audio-talk

summer is a comin'in, oh yeah...

andrew Ivimey wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 3:39 pm summer is a comin'in, oh yeah...

Shouldn't that be in the "A little light humour" thread?

Wouldn't make sense on it's own would it.

This l.p's not for turning.

What's the latest news from Bedford ?

I'm in Reading looking after a very fragile father. The rest of the ( step ) family have buggered off to Poland. So dutiful son, who cares, is doing the chores etc etc.

andrew Ivimey wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 5:49 pm I'm in Reading looking after a very fragile father. The rest of the ( step ) family have buggered off to Poland. So dutiful son, who cares, is doing the chores etc etc.

Commiserations. My mother was 94 yesterday. Doesn't look a day over 110...

Bit frail but still knows most of the 1,2&3 digit primes...

andrew Ivimey wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 5:49 pm I'm in Reading looking after a very fragile father. The rest of the ( step ) family have buggered off to Poland. So dutiful son, who cares, is doing the chores etc etc.

It could be worse Andrew, like being in Reading without a good reason for being there!

Seriously, very honourable of you and best wshes to you both.

Ah well, just got to get on with it and in between 'the chores' go into a trance about me and my dad when I was a little boy....

Reading has its charm but one has to dig about a little.

andrew Ivimey wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 9:52 am Ah well, just got to get on with it and in between 'the chores' go into a trance about me and my dad when I was a little boy....

Reading has its charm but one has to dig about a little.

Eons ago (1983) I worked in reading for DEC (subsumed into Compaq, then HP) in the charmingly named Worton Grange - next to the massive Whitbread brewery.

It was a dump then (though DEC's offices were great) but may have improved with time?

Worked as an electronic design and firmware engineer in the CSS (Computer Special Systems) secret squirrel division - mostly military and government work. I specialised in microcode, bit-slice processors/high speed (ECL) logic design, specifically for graphics acceleration and sonar analysis.

Last bit of military stuff I did.

Last bit of military my dad did was to throw himself out of aeroplanes attached to various bits of artillery. I asked him once why he volunteered ( for Chris'sake!!!!) for the Parachute Regiment. He thought a bit and replied that it was the red beret.... babe magnet, apparently. Oh and it was one shilling and eight pence more pay a day.

Last bit iof military stuff I did was joining hands with thousands of people who ringed Greenham Common Airbase. That really terrified the Soviets!

Never did Greenham, but have done plenty of protest marching.

As you say, just terrifying for the targets! Makes us all feel sanctimonious and smug though and an excellent opportunity to virtue signal

Our kids were on their first marches pretty much as soon as they could walk.

jack wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 10:01 am
Eons ago (1983) I worked in reading for DEC (subsumed into Compaq, then HP) in the charmingly named Worton Grange - next to the massive Whitbread brewery.

reminded me of an apochryphal tale that raised a laugh over a pint or two. I came to DEC a bit late, 1984 if I recall. They had just got a handout from the Irish govt I believe, in return for starting some manufacturing there. Well these large Vax boxes started to appear, I think I took delivery of an 11/750 or some such, and written large on the box(es) was 'Made in the Republic of Ireland'. All well and good you may think.......well the boxes were made in Ireland but the story(or the joke) goes that the contents weren't.

I guess as a joke it doesn't carry much weight these days.

edit: good machines as I recall, I had loads of fun with macro32.

We were still using a VMS cluster for some cartography work until just a couple of years ago.

Ray P wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 4:07 pm We were still using a VMS cluster for some cartography work until just a couple of years ago.

I loved OpenVMS - it'd run forever - not unusual to see system uptimes in the order of several years. I worked for DEC in several countries doing real-time and graphics hardware design and OpenVMS drivers etc. in MACRO32 and BLISS32. For many years I chaired European DECUS for OpenVMS, Ultrix and the real-time stuff like VAX Elan. There's a whole lot of OpenVMS freeware (much of it kernel-related) still out there that I wrote in the '80s and '90s and a bunch of stuff on comp.os.vms - good times!

I still have an AXP system capable of running OpenVMS 5.2, but I haven't powered it up for many a year... Offers?

* There was an Amsterdam Police OpenVMS cluster that famously stayed up for over 10 years (I think it was finally rebooted after 12 years of 100% availability running)

Mornington Crescent! No really.