Monday Links from the ClientCo Christmas Buffet vol. CLIV

[vetran]

It was a beastie :

removable discs
a juke-box of 128 discs with a capacity of 4.6 Kc per disk, access-time 4.25s to a disk, transfer rate 2.5Kcps


"fast" discs
Burroughs origin, with a capacity of 22 Mc, access time 100ms, transfer rate 32Kcps
Mass Storage
up to 2 Magnetic Drum capacity 128Kc, origin Bull
2 Magnetic Card Mass Memory, BULLRAC, origin RCA

They don't know they are born etc ........ (I wasn't quite)

[Sysman]

I swear the Grateful Dead fans are getting weirder: here's all the bits of them tuning their instruments from 1977, edited together into one 92 minute and 50 second mix containing no actual music: Tuning '77 : Michael David Murphy : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

No surprise there. I had a lodger who was heavily into Grateful Dead and he was weird.

I have never completely trusted Grateful Dead fans since...

[NickFitz]

I swear the Grateful Dead fans are getting weirder: here's all the bits of them tuning their instruments from 1977, edited together into one 92 minute and 50 second mix containing no actual music: Tuning '77 : Michael David Murphy : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

[Freamon]

Excellent as ever.

That newspaper one sent me off on a trail following the RCA 301 computer.

Which ended up with

Gamma 30

Towards the bottom of the page there's a picture of some weird kind of disk jukebox thing, the like of which I've never seen before.

Seen similar things in use before: HP C1150J SURESTORE 160EX OPTICAL JUKEBOX + SMO-F551-01 | eBay

[NickFitz]

Excellent as ever.

That newspaper one sent me off on a trail following the RCA 301 computer.

Which ended up with

Gamma 30

Towards the bottom of the page there's a picture of some weird kind of disk jukebox thing, the like of which I've never seen before.

Nice!

[NickFitz]

How long is the current gig of yours as I want to know if its worth buying shares in Greggs while you are there

The client asked me that the other day (the gig bit, not the Greggs bit), and I had to admit I wasn't sure

Turns out I'm signed up until February, although who knows if the work will last that long.

Top links!

Remember after 5 pints they still aren't top totty - HTH

Driving today, so no pints for me

[vetran]

Top links!

Remember after 5 pints they still aren't top totty - HTH

[SimonMac]

How long is the current gig of yours as I want to know if its worth buying shares in Greggs while you are there

[NickFitz]

Or, more accurately, not from there as I decided an inch-long sausage roll and small sausage on a stick wasn't worth the risk of having to make small talk with the permies. I'll just post these, then nip over the road to the Greggs I can see from my desk

• Back-up Tut and Other Decoy Spatial Antiquities - "On the 90th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut's tomb, an 'authorized facsimile of the burial chamber' has been created, complete 'with sarcophagus, sarcophagus lid and the missing fragment from the south wall.'" How Egypt's Department of Antiquities is using hi-res photography and laser scanners to make back-up copies of entire ancient monuments (seriously, they've built a copy of it), and similar projects elsewhere. Once they put all the data online, you'll be able to use your 3D printer to turn the spare room into a tomb
  
  
• Candle-Powered Electric Candle - "I have been thinking a lot lately about being more prepared, and what supplies we should have on hand for when the 'big one' hits... I explored different options and finally figured out a low-cost, long-term, and portable, method to keep my electric candles lit. I am going to use heat generated by tea lights." OK...
  
  
• Honolulu after Pearl Harbor: A report published for the first time, 71 years later - From journalist Betty McIntosh: "On Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, I was working as a reporter for the Hono*lulu Star-Bulletin. After a week of war, I wrote a story directed at Hawaii’s women; I thought it would be useful for them to know what I had seen. It might help prepare them for what lay ahead. But my editors thought the graphic content would be too upsetting for readers and decided not to run my article. It appears here for the first time."
  
  
• The Ups and Downs of Making Elevators Go - Good stuff about the maths and psychology behind lifts: "As a mathematician steeped in the theories of vertical transportation at Otis Elevator Co., Ms. Christy, 55, has spent a quarter-century developing systems that make elevators run as perfectly as possible—which means getting most riders into a car in less than 20 seconds. 'Traditionally, the wait time is the most important factor,' she says. 'The thing people hate the most is waiting.'"
  
  
• Deadhead: The Vast Recorded Legacy of the Grateful Dead - "The Dead’s sound system, as it evolved in the early seventies, delivered more clarity and purity of sound, at higher volumes, than any that had come before, and most that came after. The sound quality greatly enhanced the recording product, both for the devotees in the audience who started, in greater and greater numbers, to tape the gigs on smuggled reel-to-reel recorders and for the band’s official recorders themselves, who patched into the soundboard feed and mixed the music directly to tape, in real time—essentially mixing albums on the fly." Detailed account from the New Yorker of how the Grateful Dead became perhaps the most-recorded music act in history. (You can currently find 9,016 live recordings in the Internet Archive alone.)
  
  
• Inside the New Yorker - Speaking of the New Yorker, here's a look at the magazine's editor David Remnick, and the magazine's famous fact-checking department: "Everything, from long pieces to cartoons to poetry… everything is checked. When it comes to a cartoon, there are details, like which side of a blazer the buttons are on, or in a poem, historical references. Wherever there is a fact, it can be checked."
  
  
• Database of Mid-Victorian wood-engraved Illustration - "...which contains records and images of 868 literary illustrations that were published in or around 1862, providing bibliographical and iconographical details, as well as the ability for users to view images at exceptionally high quality." Just what you've been waiting for
  
  
• Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money - Dan Lyons (creator of the Fake Steve Jobs blog) writes: "Here’s some stunning, Earth-shattering news: You know all those hundreds of incredibly stupid startups that have been raising seed money in Silicon Valley despite the fact that the people running those startups have no experience doing anything, ever, and have no idea at all how to generate revenue (let alone profit) with their lousy ideas, because, in fact, there is no way to make money with their lousy ideas, because in fact their ideas are lousy? Well, nobody wants to give those dopes any more money. So now they're going to go out of business. I know. Shocking."
  
  
• The Long Good-Bye - "Fifty years ago this month, striking printers shut down seven New York City newspapers. The strike would last for 114 days and helped to kill four of those newspapers." If you've ever wondered what became of the Herald Tribune, or why Tom Wolfe turned to writing books, here's your answer.
  
  
• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks - Extensive collection, by Bethany Keeler-Jonker, of this sort of thing:
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!