aFrankAngle’s A-to-Z Challenge On Fasab

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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My blog friend Frank over at A Frank Angle came up with the idea of doing a post based on an alphabetical listing of a selection of his previous posts. An interesting idea and a good way to introduce more recent readers to some of the things they might otherwise have missed.

Of course, Frank couldn’t leave it at that, so he threw out a challenge for others to try to do the same for their blogs. And guess who couldn’t resist the challenge!

So here you are, for new and long term readers of this blog, a alphabetical journey through some of the files of Fasab!

Enjoy.

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A is for….

Awkward Moments, (Part One, Part Two and Part Three), a short series of amusing anecdotes of times when things didn’t go quite right.

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B is for….

Banksters, one of my perpetual hate figures and the subject of numerous rants such as this one

Are The Banksters Guilty Of Treason Against The Nation?

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C is for….

Classifieds, a long running series of funny classified ads that turned out rather differently to the original intent, for example Part Three and Part Fourteen

And also for factoids about Chocolate and Coffee which people seemed to enjoy

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D is for….

Dogs. I make no secret of the fact that I am very fond of dogs, and German Shepherds in particular. You won’t get a better or more loyal companion and friend. I’ve done several doggie posts, this one has been the most popular,

Sometimes Dogs Know More Than We Give Them Credit For

And for Dear Abbey, no blog like this would be complete without a few letters from Joe Public seeking advice for some of their most disturbing problems.

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E is for….

Education, the lack of, as evidenced by these student exam answers, Part One and Part Two

And also for Emergency Room, some amusing anecdotes from the medical world.

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F is for….

Facebook, in particular the disastrous launch of the company on to the stock market which inspired the longest alliterated blog post title so far

Furious Flabbergasted Facebook Fools Face Frightening Falls From Fanciful Flagging Financial Flotation Farce

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G is for….

The Great Escape, a short story aout an intrepid group of construction workers held hostage by Saddam Hussein before the outbreak of the first war with Iraq

And also for a Glass Of Milk being raised in tribute to Samuel J Porcello, the man who made Oreos what they are today.

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H is for….

Has to be for The Late Great Mr Harry Meadows, an old fellow whose efforts to spice up life in an English nursing home didn’t quite work out as intended.

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I is for….

I Miss Him, and I Miss Him Two, a nostalgic look back at some of the wonderful statements of President George W Bush.

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J is for….

The Journey, an eight part story of an eventful and amusing journey from Dublin, Ireland to the Caribbean, by way of Miami, Florida. This was one of the first things I wrote for this blog and published before there was much viewing traffic

Dublin Airport,  -   Reconfigured And Stuck,  -   The Three Hour Stopover,  -   What Color Was It?   -  Just A Trip To The Mall,   –  Miami Twice, Lost In That Is,   –  Bags And Bags And Bags Of Bother,  and  Finally, I Made It!

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K is for….

Korea, my take on the current posturing and politics concerning North and South Korea,

Is Obama Making A Bad Korea Move?

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L is for….

A Long Love Affair, a short story about my own geeky love affair with computers during the past few decades.

And for Lost In The Fog, a short story about Tommy who managed to get completely lost in the field beside his house.

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M is for….

The MilPost Blog Award, another thing inspired by Frank who was the first blogger to receive this prestigious award only given to those few bloggers who have posted 1,000 times or more on their blog. If you know of anyone who is eligible to receive it please let me know.

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N is for….

Numbers, an on going series of factoids about numbers and their meanings and associations, that has surprised me in the numbers of people viewing them. So far the most popular number is Twenty-Three 23.

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O is for….

One Small Step For Man, a tribute on hearing of the death of Neil Armstrong the first man to set foot on the Moon. There are differing views on how Mr Gorsky fared, but I hope he did okay!

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P is for….

No, you’re all wrong. P is for my loving tribute to the wonderful invention knows as Peanut Butter.

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Q is for….

Quiz Show Answers, a very funny and long running series about the dumb answers given by contestants on various TV and radio quizzes over the years. Like this for example,

It’s Monday And That Means Some More Quiz Show Answers

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R is for….

Revenge Of The First Graders, part of a short series of guess the logo quizzes, apparently kids can recognize about 200 of these by the time they are ready for the first grade!

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S is for….

Stupidity, one of the foundation stones of this blog. No one is immune, especially not politicians and lawyers.

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T is for….

Tarzan and Travel Agents, both of whom made an appearance on the fasab blog.

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U is for….

US Politics And Foreign Policy For Dummies, sometimes it takes a kid to show us how absurd the world of adults really is!

And ‘U’ is for Up, as in People Hardly Ever Look Up, Sometimes They Should!

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V is for….

Versatile Blogger Award. Actually that should be ‘awards’ the first nomination from Alex way back when this blog was barely two months old, and subsequently from Sunny and Wendy. The Fasab blog has also been nominated for the Illuminating Blogger Award (Kenton), Sunshine Award (Wendy again) and the Kreative Blogger Award (Nabdip). My sincere thanks to everyone who though this blog worthy of nomination and I will get round to doing a proper awards page I promise.

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W is for….

Word Play. Yes, you were right, just in the wrong place. I like puns and they feature almost every week somewhere in my blog. So like them, or hate them, or like to hate them, or even hate to like them, you’re sure to find some here.

Why Are Puns So Popular?

Word Play, Bad Jokes, Whatever You Call Them They’re Still Pun To Me

It’s Thursday And That Means Another Excuse For A Few More Bad Jokes

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X is for….

X-rated, a steamy tension filled post about My Morning In Bed With Derek. Read it if you dare!

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Y is for….

Your Country Needs You, a story about a friend’s unusual introduction to the military world.

And You’re Too Stupid To Own A Computer, about pc owners and technical helplines!

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Z is for….

Zero, there are no ‘Z’ posts on this blog, unless the ones that put you to sleep reading them!

I suppose I could have used some of the quiz or puzzle posts, but that’s a bit of a cop out.

I hope this means that Fasab has yet to reach its zenith.

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So that’s it, the Fasab A – Z. Feel free to click any or all of the links that take your fancy, and, as always, enjoy!

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Frank has asked me to remind everyone that no nominations are required to take part in the A2Z challenge, so why not have a go. It’s a bit of work, but fun too, and it gives you the excuse to look over some of your old posts.
The details are on Frank’s blog. To go there, click here!

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A Man Walked Into A Hardware Store….

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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In case today’s title was a little bit obscure for you, it’s pun day again.

Yes even more of those bad jokes and word plays.

Enjoy!

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A man walked into a hardware store and picked up a can of fly spray.

“Is this good for wasps?” he asked the assistant.

“No, it kills them,” was the reply.

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My Doctor told me I’m a Paranoid Schizophrenic.

We think he’s out to get us

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I went into the pharmacy last week and said to the woman behind the counter, “Packet of three, please, Miss.”

“Don’t you Miss me, young man,” she replied.

I said, “Okay, better make that four then!”

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I used to go out with a midget but we broke up.

We just couldn’t see eye to eye.

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I went to the missing persons bureau,

but there was no-one there.

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Four fonts walk into a bar

The barman says, “Oi – get out! We don’t want your type in here.”

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Why do they call it ‘raw’ sewage?

Is someone somewhere cooking it?

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I am very much into DIY.

Every time the wife asks me to do anything, I say, “do it yourself.”

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Ted Kennedy got told off for not opening the door for his girlfriend when he was on a date.

Instead he just swam to the surface.

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Computers are like air conditioners.

They work fine until you start opening windows.

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Food has supplanted sex as the main driving force in my life

- now I can’t even get into my own pants.

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I had a horrible childhood.

My father was a Pontoon dealer in Vegas,

that’s why he used to hit me till I was 21

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I conducted an orchestra the other day.

It’s more fun than you can shake a stick at.

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They say being a hostage is difficult…

…But I could do that with my hands tied behind my back.

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What’s got four legs and goes “boo”?

A cow with a cold.

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The Interstate was blocked for an hour yesterday

after a car driven by a hunchback crashed into a car driven by a bearded lady.

Police are describing it as a freak accident.

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Bloody feminists.

They should all be put behind bras.

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What kind of bees make milk?

Boobies!

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Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number Eleven 11

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The number for today’s Friday Factoid is eleven. If this is your lucky number, date of birth or if you are just interested in random facts, now is your chance to find out some things you probably didn’t know about the number eleven.

Enjoy!

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The Number Eleven 11

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In religion

• The word “apple” is cited 11 times in the Bible, all in the Old Testament.
• Moses was instructed to make curtains of goats’ hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: “eleven curtains shalt thou make.” ( Exodus 26.7)
• 11 apostles remained with Jesus after the treason and suicide of Apostle Judas:
• After Judas Iscariot was disgraced, the remaining apostles of Jesus were sometimes described as “the Eleven”; this occurred even after Matthias was added to bring the number to 12, as in Acts 2:14.
• Jesus’ parable of the vineyard laborers: And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and says unto them, Why stand you here all the day idle? (Matthew 20.6)
• 11th Book of Enoch describes the Messianic Kingdom. 
• 11th Station of the Cross: Crucifixion of Jesus (14 Stations of the Cross, Via Dolorosa)
• 11 is a spiritually significant number in Thelema.

 

 

In mathematics

• If a number is divisible by 11, reversing its digits will result in another multiple of 11.
• As long as no two adjacent digits of a number added together exceed 9, then multiplying the number by 11, reversing the digits of the product, and dividing that new number by 11, will yield a number that is the reverse of the original number. (For example: 142,312 x 11 = 1,565,432. 2,345,651 / 11 = 213,241.)
• An 11-sided polygon is called a hendecagon or undecagon.

 

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In computing

• In Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Konqueror for KDE, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer for Windows, the function key F11 key toggles full screen viewing mode. In Mac OS X, F11 hides all open windows.
• The windowing system for Unix computers is known as X11.
• Computers of the PDP-11 series from Digital Equipment Corporation were informally referred to as “elevens”.

 

cpu room with DEC PDP-11

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In science

• 11 is the atomic number of sodium.
• 11 is the Atomic Weight of Boron, a black and semi-metallic element, chemically closer to silicon than to aluminium.
• In modern string theory physics, 11 dimensions are proposed to exist in the universe.

 

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In space

• Apollo 11 was the first manned spacecraft to land on the Moon.

• The approximate periodicity of a sunspot cycle is 11 years.
• Messier object M11, a magnitude 7.0 open cluster in the constellation Scutum, also known as the Wild Duck Cluster.

Messier object M11 – Wild Duck Cluster

• The New General Catalogue object NGC 11, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda
• The 11th moon of Jupiter is Himalia.

 

Himalia, the 11th Moon of Jupiter

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In politics

• 11th State to enter the Union is New York (July 26, 1788)
• The 11th President of the United States is James Polk (1795-1849) who served (1845-1849).

James Polk 11th President of the United States of America

• Polk was on the 11¢ stamp issued on September 8, 1938 in the Presidential Series.
• 11¢ stamps of the United States have also featured Presidents, Benjamin Franklin (issued Aug. 9, 1915) and Rutherford B. Hayes (issued Oct. 4, 1922)

 

11 cent stamps, Franklin, Polk, Hayes

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In Canada

• The stylized maple leaf on the Flag of Canada has 11 points.

• The Canadian one-dollar coin is a hendecagon, an 11-sided polygon.

Canadian one-dollar coin

• Clocks depicted on Canadian currency, for example the Canadian fifty-dollar bill, show 11:00.

Canadian fifty-dollar bill showing clock

• Eleven denominations of Canadian currency are produced in large quantities.
• Due to Canada’s federal nature, eleven legally distinct Crowns effectively exist in the country, with the Monarch being represented separately in each province, as well as at the federal level.

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In sport

• There are 11 players on a soccer team on the field at a time as well as in a cricket team.
• Also in soccer, a penalty kick is referred to as “Elfmeter” because the penalty spot is approximately 11m (precisely 12 yards) from the goal line.
• Historically, in the Pyramid formation that position names are taken from, a left wing-forward in football wears number 11. In the modern game, especially using the 4-4-2 formation, it is worn by a left-sided midfielder. Less commonly a striker will wear the shirt.
• There are 11 players in a field hockey team. The player wearing 11 will usually play on the left-hand side, as in soccer.
• An American football team also has 11 players on the field at one time during play. 11 is also worn by quarterbacks, kickers, punter and wide receivers in American football’s NFL.
• In rugby union, the starting left wing wears the 11 shirt.
• In cricket, the 11th batsman is usually the weakest batsman, at the end of the tail. He is primarily in the team for his bowling abilities.
• The jersey number 11 has been retired by several North American sports teams in honor of past playing greats or other key figures:
• In Major League Baseball: the Chicago White Sox, for Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio ( 2010 and 2011, Aparicio allowed fellow Venezuelan Omar Vizquel to wear the number); the Cincinnati Reds, for Hall of Famer Barry Larkin; the Detroit Tigers, for Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson; the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, for Jim Fregosi (who played for the team in its former incarnations as the Los Angeles Angels and California Angels, and also managed the California Angels); the Pittsburgh Pirates, for Hall of Famer Paul Waner; the San Francisco Giants, for Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell (honoring the number’s retirement when the team was known as the New York Giants); the Seattle Mariners have yet to retire any numbers, but have not issued #11 since the retirement of Edgar Martínez at the end of the 2004 season.

Baseball Hall of Fame Cincinnati Reds

• In the NBA: the Detroit Pistons, for Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas; the Sacramento Kings, for Hall of Famer Bob Davies (honoring the number’s retirement when the team was known as the Rochester Royals); the Washington Wizards, for Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes (who played for the team in its past incarnations as the Baltimore, Capital, and Washington Bullets);

Elvin Hayes

• In the NFL: the New York Giants, for Phil Simms.
• In the NHL: the Buffalo Sabres, for Hall of Famer Gilbert Perreault; the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers, for Hall of Famer Mark Messier; the St. Louis Blues, for Brian Sutter; the Washington Capitals, for Hall of Famer Mike Gartner.

 

Oilers and New York Rangers, for Hall of Famer Mark Messier

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In militaria

• World War I ended with an Armistice on November 11, 1918, which went into effect at 11:00 am, the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year. Armistice Day is still observed on November 11 of each year, although it is now called Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth of Nations and parts of Europe.

• 11 is the number of guns in a gun salute to U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps Brigadier Generals, and to Navy and Coast Guard Rear Admirals Lower Half.
• 11 is the number of General Orders for Sentries in the Marine Corps and United States Navy.

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• USN F11F Tiger
• The Grumman F11F/F-11 Tiger was a single-seat carrier-based United States Navy fighter aircraft in operation during the 1950s and 1960s. Originally designated the F11F Tiger in April 1955 under the pre-1962 Navy designation system, it was redesignated as F-11 Tiger under the 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft designation system.
• The F11F/F-11 was used by the Blue Angels flight team from 1957 to 1969. Grumman Aircraft Corporation made about 200 Tigers, with last delivered 23 January 1

The Grumman F11F/F-11 Tiger

 

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• J-11 Chinese Light Fighter Aircraft
• The J-11 designation was originally applied in the design Shenyang Aircraft Factory in response to a 1968 requirement for a replacement PLAAF J-6 (MiG-19 Farmer). Shenyang’s proposal was triggered by a British Spey 512 afterburning turbofan engine and followed a conventional light fighter design, with wings swept back and side of the fuselage assembly entries.
• The J-11 was a sophisticated design for its time, but the British Spey-512 engines proved “difficult” for Communist China to obtain at that time. Shenyang factory was ordered to concentrate their energies in the J-8, and J-11 never went beyond the planning stage.

 

J-11 Chinese Light Fighter Aircraft

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• The B-11 Gun
• The B-11 gun is designed by the Design Bureau under guidance of B.I. Shavyrin. Its barrel consists of a smooth-bore tube, chamber, breech and breech mechanism. It is fixed on a tripod mount consisting of frame and boom. In firing position, the gun rests on the tripod mount and the wheels are elevated above ground level. The gun is transported by means of a prime-mover.
• The gun can be transported in a truck body together with crew and ammo load. The gun can be also dropped by parachute.

 

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• Colt 1911
• Designed by John Browning, the M1911 Colt is arguably the most well known pistol in the world. It is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated handgun chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. It  served as the standard-issue side arm for the United States armed forces from 1911 to 1985 and was widely used in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
• The M1911 is still carried by some U.S. forces. Its formal designation as of 1940 was Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911 for the original Model of 1911 or Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911A1 for the M1911A1, adopted in 1924.
• In total, the United States procured around 2.7 million M1911 and M1911A1 pistols in military contracts during its service life. The M1911 was replaced by the M9 pistol as the standard U.S. sidearm in the early 1990s, but due to its popularity among users, it has not been completely phased out. Modern M1911 variants are still in use by some units within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.
• Many military and law enforcement organizations in the United States and other countries continue to use (often modified) M1911A1 pistols including Marine Corps Special Operations Command, Los Angeles Police Department S.W.A.T. and L.A.P.D. S.I.S., the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, F.B.I. regional S.W.A.T. teams, and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta (Delta Force). The Tacoma, Washington Police Department selected the Kimber Pro Carry II or Pro Carry II HD as optional, department supplied weapons available to its officers

Colt 1911

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• Sig Sauer M11-A1
• Two of the most watched shows on television are NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles. The 2nd spinoff show, NCIS: LA features covert NCIS agents based out of Los Angeles investigating things that have nothing to do with NCIS and regularly getting into gunfights and leaving bodies all over LA. And each week, they’re correctly depicted using the Sig Sauer M11, the standard issue pistol for NCIS, Army CID, and a number of other special units of the US military.
• The Sig Sauer M11-A1 is a commercially available version of the military sidearm; upgrading the slide to stainless steel and adding Sig’s excellent Short Reset Trigger. The Sig M11-A1 comes standard with three 15-round magazines, and SigLite night sights.

 

Sig Sauer M11-A1

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• Smith & Wesson Model 11 .38 Pistol
• The American Smith & Wesson .38 Model 11 Revolver was supplied to British Commonwealth countries 1950s – 1970s for Police use. A standard 6-shot hand ejector with 4” barrel, ‘Mod 11’ marking and flared chequered walnut grips.

Smith-and-Wesson-Model-11

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• In music, movies and television
• The interval of an octave and a fourth is an 11th.
• A complete 11th chord has almost every note of a diatonic scale.
• The number of thumb keys on a bassoon, not counting the whisper key. (A few bassoons have a 12th thumb key.)
• In Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, there are 11 consecutive repetitions of the same chord.
• In Tool’s song Jimmy, and in Negativland’s song Time Zones the number 11 is heard numerous times in the lyrics.
• “Eleven pipers piping” is the gift on the 11th day of Christmas in the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
• The Eleven is a song by The Grateful Dead.
• Eleven Records is the record label of Jason Webley, and many of Webley’s works feature the number 11.
• Three films, Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), have each won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture of their respective years.

ben hur action shot

• Ocean’s Eleven is the name of two American films.
• The Eleventh Commandment is a feature length film by Allied Pictures Corp. (1933) adapted from the story The Pillory by Brandon Fleming.
• The Eleventh Commandment (1962) is a science fiction novel by Lester del Rey (USA). In a heavily overpopulated future, the Roman Catholic Church continues to encourage people to be fruitful and multiply. But there is a scientific reason behind this apparent madness.
• The number of incarnations of The Doctor in BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who is 11, as of 2012. (William Hartnell; Patrick Troughton; Jon Pertwee; Tom Baker; Peter Davison; Colin Baker; Sylvester McCoy; Paul McGann; Christopher Eccleston; David Tennant and Matt Smith)

The 11 actors who have played ‘The Doctor’

 

 

 

Other stuff

• Cities located at 11o longitude: Munich, Germany; Monrovia, Liberia
• Cities located at 11o latitude: Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Baranquilla, Colombia
• The eleventh hour means the last possible moment to take care of something, and often implies a situation of urgent danger or emergency (see Doomsday clock).
• 11 days were lost when the British imposed the Gregorian calendar in 1752, decreeing that the day following September 2 be called September 14.
• “Elevenses” is a tea or coffee taken at midmorning and often accompanied by a snack (British custom).
• The number 11 bus is a low-cost way of sightseeing in London
• In the game of blackjack, an Ace can be counted as either one or 11, whichever is more advantageous for the player.

• 11 is the number of the French department Aude.
• 11 is the channel assignment of GMA News TV in the Philippines (formerly ZOE-TV 11). Both owned by ZOE Broadcasting Network and GMA Network.
• The Roman numeral for 11 is XI.
• Steel wedding anniversary celebrates 11 years of marriage.
• K is the 11th letter of the English alphabet .
• Kaph is the 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and means “grasping hand”, with a numeric value of 20.
• Lambda is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, meaning service, with numeric value of 30
• In Astrology, Aquarius is the 11th astrological sign of the Zodiac.
• The dog is the 11th sign of the Chinese Animal Zodiac based on the lunar year. Dog-year people are honest, intelligent, and straightforward, with a deep sense of loyalty and justice. The previous dog year was Feb. 10, 1994 to Jan. 30, 1995. The next lunar dog year is Jan. 29, 2006 to Feb. 17, 2007. People born in the dog year include Voltaire, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, Chou En-lai, Sophia Loren, Elvis Presley, and Bill Clinton.
• The Cologne coat of arms depicts the two-headed Imperial eagle holding sword and sceptre. The escutcheon (shield) shows three crowns (relics of the Three Magi kept in the Cologne Cathedral). The 11 black flames stand for the Patron Saint Ursula protecting the 11,000 virgins. Hans Memling (1440-1494) painted “Saint Ursula and the Holy Virgins” (1489) on wood at Saint Ursula Shrine in Bruges. Memling reduced the 11,000 virgins to a more manageable 11.  
• German Rhineland carnival season begins on 11.11 at 11:11 A.M. in Cologne.

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9 / 11

• The twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City looked like the number 11.
• It was 110 stories tall, rising 1353 feet and was the tallest building in the world, until surpassed by Chicago’s Sears Tower (1450 feet).
• WTC was built in 1966-1977 by Minoru Yamasaki.

• American Airlines Flight 11 was a passenger flight which was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. They deliberately crashed it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing all 87 people aboard plus the hijackers, and an unconfirmed number in the building’s impact zone. The aircraft involved, a Boeing 767-223ER, was flying American Airlines’ daily scheduled morning transcontinental service from Logan International Airport, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles International Airport, in Los Angeles, California.
• The second aircraft, a United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767–222, scheduled to fly from Logan International Airport, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles International Airport, in Los Angeles, California, hit the South Tower at 09.03.

• After the World Trade Center was demolished by terrorist attack on 9/11/2001, ceremonies were held on subsequent 9/11 dates near the site showing “Tribute in Light”— twin beams of light that resemble the number 11 projected to the sky.      

 

 

 

 

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Fasab’s Eleven – Danny Ocean Eat Your Heart Out

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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When I was putting together yesterday’s post about crooks who had either been smart enough to get away with it or police who had been too dumb to catch them, the name Danny Ocean cropped up in relation to a heist in Belgium.

That put me in mind of the very popular movie remake of Ocean’s Eleven starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, et al.

Ocean’s Eleven

The Clooney version of Ocean’s Eleven was a good piece of work. (We’ll not talk so much about the sequels!) Without spoiling the whole thing for those who haven’t yet seen the movie, basically the plot is to simultaneously steal $150 million from the Bellagio, Mirage and MGM Grand casinos in Las Vegas, all belonging to ruthless entrepreneur Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). The money is being held in a state-of-the-art safe seventy yards underneath the Las Vegas Strip, with loads of hi-tech surveillance, laser beams, motion detectors and alarm systems to protect it.

Clooney/Ocean puts together a team of experienced professionals, proficient in skills from magic, pickpocteting, pyrotechnics, a card sharp, an electronics and surveillance expert and even a Chinese acrobat! 

The movie is full of special effects and great looking sets with hosts of electronic gadgets that are there to prevent people stealing the casino’s money, and loads of other gadgets that Ocean and his crew have assembled to defeat the former.

Even getting into the surveillance and restricted areas of the casinos is a huge problem that takes sophisticated planning and equipment and well worked plot lines.

casino security

But that’s Hollywood.

This blog is about reality.

I have spent quite a bit of time in Vegas, mostly on business but I enjoy playing in the casinos too.I even ended up in Federal Court there on one occasion, but that’s a story for another day. Suffice to say here that I like the place and the buzz that it has. Perhaps living there all the time would get to you, but for a visit I highly recommend it (take some money with you though!).

It just so happened that I was in Las Vegas about the time the Ocean’s Eleven movie was doing the rounds, probably 2002. One evening I found myself standing outside the Bellagio watching the fountain show (a great spectacle, see video) and of course my thoughts turned to the movie and all that had transpired. In my mind’s eye I could see Danny Ocean and the others in this very same place. It was a pleasant evening.

Me, Danny and the crew outside the Bellagio

Within a couple of days of that, however, I discovered that my cell phone was missing. Had I mislaid it, had I dropped it, had it fallen out of my pocket in a restaurant or taxi, or had I had my pocket picked by one of Danny Ocean’s men? I thought the possibility of the latter was highly unlikely so I put it down to my own carelessness.

I was staying in one of the casino hotels, I won’t say which one, because I am sure things have changed a lot in the intervening ten years. But after checking my room for the phone I decided the next best thing to do was to ask the security guys in the hotel in the unlikely event that someone had found it and handed it in. It wasn’t an expensive phone, so I wasn’t too bothered, but one feels obliged to go through the motions when something like that happens.

So I made my way down to the casino on the ground floor and found one of the security guys. He pointed me in the direction of what I presumed was his superior and he in turn pointed me towards a rather non-descript single door on the other side of the casino floor.

After a long walk, circumnavigating numerous roulette and blackjack tables, I got to the door and pressed a buzzer on the intercom affair. To my surprise no one answered, but the door simply clicked open. I wasn’t sure what I should do, but always ready for an adventure I opened the door and went inside.

Man, talk about a disappointment. My crest was fallen on several levels!

Rather than being pleased with myself at the ease with which I had been able to dismantle the multi-million dollar security, I was actually disappointed that it hadn’t been a lot more difficult. I can talk my way (or blag, some people have said) into most places if I choose to do so, and I had been rehearsing various things that I was going to say when questioned. But here I was right in the heart of the casino surveillance system and no one had even spoken to me let alone challenge why I was there.

I was disappointed also by what I saw. Sure there were loads of cctv screens all showing different parts of the casino, different gambling tables and all that sort of thing. And a few obligatory computers. But it wasn’t like the movies. The equipment was clearly not new and the décor left a lot to be desired too, not quite tatty but showing a few years of wear and tear.

I wandered around for a minute or so taking it all in. If Ocean had picked me for his crew I would have had everyone tied up and the place taken over by now, I thought. But then the movie would have been about fifteen minutes long and very little tension and excitement (and box office takings) would have been generated.

Then one of the security guys detected my presence. He didn’t speak, just gave me one of those “Where the f*** did you come from?” looks.

I too was silent, I knew what he wasn’t saying, so I put my right hand inside my jacket and went for my silenced 9mm Walther PPK in its concealed shoulder holster. Well, no, not quite. I just retrieved my room keycard and ID which I thought might be required when everyone came to their senses.

It was. And I explained why I was there and who had sent me. After their initial surprise the guys in the security room were very friendly, but no phone had been handed in and they didn’t hold out much hope of me ever seeing it again, so after a bit of conversation I bid them farewell. I think it took longer to get me buzzed out than buzzed in, but hey that’s life.

Later that evening I again found myself leaning up against the front wall at the Bellagio watching the fountains. But this time Danny and the crew weren’t there, not even in my head. After what had happened earlier, it just wasn’t the same. It hasn’t been ever since!

Just me this time

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Ocean’s eleven trailer

End sequence

 

Video taken from Paris Casino’s Eiffel Tower Observation Point, on March 11,2007

Friday’s Facebook Flop Status Quo? Down Down Deeper And Down

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Way back towards the end of May I wrote a post with a big ‘F’-ing title about the greed-inspired stupidity and madness that preceded the Facebook IPO. Remember, “Furious Flabbergasted Facebook Fools Face Frightening Falls From Fanciful Flagging Financial Flotation Farce”? 

Launched at the ridiculous price of $38 a share, or about 100 times the company’s earnings, the price momentarily made it to $45, but then quickly plummeted to $34. 

In my post in May I suggested that the shares were worth more like $18 a share rather than $38. As of yesterday (August 16th) the price had fallen below $20.

Facebook stock has crashed

I’m not saying this by way of blowing my trumpet, because I now think that my $18 peg may have been rather optimistic too. Investors have by and large turned against Facebook.

Apart from the odd blip, the stock has been on a downward trend pressured by disappointing earnings and by the fact that from today the so-called “lockups” that have prevented some early Facebook backers from unloading their stakes begin to expire. This simply means they will be able to sell shares into the market and with around two billion shares eligible for a sell off between now and May 2013, with a big one coming in November, the signs for a price recovery are ominous.

In fact further falls are more than likely.

Those who can are shorting the stock like crazy. (Shorting is where your broker borrows shares which you sell immediately in the hope that you can buy them back later at a lower price.)

The number of Facebook shares on loan to short sellers has risen from 63 million a month ago to more than 93 million.

So is it a good buy now at $18? I think not. Not for a while anyhow, until these locked shares find their way into the market and the price stabilizes and that will probably be well into 2013.

In the short term the status quo is probably down down deeper and down.

Forget Facebook and enjoy some music from the 70s instead.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKe2OfXLxuc

 

The small print.

Fasab disclaimer: this blog post does not constitute professional advice as regards investments on the stock exchange, such advice would only be given and indicated thus if an outrageous fee were being charged and this blog is being given to you for free. Also any investor should always be aware that shares can fall as well as plummet and should act accordingly by not investing any money they can not afford to lose.

Hidden In Plain Sight

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I always remember during the Vietnam War how the Viet Cong soldiers were able to hide themselves in plain sight of the South Vietnamese and US forces. In one remarkable incident a Viet Cong intelligence officer rented a house beside the local police station. Then there were the remarkable tunnels of Chu Chi. Remarkable for two things, one, because of their vast size and the number of enemy soldiers that they provided a base for; and two, because of the unbelievable courage of the Tunnel Rats whose unenviable job it was to enter this tunnel complex and search out the enemy. Remarkable indeed.

On a much lighter note, I’m sure you are all very aware of the saying, “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

The strange thing is that although our own nose is constantly in view of our eyes we never see it, because somehow our brain filters this image out of our vision as unimportant, or rather, unnecessary. Good job too for some people. I know a couple of dudes with enormous honkers! If their noses were in their vision they wouldn’t see anything else.

Joking aside, however, this got me thinking as to how much other information does our brain filter out of our vision equation without letting us know. How much do we not see although it is right in front of us? It can be a rather scary thought.

I have always been particular about what I write and I always check to see that everything is spelled okay and sentences make sense. (Proof reading you own work however is one of the hardest things to do, because you know what you meant to write an after a while loss of a little concentration can lead to mistakes.)

But it turns out I have just been wasting my time because, spell checkers be damned, apparently they aren’t even necessary. I guess some of you will already have seen this piece about how the mind works when reading. If you haven’t you’re in for a bit of a surprise.

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Can you read this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

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Which written normally is this:

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According to a researcher (sic) at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

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During a period in my life when I was in the construction business I once drew out a plan and asked the carpenters working for me to assemble it out of some 2 x2 timber that was lying around. Strangely none of them could manage it, but a couple of them puzzled over it for quite a while. The drawing I gave them was much more detailed than this with measurements and fitting instructions, but the finished object was to look like this. Officially it is called a Penrose triangle.

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A Penrose triangle

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Then there are loads of very interesting and amusing optical illusions based on the eye-to-brain ability to process information. One of my favorites is this Einstein rotating head. Is it hollow or is it protruding? Depends how your brain processes what it sees.

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There is also the Ballerina illusion which is interesting. If you stare at a girl’s feet she appears to be swiveling back and forth. But if you look at her head she appears to be rotating 360 degrees. Try it out. Weird!

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And there’s another spinning dancing girl who, if the right side of your brain is dominant appears to be rotating clockwise, and if the left side of your brain is dominant she appears to be rotating anti-clockwise. To make things even more weird if you stare at it for a little while you can make her change direction. Duh…

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But by far the weirdest thing of all is our ability to concentrate and count baseball passes. I hope you haven’t seen this one before, but even if you have, take another go at it. I won’t tell you the answer and don’t read the rest of this blog post without viewing the video, or you will spoil the whole thing for yourself.

It explains it on the video too, but there is a team in black and a team in white and what you must try to do is count the number passes the white players make to each other and ignore what’s happening with the team in black. It’s quite fast and there is a lot of movement so you do have to concentrate. Also, if you happen to be on a slow internet connection let the whole video load before you play it.

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Basket ball count test

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So how did you do?

Did you get the correct number of passes?

Actually I’m not going to say any more about this just now, but I’ll return to the subject in a few days hopefully, because there is an interesting and slightly disturbing question that arises from all this.

Meantime, if you feel like it let me know how you got on with the basket ball count.

And rmeemebr trohw aawy that slpel ccehekr.

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I Like Watching Game Shows

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Don’t start me on soaps which I don’t watch. Except a few years ago for SOAP which was a soap about how bad soaps could be and was quite good indeed. Confused, as they said? Quite possibly but you’re inside my mind now and this is how it operates.

The television soap SOAP

But Game Shows like Family Feud, Family Fortunes, Wheel of Fortune, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, etc., I do like. Sometimes I try to answer the questions just to limber up a brain cell or two, but really I watch them in the hope that a complete twit will take the stage – usually the first one out of town, as it happens, after they’ve been asked a few questions!

Here are a few examples of what I mean.

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Worst wheel of fortune fail ever?

Probably not but what an idiot!

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Dumbest Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant ever?

Probably not but very close.

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There are surprises too, when the people questioned in the sample give just as dumb an answer as the contestant.

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And my favorite, something that gets passed around

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Furious Flabbergasted Facebook Fools Face Frightening Falls From Fanciful Flagging Financial Flotation Farce

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

 

First of all, well done if you were one of the people who tried out the quiz. I hope you enjoyed it.

Today’s blog, if the alliterated title full of “f” words hasn’t given it away already, is regarding financial matters. No, hang on, stick with it. It’s not that bad really.

Were you one of the “zuckers” who bought shares in Facebook? I hope the answer is no, because it is another example of the stupidity and madness that greed can provoke in people who should know better, but frequently don’t.

Zuckerberg Pre-IPO

I can’t predict the future, but I knew that the Facebook IPO would cost a lot of idiots a lot of money.

The IPO launch price was tagged at $38 per share or something like 100 times the company’s earnings. It is easy to know why they priced it so. They set the price that high because they thought they could get away with it. Because the herd, unknowing and unthinking, would swallow the crazy hype about the company and buy, buy, buy!

Does that show more than a little contempt for the people you want to invest in your company?  Sadly I think that it does. Not that it is all down to the greed of Zuckerberg. The advising and underwriting banks had a lot to do with it and we know for a fact that they have nothing but contempt for ordinary mortals like ourselves. We are the marks, they are the conmen!

Usually they take the time to milk us dry before abandoning the market and leaving the ordinary investor to lick their wounds. But this time it happened fast. Within hours in fact!

Those who were not in the “loop” and couldn’t buy pre-launch, waded in on launch day and bought, bought, bought from $38 right up to $45 which the shares reached for a couple of minutes.

zucker

The poor fools got whacked almost straight away.

The market very quickly began to realize it had been conned, that this was not a LinkedIn IPO and the issue price had been set far, far too high to ever double on launch. An element of sanity crept in. Facebook  promptly started to fall, by about 11%.

In other words if you’d invested $1000 in the morning you would have turned it into $868 in the space of a few hours. If you were unfortunate to buy at the peak price, your $1000 would now be worth just a little over $700. OUCH!

Zuckerberg Post-IPO

But it wasn’t just individual investors that got caught. Almost every large mutual fund etc., most of which are run by, let’s be kind and say, poorer quality managers, felt compelled to purchase Facebook shares, not because they though they were a good buy but because they saw other idiots doing the same and they were frightened about the possibility of missing out “the next Big Thing”.

Little do most investors realize, but the situation could have been even worse had the price not been artificially propped up for a while by the investment bank underwriters.

For the benefit of those who aren’t investors and/or who don’t know how the market works in things like this, here is a quick summary. IPOs are underwritten by investment banks like Morgan Stanley. The investment banks therefore have their reputations on the line. If the IPO goes really badly so does their reputation and their chances of being asked to underwrite future IPOs (and they get huge gigantic enormous fees for this work so they don’t want to lose it.)

Trust Me I’m A Banker

Thus, in the case of Facebook, when the share price stopped climbing and quickly fell back to the $38 launch price, the investment bank underwriters stepped in and bought heavily. Without their intervention Facebook could have fallen catastrophically on its first day of trading.

Facebook does generate cash, mainly from advertising revenue. It has a vast following and that advertising revenue should rise substantially over time, so the company may one day be worth the $38 and even more. Google launched at $85 and is now worth $600, but it is a proven quantity revenue-wise and the price rise took time.

But, and it’s a big BUT, Facebook would need to be a hell of a lot better managed than at its market launch.

Thumbs DOWN Facebook stock IPO crash

But for now, I’m with my other “mad” friend Jim Cramer of Mad Money fame who rightly and sensibly advised a pass on the Facebook IPO. There may be a time to buy into Facebook, but the writing on my wall says “not today thanks”. Booyah Jim!

Jim Cramer “Booyah!”

There’s an obvious question that I haven’t addressed. It is, “So what do I think Facebook is worth?” Well for what my opinion on these matters is worth (i.e. probably not much) I would peg the value at a lot closer to $18 than $38. I may be right, or I may be wrong, but I really don’t care because I haven’t bought any. I might reconsider if it the price comes a bit closer to my valuation, but it’s only a might.

The small print. (I know it’s just the same size, WordPress didn’t tell me how to change it.)

Fasab disclaimer: this blog post does not constitute professional advice as regards investments on the stock exchange, such advice would only be given and indicated thus if an outrageous fee were being charged and this blog is being given to you for free. Also any investor should always be aware that shares can fall as well as plummet and should act accordingly by not investing any money they can not afford to lose.

 

 

It Always Surprises Me How One Thing Leads To Another!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

I have no idea why that should be, I mean why it always surprises me how one thing leads to another. After all, where else can one thing go? It’s the logical sequence, it has to happen that way. I think what I really mean is, the surprise is what you are led to. It is hardly ever the thing you were expecting.

Every one of us knows from hours of experience how difficult it is to switch on the computer or log on to the internet on a smart phone or other device and be self-disciplined enough to just search for the thing we initially wanted to look for. Countless times in my experience I have gone on to the internet with the sole purpose of maybe checking some stats or looking up some information relating to a business problem, or a health issue perhaps, only to find an hour or so later that I’m on a completely different tack, forgotten completely about why I started, and now absorbed in some other information that has nothing to do with the job originally at hand.

Entertaining it certainly is. Enjoyable too, without a doubt. Informative, yes it can be (although you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet – unless it appears in this blog of course). And a waste of time? That one is debatable. I think not. Nothing is a waste of time if it is providing any or all of the above attributes – entertainment, enjoyment or information.

One of my favorite sayings is, “It’s a sad day you don’t learn something,” and I am glad to report that in that regard I do not have any sad days. Every day I learn something, usually not what I expected and sometimes the lessons can be very harsh, but it all counts towards bettering oneself and providing valuable experience for the future.

So when I looked at my blog today I had a very different subject in my head to write about. Then I read a comment from my blog-friend coastalcrone on yesterdays blog post “Today Is A Beautiful Day”, part of which sparked off what you are now reading.

Coastalcrone said, “For me words are so visual… they have to look right for me too.”

Now one can analyze any writing from a grammatical viewpoint, or the construction of sentences and paragraphs, or the balance and rhythm of the words, or on its aesthetic content, or on many other different levels. That’s what they do when they study literature at universities, tearing apart and analyzing writing and writers. Sometimes I think that is valuable and informative; at other times I think that they don’t have a clue what they are talking about and have read far, far more into a piece than the writer originally intended. (Most writers, though, are happy to go along with such academic pronouncements because it makes them appear a bit more clever that they would be if they denied them.)

However, all that academic stuff aside, the part of coastalcrone’s comment that promoted all this was really the first part,

“… words are so visual”.

Words are visual. Indeed they are. A good description of a person, or a scene, or an incident, conjures up the image in the reader’s mind, and so it should. The better the writing and the writer, the better the visuals the reader experiences.

But, and it’s a big bold BUT, the visual experience is not the writer’s, it always belongs to the reader. The writer is simply the catalyst.

No matter how precise and detailed a description is, if it is a description of something we have not personally witnessed (in other words someone describing a fictitious person or place, or even for example a valley or lake in Australia or India which most of will never have seen, as opposed to a $10 bill or a laptop computer) a different image will be conjured up in the minds of each individual.

I’m sure you have read a book and then later gone to see the movie. Very seldom if ever does your own visual image agree with the film maker’s. At the moment I can only think of one occasion when my own visual interpretation of a book almost exactly matched the movie interpretation. That was Alastair MacLean’s “Where Eagles Dare”, an excellent World War II espionage thriller and an equally excellent movie. That was probably because MacLean wrote the book and movie screenplay more or less at the same time. (Btw, I don’t mean that I had Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in my visual picture – that would have been too crazy, even for me!)

Of course the converse is easier to come to grips with. If you see the movie and then read the book, the movie-maker’s visuals, rather than your own, are already in your head. Sometimes that’s okay, if the movie has been a reasonably close interpretation of the book. If they don’t gel well then the one can easily spoil the enjoyment of the other.

Visual interpretations also hold for the spoken as well as the written word. If one hears something described on the radio, for example, it produces visual images in one’s mind. Not only that, however, but one often gets an imaginary picture of what the person speaking looks like. It can sometimes come as a bit of shock when you see the person on tv or in real life. I’ve heard people remarking on more than one occasion that so-and-so “isn’t like his voice”.

Even when you meet people, you can have preconceived ideas about them in the few seconds between seeing them and hearing them speak. Some say that that is conclusive proof that light travels faster than sound, i.e. that most people seem bright until you hear them speak.

Of course one should be mature enough to accept people as they are. What one should definitely not do is laugh at some unfortunate with a voice that doesn’t fit them. Admittedly it can be funny, as this talk show host found out when carrying out a tv interview some years ago.

Let’s have a little experiment and see how good you are. You know you shouldn’t laugh but I rather think you might. I did! Quite a lot  But at the show host, naturally

Enjoy!

A Long Love Affair

“Flight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

Yesterday’s post was really about a couple of funny helpline incidents. But by way of introducing it I started to talk about my love affair and history with computers. Well I didn’t stop thinking about that when I finished yesterday’s blog post and so another post was born.

I hope you find this at least a little bit interesting. Obviously I do because I lived through it. To younger readers I’m sure it won’t mean much, but maybe they can have a laugh at the archaic crap that at the time we all thought was just the greatest thing ever – and actually at the time so it was.

As I said yesterday, my first experiences with computers were on the big mainframes. We had them in university and quite honestly the stuff we were doing on them in those days you could probably do on a good scientific calculator now. But there we were punching cards and working out mathematical formulae and getting results that I’m sure no one understood or cared about but us. (I probably wouldn’t even understand them now either!)

Here are a couple of pictures of the big machines. Younger readers will note the handy compact hard disks used to store information!

Hard Drives In The Good Old Days

 

Compare the size with one of today’s disks

Yesterday and Today

 

My first tussle with the big boys was on something resembling this

mainframes

 

And we inputted our data via either these punch cards

IBM Punch Card

 

Or via these teletype machines that I called the “chuggers” in yesterday’s post (notice the paper tape at the left hand side that made everything work!)

teletype computer interface

 

Then the personal computer era began.

My first introduction to that was a Commodore PET. It was around 1977 or 1978, I think. A fellow student and friend of mine at the time, a Malaysian Chinese guy who’s family were super rich (I don’t think he ever told them the proper exchange rate so his monthly allowance was huge!) bought one of the first of these machines and he loaned it to me for a few days when he was away on vacation.

I was enthralled. Dear knows why. If you look at the video at the end of this post you’ll see just how basic the technology was.

But ignorance is bliss. There was nothing better around.

The Commodore PET

 

Needless to say I could not afford a Commodore PET, nor for that matter an Apple II which was making its debut at more or less the same time and was vastly overpriced as Apple stuff still is. In it’s defense the Apple II was a cut above the norm even in those days as regards looks and it had a floppy drive (which I think you had to buy as an optional extra) instead of the awful cassette tapes.

The Apple II System

 

But something that I could afford was the budget priced, but very, very basic Sinclair ZX81. To call it a computer nowadays is a bit of a joke, it had little or no memory, you needed a cassette tape deck, and a television to help it along, and it hadn’t even a real keyboard. But it did come in kit form and was fun to build and do basic Basic programming on.

Sinclair ZX81

 

Of course my thirst for bigger and better machines was only getting started. Next I was on to something called a Dragon 32, which as the name implied had a massive 32k of memory  -  yes, you young ‘uns, I said 32k, as in kilo  -  of memory. There was talk at the time that the company were working on a 64k version, but hardly anyone believed that a machine with such a vast memory was possible or even desirable!

The Dragon 32 was another one fired up by a cassette tape and a tv screen connection, but it was okay for learing more programming skills and there were plenty of games available that amused everyone at the time.

The Dragon 32 with a massive 32k of memory!

 

Then for me came an epiphany, computer-wise. I was about to put my trusty, and maybe a little rusty, typewriter aside. I bought an Amstrad 8256 word processor. It allegedly could handle other tasks as well, but it was primarily a word-processing machine and it did that job pretty well and reliably using its inbuilt Logoscript software. You could store letters and documents on its floppy disks and it had its own printer as part of the bundle. All in all a good piece of kit for the time.

The Amstrad 8256 Word-processor

 

A while after that the whole game changed. And the game changer was the graphical user interface, GUI, and the mouse.

DOS was dead. We would no longer have to plow our way through screens like this

DOS type screen interface

 

The Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981 was the first to use it.

Xerox Star 8010

 

But Xerox didn’t see the potential and didn’t capitalize on it.  Steve Jobs and Apple did, and the Mackintosh released in about 1984 was the first to perfect its use commercially. It was a major change and brought computing into the reach of ordinary people instead of just the computer nerds and geeks.

The Apple Macintosh

 

Microsoft Windows soon dominated the PC end of the market with their 3.1 version doing a reasonably good job. Later versions like Windows 95, 98 and the appalling ME versions were rushed out and unstable. And, having learned nothing they followed that with a similarly unprepared Vista. All that did nothing for the reputation of the company.

They have made a lot of ground up with Windows 7 and 8 which seem to be a lot better both with regard to stability and functionality. And nowadays if you really hate windows you can run PC machines in linux based operating systems, just look for the penguin.

linux logo

 

From the mid 1980s the PC market exploded. Many companies large and small, from the IBMs to brand new budget manufacturers (or rather, assemblers) were born. They all did basically the same job, used the same internal hardware and software and had internal hard drives that would store up to 100MB (yes, mega bites) and up to 4MB of RAM.

At first they looked like this

PC version 1 – IBM-PC-XT1

 

And then this

PC version 2 – Fujitsu

 

And then this

PC modern generic desktop design

 

I had versions like pictures two and three. In fact I still have one of what I’ve called the modern generic desktop design in my office today.  Of course the processing speeds and memory capacities of both the hard drives and the RAM have increased dramatically. Now it is not unusual to be able to buy a desktop computer with at least a terrabyte of hard drive storage and 8 GB (yes, giga bytes) of RAM, as well as extremely fast multi processors and large high definition flat screens.

All in all a great improvement. A lot of it not really necessary for the average user who just uses their computer for a bit of word processing and to surf the internet, but when it comes to computers most of us kinda have to have the best spec we can afford, rather than what we actually need.

And there was another revolution in computers. This one really took off during the late 1990s and it was the increasing popularity of the laptop. In earlier years the laptop had been the preserve of the business community and were priced accordingly,  usually well out of the reach of the average consumer. As well as that the spec was well below that of contemporary desktop machines and no one like to pay more for less.

Then a few things sort of coincided. We had the near saturation of the desktop market with a subsequent slowing down of new sales. The cost of component parts like processors and memory consequently dropped as demand tailed off. And some of the smarter manufacturers saw this as an opportunity to create a brand new market that would allow them to sell affordable laptops with a near desktop spec to the same market that had previously only been interested, and could only afford, the bigger desktop computers.

I seldom if ever use my desktop at all now. All my work is done on my laptop. When I travel it comes with me. I’m writing this blog post on one like this right now

ASUS laptop computer

 

ASUS is a good machine. But I’ve also had laptops from Toshiba, Sony, Acer and Dell and for me they all worked perfectly fine.

As for the future?

Who knows?

Now that Steve Jobs is no longer with us will someone else invent things that no one wants, and that no one needs, and sell it to them at inflated prices, while generating their love and gratitude for it? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think that Jobs was unique in that respect. He was in the right place at the right time and the right man to take advantage.

What I can envisage is the continued development of faster and better processing; better internet communication speeds with more mobility; infinite storage capacity in the “cloud”; greater integration of all the bits and bobs we have at our disposal; and easier operation of it all through more voice activated control.

The future I think will be every bit as interesting as the past. If some ballax with an EMP device doesn’t fry all our chips, that is!

I kept my old typewriter just in case.

 

Finally, some hysterical historical videos.

Enjoy!

 

 

Commodore PET circa 1977

 

 

Apple II circa 1977

 

Sinclair ZX81

 

Amstrad ad circa 1985