h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First day of the six week school holidays. Osh said he was bored at 10.15 - a new record. He's now busy turning the huge box that the cooker arrived in, into a time machine. He keeps going off saying 'see you in the future'. Which is, of course, totally accurate

Mol

Have just learned that Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson is the drummer with the astronauts rock band, MaxQ. How mega-cool is that?

[Nick - so pleased that Milady's birthday was all a success. And thanks HN for noticing]

[Bagpuss]

Do we have anybody in Oslo, and if so, are they okay?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14252515

I even pre-date 8" floppies. I was trained in the era of maytags and winchesters. I remember when 5.25 floppies went from 360K to "high density" (end of '87, I think) and there was no external marking on the new floppies so that you could tell them apart from the old ones. PKZip was good at archiving material across multiple floppies, which was good because it might take three to store a TGA image.

I still have the 5.25" boot floppy for the Wang mini-mainframe that was used until 1992 at the school where I worked. It's dated 1984. I also had a maytag platter, but I left it behind when I moved away from Florida.

I know some people in Norway but they're not hootooers. They would be somewhere around the university in Oslo.

I come from a time of 11" copper-platter as a storeage system, with 5-level baudot punched tape, and pencil encoded Holarith cards. I did meet the 8" single-sided floppies, and 5 1'4", ... Dang, now I feel old(er)

I have an 8" floppy disk that I keep for entertainment value. Used to have the drive for it too, but it is long gone.

Pencil-encoded hollerith cards, yup... I used to write the program out longhand on coding sheets and mail them to another city (Coventry to Liverpool) where the keypunch department was. I would get back a job deck of those cards. If the job didn't run, I had to figure out the bad code and replace it by hand-punching new cards and replacing them in the deck.

Just heard about the U.S. heatwave, I do hope the U.S. salonistas are okay!

It's mildly broiling in my apartment, but I'm otherwise fine.

Extending my heart to the people in Oslo. Wish I had anything else I could say, really, but I'm not good with words in cases like this.

Bad news in Oslo. I like Norwegians!

Winchester discs were used in the original Nimrod simulators. On the aircraft we loaded up the computer on the ESM system using 8" floppies. The 16K radar computer loaded up from a bespoke tape drive, as did the 64K Central Tactical System.

By the end of it's life, most loading systems had been replaced by flashcards.

Hope you have a great time, GDZ. Sounds like quite an adventure.

I'm standing by the phone waiting to see what to do next. My mom's sister is in the hospital right now on a ventilator. She has advanced COPD and emphysema from a lifetime of smoking. She may not last long if they can't get the pneumonia under control. I know her loss would hit my mother hard. And this aunt is one of the few extended family members with whom I am close.

Beatrice had mentioned MaxQ, the astronaut band, and here's the interview they did about them on the radio last weekend:

http://tinyurl.com/3fjvakn

I love the last song, played by MaxQ at the end of the interview -- "We'll have fun, fun, fun, till they make us put the shuttle away..."

Wow, shut down the computer for a couple of hours...why Norway? Odd, as bad as the attacks were, there still isn't a report on the motive. Only just now is there much detailed information. My sympathies to them all.



When I was in my high school office tech class, I had to learn how to use a keypunch machine -- a decade later, I was in a computer tech course learning how to debug a stack of those cards for my programs. Thank BoB for floppies, they were a miracle at the time!

Reading of a mass shooting in Norway as well. For something like this to happen in such a lovely place is shocking.

News from Norway horrible and distressing.

Marv, I'm so sorry to hear your aunt is so very ill. My thoughts are with you and your family, and my fingers are crossed HARD for her.

for all those caught up in the events in Oslo

for Marv and family.

Just changed my FB profile pic to a Norwegian flag. Least I could do.

for you & the family, Marv.

Oh Marv, I'm so sorry. I hope your aunt improves.

I read that the authorities think that the two incidents in Norway are connected.

The high temperature in my neck of the woods today was 102° with the high humidity making feel like 120°. We're down to a chilly 97° right now. Betcha there will be frost on the pumpkins tonight.