My daughter found these socks. Really, I cannot see the point - you might as well wear shoes!
20120731
barefoot running and Swimming
A weekend in Dundrum, County Down decorating a friend's house. The picture is taken from the castle just up from where I was staying. I could not resist the chance to run along the seashore, so made off at 05:30 each morning, across the peninsular (in the centre of the picture) to the Murlough nature reserve, turn left to the North-most end, then South along the beach to Newcastle and back. A round trip of about 8 miles, bare foot of course, punctuated with some brief swims (it was very cold).
My daughter found these socks. Really, I cannot see the point - you might as well wear shoes!
My daughter found these socks. Really, I cannot see the point - you might as well wear shoes!
20120724
High Fidelity and Organs
Joe, a friend of mine in his 20's, who knows all about computers especially multi-media, asked me "what is hi-fi?". I have other friends who set their Apple Mac on the counter to play music whilst they are working - playing music from unbelievably tinny speakers so that all you are getting is stuff between about 1kHz and 2kHz. An iPod (which equates to all that is music for many folk), even in a dock, emits audio so horrible that I find it hard to listen to at all. MP3, clever though it is, has become ubiquitous - who now appreciates that there was (better) quality before MP3? Or that audio is an area where technology is actually going backwards?
In its hey day hi-fi was a cult as aptly portrayed by Flanders and Swann. It's followers believed (and still do) that gold plated connectors, oxygen free copper wire, and valves (vacuum tubes) improved fidelity, and poured scorn on CD's and anything digital.
Not that there isn't some truth here. One of the many things I took to pieces in my youth contained a valve audio amplifier which I noted for its quality. It was, of course, valve - but in particular the output stage was a balanced pair of pentodes, driven from a phase-splitting transformer. Because a balanced arrangement like this tends to cancel out the more objectionable 3rd harmonic distortion, added to the "soft" sound of valves (which in objective terms is due to the gradual limiting when overdriven, as opposed to semiconductors which suddenly overload), the sound was very good. A pity I no longer have that amplifier.
And so it was with pleasure that I read the interview with Bob Stuart of Meridian in E&T July 2012. Here are some quotes. "One of the ironies of the digital age is that while we're listening to more and more music, we're listening to it on worse and worse playback systems. The biggest threat to the success of audio companies is that Apple has become the world's biggest audio company." "Music is one of the great social experiences, especially for the young, but they're listening to it on 1" speakers on their iPod dock... and these people are growing up thinking that this is what music sounds like." and "How does Stuart feel when a footballer pays £35,000 for a pair of his DSP8000 speakers only to plug his iPod into it?".
Sadly I am unlikely ever to have £35,000 to throw around, and in any case my hearing is not so good now - reduced high frequency response and a bit of tinnitus. But I can still feel the difference between live sound and canned sound. Anyone who has heard the majesty of a large organ will appreciate that this experience is hard to reproduce on loudspeakers. Only two organs in the world (in Atlanta and Sydney) have 64' pipes - that corresponds to a fundamental vibration of 8Hz which is below the threshold of hearing: you feel rather more than hear the sound - you feel it in your belly. Not that I have experienced the 64' sound, but I have experienced and loved 32'. Try a live concert of Saint-Saëns' Organ symphony. The Atlanta organ also is the only one with pipes working from 100" of pressure, resulting in a very loud sound. Indeed one could be forgiven for imagining that the designers were doing that, oh so American, thing of trying to be bigger, louder, longer and stronger just for the sake of being better than anyone else in the world.
Whilst I am talking of organs (which I have noted people either love or hate with a vengeance) I can hardly omit reference to my namesake's organ. And whilst talking of keyboard instruments, the common piano is also remarkably hard to reproduce faithfully, this time due to its sudden transients and large dynamic range. Here's another thing that has been dumbed down in modern audio equipment. The dynamic range of the human ear is immense, perhaps as much as 130dB. A good set of ears (mine sadly are no longer that good) can hear (in a suitably quite room) the Brownian motion of molecules of air hitting the pinna. No electronics that I have ever heard of, much less heard, even approaches this. In contrast popular music is actually designed to use a very limited dynamic range (put otherwise it is simply loud all the time) because that is "what people want" or more to the point it is "what people want people to want" because it makes the job of designing and marketing iPods and the like so much easier and cheaper. Classical music generally has a much greater dynamic range, but it is often artificially reduced when recorded or broadcast otherwise you would never be able to listen to it with ambient noise around (like in a car).
I still look forward to that day when audio reproduction can do justice to both organ (all 64' of, please) and piano. I hope technology can do me the honour before the capability of my ears to hear it fades altogether.
In its hey day hi-fi was a cult as aptly portrayed by Flanders and Swann. It's followers believed (and still do) that gold plated connectors, oxygen free copper wire, and valves (vacuum tubes) improved fidelity, and poured scorn on CD's and anything digital.
Not that there isn't some truth here. One of the many things I took to pieces in my youth contained a valve audio amplifier which I noted for its quality. It was, of course, valve - but in particular the output stage was a balanced pair of pentodes, driven from a phase-splitting transformer. Because a balanced arrangement like this tends to cancel out the more objectionable 3rd harmonic distortion, added to the "soft" sound of valves (which in objective terms is due to the gradual limiting when overdriven, as opposed to semiconductors which suddenly overload), the sound was very good. A pity I no longer have that amplifier.
And so it was with pleasure that I read the interview with Bob Stuart of Meridian in E&T July 2012. Here are some quotes. "One of the ironies of the digital age is that while we're listening to more and more music, we're listening to it on worse and worse playback systems. The biggest threat to the success of audio companies is that Apple has become the world's biggest audio company." "Music is one of the great social experiences, especially for the young, but they're listening to it on 1" speakers on their iPod dock... and these people are growing up thinking that this is what music sounds like." and "How does Stuart feel when a footballer pays £35,000 for a pair of his DSP8000 speakers only to plug his iPod into it?".
Console of the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ, Atlanta
Sadly I am unlikely ever to have £35,000 to throw around, and in any case my hearing is not so good now - reduced high frequency response and a bit of tinnitus. But I can still feel the difference between live sound and canned sound. Anyone who has heard the majesty of a large organ will appreciate that this experience is hard to reproduce on loudspeakers. Only two organs in the world (in Atlanta and Sydney) have 64' pipes - that corresponds to a fundamental vibration of 8Hz which is below the threshold of hearing: you feel rather more than hear the sound - you feel it in your belly. Not that I have experienced the 64' sound, but I have experienced and loved 32'. Try a live concert of Saint-Saëns' Organ symphony. The Atlanta organ also is the only one with pipes working from 100" of pressure, resulting in a very loud sound. Indeed one could be forgiven for imagining that the designers were doing that, oh so American, thing of trying to be bigger, louder, longer and stronger just for the sake of being better than anyone else in the world.
Bruckner's organ in St. Florian's Priory
Whilst I am talking of organs (which I have noted people either love or hate with a vengeance) I can hardly omit reference to my namesake's organ. And whilst talking of keyboard instruments, the common piano is also remarkably hard to reproduce faithfully, this time due to its sudden transients and large dynamic range. Here's another thing that has been dumbed down in modern audio equipment. The dynamic range of the human ear is immense, perhaps as much as 130dB. A good set of ears (mine sadly are no longer that good) can hear (in a suitably quite room) the Brownian motion of molecules of air hitting the pinna. No electronics that I have ever heard of, much less heard, even approaches this. In contrast popular music is actually designed to use a very limited dynamic range (put otherwise it is simply loud all the time) because that is "what people want" or more to the point it is "what people want people to want" because it makes the job of designing and marketing iPods and the like so much easier and cheaper. Classical music generally has a much greater dynamic range, but it is often artificially reduced when recorded or broadcast otherwise you would never be able to listen to it with ambient noise around (like in a car).
I still look forward to that day when audio reproduction can do justice to both organ (all 64' of, please) and piano. I hope technology can do me the honour before the capability of my ears to hear it fades altogether.
20120722
Ten miles
Having entered the forest and judged there were too many flies, I retraced my steps and did the Goat Man's lane, King's River bridge and back via Valleymount loop - I reckon about ten miles. No shoes of course. My feet survived remarkably well but the rest of me is très fatigue.
20120721
Oxford and Port Meadow
In case you are interested... "Oriel College was established in 1326 by King Edward II, the oldest college in Oxford to be founded by a monarch. Oriel numbers Sir Walter Raleigh and Cecil Rhodes amongst its illustrious alumni."
One cannot condense three full years into a few paragraphs of blog so you will have to be content with some random memories. My first-year room in college you know was in the corner of the Rhodes Building. In a similar way to CU at school, in my second year I got landed with the title "college representative" for OICCU. A by-product was getting the special CU room between 1st and 2nd quads - a large living room with separate (tiny) bedroom. Here I hosted many a CU supper: one purchased vast numbers of loaves of bread, margarine, cheese, sliced cooked meat and jam. Come the appointed hour hoards of would-be-Christians would descend upon this spread leaving me (and my scout) to clear up the greasy and crumby mess.
Because of its location, my room also became for one week the props room for the annual college play. That year it was Alice, and one of the props was a real pig's head (for the Duchess). At the start of the week it was not nice. As the week progressed it became increasingly horrid.
In my 3rd year I was obliged to find accommodation outside the college. The Cave taught architecture in the polytechnic and, being a widower and I suppose lonely, opened his house to students from the poly. He even built an extension to provide extra rooms. Somehow it had become a tradition for a couple of rooms to be made available to Orielenses and, knowing the guy who was there the year before, I was recommended along with a fellow Physicist. In my usual way I chose the smaller of the rooms which I loved. This, by the way, was the time and place that I often ate bread and onion, as you will know if you talk to my children! The thing was, one had to pay the college for half the price of all meals whether you took them or not, and they were subsidised - so if you opted out to save money you had to get a meal for less than, I think, 20p.
This picture, courtesy of StreetView, is the best I can muster for this infamous residence. The room cost £3 per week which, even in those days, was ridiculously cheap. This included optional breakfast with the Cave. He made his own bread which was sumptuous when toasted. For a supplement of just 30p you could join the Sunday lunch extravaganza. This would be a multi-course gourmet meal starting with nibbles and sherry (a dry amontillado), a starter, main course (with wine), desert (often with a desert wine) or cheese board, finished off with coffee and liqueurs. One was, of course, expected to help with the cooking, serving and dishes, and one was expected to be sociable. You had to be prepared to invest a good 3 hours of your life. Optionally (and for no extra expense) you could stay for afternoon tea which could be almost as extravagant (like strawberries and cream, served on the lawn) and would add at least another 3 hours to your budget.
Here it was I experienced pigeon pie. You remember four and twenty blackbirds? Unfortunately, said Cave, Sainsburys did not have pigeons complete with the claws so he was unable to stick the claws through the crust as tradition demanded. But he did cook it complete with the inners which made for interesting gymnastics on one's plate. But this was not one of his better meals. Cave it was who taught me how to make pastry. And how never to keep cheese in the fridge: you try telling that to the women here!
In those days I still had the bicycle my parents had bought me at age 13. The bicycle was and probably still is by far the best mode of transport in Oxford. Besides getting me to college every day it (and I) also frequented such places as Port Meadow and Shotover Hill.
In my first year a ride to Shotover hill was an often subsitute for church on Sunday morning. I tried most of the available flavours and found them sadly lacking. In comparison sitting here and enjoying the view I found most edifying. Eventually I discovered the college chapel and, high-church though it was and thus unlikely for someone brought up as an evangelical brethren, it and its chaplain seemed to answer my spiritual needs.
Port Meadow was close by Cave's residence, so was a frequent haunt of mine in my 3rd year. It is a large area of common land which, apparently, has never been ploughed and, in short, a wonderful place to roam. Incidentally it was here that I discovered Granny Smith apples for the first time. Just as running (in bare feet!) is now, Port Meadow was a safety valve, it was a place where I could get away from my studies and from other people.
Google Earth view of Oriel College.
Rhodes Building is the copper roof at top.
The copper roof below is the senior library.
To the left is the "island block" which also
contains buildings belonging to the college.
Because of its location, my room also became for one week the props room for the annual college play. That year it was Alice, and one of the props was a real pig's head (for the Duchess). At the start of the week it was not nice. As the week progressed it became increasingly horrid.
In my 3rd year I was obliged to find accommodation outside the college. The Cave taught architecture in the polytechnic and, being a widower and I suppose lonely, opened his house to students from the poly. He even built an extension to provide extra rooms. Somehow it had become a tradition for a couple of rooms to be made available to Orielenses and, knowing the guy who was there the year before, I was recommended along with a fellow Physicist. In my usual way I chose the smaller of the rooms which I loved. This, by the way, was the time and place that I often ate bread and onion, as you will know if you talk to my children! The thing was, one had to pay the college for half the price of all meals whether you took them or not, and they were subsidised - so if you opted out to save money you had to get a meal for less than, I think, 20p.
208 Banbury Road
This picture, courtesy of StreetView, is the best I can muster for this infamous residence. The room cost £3 per week which, even in those days, was ridiculously cheap. This included optional breakfast with the Cave. He made his own bread which was sumptuous when toasted. For a supplement of just 30p you could join the Sunday lunch extravaganza. This would be a multi-course gourmet meal starting with nibbles and sherry (a dry amontillado), a starter, main course (with wine), desert (often with a desert wine) or cheese board, finished off with coffee and liqueurs. One was, of course, expected to help with the cooking, serving and dishes, and one was expected to be sociable. You had to be prepared to invest a good 3 hours of your life. Optionally (and for no extra expense) you could stay for afternoon tea which could be almost as extravagant (like strawberries and cream, served on the lawn) and would add at least another 3 hours to your budget.
Here it was I experienced pigeon pie. You remember four and twenty blackbirds? Unfortunately, said Cave, Sainsburys did not have pigeons complete with the claws so he was unable to stick the claws through the crust as tradition demanded. But he did cook it complete with the inners which made for interesting gymnastics on one's plate. But this was not one of his better meals. Cave it was who taught me how to make pastry. And how never to keep cheese in the fridge: you try telling that to the women here!
In those days I still had the bicycle my parents had bought me at age 13. The bicycle was and probably still is by far the best mode of transport in Oxford. Besides getting me to college every day it (and I) also frequented such places as Port Meadow and Shotover Hill.
John Baptist Malchair - View of Oxford from Shotover Hill
A more recent picture borrowed from Flickr
In my first year a ride to Shotover hill was an often subsitute for church on Sunday morning. I tried most of the available flavours and found them sadly lacking. In comparison sitting here and enjoying the view I found most edifying. Eventually I discovered the college chapel and, high-church though it was and thus unlikely for someone brought up as an evangelical brethren, it and its chaplain seemed to answer my spiritual needs.
Showing (besides some other places) Port Meadow,
Cave's as yellow square with blue outline,
and Oriel College highlighted in green
Recent views of Port Meadow (not my own)
20120718
Computing at Oxford
I met the computer for the first time at Oxford. How strange that sounds today when it is not unusual for everyone here in the lounge to have a laptop of equivalent on their lap. But in those days, before the IBM PC, it was not so.
My friend and I attended an extra-curriculum computer course. Not having the internet to check this out beforehand, I had not a clue what it was about and it took a while for the penny to drop that you could actually tell the computer to do stuff, line by line. And so we learnt Fortran IV, and exercised our new found knowledge on the Nuclear Physics Department IBM 1130 with its 32K-word core memory, card reader and, oh joy, a pen plotter.
The IBM 1130 was single-user and single-task. You "typed" your program on a card punch machine in a cubicle in some remote and very noisy room. Each card described a statement (a line of code): the card in the picture is one of my own and describes an IF statement.
A typical program would thus end up as a stack of cards several inches thick. You would take this to the computer room and join the queue. When eventually your turn came you would place the cards in the card reader which would read them surprisingly fast (woe betide any cards that were dog-eared!) and your program would either execute as intended or not. As with most programs, generally it did not execute correctly for the first many tries. There was no way to tinker with it there and then - there was a queue of other users behind and besides there was no card punch in the computer room. So, back to the cubicle.
The computer bug really got to me at first - I remember my parents coming to collect me at the end of term and feeling like a zombie - we stopped outside Newbury for a picnic on the way home and I can remember the juxtaposition of the "homely" taste of the sandwiches and the surreal, almost drunk feeling of utter fatigue. When we got back home I went to my room and slept for a very long time.
Here are some of the programs I can remember writing:
(1) I was very pleased with myself for simplifying the maths of solving multiple simultaneous linear equations by the reduction to echelon form method.
(2) As mentioned in a previous post I made a program to print out ground-hogs subjected to various graphical transformations (skew, enlargement, reflection, rotation, etc.) . This partially in eternal devotion to the ground-hog artist previously mentioned, and partly because a pen plotter must be brought into submission.
(3) The pièce de résistance was a joint effect. It absorbed colossal amounts of effort. My friend wrote the main program and I wrote the subroutine. The whole thing developed a musical theme into a fugue and plotted it out in high definition in full harmony on two staves. The subroutine (I called it "note" I think) dealt with the graphical aspect. The call specified the pitch and length of the note(s) and the subroutine would work out whether it first needed to plot staves, ledger lines, bar lines, time and key signatures and the like and then would draw the note appropriately. Regrettably I have nothing to show for my work: I gave the final plot to my friend and we felt we could not repeat the exercise for fear of stretch to ultimate distraction the patience of the other programmers who wanted to use the computer for what they thought were "serious" purposes.
The second computer in my life was the PDP-8 at the Clarendon Laboratory.
This picture is the closest I could find to what the setup was. There was a single teletype for creating punched paper tape and interacting with the computer. The computer itself had a high speed paper tape reader that would read literally piles of tape in seconds.
The PDP-8 was classed the "first minicomputer". It was pretty close in power and speed to a Microchip PIC16 microcontroller which is a "chip" costing much less than a euro today - a rather large example is shown below. In case you didn't catch it, this is somewhat of a condemnation of the PDP-8. Like the PIC it had a 12-bit instruction code, this being rather unusual in a computer. And probably a similar amount of memory.
Again this computer was single-user, single-task. It had no disk drive and no internal operating system, so each task had to be loaded from scratch from paper tape starting with the operating system. Programs were written in FOCAL which was not dissimilar to a very basic sort of BASIC. The machine was used mainly to carry out linear regression analysis on experimental results. As computers go (back then) it had very little character - a lot less than the IBM 1130 because it had no plotter. But the concept of linear regression fascinated me and I taught myself to derive the equations from first principles and then extend to polynominal regression analysis complete with adjustable weighting on each data set. Any student of elementary calculus would appreciate this task - it is very satisfying.
For you youngsters reading this, a "teletype" was a wondrous machine. It was, I suppose, a derivative of the telex machine. It is entirely mechanical, the only electrical parts being a motor to drive the works, and a solenoid to convert the electrical pulses sent from the remote computer to actions and some sort of switch for the inverse operation. So doing, you could type at up to 10 characters per second and, low and behold, the whirring gears would convert this to a pulse stream at 110 baud and send it to the computer. Conversely the computer could drive the type-writer action, again at a maximum speed of 10 characters per second. No lower case letters mind you.
The third computer in my life was the PDP-11 in the inner sanctuary of the Nuclear Physics Department. Its discovery was like finding something out of Star Trek - a vast room filled with racks of equipment and magnetic tape readers constantly spooling tape to, I suppose, seek particular data. Whilst this behemoth was doubtless built for advanced physics experiments beyond my undergraduate ken, I found out that ordinary mortals could use terminals connected to it. The operating system being multi-user, about 20 teletypes were available in a room away from the machine itself. Later these were provided with monitors so that output was not limited to 10 characters per second. The monitors were, of course, monochrome and strictly text only. But, oh, so much superior to the teletype output (unless you wanted a hard copy).
Mortals like me wrote in BASIC PLUS. This was a very powerful language which included, for example, matrix instructions such that the simple statement:
MAT Q = INV(Z)
calculated the inverse of a 2D matrix of arbitrary size, and anyone knows that this is an essential step in the "reducing to echelon form" method that I had previously laboriously worked out long-hand.
The PDP-11 had hard disk storage and each (ordinary) user was allocated room to store his or her programs, luxury indeed compared with punched cards! The trivial amount of storage allocated would shock modern users. One of the great sins of our time is the waste of data storage, and one of the greatest sinners must be the Microsoft Corporation - or is it the digital camera?
The forth and last computer of my life until after I emerged from hibernation was the mini-computer at the BBC Research Department. I regret I cannot even remember the brand or operating system - was it CP/M?. It was located in an air conditioned room ruled over by a nerd. It had hard large disks and an 8" floppy disk drive. Being multi-user each department had one or maybe two terminals (teletype style). By way of example of the technology back two software packages it boasted were a BASIC interpretor which you were encouraged not to use because, whilst loaded, it used up a large chunk of available RAM, and a word processor program. To use the word processor you would type your report at the terminal using embedded formatting codes (e.g. for italics, indent). You would then run the word processor software which would apply the formatting to this data and write an output print file. Finally you would beg to be allowed to use the one and only high quality printer which was basically an electric typewriter, and then go and collect the print-out from the computer room (in another building). Inevitable mistakes would mean repeating the whole process several times before the end result was sufficiently perfect (what a waste of paper!).
I left the Research Department after about 5 years and went into electronics-hibernation for another 5 years. When I finally emerged (relatively unscathed, but that is another story), the world had changed. The PC had been born and people had began to speak of mice and GUI's...
IBM 1130 (similar to, but not the one I used)
My friend and I attended an extra-curriculum computer course. Not having the internet to check this out beforehand, I had not a clue what it was about and it took a while for the penny to drop that you could actually tell the computer to do stuff, line by line. And so we learnt Fortran IV, and exercised our new found knowledge on the Nuclear Physics Department IBM 1130 with its 32K-word core memory, card reader and, oh joy, a pen plotter.
The IBM 1130 was single-user and single-task. You "typed" your program on a card punch machine in a cubicle in some remote and very noisy room. Each card described a statement (a line of code): the card in the picture is one of my own and describes an IF statement.
A typical program would thus end up as a stack of cards several inches thick. You would take this to the computer room and join the queue. When eventually your turn came you would place the cards in the card reader which would read them surprisingly fast (woe betide any cards that were dog-eared!) and your program would either execute as intended or not. As with most programs, generally it did not execute correctly for the first many tries. There was no way to tinker with it there and then - there was a queue of other users behind and besides there was no card punch in the computer room. So, back to the cubicle.
The computer bug really got to me at first - I remember my parents coming to collect me at the end of term and feeling like a zombie - we stopped outside Newbury for a picnic on the way home and I can remember the juxtaposition of the "homely" taste of the sandwiches and the surreal, almost drunk feeling of utter fatigue. When we got back home I went to my room and slept for a very long time.
Here are some of the programs I can remember writing:
(1) I was very pleased with myself for simplifying the maths of solving multiple simultaneous linear equations by the reduction to echelon form method.
(2) As mentioned in a previous post I made a program to print out ground-hogs subjected to various graphical transformations (skew, enlargement, reflection, rotation, etc.) . This partially in eternal devotion to the ground-hog artist previously mentioned, and partly because a pen plotter must be brought into submission.
(3) The pièce de résistance was a joint effect. It absorbed colossal amounts of effort. My friend wrote the main program and I wrote the subroutine. The whole thing developed a musical theme into a fugue and plotted it out in high definition in full harmony on two staves. The subroutine (I called it "note" I think) dealt with the graphical aspect. The call specified the pitch and length of the note(s) and the subroutine would work out whether it first needed to plot staves, ledger lines, bar lines, time and key signatures and the like and then would draw the note appropriately. Regrettably I have nothing to show for my work: I gave the final plot to my friend and we felt we could not repeat the exercise for fear of stretch to ultimate distraction the patience of the other programmers who wanted to use the computer for what they thought were "serious" purposes.
++++
This picture is the closest I could find to what the setup was. There was a single teletype for creating punched paper tape and interacting with the computer. The computer itself had a high speed paper tape reader that would read literally piles of tape in seconds.
The PDP-8 was classed the "first minicomputer". It was pretty close in power and speed to a Microchip PIC16 microcontroller which is a "chip" costing much less than a euro today - a rather large example is shown below. In case you didn't catch it, this is somewhat of a condemnation of the PDP-8. Like the PIC it had a 12-bit instruction code, this being rather unusual in a computer. And probably a similar amount of memory.
Again this computer was single-user, single-task. It had no disk drive and no internal operating system, so each task had to be loaded from scratch from paper tape starting with the operating system. Programs were written in FOCAL which was not dissimilar to a very basic sort of BASIC. The machine was used mainly to carry out linear regression analysis on experimental results. As computers go (back then) it had very little character - a lot less than the IBM 1130 because it had no plotter. But the concept of linear regression fascinated me and I taught myself to derive the equations from first principles and then extend to polynominal regression analysis complete with adjustable weighting on each data set. Any student of elementary calculus would appreciate this task - it is very satisfying.
For you youngsters reading this, a "teletype" was a wondrous machine. It was, I suppose, a derivative of the telex machine. It is entirely mechanical, the only electrical parts being a motor to drive the works, and a solenoid to convert the electrical pulses sent from the remote computer to actions and some sort of switch for the inverse operation. So doing, you could type at up to 10 characters per second and, low and behold, the whirring gears would convert this to a pulse stream at 110 baud and send it to the computer. Conversely the computer could drive the type-writer action, again at a maximum speed of 10 characters per second. No lower case letters mind you.
++++
The third computer in my life was the PDP-11 in the inner sanctuary of the Nuclear Physics Department. Its discovery was like finding something out of Star Trek - a vast room filled with racks of equipment and magnetic tape readers constantly spooling tape to, I suppose, seek particular data. Whilst this behemoth was doubtless built for advanced physics experiments beyond my undergraduate ken, I found out that ordinary mortals could use terminals connected to it. The operating system being multi-user, about 20 teletypes were available in a room away from the machine itself. Later these were provided with monitors so that output was not limited to 10 characters per second. The monitors were, of course, monochrome and strictly text only. But, oh, so much superior to the teletype output (unless you wanted a hard copy).
Mortals like me wrote in BASIC PLUS. This was a very powerful language which included, for example, matrix instructions such that the simple statement:
MAT Q = INV(Z)
calculated the inverse of a 2D matrix of arbitrary size, and anyone knows that this is an essential step in the "reducing to echelon form" method that I had previously laboriously worked out long-hand.
The PDP-11 had hard disk storage and each (ordinary) user was allocated room to store his or her programs, luxury indeed compared with punched cards! The trivial amount of storage allocated would shock modern users. One of the great sins of our time is the waste of data storage, and one of the greatest sinners must be the Microsoft Corporation - or is it the digital camera?
++++
The forth and last computer of my life until after I emerged from hibernation was the mini-computer at the BBC Research Department. I regret I cannot even remember the brand or operating system - was it CP/M?. It was located in an air conditioned room ruled over by a nerd. It had hard large disks and an 8" floppy disk drive. Being multi-user each department had one or maybe two terminals (teletype style). By way of example of the technology back two software packages it boasted were a BASIC interpretor which you were encouraged not to use because, whilst loaded, it used up a large chunk of available RAM, and a word processor program. To use the word processor you would type your report at the terminal using embedded formatting codes (e.g. for italics, indent). You would then run the word processor software which would apply the formatting to this data and write an output print file. Finally you would beg to be allowed to use the one and only high quality printer which was basically an electric typewriter, and then go and collect the print-out from the computer room (in another building). Inevitable mistakes would mean repeating the whole process several times before the end result was sufficiently perfect (what a waste of paper!).
I left the Research Department after about 5 years and went into electronics-hibernation for another 5 years. When I finally emerged (relatively unscathed, but that is another story), the world had changed. The PC had been born and people had began to speak of mice and GUI's...
20120716
Oxford
I must have done well in my entrance exams because I won a scholarship. A small group of us traveled to Oxford for the interview. It was very cold at the time, and the only form of heat in the room I had been billeted in was a one-bar electric fire set into the wall. I remember huddling around the fire with many layers of clothing and still feeling cold. The chairs were upholstered with some hard, coarse material which had as much give in them as coconut door matting. And the nearest toilet and wash-room was down a flight of stairs and across the quad. I understand that Oriel College has now gone soft with en-suite showers and central heating.
In spite of these (literal) inconveniences I look back at my time in Oxford with great thankfulness.
On going up for my first year I was allocated a room in the north-west corner of the Rhodes building, with the same one-bar electric fire, and nearest loo outside in the quad arrangement. But bliss, oh bliss: in the basement at the foot of our stairwell a wash-room with a concrete floor, several baths long enough to lay down in, open-plan showers with huge shower-roses supplied by 3/4" pipe work, and lashings of hot water. Everything in one room, open-plan style, but that didn't faze me. To this day this sort of arrangement has been my prototype for the ideal bathroom. Regrettably no one else agrees.
My next door neighbour, Neil Mapley, was a self confessed pyromaniac. More to suppress the traffic noise than to create a warmer environment our windows had sliding "double" glazing panels on the inside. I remember Neil putting bits of paper in the space between the window proper and this sliding panel and lighting them - I tried to stop him... I enjoyed several walking holidays and one sailing holiday with him: he's the one with the generous mop of hair in my pictures below. Sadly Neil was killed in a motor-bike accident in Africa a number of years ago.
The 2011 edition of the Oriel College Record article "100 years of the Rhodes Building: its creation and a re-appraisal" reveals that the building was opened in 1911. I had always assumed it was much older.
The building is famed for its statues with Cecil himself in South African garb taking the highest position. The inscription beneath his statue reads (when translated from the Latin) "From the great generosity of Cecil Rhodes". The enlarged letters are a chronogram giving the date of construction, 1911, in roman numerals but involving a little "poetic" license as explained here.
In spite of these (literal) inconveniences I look back at my time in Oxford with great thankfulness.
On going up for my first year I was allocated a room in the north-west corner of the Rhodes building, with the same one-bar electric fire, and nearest loo outside in the quad arrangement. But bliss, oh bliss: in the basement at the foot of our stairwell a wash-room with a concrete floor, several baths long enough to lay down in, open-plan showers with huge shower-roses supplied by 3/4" pipe work, and lashings of hot water. Everything in one room, open-plan style, but that didn't faze me. To this day this sort of arrangement has been my prototype for the ideal bathroom. Regrettably no one else agrees.
The Rhodes Building - my room was on the first floor to the left
My next door neighbour, Neil Mapley, was a self confessed pyromaniac. More to suppress the traffic noise than to create a warmer environment our windows had sliding "double" glazing panels on the inside. I remember Neil putting bits of paper in the space between the window proper and this sliding panel and lighting them - I tried to stop him... I enjoyed several walking holidays and one sailing holiday with him: he's the one with the generous mop of hair in my pictures below. Sadly Neil was killed in a motor-bike accident in Africa a number of years ago.
Neil Mapley and Mike Attwood descending Helvellyn to the Striding Edge
Neil Mapley and Ranolph Poole on the Norfolk Broads
The 2011 edition of the Oriel College Record article "100 years of the Rhodes Building: its creation and a re-appraisal" reveals that the building was opened in 1911. I had always assumed it was much older.
Recent picture of the front of the Rhodes Building - my room's window is highlighted
The building is famed for its statues with Cecil himself in South African garb taking the highest position. The inscription beneath his statue reads (when translated from the Latin) "From the great generosity of Cecil Rhodes". The enlarged letters are a chronogram giving the date of construction, 1911, in roman numerals but involving a little "poetic" license as explained here.
The inscription below the statue of Cecil Rhodes
The last car boot sale
We combined forces with the Giles, and Nora came to help us too. Hence two car boots in the picture. I am not visible because I am behind the camera. Sorry about the over-exposure - there's HTC for you.
The problem with car boot sales is that you go with X and you come back with not much less than X. A bit like "And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum."
20120715
And on to Oxford
Back in those days caning had not been banned.
John Ashurst (Jake) became headmaster at Peter Symond's just before I started. He was strict and would use the cane if necessary, but just and most of us respected him. I vaguely remember the Duke of Edinburgh's visit - it coincided with a "general inspection" of the Combined Cadet Force. There was one of these each year: all cadets had to stand in the playing fields in full uniform for the duration, maybe three hours - thankfully at ease until the inspecting team came to one's platoon. Inevitably several boys would feint in spite of having been told how to periodically adjust the pressure on one's feet without it showing.
All that as prelude for the fact that it was Ashurst who was responsible for me going to Oriel College, Oxford. When it came to that time when third level education had to be decided, Ashurst told me I was Oxbridge material and, on hearing that I wanted to do Electronics Engineering, told me I should study Physics and choose Oriel College. Thankfully it was no longer necessary to have Latin to matriculate otherwise I would not be here typing this. There were, however, special entrance examinations which we were groomed for, and (horrors!) a requirement to pass a "Use of English" exam. I suppose I must have passed the latter.
Duke of Edinburgh's visit 1965
John Ashurst (Jake) became headmaster at Peter Symond's just before I started. He was strict and would use the cane if necessary, but just and most of us respected him. I vaguely remember the Duke of Edinburgh's visit - it coincided with a "general inspection" of the Combined Cadet Force. There was one of these each year: all cadets had to stand in the playing fields in full uniform for the duration, maybe three hours - thankfully at ease until the inspecting team came to one's platoon. Inevitably several boys would feint in spite of having been told how to periodically adjust the pressure on one's feet without it showing.
All that as prelude for the fact that it was Ashurst who was responsible for me going to Oriel College, Oxford. When it came to that time when third level education had to be decided, Ashurst told me I was Oxbridge material and, on hearing that I wanted to do Electronics Engineering, told me I should study Physics and choose Oriel College. Thankfully it was no longer necessary to have Latin to matriculate otherwise I would not be here typing this. There were, however, special entrance examinations which we were groomed for, and (horrors!) a requirement to pass a "Use of English" exam. I suppose I must have passed the latter.
20120708
The greatest story
My father used to say that the prototypes for all the best stories in the world can be found in the Bible. I have always considered this a rather far claim - but then I conceived this blog.
I have just finished reading Kim for possibly the third time in my life. In my opinion a blog should be as honest as one can reasonably get in public, so I will say that I love the book. Or is it Kim that I love?
I have just finished reading Kim for possibly the third time in my life. In my opinion a blog should be as honest as one can reasonably get in public, so I will say that I love the book. Or is it Kim that I love?
Kim's gun Zam Zammah in front of the Lahore 'Wonder House'
Right from "He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher--the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot" I want Kim, fatherless and to all intents motherless and homeless, to succeed in life. Sorry, that sounds so lame, but I do not know how to express my feeling any better.
The book ends with the lama who "crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved." Though Kim sometimes calls the lama "mad", unlikely a relationship though it may be, each is totally committed to and loves the other. And, to a lesser degree, it could be said that Colonel Creighton, Babu and Mahbub Ali love Kim. Although Kipling paints a poor picture of the two clergy who want to convert him, the lama never inflicts his religion on Kim and Kim never despises the lama on account of his "mad" beliefs.
I think that Kim is an idealisation of Kipling's son John (Jack) who a few years old when the book was published. The strong love Kipling had for his son, lost in WWI, is well expressed in:
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
Some people seem to want to label any love expressed between men as blatant homosexuality quoting, for example, the powerful and loaded words "it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama... sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty." I strongly oppose this as far as Kim and my other examples, all beautiful in their own way, are concerned.
We recently watched Australia and of course all fell in love with the boy Nullah (for what it is worth it took me a while to realise that he was not a girl...)
Then there is Le Petit Prince. Who can fail to appreciate the bond of love between the author and this boy, the strong desire to see the boy succeed, who ends up dying in order to live?
Regarding the author you might be interested to check out this and this.
Another favourite of mine is Diamond in At the back of the North Wind who is likewise fragile, but greatly loved, and likewise dies in order to live.
In all these stories the theme is of a boy, always a boy, who is helped through the perils of the world by great, fatherly love.
Luke 15 has "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' So he told them..." three parables, the third being the "Prodigal Son", the point being that the Pharisees were the older son who could not accept his renegade brother being accepted back into the family, but Jesus carefully shifts the emphasis to the younger boy. Once again we have a boy helped through the perils of the world by the great love of his father. But we haven't got to the prototype yet. This parable is one of the most poignant stories to describe the love of God for his sons, a love that reaches down to the depths of man's depravity. That is the prototype I believe Kipling and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (possibly unwittingly), MacDonald and others are echoing, and that is why this, the greatest story, continues to touch our heartstrings.
The book ends with the lama who "crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved." Though Kim sometimes calls the lama "mad", unlikely a relationship though it may be, each is totally committed to and loves the other. And, to a lesser degree, it could be said that Colonel Creighton, Babu and Mahbub Ali love Kim. Although Kipling paints a poor picture of the two clergy who want to convert him, the lama never inflicts his religion on Kim and Kim never despises the lama on account of his "mad" beliefs.
I think that Kim is an idealisation of Kipling's son John (Jack) who a few years old when the book was published. The strong love Kipling had for his son, lost in WWI, is well expressed in:
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
Some people seem to want to label any love expressed between men as blatant homosexuality quoting, for example, the powerful and loaded words "it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama... sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty." I strongly oppose this as far as Kim and my other examples, all beautiful in their own way, are concerned.
We recently watched Australia and of course all fell in love with the boy Nullah (for what it is worth it took me a while to realise that he was not a girl...)
Then there is Le Petit Prince. Who can fail to appreciate the bond of love between the author and this boy, the strong desire to see the boy succeed, who ends up dying in order to live?
There was nothing but a flash of yellow close to his ankle.
He remained motionless for an instant.
He did not cry out.
He fell as gently as a tree falls.
There was not even any sound, because of the sand.
Another favourite of mine is Diamond in At the back of the North Wind who is likewise fragile, but greatly loved, and likewise dies in order to live.
"Fourdays after, I called again at the Mound. The maid who opened the doorlooked grave, but I suspected nothing. When I reached the drawing-room, I saw Mrs. Raymond had been crying. "Haven't you heard?" she said, seeing my questioning looks.
" 'I've heard nothing,' I answered. 'This morning we found our dear little Diamond lying on the floor of the big attic-room, just outside his own door—fast asleep, as we thought. But when we took him up, we did not think he was asleep. We saw that-----' "
"Here the kind-hearted lady broke out crying afresh.
"" May I go and see him?" I asked.
""Yes," she sobbed. "You know your way to the top of the tower."
"I walked up the winding stair, and entered his room. A lovely figure, as white and almost as clear as alabaster, was lying on the bed. I saw at once how it was. They thought he was dead. I knew that he had gone to the back of the north wind."
In all these stories the theme is of a boy, always a boy, who is helped through the perils of the world by great, fatherly love.
Luke 15 has "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' So he told them..." three parables, the third being the "Prodigal Son", the point being that the Pharisees were the older son who could not accept his renegade brother being accepted back into the family, but Jesus carefully shifts the emphasis to the younger boy. Once again we have a boy helped through the perils of the world by the great love of his father. But we haven't got to the prototype yet. This parable is one of the most poignant stories to describe the love of God for his sons, a love that reaches down to the depths of man's depravity. That is the prototype I believe Kipling and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (possibly unwittingly), MacDonald and others are echoing, and that is why this, the greatest story, continues to touch our heartstrings.
20120707
Barefoot running after the deluge
Yesterday it started raining at lunch time. It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old--three, was it, or four?--never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days. Well actually - well into the night. This is the rain that was forecast to cause much flooding in the UK. It would have to rain a lot for us to be flooded, mind you. I woke in the night (to relieve myself) and the wind was howling. I had kinda planned to go running in the morning as it was forecast to be warm and wet.
I first woke (after the above) at some unearthly hour and got out of bed, went to the bathroom to change into my running togs (so as not to wake Ali) only to find that I was still lying snug in bed. This dream reoccurred several times before I actually got up and, lo, the storm had passed, the wind had calmed, and there was even some blue sky.
So I did the usual forest run, a bit squishy under foot in places, but not as bad as the pictures suggest. The subject "the morning after the deluge" has tickled my fancy since early childhood. Turner is some distant relation of Ali's side of the family, but I approved of his paintings long before I knew this. The squiggle in the middle is, I am told, meant to portray the serpent as in Genesis.
The rest of the day has had, possibly, the best weather for a long time. It was very hot in the "jacuzzi" tunnel so I took the opportunity of emptying, cleaning and refilling the jacuzzi.
I first woke (after the above) at some unearthly hour and got out of bed, went to the bathroom to change into my running togs (so as not to wake Ali) only to find that I was still lying snug in bed. This dream reoccurred several times before I actually got up and, lo, the storm had passed, the wind had calmed, and there was even some blue sky.
Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848) The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge
The Deluge, engraving by William Miller after the painting by John Martin
The Morning after the Deluge c. 1843 Joseph Mallord William Turner
So I did the usual forest run, a bit squishy under foot in places, but not as bad as the pictures suggest. The subject "the morning after the deluge" has tickled my fancy since early childhood. Turner is some distant relation of Ali's side of the family, but I approved of his paintings long before I knew this. The squiggle in the middle is, I am told, meant to portray the serpent as in Genesis.
The rest of the day has had, possibly, the best weather for a long time. It was very hot in the "jacuzzi" tunnel so I took the opportunity of emptying, cleaning and refilling the jacuzzi.
20120701
The George Yard and Groundhogs
My childhood home was, I am told, once part of the George Inn which, hundreds of years ago, straddled the archway that leads into what is now called the George Yard. My parents now both being deceased, the house was sold and converted into the County Library. When I last visited the Library I found that my old bedroom and the bathroom next door still exist much as I remember it. Even the bathroom suite, and the towel rail with its secret fixing which I made myself, is still there. This is surprising because much of the rest of the house was gutted in the conversion. My bedroom was where the yellow square is in the Google Earth image below.
The view from my bedroom window looked down on Smith & Cockford, Builder's Providers owned and run by my parents (now Alresford Builders Supplies).
You can see from the earlier picture below (which predates me) that my parents did some improvements, but some of the sheds to the rear were still in bad shape and, with their rusty tin roofs, served as my childhood playground. My friend from next door and I clambered over many of the roofs in the vicinity, often against the express order of the owners. The goal was to get from A to B without touching the ground and without being seen by any adult. Or we would (from an allowed vantage point) hurl abuse at my father's workmen on their way to or from the very suspect convenience (which stank) provided for them. In one shed there were two layers of stacked timber which you could crawl between to hide or to, once again, get from A to B without being seen when playing tag. There was a large rectangular rainwater tank for playing submarines - you get a suitably shaped piece of wood and leave it for several days to become waterlogged, then drive in nails until it is on the verge of sinking. The game is to see who can make a submarine that stays down longest (without aide) although which eventually surfaces. As a result the bottom of the tank became filled, after a time, with failed missions and other debris which my father had to clean out to his chagrin. This tank is the same one that supplied my venturi pump described in an earlier post.
Looking back from where this photograph was taken, the next two pictures are recent and show our house on the left, and our neighbour's on the right.
It you walk up the George Yard passing what was Smith & Crockford on the left, there is now the plot of a new house occupying what was our "Top Garden". My workshop, marked by the red square is in the aerial view above, was in the corner of this garden and is where I would retreat to make my inventions. My father built the swimming pool which you can see in the aerial view. I plumbed in the filtering system and made a solar heating system (by diverting some of the pumped water to trickle down the plastic roof of the changing room / shed). The picture below is recent and was taken by slightly trespassing into what is now the garden of that new house. Had anyone been there to ask I would have done so and I am sure they would have been happy to show me around.
An advantage of owning your own swimming pool is that you can swim naked. It is better in every way - you are more streamlined, there is none of that clinging of wet material to the skin, the water does not feel as cold, no wet swimming costume to peel off and deal with afterwards, etc. There are locations on the river close to where I live now where one can (with some care) get away with swimming naked, but I am not going to tell you where they are.
The pallisade fence is new but the low brick dividing wall, the fruit tree and the high flint wall at the rear with its inset arched seat are all as I remember them. The wall was built by Bill Smith (no relation of the Smith in Smith & Crockford who died long before my time). Bill was an old-timer. He and his family lived in what seemed to me, as a child, little more than a shed with a tin roof. They kept chickens and my mother would buy free range eggs from them. It used to be said that anything Bill Smith built would last a lifetime. The fact that this wall still exists and is in perfect condition is testimony to this, although Bill himself is long gone. He used to let me "help" him and there is, in that wall, several pieces of green glass that I inserted all by myself. If the present owner reads this, they can find the glass not far from the inset arched seat, to the left if I remember correctly.
A little further up the George Yard there were trash heaps to left and right. These were doubtless meant to be for builder's rubble but sometimes there was more - so they were wonderful places for me - very, very occasionally I would find a prize - an old radio, or a discarded vacuum cleaner. These I would haul back to my workshop, like an ant hauling food for its menagerie, where they would be stripped down and any useful components kept.
In my earlier years most of my "work" was in disassembling (parents should not necessarily discourage this activity, negative though it may seem - it is how I learn. Adults call it "reverse engineering"). But later I did make stuff - here are some examples.
My earliest memory, having previously decimated various valve radios and stuff, was to construct my very first radio receiver. Or so I hoped. I figured that these parts once made up a radio, so my connecting them together I must surely stand a chance of making a radio. This exercise was not completely without knowledge - I had a battery and earphones. But it didn't work.
My other examples were later on in my career...
An oscilloscope - this was heavily based on a magazine article. It used a 2.5" CRT, a special mains transformer, and valves. Valves (vacuum tubes) are ideal for an oscilloscope because of their naturally high input impedance. I did all the metal work myself, the source of aluminium sheet being an unused Green Shield Stamps placard (bare aluminium on the reverse) which was surplus to my father's requirements. .
An audio signal generator - again heavily based on a magazine article, but I could not afford the thermistor stabilising device so instead had a potentiometer which had to be carefully tweaked for lowest distortion.
An X-Y plotter. This used a platen roller from a type-writer for the Y-dimension, and a pen drawn along a brass rod for the X-dimension. The rod was milled (a friend of my father's who built model steam engines allowed me to use his milling machine) with a slot and turning the rod lifted the pen so gave the Z-dimension. Z was actuated by a solenoid. X and Y were actuated by d.c. motors driven by AD161 / AD162 power germanium transistors in a servo loop. The position coder was a standard linear potentiometer in each case. The design was largely my own this time. The chassis, this time, was made from Perspex (acrylic). I had discovered that chloroform is a solvent for Perspex so, accompanied my my father, we had to sign the dangerous substances register at the local chemist to purchase a small bottle of the stuff, which promptly evaporated if you didn't screw the lid back on tight after use.
My crowning achievement was to use this device to plot a groundhog. Dunlop had been running adverts for their tyres featuring this creature, and I had a younger friend Nigel at school whose claim to fame was the ability to draw them. So my hand-drawn groundhog became a sort of icon for any graphics project.
Later - or was it concurrent? - I discovered the digital plotter at college and my first software program to make use of it had to have it drawing groundhogs subject to various geometrical transformations, but that is another story.
And then there was the railway room.
The view from my bedroom window looked down on Smith & Cockford, Builder's Providers owned and run by my parents (now Alresford Builders Supplies).
You can see from the earlier picture below (which predates me) that my parents did some improvements, but some of the sheds to the rear were still in bad shape and, with their rusty tin roofs, served as my childhood playground. My friend from next door and I clambered over many of the roofs in the vicinity, often against the express order of the owners. The goal was to get from A to B without touching the ground and without being seen by any adult. Or we would (from an allowed vantage point) hurl abuse at my father's workmen on their way to or from the very suspect convenience (which stank) provided for them. In one shed there were two layers of stacked timber which you could crawl between to hide or to, once again, get from A to B without being seen when playing tag. There was a large rectangular rainwater tank for playing submarines - you get a suitably shaped piece of wood and leave it for several days to become waterlogged, then drive in nails until it is on the verge of sinking. The game is to see who can make a submarine that stays down longest (without aide) although which eventually surfaces. As a result the bottom of the tank became filled, after a time, with failed missions and other debris which my father had to clean out to his chagrin. This tank is the same one that supplied my venturi pump described in an earlier post.
Looking back from where this photograph was taken, the next two pictures are recent and show our house on the left, and our neighbour's on the right.
It you walk up the George Yard passing what was Smith & Crockford on the left, there is now the plot of a new house occupying what was our "Top Garden". My workshop, marked by the red square is in the aerial view above, was in the corner of this garden and is where I would retreat to make my inventions. My father built the swimming pool which you can see in the aerial view. I plumbed in the filtering system and made a solar heating system (by diverting some of the pumped water to trickle down the plastic roof of the changing room / shed). The picture below is recent and was taken by slightly trespassing into what is now the garden of that new house. Had anyone been there to ask I would have done so and I am sure they would have been happy to show me around.
An advantage of owning your own swimming pool is that you can swim naked. It is better in every way - you are more streamlined, there is none of that clinging of wet material to the skin, the water does not feel as cold, no wet swimming costume to peel off and deal with afterwards, etc. There are locations on the river close to where I live now where one can (with some care) get away with swimming naked, but I am not going to tell you where they are.
The pallisade fence is new but the low brick dividing wall, the fruit tree and the high flint wall at the rear with its inset arched seat are all as I remember them. The wall was built by Bill Smith (no relation of the Smith in Smith & Crockford who died long before my time). Bill was an old-timer. He and his family lived in what seemed to me, as a child, little more than a shed with a tin roof. They kept chickens and my mother would buy free range eggs from them. It used to be said that anything Bill Smith built would last a lifetime. The fact that this wall still exists and is in perfect condition is testimony to this, although Bill himself is long gone. He used to let me "help" him and there is, in that wall, several pieces of green glass that I inserted all by myself. If the present owner reads this, they can find the glass not far from the inset arched seat, to the left if I remember correctly.
A little further up the George Yard there were trash heaps to left and right. These were doubtless meant to be for builder's rubble but sometimes there was more - so they were wonderful places for me - very, very occasionally I would find a prize - an old radio, or a discarded vacuum cleaner. These I would haul back to my workshop, like an ant hauling food for its menagerie, where they would be stripped down and any useful components kept.
In my earlier years most of my "work" was in disassembling (parents should not necessarily discourage this activity, negative though it may seem - it is how I learn. Adults call it "reverse engineering"). But later I did make stuff - here are some examples.
My earliest memory, having previously decimated various valve radios and stuff, was to construct my very first radio receiver. Or so I hoped. I figured that these parts once made up a radio, so my connecting them together I must surely stand a chance of making a radio. This exercise was not completely without knowledge - I had a battery and earphones. But it didn't work.
My other examples were later on in my career...
An oscilloscope - this was heavily based on a magazine article. It used a 2.5" CRT, a special mains transformer, and valves. Valves (vacuum tubes) are ideal for an oscilloscope because of their naturally high input impedance. I did all the metal work myself, the source of aluminium sheet being an unused Green Shield Stamps placard (bare aluminium on the reverse) which was surplus to my father's requirements. .
An audio signal generator - again heavily based on a magazine article, but I could not afford the thermistor stabilising device so instead had a potentiometer which had to be carefully tweaked for lowest distortion.
An X-Y plotter. This used a platen roller from a type-writer for the Y-dimension, and a pen drawn along a brass rod for the X-dimension. The rod was milled (a friend of my father's who built model steam engines allowed me to use his milling machine) with a slot and turning the rod lifted the pen so gave the Z-dimension. Z was actuated by a solenoid. X and Y were actuated by d.c. motors driven by AD161 / AD162 power germanium transistors in a servo loop. The position coder was a standard linear potentiometer in each case. The design was largely my own this time. The chassis, this time, was made from Perspex (acrylic). I had discovered that chloroform is a solvent for Perspex so, accompanied my my father, we had to sign the dangerous substances register at the local chemist to purchase a small bottle of the stuff, which promptly evaporated if you didn't screw the lid back on tight after use.
My crowning achievement was to use this device to plot a groundhog. Dunlop had been running adverts for their tyres featuring this creature, and I had a younger friend Nigel at school whose claim to fame was the ability to draw them. So my hand-drawn groundhog became a sort of icon for any graphics project.
Later - or was it concurrent? - I discovered the digital plotter at college and my first software program to make use of it had to have it drawing groundhogs subject to various geometrical transformations, but that is another story.
And then there was the railway room.
Barefoot running new record
Sunday afternoon again - I felt like running away so I did - this is my longest totally barefoot run so far, just short of 11 miles, and about a mile of it was on "loose chippings" that had not yet bedded in much - not very comfortable. The dog didn't seem to mind though. The link should open in Google Earth (if you have it installed). The route starts with a segment of my usual "forest run", then through Hollywood to part of St Kevin's way and back along what we call "Goat man's lane".
Yes, I was tired afterwards, but I could have run further. My feet are coping pretty well - one problem I have at the moment is cracks in the creases underneath where the toes join the foot: I get cracks on my hands too, and the condition is probably related to the nail fungus which I also suffer from. The best treatment I have found so far for cracks is pink Germolene creme: basically it keeps the area from drying out. I am not sure if my link is correct as Bayer appear to have rebranded the substance. I have, of course, tried various topical treatments for the nail fungus and none have worked. The latest idea is to try healing clay (calcium bentonite) both internally and topically, but I have not plucked up the courage to do this yet as it is fairly invasive. Any readers that can offer a remedy with first hand experience of its efficacy might like to comment...
Yes, I was tired afterwards, but I could have run further. My feet are coping pretty well - one problem I have at the moment is cracks in the creases underneath where the toes join the foot: I get cracks on my hands too, and the condition is probably related to the nail fungus which I also suffer from. The best treatment I have found so far for cracks is pink Germolene creme: basically it keeps the area from drying out. I am not sure if my link is correct as Bayer appear to have rebranded the substance. I have, of course, tried various topical treatments for the nail fungus and none have worked. The latest idea is to try healing clay (calcium bentonite) both internally and topically, but I have not plucked up the courage to do this yet as it is fairly invasive. Any readers that can offer a remedy with first hand experience of its efficacy might like to comment...
20120628
Barefoot running and Rain
At 0530 this morning till a while ago it was raining reasonably hard - probably the wettest run this year. I did the usual forest route (5 miles). And yet it was warm - anything above about 15 degrees C registers as "warm" as far as I am concerned (else, in Ireland, it would rarely ever be warm!). When running barefoot, the wetter the better: the stones feel less sharp and one's feet stay clean despite mud, whereas trainers would collect the mud and be rotting. When warm one can afford to be scantily clad, whereas wet clothes feel horrible.
Such times remind me of "...and Mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo" (Letting in the Jungle). My parents had the blue, cloth-bound edition "All the Mowgli Stories" illustrated superbly by Stuart Tresilian. Ever since first reading that line I have sought the experience of a hard, tropical rain storm.
And of "Kim yearned for the caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes..."
Such times remind me of "...and Mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo" (Letting in the Jungle). My parents had the blue, cloth-bound edition "All the Mowgli Stories" illustrated superbly by Stuart Tresilian. Ever since first reading that line I have sought the experience of a hard, tropical rain storm.
And of "Kim yearned for the caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes..."
20120627
School days - Peter Symonds 3
Be warned - you might find this blog boring! I found some school reports and other memorabilia:
Apparently my first form was 1c and not 1b as I said in an earlier blog. But later on I was transferred to the 'b' stream. The form master and maths teacher "PWG" is Mr Gale, aka Breezy. Note the lie "good" for history! So as not to ultimately bore I omit the intermediate reports so here is the last:
I may have mentioned that I grew up in a Christian home. Naturally I rebelled against this for a part of my teenage years so was apostate in my 5th year when I was approached by an older boy who was apparently the leader of the C.U. He was about to graduate, and had somehow found out my credentials so informed me that there was no-one else and if I didn't rise to the challenge the C.U. would cease to exist. My days of apostasy were numbered. Starting with about 2 people, we learnt the hard way (after half a year of drudgery) about prayer. That is another story - for now let this C.U. report (my typewriter!) suffice:
Of particular interest (well to me) is the entry "Pot or Not" - after meetings with attendance of 2 or 3, this talk attracted perhaps 30 or 40 boys! I remember making a large psychedelic poster for the occasion. Also the outing to hear the "Forerunners", a gospel music group who did, amongst other tracks no doubt, a very passable rendition of "Bridge over troubled water" and thus introduced me to S&G. I instantly loved this track but until then I had never heard of S&G (my parents did not approve of popular music). It took a younger boy to identify the original artist after the event. And note the proud comment that the Head (Ashurst) was "happy".
My last boring picture is of an invention of mine. I developed my "musical slide-rule" whilst in my 5th year to help me with music theory for O-level. Readers who are ignorant about the slide-rule check here. The version, for which the image shown is a template, was a revised version which dealt with the C# / Db ambiguity. In construction the lower image is taped around some plastic tube (waste pipe) and the upper part is photocopied onto clear acetate and wound around the tube and taped so that it can both slide length-ways and be rotated. The device calculates the correct notes of any major or minor scale, the key signature of same, and calculates the correct name for the interval between two arbitrary notes. The design is, of course, copyrighted.
20120626
What do you see?
What do you see when you look at these pictures?
They are both pictures of traction engines - the location being the village fair at Hollywood, Co. Wicklow. My eyes are drawn to then centrifugal governor, very obvious in both pictures.
Recently I had reason to describe the principle to a colleague, someone who understands computers so has technical understanding. So I showed him the two photographs and he was none the wiser. Apparently he had never come across the device and he did not immediately see how it works. With my Meccano set I learnt about and built such things from an early age - how different people are!
Here is another area where the modern version has been dumbed down. Compare the modern Meccano site with, for example these instructions or this familiar list-of-parts. Is it really that folk have less sense now-a-days, or it is just a shift in interest? A reader's letter in E&T July 2012 claims that the word "craft" has now been excluded from the national design and technology curriculum and the school curriculum, to be replaced I suppose by computer expertise. Instead of building complex models people spend their spare time playing computer games. In contrast I remember a book from my father's era that I read as a boy with a title "1001 things for a boy to do". Included in this number was making a real model steam engine almost from scratch. For the more demanding parts the child was directed to ask a favour from the nearest machine shop. Even then times had changed and I could not imagine going to this length. But now-a-days I cannot believe that the average boy would even thinks about such things.
20120624
Enchanted
Have you ever experienced a feeling that a particular location is special in some way - enchanted, if you will? In this blog I hope to present some of my own evidence and you skeptics can judge for yourself.
If you drive from our place through Ballymore towards Naas, turn left at the Punchestown cross roads and continue through Two Mile House and Corbally (an interesting place in its own right) you pass through the townland of Rosetown and come to the river Liffey at Athgarvan. The first time I drove this way I experienced the feeling of interest, magic, call it what you like, as the road descends to cross the river. The road here has high banks and trees either side, a bit like a tunnel. As you emerge from this tunnel there is the added interest of the bridge, the weir and the old mill on the left.
Further research reveals that the high bank on the left is Rosetown Rath, a prehistoric mound, and just across the river a grave-yard and the site of an ancient church. The picture below is all you can see of Rosetown Rath from the road (looking back towards Corbally).
The Ordnance Survey Ireland web site has a free map viewer with current topical, aerial and historic map sources. The site is shown below in both the 25" to the mile greyscale version (dated 1888-1913) and the 6" to the mile greyscale version (dated 1837-1842).
Rosetown Rath and the grave yard are clearly indicated on both. Note the river crossing is a ford in the older map, but everything else is much the same.
This link tells more: "One of the great routeways of early Ireland, the Slíge Dála, traversed this territory and probably crossed the Liffey at the ford of Athgarvan within Connul. Though definitive evidence is lacking, it is likely that the prependal parish church of Athgarvan, which overlooks the ford at the west, is early in origin. It is the only church site now evident within the Kildare portion of Connul. Directly across the river is Rosetown Rath, the only impressive secular settlement in Connul. Now much overgrown, the surviving remains and early records indicate that it was bivallate and 110m across. It is possible that there was a similar juxtaposition at Old Connell, where the nearby Anglo-Norman motte may supersede the royal residence mentioned in a tenth-century saga (ibid. 350). This twinning of sites expresses the symbiotic relationship between ecclesiastical and secular powers within Connul."
++++
My second case is the parish church at Manor Kilbride. Except that the church is in fact nowhere near the settlement of Manor Kilbride, indeed it does not appear to be near anywhere in particular. You pass this church on the Sally Gap road - it is marked with a cross in the map below.
The magic of this place is the Shankill stream descending over rocky pools down to join the river Liffey, and the road bridge over this stream. The picture below (not my own) is almost surrealistic.
++++
My third case is on the way from Hollywood cross roads towards Dunlavin. After the crossing at Lemonstown the road climbs up over what I suppose is a terminal moraine with a wonderful view as you come over the top.
The road bends to the left and, after passing a (doubtless sand and gravel) quarry on the left, you come to the magic place, marked with a cross in the map above. I have passed this place numerous times on my way to pick up materials from the builder's suppliers Liam Kennedy, and the magic intrigues me every time. The picture below is from Street View and does not, I regret, do justice to the place.
There is a mound densely covered with trees, a tiny stream between this and the road, and a grassy hill going up to a ruin (just visible in my picture). The whole site appears to be on private land, and there is no place to park, so not much chance for exploring.
The historic 25" map shows the mound, a fish-pond and reveals that the ruin is a church.
++++
My fourth case is Old Kilcullen church. From our place you head for Brannockstown, past the quaint Baptist Church there, and go straight across the dangerous cross roads where you might turn right for (new) Kilcullen. The magic location is a church on a hill, marked with a cross in the map below. This time there are no trees and no water.
It is an odd place to find a church. One would have thought a church should be near where people live and not perched upon a hill. When I first came across this place I parked the car, of course, and wandered up to the path shown to check it out. Nothing of much consequence, a church is a church, and I cannot say that this location ranks very high on my magic rating - but it is still strange.
The 25" map (above) doesn't help much, except to indicate that the site is ancient. Zooming out a bit using the older 6" map reveals another hill not too far away, the very important prehistoric site Dún Áilinne.
++++
My last case is also weaker than my first three. I pass the location on my way to visit an aged neighbour. Head towards Kilcullen from Ballymore: the magic place is marked with a cross. The cottage pictured below was my first focal point. There is something about this cottage that I like - it is something to do with the white painted iron fence, possibly resonating with some childhood memory.
After passing this cottage you see the church ruins on your left, several hundred yards from the road.
The 25" map doesn't show any evidence of prehistoric earthworks but does indicate several ancient monuments near the church, and interestingly a "hydralic ram" (that's a ram pump, see my previous post).
The older 6" map shows more detail (and a large "H"...) - perhaps those embankments are prehistoric, or are they simply dykes? Interesting my cottage is still there and is identified as "Stonebrook cottage".
++++
One more case could be added, but it belongs more to my son - it is the five-ways junction marked "Carnalway" in the general map above. I will leave Jonathan to supply his own emotions should he ever read this post and want to comment, but I can at least testify that there are lots of trees here and a church, again in an odd position but this time possibly because it belongs to a large estate surrounded by an stone wall.
++++
Conclusions? Is it just that I like locations where there is visual interest, especially trees, water and hills? This is certainly true. But I cannot help thinking that there is something more. And are the various churches (some in ruins so very ancient) and prehistoric earthworks just co-incidence?
Long ago in college days I stumbled across some fellow students poring over maps. I have always loved maps so stopped to talk: there were investigating the phenomenon of ley-lines. This site gives a fairly factual summary of the apparently well known St Michael ley line. You will see a number of very oddly placed churches in the pictures, one being on Glastonbury Tor. Why build churches in such odd places? So much work lugging the stones up there! We have a "church mountain" a few miles from our home: on top there is now just a pile of stones, but once it was a church and they still say mass up there every so often.
See here for a Christian perspective on ley-lines and the like. The suggestion here is that the paranormal aspects are the work of demons. I do not know what this does for my "enchanted" places - I cannot help the feeling I had when I first passed near these locations, and I am not aware of anything sinister about it?
As for those churches - maybe the building of churches was more political than anything to do with Christ? Or maybe they built the churches in these places intentionally to break the forces of evil? Or maybe it is just co-incidence that they lugged all those heavy stones up to the top of an otherwise deserted hill?
If you drive from our place through Ballymore towards Naas, turn left at the Punchestown cross roads and continue through Two Mile House and Corbally (an interesting place in its own right) you pass through the townland of Rosetown and come to the river Liffey at Athgarvan. The first time I drove this way I experienced the feeling of interest, magic, call it what you like, as the road descends to cross the river. The road here has high banks and trees either side, a bit like a tunnel. As you emerge from this tunnel there is the added interest of the bridge, the weir and the old mill on the left.
Further research reveals that the high bank on the left is Rosetown Rath, a prehistoric mound, and just across the river a grave-yard and the site of an ancient church. The picture below is all you can see of Rosetown Rath from the road (looking back towards Corbally).
The Ordnance Survey Ireland web site has a free map viewer with current topical, aerial and historic map sources. The site is shown below in both the 25" to the mile greyscale version (dated 1888-1913) and the 6" to the mile greyscale version (dated 1837-1842).
Rosetown Rath and the grave yard are clearly indicated on both. Note the river crossing is a ford in the older map, but everything else is much the same.
This link tells more: "One of the great routeways of early Ireland, the Slíge Dála, traversed this territory and probably crossed the Liffey at the ford of Athgarvan within Connul. Though definitive evidence is lacking, it is likely that the prependal parish church of Athgarvan, which overlooks the ford at the west, is early in origin. It is the only church site now evident within the Kildare portion of Connul. Directly across the river is Rosetown Rath, the only impressive secular settlement in Connul. Now much overgrown, the surviving remains and early records indicate that it was bivallate and 110m across. It is possible that there was a similar juxtaposition at Old Connell, where the nearby Anglo-Norman motte may supersede the royal residence mentioned in a tenth-century saga (ibid. 350). This twinning of sites expresses the symbiotic relationship between ecclesiastical and secular powers within Connul."
++++
My second case is the parish church at Manor Kilbride. Except that the church is in fact nowhere near the settlement of Manor Kilbride, indeed it does not appear to be near anywhere in particular. You pass this church on the Sally Gap road - it is marked with a cross in the map below.
The magic of this place is the Shankill stream descending over rocky pools down to join the river Liffey, and the road bridge over this stream. The picture below (not my own) is almost surrealistic.
But the church - why build a church here of all places? And what a strange, almost "toy-town" building (I hope this judgement offends no-one!).
Further research reveals that there is a mound - doubtless a burial mound - just behind the church. It seems to now be part of someone's front garden. The map is the 25" to the mile version.
My third case is on the way from Hollywood cross roads towards Dunlavin. After the crossing at Lemonstown the road climbs up over what I suppose is a terminal moraine with a wonderful view as you come over the top.
The road bends to the left and, after passing a (doubtless sand and gravel) quarry on the left, you come to the magic place, marked with a cross in the map above. I have passed this place numerous times on my way to pick up materials from the builder's suppliers Liam Kennedy, and the magic intrigues me every time. The picture below is from Street View and does not, I regret, do justice to the place.
There is a mound densely covered with trees, a tiny stream between this and the road, and a grassy hill going up to a ruin (just visible in my picture). The whole site appears to be on private land, and there is no place to park, so not much chance for exploring.
The historic 25" map shows the mound, a fish-pond and reveals that the ruin is a church.
++++
My fourth case is Old Kilcullen church. From our place you head for Brannockstown, past the quaint Baptist Church there, and go straight across the dangerous cross roads where you might turn right for (new) Kilcullen. The magic location is a church on a hill, marked with a cross in the map below. This time there are no trees and no water.
It is an odd place to find a church. One would have thought a church should be near where people live and not perched upon a hill. When I first came across this place I parked the car, of course, and wandered up to the path shown to check it out. Nothing of much consequence, a church is a church, and I cannot say that this location ranks very high on my magic rating - but it is still strange.
The 25" map (above) doesn't help much, except to indicate that the site is ancient. Zooming out a bit using the older 6" map reveals another hill not too far away, the very important prehistoric site Dún Áilinne.
There is something very odd going on here! This link suggests that "...the hills Old Kilcullen and Dún Áilinne... how the symbiotic relationship between ecclesiastical and royal authority within this estate is expressed in the unusual shapes of the townlands (red borders) which ensures that the church of Kilcullen has a tenurial and symbolic stake in both of these sacred hills."
++++
My last case is also weaker than my first three. I pass the location on my way to visit an aged neighbour. Head towards Kilcullen from Ballymore: the magic place is marked with a cross. The cottage pictured below was my first focal point. There is something about this cottage that I like - it is something to do with the white painted iron fence, possibly resonating with some childhood memory.
After passing this cottage you see the church ruins on your left, several hundred yards from the road.
The 25" map doesn't show any evidence of prehistoric earthworks but does indicate several ancient monuments near the church, and interestingly a "hydralic ram" (that's a ram pump, see my previous post).
The older 6" map shows more detail (and a large "H"...) - perhaps those embankments are prehistoric, or are they simply dykes? Interesting my cottage is still there and is identified as "Stonebrook cottage".
++++
One more case could be added, but it belongs more to my son - it is the five-ways junction marked "Carnalway" in the general map above. I will leave Jonathan to supply his own emotions should he ever read this post and want to comment, but I can at least testify that there are lots of trees here and a church, again in an odd position but this time possibly because it belongs to a large estate surrounded by an stone wall.
++++
Conclusions? Is it just that I like locations where there is visual interest, especially trees, water and hills? This is certainly true. But I cannot help thinking that there is something more. And are the various churches (some in ruins so very ancient) and prehistoric earthworks just co-incidence?
Long ago in college days I stumbled across some fellow students poring over maps. I have always loved maps so stopped to talk: there were investigating the phenomenon of ley-lines. This site gives a fairly factual summary of the apparently well known St Michael ley line. You will see a number of very oddly placed churches in the pictures, one being on Glastonbury Tor. Why build churches in such odd places? So much work lugging the stones up there! We have a "church mountain" a few miles from our home: on top there is now just a pile of stones, but once it was a church and they still say mass up there every so often.
See here for a Christian perspective on ley-lines and the like. The suggestion here is that the paranormal aspects are the work of demons. I do not know what this does for my "enchanted" places - I cannot help the feeling I had when I first passed near these locations, and I am not aware of anything sinister about it?
As for those churches - maybe the building of churches was more political than anything to do with Christ? Or maybe they built the churches in these places intentionally to break the forces of evil? Or maybe it is just co-incidence that they lugged all those heavy stones up to the top of an otherwise deserted hill?
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