Category: Uncategorized

Including world record balloon blowing by nose…yup, if I was going to go for a world record on nasal balloon blowing, I’d be nipping down to the public library to do it too…maybe.

That is one unusual talent…

Story originally from Nothing to Do With Arbroath

From CILIP, to me!
After having had my portfolio since September, it missing the October and January Chartership Board meetings, and having no hope of hearing anything until after the April meeting…

I passed!
On a meeting on the 19th of March, bizarrely!
I’m Chartered! – I can put MCLIP after my name!

It’s a bit of an anticlimax now, after submitting it 8 months ago, and all the incredibly ridiculous problems caused by CILIP, and all the fighting to try and get things moved along…

Although one friend has said that she can’t help reading MCLIP as McCLIP….maybe that’s the Scottish version? 😀

The men responsible for the creation of the BBC Micro are meeting up at the Science Museum in London today, to celebrate its creation.

I have many happy memories of the BBC Micro – my Dad was lucky enouguh to have an employer who understood what a revolution these ‘computers’ were likely to cause in the future. In the mid 1980s (I think) they set up a programme to allow staff to purchase a BBC Micro to use at home and educate themselves on. The initial purchase was actually made by the company, and the (then huge) cost of the Micro was taken out of the salary in instalments. Those who took them up on this offer got a snazzy machine to play with, and I can’t say that being able to programme in Basic ever harmed their career prospects!

A side effect of this is that I got to come home from school and , if Dad wasn’t using it, play games on the Micro. It was connected to an old TV which was used as the monitor, sitting on a wooden plinth that my Dad had made that fitted over that large ‘bum’. I don’t remember there being any more colour than a black background and green text, despite the fact that it was a colour TV. Text based games could be loaded onto it (I thought at first they were cassette based, but now I remember they were the original ‘floppy discs’, which meant they were portable and easy to load.), and my favourite game was definitely Eliza. Me and my friends spent many hours trying to wind her up, and feeling very naughty when we used a swear word! I almost learned to touch type on there too, but was far more interested in playing than typing…

I learned how to programme in Basic on the BBC Micro, which certainly helped me out when I took Computing in secondary school and we were using BBC Micros. Unfortunately, our teacher wasn’t actually a Computing teacher, but a Maths teacher who’d done a weekend course. So, when I got stuck, I was stuck for good. I think a lot of peoples terror of hitting the ‘wrong’ key also comes from BBC Micros – you hit the wrong thing at the wrong time and EVERYTHING went!!

Now, that BBC is up in the loft, securely packaged and insulated. It lives along with various other old computers (Commodore 64 and perhaps an Atari?), in a box sealed by my brother, and bearing the immortal words “Not to be opened until 2010”.

The time for opening draws near…maybe we could open it early and take the BBC on a daytrip to next years exhibition at the Science Museum?

From a link pasted on law.librarians, I did this survey, to find out where I fit in the technology world. It’s aimed at the American public, but here’s my results anyway:

Where do you fit?

Your Results

Based on your answers to the questionnaire, you most closely resemble survey respondents within the Omnivores typology group. This does not mean that you necessarily fit every group characteristic.

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.

Basic Description
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

Defining Characteristics
You might see them watching video on an iPod. They might talk about their video games or their participation in virtual worlds the way their parents talked about their favorite TV episode a generation ago. Much of this chatter will take place via instant messages, texting on a cell phone, or on personal blogs. Omnivores are particularly active in dealing with video content. Most have video or digital cameras, and most have tried watching TV on a non-television device, such as a laptop or a cell phone.

Omnivores embrace all this connectivity, feeling confident in how they manage information and their many devices. This puts information technology at the center of how they express themselves, do their jobs, and connect to their friends.

Who They Are
They are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.