![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2024/42d8108a4d.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2024/1098fcc5f5.jpg\")
The grandkids are playing around with my old Pentax ME film camera.
\nIt’s a great opportunity to explain how cameras work. Open the back to see the shutter open. Take off the lens to see the mirror flip away.
\n“But how do you see the pictures?”.
\nI explained the process of taking up to 24 photos, rewinding the film, sending it to the chemist, they send it to the lab, wait a week, then find out everyone was blinking.
\nQuote of the week: “wait… you had to pay to take pictures…???”
\n![](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2024/unnamed.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2024-11-23T15:35:42+11:00",
"url": "https://ianjs.com/2024/11/23/the-grandkids-are.html",
"tags": ["Not nerdy"]
},
{
"id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2024/11/15/stop-comparing-mastodon.html",
"title": "Stop comparing Mastodon and Threads/Bluesky. It's a category mistake.",
"content_html": "These things are not apples and apples.
\nMastodon is a grassroots alternative to the ugly silos of commercial social media. It offers baked-in interoperability, decentralization, cooperation and a future that isn’t based on enshittification.
\nMastodon is everything Threads/Bluesky is not.
\nI’ve seen shiny-faced developers from Threads and Bluesky discussing how the future is federated and how they look forward to joining hands with everyone. They really seem sincere, but they are doomed.
\nOnce they’ve built it and dusted their hands, the investors and accountants will pat them on the head, then set the enshittification spiral in motion. It’s already happening.
\nDorsey initially seemed to be trying to innovate, but he’s gone. The vulture capitalists are descending because they smell a business-as-usual opportunity to build it, milk it, let it die then move on.
\nAnd Threads, well… Zuckerberg.
\nDon’t be distracted. They are not the Fediverse’s friends.
\n", "date_published": "2024-11-15T21:37:06+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2024/11/15/stop-comparing-mastodon.html", "tags": ["A bit nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2024/10/24/i-was-a.html", "title": "Lenny vs bland.ai", "content_html": "I was a bit pissed off the other day when I looked up an old Twitter thread to find it had been spammed by someone at bland.ai . Not cool.
\nDespite the shitty tactic, I couldn’t resist the clickbait.
\nThey provide automated phone agents and will call you for a demo, so I tried it. I was actually pretty impressed. I threw a bunch of nonsense and non sequiturs at her, but she patiently waited then steered the conversation back on track. If I spoke over her she stopped talking, listened to what I said, and responded appropriately.
\nJust for fun, I decided to pit her against Lenny so I forwarded the call to him.
\nLenny is a series of cleverly-constructed canned responses designed to infuriate spammers and cold callers. The recordings are generic enough to keep them on the line as he waffles and wanders till they finally give up in frustration.
\nHere’s how it went:
\n \nShe didn’t do too badly. Lenny is just a dumb series of fixed responses, but Bland.ai was unfazed and patiently tried to explain. When it was obvious that the conversation was going nowhere, she politely wound up the conversation.
\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-10-24T21:41:45+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2024/10/24/i-was-a.html", "tags": ["A bit nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2024/10/22/we-arrived-at.html", "content_html": "“Don’t anthropomorphize computers – they hate it.” — Andrew McAfee.
\n
We arrived at our cabin to find a 2001 centenary dollar coin on the doormat.
\nI can only assume the magpies left it as payment for all the oatmeal we’ve been feeding them.
\n
I recently decided I wanted a Home Assistant automation to turn on the bathroom fan. I already had an ESPHome temperature/humidity sensor so it seemed simple enough - just trigger the fan when the humidity reached a certain level.
\nThe problem was what level? Humidity in the bathroom varies with the time of year and how long the shower is on. This looked like it could become a messy automation with a lot of tweaking.
\nIt turned out what I really wanted to trigger on was the rate of change of humidity; a spike in humidity is a good indicator the shower is on. The time window and the rate of change are the only things to tweak. Once you’re happy with that, the absolute humidity doesn’t matter.
\nI messed about for a while trying to calculate this, then I discovered HA already had it covered with the derivative integration. I created a sensor like this:
\nsensor:\n- platform: derivative\n name: Bathroom humidity change\n source: sensor.bathroom_humidity\n unit_time: min\n time_window: "00:05:00"\nwhich gives me a sensor to trigger the automation on:
\n- alias: "Bathroom: Turn on fan on fast change in humidity"\n trigger:\n platform: numeric_state\n entity_id: sensor.bathroom_humidity_change\n above: 2 # Over n minutes the slope went above this value\n action:\n service: switch.turn_on\n entity_id: switch.bathroom_fan\nNow that it’s on, it needs to be turned off some time later. I went with the easy way out and just left it on for a set time. It could probably trigger on a negative value as the humidity decreases but I suspect that would be touchy to calibrate.
\n- alias: "Bathroom: Turn off fan after a while"\n trigger:\n platform: state\n entity_id: switch.bathroom_fan\n to: 'on'\n for:\n minutes: 30\n action:\n service: switch.turn_off\n entity_id: switch.bathroom_fan\nFinally for tweaking, and just because I can, I added a graph to show the interaction of the humidity and the sensor:
\n![](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2024/h.png\")
\n",
"date_published": "2024-06-11T17:30:00+11:00",
"url": "https://ianjs.com/2024/06/11/humidity-control-of-a-bathroom.html",
"tags": ["Nerdy"]
},
{
"id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2024/01/05/cray-vs-iphone.html",
"title": "Cray-1 vs iPhone 13",
"content_html": "I remember when the Cray-1 was the iconic supercomputer of the day but I’d heard that modern phones were comparable.
\nOf course the Google algorithm was listening to my thoughts and offered an appropriate video the next day. Here are the (slightly corrected) stats from the video so I can refer to them in future:
\n| \n | Cray-1 | \niPhone 13 | \n\n |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | \n1978 | \n2022 | \n\n |
| Price | \n$38,000,000 (2020 $) | \n$1000 | \n\n |
| Weight | \n5000 Kg | \n170g | \n\n |
| Power | \n115Kw | \n20h on a Li-Ion battery | \n\n |
| Memory | \n8.39Mb | \n6Gb | \n\n |
| Storage | \n300Mb | \n512Gb | \n\n |
| FLOPS | \n160 MFLOPS | \n15.8 TFLOPS | \n\n |
I just spent way too much time tracking down the source of a bird call that’s been haunting me for weeks. Finally identified it: an Eastern Koel or Rainbird.
\nIt’s always just out of visual range, but the call is very distinctive. It even has an interesting back-story as a migratory bird from New Guinea (which is presumably why I haven’t heard it before), and a dark side as a brood parasite doing the cuckoo thing.
\n![](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2023/andrew-king-eastern-koel-copy.webp\")
\n",
"date_published": "2023-12-27T20:58:28+11:00",
"url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/12/27/i-just-spent.html"
},
{
"id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/12/20/its-a-delightful.html",
"content_html": "It’s a delightful morning and I’ve managed to get out the door for a walk for the second day in a row. That’s a trend, right?
\nWhen I paused to take this picture, a kookaburra directly above me cocked his head to one side to look at me, then cracked up laughing.
\nI think he’s seen through me.
\n![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2023/ddb8b67d6b.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2023-12-20T11:59:54+11:00",
"url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/12/20/its-a-delightful.html"
},
{
"id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/12/18/sigh-just-got.html",
"content_html": "Sigh. Just got my first Mastodon spam.
\nIt was really dumb spam, but I clicked on it because I’m in the Mastodon honeymoon period and my brain is thinking butterflies and unicorns because of all the nice people here.
\nIllusion shattered. Honeymoon over.
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-18T19:51:35+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/12/18/sigh-just-got.html" }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/12/18/i-guess-im.html", "content_html": "I guess I’m not starting the bonfire any time soon…
\n![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2023/image.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2023/e60105880b.jpg\")
Seriously FaceBook? Putting a link to my blog article is “spam”?
\nThat’s kind of pathetic. Perhaps they are nervous about the IndieWeb?
\n![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2023/c3f470fd70.png\")
\n",
"date_published": "2023-12-17T19:43:45+11:00",
"url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/12/17/seriously-facebook-apparently.html"
},
{
"id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/12/09/the-five-second.html",
"title": "The five second time machine",
"content_html": "![\"\"](\"https://ianjs.micro.blog/uploads/2023/image.png\")
\nI was walking along the Warburton Trail the other day and I passed through a grove of pine trees. There was a breeze and the pine needles soughed in the wind.
\nFor an instant, I was ten years old again at my grandparent’s house and I could glance around in 1967.
\nI tried to grab at the memory…
\n\n… and then it was gone.
\nIt triggered a cascade of memories from the old farmhouse in Glen Waverley that my grandparents rented.
\nIt was in the middle of ten acres of paddocks surrounded by orchards and their long driveway came off Crow’s Lane. The lane is still there according to Google Maps, but it’s now just a name on a suburban street. In 1967 it was paved with bricks and lined with blackberries. It also led to the residence of “Mr Crow The Farmer” who ran, and probably owned, the orchards. My grandmother had a forelock-tugging respect for him. She told us he was not to be crossed, but we roamed the orchards anyway.
\n \nWe actually took that story seriously, despite its obvious contradictions. I guess that’s how legends start.
\nEventually the quarry was turned into a landfill tip…
\n \nThe driveway ended in a garage with a lean-to shed on each side. The garage had two enormous timber doors which we could prise open a bit to see my grandfather’s dusty Standard Vanguard sitting in the gloom.\n![\"Standard](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/130050/2023/vanguard.png\")
We assumed the car didn’t work – we’d never seen him drive it. It turned out there was more to the story. Apparently my grandmother, who was a notoriously anxious passenger, freaked out so much when he was driving that one day he parked in the garage and never drove again. Problem solved.
\nI always found him to be a gentle soul, but I rarely heard him say much.
\n\nOne of the lean-tos had a bench and scattered tools which we assumed were there for the taking.
\n\nIt’s hard to know how much of this is accurate or even real. Some of it will be actual memories, but they’re molded by time and bit-rot as they overlap with family stories and other memories and recede further into the past.
\nAnyway, time to teleport back to sixty years in that kid’s future and keep walking.
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-16T13:32:34+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/12/09/the-five-second.html", "tags": ["Not nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/12/04/heres-an-excellent.html", "content_html": "Here’s an excellent video from @karpathy@sigmoid.social with some intriguing ways to think about Large Language Models:
\nGoogle Assistant seems to be doing a HAL 9000…
\nEver since Google’s started cutting back on that product she’s been slowly losing her mind.
\nWhen she reads the news now it’s 50-50 whether she’ll read it, or just show a search result, or sometimes video with no sound.
\nUsed to work perfectly. I’ll give up when she gets to the “Daisy, Daisy…” stage.
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-02T09:21:56+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/12/02/i-think-google.html" }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/11/26/i-cant-seem.html", "content_html": "I can’t seem to find Elon Musk’s Mastodon handle to follow.
\nPlease advise.
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-26T14:58:34+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/11/26/i-cant-seem.html", "tags": ["Not nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/11/25/todays-rabbithole-the.html", "title": "Today's rabbit-hole - the IndieWeb and Micro.blog", "content_html": "Over a week ago I read this article by Cory Doctorow and it sparked a cascade of neurons that have been tickled over the past few years.
\nIt was a short hop from that article, to the state of the IndieWeb, to realising what a shit-show the whole social-media world has become. The IndieWeb and its principles were the solution I didn’t know I needed - I want to get back to blogging in my own place, with my own identity like it was in the early Internet.
\nTo do that I need to minimise the friction or I simply won’t get off my arse. I also need to belt out a quick post when inspiration hits, but still be able to create a long form post. The best I could come up with was a Hugo-based blog (for longer posts) and Mastodon (for micro-blogging).
\nMicro.blog provides a way to deal with all this in one place.
\nLike Twitter (I refuse to call it X), titles aren’t used on short posts. Like Google+ (R.I.P.), you can have a heading if you like. Like Medium, you can create long-form posts to your heart’s content. Like none of these, the infrastructure is not siloed in the hands of some deranged tech-bro.
\nSo, that’s been my week; setting up a blog, agonising over the layout, and merging it with my Mastodon presence.
\nI think I’m ready to go.
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-25T18:37:26+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/11/25/todays-rabbithole-the.html", "tags": ["A bit nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/11/23/wow-that-was.html", "content_html": "Wow, that was a whole new rabbit-hole.
\nI wanted to consolidate my identity, cross-post to Mastodon and dive into the whole IndieWeb thing; micro.blog ticked all the boxes.
\nOf course, that was a whole new world of procrastination because it had to be set up perfectly.
\nAlmost there…
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-23T21:33:17+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/11/23/wow-that-was.html", "tags": ["A bit nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2023/11/12/dance-like-nobodys.html", "title": "Dance like nobody's watching, blog like nobody's reading", "content_html": "I like to write and I’d like to get better at it, but if you think you have to come up with something profound it’s a great excuse to procrastinate.
\nTwitter is quick and ok for random shower-thoughts, but not for anything meatier.
\nGoogle+ used to be a good middle ground. There were less restrictions on length so your post could have a heading, and some formatting so it looked nice. Of course, that all evaporated when Google got bored and nuked the whole platform.
\nI have this blog but it always felt like I should be posting longer form essays. But maybe not.
\nIn The Memex Method Cory Doctorow treats blogging as a “commonplace book”:
\n\n\n… a web-log serves as more than an aide-memoire, a record that can be consulted at a later date. The very act of recording your actions and impressions is itself powerfully mnemonic…
\n
and…
\n\n\nThe genius of the blog was not in the note-taking, it was in the publishing. The act of making your log-file public requires a rigor that keeping personal notes does not.
\n
This was kind of exhilarating. Of course I can just write and publish stuff. It’s public so there’s pressure not to say dumb shit, but the real value is learning by having to explain it to yourself (and others).
\nWho knows, it might even work for me.
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-12T11:00:00+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2023/11/12/dance-like-nobodys.html", "tags": ["A bit nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2021/11/08/merlynston-primary-school.html", "title": "Merlynston Primary School, 1942-43", "content_html": "My dad, Edgar (Ted) Slinger, found these photos and thought they would be of interest to anyone who attended Merlynston State School in the 1940s.
\nThis is from 1942 when he was in Grade 5.
\n![\"\"](\"/uploads/2023/d642dbc329.jpg\")
\n… and this is 1943 in Grade 6:
\n![\"Grade](\"/uploads/2023/49403ea0a2.jpg\")
\n \n \n \n Grade 6, 1943\n \n \n \n
\nHere are some of the names he was able to dig out of his prodigious memory:
\n| Boys | \nGirls | \n
|---|---|
| David Barr | \nEve Madden | \n
| Terry Collins | \nShirley Griffiths | \n
| Jim Hewes | \nBarbara Phillips | \n
| John Ocolwitz | \nOlive Oliver | \n
| George Powell | \nMafanny Crisp | \n
| Ron Muir | \nJoy King | \n
| Owen Lawson | \nBetty Yarwood | \n
| Gordon Anderson | \nJim Whittle | \n
| Kevin Stubbs | \n\n |
| ? Hewitt | \n\n |
| Phil Wills | \n\n |
Also some teachers:
\nHere are some others from the same period from Coburg North that may be of interest to people from the area:
\n![\"Coburg](\"/uploads/2023/b6e2382749.jpg\")
\n \n \n \n Coburg Nth, Grade Prep 1937\n \n \n \n
\n![\"Coburg](\"/uploads/2023/bfb5be6e3b.jpg\")
\n \n \n \n Coburg Nth, Grade 2a 1937\n \n \n \n
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/media.jpg\")
\nMy adult life has roots in that glowing decade in my mid-to-late teens. The world was opening up to friends, music, politics, science, learning a trade and, by the end of the decade, starting a family. Time went slowly because everything was new and novel. It’s still the most vivid period of my life.
\n[ Cue blurry, fast-forward montage of life, kids, jobs… ]
\nAlong the way you latch on to people who have inspired or entertained you. For the longest time these icons of my youth were still part of the real world. I knew they were out there somewhere and it felt like they always would be.
\nBut one by one they’re winking out and fading into the monochromatic past. The gritty rockers of my youth are now grizzled grandfathers. Or dead already. I randomly look up bands I used to love from the seventies and find half of them have dropped off the perch. For a while there I thought I was personally killing them off by finding them on Wikipedia.
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/61876ac15f.jpg\")
\n \n \n
Some of them weren’t much older than me. I knew the greybeards of computing who inspired me were getting on, but I recently found out Dennis Ritchie, one of the creators of Unix, died in 2011 at seventy.
I can’t ignore it any more and pretend there is an an endless future ahead. I’ve dodged and weaved my way with sheer luck to sixty-four years old, but suddenly some of my closest friends are dealing with scary words like Bowel Cancer and Open Heart Surgery. Mortality is no longer an abstract idea, it’s hovering around and sniffing at the people who are the thread back to my youth.
\nI used to take my parents for granted. At some point it crept into my mind that they weren’t immortal and I made sure to drop in on them regularly to appreciate their company.
\nWhen I drove away from their house Mum and Dad would be waving from the porch. Now it’s just Dad. One day the porch will be empty.
\nEven thinking about it now is freezing a moment in time. A time when my grandparents and my Mum are gone, but Dad, my friends and my siblings are still here. Future snapshots will have more of the pieces missing.
\nSo how should I deal with this?
\n\n It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. \n\n\n
“And in the end…” might sound a bit bleak, but it’s the last line, of the last song, on the last album The Beatles made as a band. They all went on to new careers as solo artists. I think the lesson here is to look ahead, not back.
\nIt’s better to reorient my brain, set a course to enjoy a graceful slide and grab as many sunny moments as I can, like today with the grand-kids on the last day before lockdown.
\nIf I’m really lucky, good genes and good health-care could give me another thirty years or so. That’s a whole childhood, or early adulthood, or a whole career. It’s practically a third life. Some of it will taper away as age and disease do their thing. Maybe the crazy advances in medicine will paper over some of it. Either way I’d better not piss it away; that would be dumb.
\nMy Dad seems to have a decent model for it: let it happen. You can’t fight it. Continue to be a good person. Get joy from leaving a legacy, and comfort that you’ll be remembered fondly. If you let it eat away at you it’s just going to poison what’s left.
\nIt’s Autumn and it’s a Friday.
\nIn Melbourne that can mean a dreary end to the week, but sometimes it’s a surprise; cool but sunny.
\nBeing a Friday, grandchild #1.4 is over for the day. She’s two, so if I suggest a walk she’s up for it, because everything is an adventure when you’re two. We head out the door and we’re dazzled by sunshine and blue sky.
\n\n![](\"/uploads/2023/8bdab359ac.jpg\")
\n \n \nShe grabs my hand and it completely encloses hers as we head up the driveway. What is it about holding a toddler’s tiny, soft hand that way?
\n\n![](\"/uploads/2023/d6a789e7fc.jpg\")
\n \n \nWe spend five minutes discussing the bee and what it’s up to. She only has a few words, but that’s not a problem; she can have an animated conversation with just “mmm“s , “nope“s and “uhoh“s.
\nIt seems like only weeks ago she was a mute pre-toddler who only communicated with grins and grizzles. Now there’s a confident little person in there who just assumes I understand everything she says.
\nNext is the obligatory shuffle through the Autumn leaves. We’ve done this more than once before, so it’s officially a ritual.
\nTo the bakery!
\nShe wrestles with the fly strips on the door, beams at the array of biscuits and glares at the nice lady behind the counter for smiling at her.
\nThe decision is already made though; it’s always the jam biscuit with sprinkles on top. Nothing to do with the fact that Gramps prefers them. That will become controversial as her vocabulary expands; grandchild #3.1, or #2.3 would never let me get away with that.
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/3b4c56f253.jpg\")
\n \n \nOff to the shady seat under the trees where we can discuss the magpies and kookaburras while she carefully spreads the jam from the biscuit in a radius around her mouth.
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/6fc400c06f.jpg\")
\n \n \nMore importantly, the loose sprinkles from the bag have to be rained down on the ant’s nest below. We listen to their tiny cries of gratitude for this manna from heaven, and watch the High Priest Ant take all the credit for making it happen.
\nIn a few seconds sprinkles starts to wobble away and disappear down the hole. We discuss this at length.
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/61c5672b5b.jpg\")
\n \n \nTime to head back to Narni and pick some flowers for her on the way. These are stuffed in my pocket then promptly forgotten until wash day.
\nAlso any dandelion heads we find must be blown… and blown… and blown… Nope, she can’t do it and holds it out to me imploringly. I nuke the dandelion and she’s delighted by my super powers.
\n\nI cross the road on the opposite side to the park to see if she notices. She notices. An insistent finger points at the swings; then a grunt, and a glare when I hesitate. So we’re on the swing.
\nAmusing toddlers is easy - push the swing, get a laugh. Repeat forever. I manage to do it long enough to add hiccups to the giggles and that is just hilarious apparently.
\nI’m tempted to see who will get bored first, but I end up having to cajole her into heading back to Narni’s house.
\nShe’s looking drowsy so I offer to carry her for the last stretch. She concedes, but narrows her eyes suspiciously when I suggest resting her head on my shoulder. You don’t think I’m going to fall for that do you?
\nLittle does she realise, I’m the Master of Being Boring. Some quiet murmuring talk… a gentle rocking as we walk… yeah, sure, put your head down if you like…
\nAaaand… she’s out. I know this because she’s turned into lead in my arms.
\nI wrote this because I wanted to capture the moment, but it turned out the real value was reminding myself to savour it.
\nThe grandparent thing is a last chance to appreciate the unconditional trust and uncomplicated love from a person who is discovering the world.
\nDon’t drop that ball, idiot.
\nSigh.
\nI came across this archive of all the Byte magazine covers which some energetic soul has scanned. They go all the way back to the first issue in January 1977.
\nMajor flashback!
\nHere’s the first one I bought at McGills Technical Books in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne:
\n![\"\"](\"/uploads/2023/59a688aaea.jpg\")
\n
I’m pretty sure it cost me $4.50 – about $18 or more in current dollars. I was a poor student and I agonised over spending that much.
In a world where computers are everywhere, it’s hard to imagine how exciting it was to get your hands on a real computer in 1977. Byte was the go-to magazine back then for enthusiasts exploring the idea of owning a “personal” computer.
\nThere was a thriving market in development boards for the different microprocessors, but you had to assemble them from scratch by soldering components to a board. If you were really cashed up you could get a fully assembled board like this one from an obscure company in California:
![](\"/uploads/2023/3335b82973.jpg\")
\nI pored over the ads in Byte and vacuumed up the articles on assembly language, threaded interpretive languages and wire wrapping. Eventually I conned my wife into diverting much-needed funds from our house savings for a Z80 Starter System from SD Systems.
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/4b3ccce435.jpg\")
\n1024 bytes of RAM (expandable to 2048 bytes!), a 2K EPROM programmer, a cassette interface to store programs and the all-important S100 bus expansion so I would never have to buy another computer again.
\nDoesn’t sound like much, but it eventually had:
\nI still have the S100 cards pinned to my wall for nostalgia.
\nHere is the wire wrap board with all the specialty chips crammed up one end to maximise the board usage:
\n![](\"https://ianjs.micro.blog/uploads/2023/5b6b7d9b4c.jpg\")
\n… and here’s the rat’s nest of wire-wrap on the back:
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/9dbf8ebe87.jpg\")
\nEnough!
\nI need to go off for a quiet sob now, or maybe get inspired to get off my arse and build something.
\n", "date_published": "2014-12-31T11:00:00+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2014/12/31/in-which-i.html", "tags": ["Nerdy"] }, { "id": "http://ianjs.micro.blog/2014/09/09/mount-buffalo-chalet.html", "title": "Mount Buffalo Chalet, 1952", "content_html": "![](\"/uploads/2023/d17a553c40.jpeg\"/)
\nMy Dad asked me to scan some photos taken when he was working as a maintenance carpenter at Mount Buffalo Chalet in 1952. He was employed by the Victorian Railway and in those days they owned and ran the Chalet. I guess that explains the holiday posters I used to see on the Red Rattlers.
\nHe was 21 and had just hooked up with a hot waitress who also worked there. That turned out to be an important event in my life because he married her a few years later and they produced some amazing offspring and, equally importantly, an amazing marriage which is going to clock over sixty years soon.
\nThere’s something magical about peering into this monochromatic time portal at a bunch of kids just starting out in their adult life. They are younger than any of my biological children in these photos. Even more spooky is Mum and Dad popping out of the photos and realising the glint in Dad’s eye is my own genesis.
\nThese are scans from sepia prints, some of which are quite small.
\nThe captions are Dad’s.
\n| \n | \n |
|---|---|
![\"Leslie](\"/uploads/2023/a97ccbfd8e.jpeg\"\n) Leslie Brush, Ray Castles, Les Merton, Gordon Day \n | \n![\"Back](\"/uploads/2023/media.jpeg\"\n) Back Row: Myself (Edgar (Ted) Slinger, Shirley Rudland, Les Merton, Yvonne ?, painter ?, Gordon Day. Front Row: Painter ?, Ray Castles, Flora Struthers, Peggy Finnigan. \n | \n
![\"Opening](\"/uploads/2023/2bcf7c9376.jpeg\"\n) Opening the roof over the Chalet Kitchen for new bain-maries and stoves. June 1952 \n | \n![\"Outside](\"Scan-300x180.jpeg\"\n) Outside the stables. From left: Yvonne (?), Flora Struthers, Shirley Rudland \n | \n
![\"Railway](\"/uploads/2023/fcfd6dff76.jpeg\"\n) Railway tradesmen. Carpenters, plumbers, painters, tilers, and labourers. Photo taken at Echo Point, June 1952. Third from left: Les Merton, plumber. Back row right of door, myself, carpenter. Back row left of window, Allan Coulson, carpenter. Extreme right, engineer. Third from right, Leslie Brush, foreman carpenter. \n | \n![\"From](\"/uploads/2023/162813199b.jpeg\"\n) From left: Flora Struthers, waitress. Gordon Day, plumber. Front row: Peggy Finnigan, waitress. Shirley Rudland, waitress. Irene (?), waitress. Jessy (?) , waitress. \n | \n
![\"Staircase](\"/uploads/2023/151136958a.jpeg\"\n) Staircase to female staff quarters. Top left: Violet Rudland (Shirley’s mother), Bottom left: Annie (?), Bottom right: Shirley Rudland \n | \n![\"Short](\"/uploads/2023/75803635ec.jpeg\"\n) Short man on the left: Frank, commissioner. Flora Struthers, bloke in charge of the boilers, Shirley Rudland, Peggy Finnegan. \n | \n
![\"V.I.A.](\"/uploads/2023/c7a49cf021.jpeg\"\n) V.I.A. Hut. Slept four. Built next to Pigeon Rock. From left: Gordon Day, ?, Ray Castles, Shirley Rudland. \n | \n![\"Left:](\"/uploads/2023/2bc994d882.jpeg\"\n) Left: Les Merton. Peggy Finnegan, Flora Struthers, Gordon Day, Yvonne Front seated: Shirley Rudland, Standing second row: Violet Rudland \n | \n
Outside the stables. Yvonne and Shirley \n | \n![\"Violet](\"Scan-11-202x300.jpeg\"\n) Violet Rudland, Anne, Peggy Finnegan \n | \n
Irene, Flora, Jessy \n | \n![\"On](\"Scan-13-300x193.jpeg\"\n) On horseback: Annie. Shirley Rudland, Flora Struthers. \n | \n
Shirley Rudland, Flora Struthers. \n | \n![\"Shirley](\"/uploads/2023/d17a553c40.jpeg\"\n) Shirley Rudland, who I married 60 years ago, beside the "new" Commer bus. \n | \n
![](\"/uploads/2023/datamation-cover-june-15th-19851.jpg\")
\nI saw an article today called Kids Can’t Use Computers… And This Is Why It Should Worry You and it bugged me so much I had to respond at length.
\nI agree with some of it, but the general theme is “you don’t understand computers and I do, so you’re stupid”. There are (currently) 800 or more comments and growing so I assume it has gained some traction.
\nIt’s written by a Computing teacher who is frustrated by people who come to him for help. Unfortunately he thinks they don’t understand because the lazy sods refuse to devote their lives to the internal workings of their computers and phones.
\nDon’t get me wrong. I’ve been an IT geek for thirty years or more. I love technology and I love tinkering with computers, but I’m frankly embarrassed by the industry sometimes.
\nI can usually hack my way through a problem because I’m used to the nuances of software and hardware, but if some bewildered soul says:
\n“The computer says Error Code: 0x32C8. What does that mean?”,
\nI’ll look sheepish and say:
\n“Yeah, it’s not your fault. There’s no way you could know that. Let me do some arcane magic and we’ll pretend you never saw it”.
\nI really feel for people when their computer makes them feel stupid, and I need them to realise it’s not their fault.
\nSo here are a few of the points that made me mutter “Bullshit!” under my breath as I flicked through the article.
\n\n\n…a visitor downstairs that needed to get on the school’s WiFi network…. [Large chunk of geek paranoia and resentment skipped here] ‘The Internet’s not working.’ she stated with disdain.
\n‘Do you know where the proxy settings are?’ I asked, hopefully.
\nI don’t get a response. I might as well have asked her ‘Can you tell me how to reticulate splines using a hexagonal decode system so that I can build a GUI in VisualBasic and track an IP Address.’
\n
Yes, you might as well have asked that. The phrase “proxy server” should never be part of the average user’s vocabulary. There are well defined protocols to hide this unnecessary detail, so it’s inexcusable to burden them with it.
\n\n\nIt took me about ten seconds to find and fill in the proxy settings. I handed back her MacBook and she actually closed Safari and reopened it, rather than just refreshing. [more sarcasm and resentment].
\n
[…Slow hand clap…] Good for you. Of course, you know there’s such a thing as a “proxy setting”, what it does, and where to find it. And it’s your job.
\n(Extra points for the snide dig at the user’s perfectly reasonable approach to restarting their browser).
\n\n\nThere are always one or two kids in every cohort that have already picked up programming or web development or can strip a computer down to the bare bones, replace a motherboard, and reinstall an operating system. There are usually a couple of tech-savvy teachers outside the age range I’ve stated, often from the Maths and Science departments who are only ever defeated by their school laptops because they don’t have administrator privileges, but these individuals are rare.
\n
Yep, that’s pretty much what you’d expect. There will be a few people who love the technology for its own sake, and everybody else who just want to get shit done. But they can’t. Because the system has popped up yet another dialogue box spewing gibberish from the bowels of the operating system asking them to fix something the software should have figured out for itself.
\n\n\nA kid puts her hand up in my lesson. ‘My computer won’t switch on.’ she says, with the air of desperation that implies she’s tried every conceivable way of making the thing work. I reach forward and switch on the monitor, and the screen flickers to life, displaying the Windows login screen. She can’t use a computer.
\n
So the kid turned on the computer with the power switch but it wasn’t “on” on, because you have to press another switch? And that makes sense?
\nMy son’s Dell desktop computer has a very cool glossy black case which is appealing in every way except usability. The designer decided that finding the power button or DVD eject button was less important than how cool it looked. So all the buttons are black. On a black background. So they’re invisible.
\nIt reminds me of this scene in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
\n![](\"/uploads/2023/zaphod2.jpg\")
\n It’s the weird color-scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labelled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up in black to let you know you’ve done it!” — Zaphod Beeblebrox \n
\n\n\nMobile has killed technical competence. We now all carry around computers that pretend to be mobile phones or tablets.
\n
No we don’t. We carry around mobile phones and tablets. Period. In fact every time you are reminded it’s a computer, that’s a usability fail.
\n\n\nMost people don’t even think of their phone as a computer. It’s a device to get quick and easy access to Google. It’s a device that allows us to take photos and post them to Facebook. It’s a device that allows us to play games and post our scores to Twitter.
\n
Yep, it gets shit done. Isn’t that fantastic! How does “thinking of it as a computer” enhance that experience?
\n\n\nIt’s a device that locks away the file system (or hides it from us). It’s a device that only allows installation of sanitised apps through a regulated app store. It’s a device whose hardware can’t be upgraded or replaced and will be obsolete in a year or two. It’s a device that’s as much a general purpose computer as the Fisher Price toy I had when I was three.
\n
Yep. It does what it says it does. It has a simple, consistent interface, makes phone calls, protects you from viruses that are constantly trying to pick your pocket, and is so compact that most of the parts aren’t replaceable. It’s not a “general purpose computer” because it’s a phone.
\nThe article has a lot more examples but none of them showed that “kids can’t use computers”. If anything these sentiments are the problem. People shouldn’t have to accommodate shitty design; the design should address what real people need to get done.
\nIt might sound like I’m jaded with the industry, but I’m not. There’s a growing realisation that usability and simplicity might actually make products more desirable. Hell, one company got to be the most profitable in the world doing just that. Vote with your wallet and and choose a platform where the user experience is the focus not an afterthought.
\nIn the meantime, let’s stop pretending that “computer literacy” is about fathoming why there’s a mysterious black switch on your black laptop that turns off the WiFi.
\n", "date_published": "2013-08-13T21:18:33+11:00", "url": "https://ianjs.com/2013/08/13/kids-cant-use.html", "tags": ["A bit nerdy"] } ] }