Week 148, Clown Computing

A cardboard, dummy floppy disk, retrieved from a 'not quite' MS-DOS compatible Apricot PC XI just before I flogged it.  This XI also had a 10MB hard disk drive, which by the time I took ownership in around 1990 wasn't such a big deal.  The cardboard floppy was used to protect the drive of the 'luggable' PC during transportation.  The hard disk needed the 'park' command to park the read/write head in a safe location to prevent it damaging the drive once shutdown, a process no longer needed as modern disks auto-park their heads.

No need to consider that now, just pop your data in the cloud and assume someone else has taken responsibility.

Excuse me while I locate my stick-on red nose.

Always read the small print - have you have handed over rights of ownership; what happens if the cloud provider goes bust; what happens if your data is not as well protected as you assume - e.g. held in a single location; what happens if a legal case is made against the service provider and they suspend business; what happens if the data centre provider has similar issues; what happens if you need to end the relationship with your service provider and have to extract your data; what happens if your business critical data is the "small percentage" lost by the eleven nines uptime service provider.

No service provider will accept liability if your data is lost, not even for large customers.

I'm sure it'll be perfectly fine, it'll never happen.  Well, it rarely happens.

Otherwise you might as well have saved your data on a cardboard, dummy floppy disk, or on a 10MB MFM RLL hard disk drive.

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Week 147, Roger and Out, maximum break

June 7 1985.

In the pub, as usual, the Frog and Parrot, a regular haunt.  It was a neat and quiet pub, other than when occupied by huge numbers of people.  The pub had no jukebox, dart board, or pool table, and still had original features such as the enormous sheets of curved plate glass window on each side of the main entrance.  I understand it now has noise, slot machines, and other entertainment for those unable to make conversation or sit silently sulking, and the curved plate glass has long since been destroyed by oafish behaviour.

By 1985 there was no frog, and the parrot had been retired from public display - there had actually never been a frog.  The parrot had been removed due to becoming a little moth-eaten after developing an enforced beer habit, the habit due to some customers not respecting the dietary requirements of your Norwegian Blue.*

Roger and Out, the strongest draught beer in the world apparently, went on sale in the Frog and Parrot on Division Street in Sheffield on Friday 7 June 1985.  On first release it had an original gravity of 1125, roughly 15% alcohol.

For each one third of a pint glass of Roger and Out, up to the third glass, you were issued with a different certificate.  It was rumoured that any drinker was limited to three glasses, that was nonsense, it was actually the certificates which stopped at three.  The limit was all part of the mythology, no attempt was made to stop anyone drinking more, and in fact the likelihood was that having got your three certificates you were relieved you didn't have to drink any more as it wasn't particularly pleasant.

I have all three of the certificates - they are reproduced below - and on the 7th June 1985 I drank five thirds of the stuff.  After the thirds of R&O I moved onto one of the normal brews (Conqueror with an OG of 1066 or Reckless), and probably went to the Wapentake and then Rebels.  At that time I had the constitution of an ox and was able to drink well into double figures with absolutely no ill effects whatsoever, until the next day at least...

Many may have the certificates, but few will have collected the maximum set on the first night, with authentic advertising literature too - before leaving I also pinched this A4 poster from the window.

* I have no idea what the actual brand of the Parrot was.

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Week 146, Wittgenstein and the answer to the ultimate question

So where were you and what were you doing on Wednesday 8th December 1993, thirteen years after Lennon (John) was shot?

Let's take a look into the crystal ball and see if there is any observable empirical data to give us some cognitive meaning for one group of characters on that day.

Back when the Film Unit at Sheffield Uni was just a long room with some rows of chairs in it the band known as Caustic Soup would make the occasional visit.  Why did we do that?  Well, that must be part of the ultimate question.

The ultimate question must also contain the reasoning for there being a Martian dwarf in Jarman's film Wittgenstein where none appeared in Eagleton's original script.  Is the Martian an hypothetical external observer?  Perhaps Durkheim has something to say on this - although it will almost certainly be too verbose and not even slightly humorous, which would have appealed to Wittgenstein.*

Fast forward in the film to Wittgenstein as he is dying:

Wittgenstein tells John Maynard Keynes, "I'd quite like to have composed a philosophical work that consisted only of jokes."

"Why didn't you do it?" Keynes inquires.

"Sadly, I had no sense of humour."


About a year later, at the end of November 1994 and 7 years before Harrison (George) died, the band went to see Faust, the film directed by Švankmajer.  This was purely for the hell of it - logical, positive, and an ideal cultural night out.  Wooden heads, puppets, live action, and all voiced by Sachs (Andrew) - one of the fifth Beatles.**  But without the physical evidence of a ticket did this elevating cultural event actually take place...

A broad cultural input is invaluable to the creative process, a view which some may consider pompous and overblown, but to that I say, Pretentious, Moi?  In retrospect however can we detect any actual cultural output, is that output unambiguous and of a notable qualitative standard when presented to an unbiased audience?

All the questions.

Let's take a look at the ticket to see if we can spot the answer to the ultimate question.

Just there below the watermark of Starr (Ringo) and McCartney (Paul).  Can you see it.

I can't imagine what Hitchhikers writer, and substantial Beatles fan, Adams (Douglas) would have made of it, but perhaps there is no correlation at all.†

* There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent. - Emile Durkheim
** Everyone will be referred to as "The fifth Beatle" for up to 15 minutes at some point.
† Another question is... [insert your own here] ?

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Week 145, Five things: Gigs; April; Mystery year; Names; This will change your life

While tidying up I unearthed this band related artefact.

Caustic Soup on tour.

Surely this amount of gigs wasn't sustainable given the number of venues within relatively easy reach of our home base.  Distance was no object, as long as it took less than an hour to get there and we could get our PA back in time for midnight, otherwise it would turn into a pumpkin sized excess charge.  I certainly don't remember there being an average of four gigs per month.  Rock and roll excess huh?

My memory may not be accurate, perhaps we supported Guns N' Roses at some point.  Although given the size of Morrisey's Riverside, a regular venue for us, I doubt it would have had room for the provisions for their legendary consumption, or indeed Duff McKagan's exploding pancreas.  No, we wouldn't have supported them, there would have ended up being an altercation with Axl Rose caused by him being an arse.

As for the Slug and Fiddle (proprietor Herbie Armstrong) gig on Thursday 17 April being switched to the Foundry and Firkin, I have no idea, maybe we never played the Slug.  We did at some point play The Boardwalk, or Mucky Duck as it should properly be known, the other one of Herbie Armstrong's pubs, a stage graced by many bands people had actually heard of.

I'm quite prepared to extrapolate from this and believe we played around 50 gigs per year for five years if it adds to the mythology.  A mythology which included us being the first band to play an open air festival on The Ponderosa in Sheffield since Free, which is probably, nearly true - it was definitely the easiest gig for me to get to, I just took the lift down from my flat with my guitar and walked to the stage.

I also found copies of the setlist, and while many songs were easy to recollect I struggled to associate some of the titles with any tune at all - something we had occasionally been accused of, however being an avant-garde outfit this didn't perturb us.

The unknown year?  My skills of Googling tell me that Friday 18 April was in 1997.  Less than a fortnight after the final gig listed here we had a Labour government, heady days where people appeared to know what they were doing and not just blundering about like a bunch of privileged, tousle-haired twats.

Exactly the sorts of things that will change your life.

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Week 144, Planet of the sheds

"Nobody should be denied a shed."

So said Fallacious, the Greek pragmatist, sometime around 400 BC - and in doing so Fallacious managed to predate the US tradition of pragmatism by some 2000 odd years, much to the annoyance of Charles Peirce.  Peirce subsequently steadfastly refused to countenance outbuildings of any kind on his substantial farmland, which severely restricted income and lead to years of poverty.

Why this interest in sheds?

I had the good fortune to see the inside of a decently sized outbuilding the other day, a building which included a cast iron range.  Myself and a couple of others were discussing what a fine construction it was when the topic moved to storage, and how outhouses, sheds and the like, rapidly become filled with items.

One of the party, who shall remain nameless, said he had five sheds.  Five whole sheds.

This makes the 1969 Monty Python sketch "Arthur 'two sheds' Jackson" appear rather tame.

So Gary - let's call him Gary, that isn't his name - Gary 'five sheds' went on to explain that he had all sorts of things in the sheds, wood, more wood, a lot of wood, and other things.  The rest of us agreed that we had a lot of things in our sheds too, wood, a lot of wood, and other things that weren't wood but which were not dissimilar to wood in their property of space consumption.

Having grown up with no male role model to speak of, other than Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise, I found it reassuring and satisfying to discover that the acquisition of sheds, and the propensity of items to expand to fill those sheds, was not a peculiar one.  I refer to a male role model but I am aware that there are female shedees too, perhaps not as many, or perhaps due to a perceived, and very real, patriarchal disdain of female shedees they are not as forthcoming - fortunately these outmoded views are rapidly being discarded.

I am reminded of a number of songs about sheds.  Pat Benatar memorably sang about them and their storage capability, who could forget the line 'We have sheds, wood's not a battlefield' from the song Wood's not a Battlefield.  Pat was at the vanguard, knocking over the male-dominated, external non-permanent structure world view.  Views such as that of King Crimson in their song The Night Watch with the lyrics 'Shed, shed, the light of wood works shed, The struts before the plain sawn gate, now painted new and primed', where they refer to various pursuits deemed manly.

But I digress.

I've only got the two sheds myself, although I'm not called Arthur.

Perhaps there's someone, somewhere out there with two sheds called Martha?

Who knows.

I maybe confused.

Is it too early for a drink?

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Week 143, Red lights, lotto winner, flat out

Foot down, firm not hard, drop the clutch, drop the second clutch.

And we're off.

A few corners to settle down, take in the view, before giving it the beans.

On the straight, flat out, bouncing off the rev limiter.

Coming into the sequence of twisting bends.

Take the rear brake balance back 10%.

Check your tickets.

Spin off.

Wake up a winner.

The raffle - not the lottery, not the race.

The prize is a jar of green tomato chutney, so not too bad.

And here is the prize, in the shadow of a beer glass.

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Week 142, TiTTle Parking TaTTle

Here I am, parking to a T.

Classic manoeuvrability skills.

There's nothing in this location to say a person should park between the Ts.

I'm almost between them, partially over and beyond the edge.

The Ts may be nothing to do with parking - there's a gap between them, why is that?

I'm surprised nobody has popped up with a can of spray paint and inserted a W and an A between them.

One of the shops this car park services is Halfords.

They sell spray paint.

That's why I'm here.

But then the reason this car park is empty is that there's a thirty second walk to the shops - drivers prefer not to walk.

If there's a pavement to park on, which is closer to the store, then so be it.

So nobody but myself and the one other person parked here is aware of the comedy potential.

Weak comedy potential.

Very weak.

Toilet, that might fit as well.

Depending on the font and the kerning.

Tastiest.

Trout.

...

No, I didn't waste my expensive spray paint on the tarmac.

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