Observations from a Hill

I mentioned last night that digitised data is twice abstracted via both hardware and software, but I didn't expand on what I meant by that, so I thought I'd drop a brief note to go some way in explaining what I meant by it. Getting back to the written/printed page as the most successful archival method of human produced stuff yet invented: a page of text in whatever natural language is the perfect wysiwyg - 'what you see you get' - interface. It is a direct, orthographic, symbolic rendering of human language, unmediated by the medium that transmits it. It's longevity, and hence its long term viability and reliability as a data retrieval system, is only governed by the quality of the means of production [paper, ink, binding, etc.] and the stability of the long term storage conditions of the artefacts. No other significant factor comes into play, and as the layer of abstraction of the data is the direct analogue of its source, ie. natural language, and as written lang...

Talking yesterday in the pub with Joe about that development in data storage media currently being mooted, which utilises a 3D borosilicate glass [ Pyrex to you and me] structure and lasers to store data at a pretty prodigious density for a claimed 10,000 years. The development by Microsoft is pretty impressive in and of itself, technically, and the predicted lifespan of the storage medium is a thousand times that of today's solid state hard drives, but herein lies the rub. As I've written here before, we struggle now to retrieve data from digital media created less than fifty years ago; not because the media themselves have necessarily physically deteriorated beyond reading, but simply because the file storage formats, not only physically themselves but their data structures also are now obsolete; the disk drives largely all gone to landfill, and the file and disk formats they employed arcane to all but a few archivists, museums and data specialists. For most us at least,...

  Pictured, some of Jane's charity-shop acquisitions from today: three old singles, and all in pretty decent nick, considering their considerable age. On top is a record that is dear to my heart: it charted in the summer of 1970 and I first heard it on the radio when I was holidaying in Ross-On-Wye with my mate Jeff and his parents: we were fifteen at the time and still forging our identities, both personally and musically. I remember this track coming out of the tiny little transistor radio [Google it if the reference is too obscure for your age group] and thinking 'my God, this is utterly brilliant'; so unlike anything that Fleetwood Mac had released thus far, and I'd been a fan for some time at that point. What I didn't realise in my naivety - and to be fair not many spotted it coming - was that this was probably the final signal of Peter Green's mental deterioration that led soon after to him leaving the band and living for many years as a virtual hermit, we...

Pictured - I guess weirdly, if I'm honest - are my boots. On the left my current daily wear, and to their right, my originals. The astute observer will note that, apart from age and wear, they are identical. The original pair I bought ten, maybe fifteen years - more likely the latter, I really can't remember - ago. The new ones are just broken in and in constant use. They are German-made, and go by the brand name Waldläufer, or ranger; literally, a forest walker in English. To say they are superb is a bloody understatement: they are comfortable from the first wearing - when I said that the new ones were broken in, I really should have said christened by the outdoors - they are lighter than any boot this durable has a right to be, and wear like carpet slippers. Both pairs were bought from Dick's Discount Shoes on Anglesey; the originals costing around eighty quid, discounted from well over a hundred, but still not cheap.  Their replacements last year were a hundred and thirt...

Sodium Chloride, NaCl, the chloride of sodium: Common Salt. It is comprised of two highly reactive and dangerous substances: an alkali metal, sodium, and chlorine, a halogen whose vapour can kill or maim anyone inhaling it and used most violently in The First World War as a chemical weapon that left a lasting legacy long after the war ended, with the residual fear of its and other chemical substance's re-use in future conflicts carrying over into The Second World War in the form of universal gas protection measures for both combatants and civilians alike. In the form of their combined salt, however, these two fearsome elements are tamed for the good and this most abundant of materials - salt - is central to our lives and our very existence, providing essential body-chemistry-balancing chemicals that ensure that our bodies continue to function normally. I remember my uncle Edgar, who was a keen amateur chemist and experimenter coming one day into their parlour in the house in which ...

One place from my childhood still sticks fondly in my mind, sixty-odd years on: Snow Hill Railway Station in Birmingham: the Great Western Railway's hub in the Midlands, and a magnificent structure, to boot - pictured, the incredible glass-vaulted booking hall that fronted the place. Across the street, its facade reflected across Colmore Row, the entrance of the Great Western Arcade, a Victorian shopping arcade stretching from Colmore itself to Temple Row. Of course, over the years this architectural continuity has been been rather upset by progress, with the implied connection between station and arcade subsumed by years of messing around with Brum's inner-city road infrastructure; never to great end, but always serving the profit motive of the Midlands road transport lobby, aided and abetted in the sixties by Dr. Beeching's rather specious findings about railway efficiency [the roots of neoliberalism made flesh before we even knew it even existed?] When I was a kid, we us...