with a tin opener. We even get proper tea breaks and an hour for lunch. The pay's about the same too. 
9. There's a lady who has worked in my branch since 1974. Say it again. 1974.
10. Oh, and...
11. ...it is really very pleasant and we have LOTS of GREAT books! Hurray for libraries!