Here's a picture from warmer days. The Liffey, just below Liffeyhead Bridge, a couple of miles from the source on the flank of Kippure.
The blog will be slow to load with these high-resolution images. I suppose the
thing to do is to give links, and possibly thumbnails. But I don't want the bother of editing photos to size them before posting. I also don't want the bother of copying them from my usual spot to a public area on my server. Ah! I can just upload them to this photos1.blogger.com, and link to a text. For instance, here I just edit
the html to replace the "<" img .... /> bit by the text I want, such as "Here's a picture...".
Maybe I shouldn't worry about stuff like file sizes, storage limits, and download speeds. It's the result of long habit. I started computing in 1965-6, on the IBM 1620, using FORTRAN-2,
punch-card or console input, and punch-card or teletype output. I just missed the end of the paper-tape era. Fr. Ingram (may God be good to him) taught me the rudiments. The thing had 16K (bits?), which were quite large transistors and failed a lot, it output a little faster than a good typist, it had no read-write external storage, no operating system, did one job at a time, and lived in a climate-controlled room, cared for by a roster of pretty girls and a brain surgeon from IBM who came in every few days to replace a failed component. You could do wonderful things with it, but your code had to be efficient, minimising computations and minimising use of memory. This discipline developed habits that stay with me, and make me weep to see the waste that goes on nowadays.
4 comments:
There are photos and details on the 1620 on
a Columbia site and the
computer history museum.
I Messed up that link, it's
"http://www.computerhistory.com">
http://www.computerhistory.com
I'll get it right yet! It's
that museum .
It seems (1) I can't edit a comment, once published, unless I intercept it by turning on the option to intercept all comments.
I don't want to do that unless it becomes absolutely necessary because of some abuse of the system. I'm in favour of free speech.
(2) the interface is a bit confusing; I managed to publish before being ready; I'm used to being able to fiddle with my html before committing to it.
Ah! I can delete a comment with that thing that looked vaguely like an electric motor, or a solenoid; it's a rubbish-bin ( trash can ). That's better.
I'm taking the advice to turn on word verification for comments, and I've turned off comment moderation.
Post a Comment