2015 — 4 February: Wednesday
In 1974, on this date,1 I caught the bus in Windsor taking me from my temporary bed-and-breakfast to the ICL Education and Training HQ in Beaumont, Old Windsor. My first day as a trainee instructional writer in the IT industry. Not surprisingly, I also regarded this as my first day of real work in a 'proper' grown-up job, having long ago decided that the world of aeronautical engineering was simply not for me :-)
The feelings of...
... stupidity, guilt, and ingratitude that my apprentice training officer in Hawker Siddeley had done his best to inculcate in me during (and for some time before) my final exit interview were already fading. News of the effective cancellation of the project that he'd oh-so-confidently promised2 would "guarantee your job, you blithering young idiot" for the next decade or more didn't come for another month. By which time I had already absorbed sufficient knowledge of the ICL 1900 Series mainframe and its low-level coding language...
... that I was now able to start turning the three-week full-time series of lectures I'd been attending in Radley House (in Ealing) into a packaged series of self-teach audio and text modules. My first book — published in a limited edition of 50 copies, priced at £750 each — was to be followed by over twenty more in the next decade and a half. Looking back, I actually wrote more books for ICL during my seven years with them than I did for IBM in the next quarter of a century. And I managed to fit in some rather lucrative freelance3 ones along the way, too.
Today's lack of snow...
... means our walk this morning is now "on". Despite the enduring coolth. We shall just have to trot briskly, won't we? But not on an empty tum. Breakfast beckons.
The barometer...
... reading has shot right back up, but the level of the blue-tinted alcohol in my porch thermometer remains stubbornly just above 0C. And the wind, when we were actually exposed to it, was remarkably chilly. But the sun shone brightly, the chatter flowed smoothly, and the miles melted away underfoot. After three hours out there, the 19.9C here in the living room now seems positively subtropical, too. Now, with a light lunch gently digesting, I'm predicting a second mug of tea should just about restore my inner core to normality.
This was a fun read (as was Goldman's 1973 novel); I shall keep an eye out for Elwes' book. Source and snippet:
Elwes' descriptions in the book of the making of The Princess Bride will immediately make you want to rewatch the movie to see the scenes Elwes had to limp through with a broken toe and fight his 7ft 4in co-star Andre the Giant. "Each time you saw him, it was
like meeting him for the first time, in the sense that one could never really become accustomed to his extraordinary size," Elwes writes...
(And any book that includes in the index "Andre the Giant, breaking wind: 123-126" should be required reading for all.)
If only...
... this wasn't fiction:
Quite so. [Pause] Followed by this rather weird NPR pop-sci piece on quantum entanglement. (Link.)
And this piece from Vanity Fair on what Larry David is now up to. I'm a huge fan of "Seinfeld" and "Curb your Enthusiasm". (Link.)
Rule 34?
Clearly, I lead a very sheltered life. Such memes tend to pass me by. How would I know? (Link.)
Where will it end?
I enjoyed my computing spent dallying with ARM chips in my RISC-OS home PCs from 1989 onward. Now look what they're up to:
It's enough to make your eyes water, Rule 34 notwithstanding.
As I said...
... memes (Internet, or otherwise) tend to pass me by. I was unaware, until finding it quite by accident mere minutes ago, that "Explain XKCD" was needed, let alone that it actually exists. What can I say? My flabber is simply well and truly gasted. I shall retire to make my evening meal.