Jump to content

Silversea Water Cooler: Part 3, Welcome!


Host Dan
 Share

Recommended Posts

Lovely memories JP.

 

The TRs-80 was an iconic machine and the US were way ahead of the UK when it came to personal computers. I agreed with wifey that I could buy a TRS-80 - which I recall felt like it was eye-wateringly expensive, and we set off one Saturday for our local Tandy store which was in Cambridge. The salesman was clueless and we left empty-handed. Cambridge was really the UK science and technology center in those early days.

 

A machine was developed there by Acorn Computers for the BBC and was sold to be used alongside some TV programmes. Another Cambridge resident Clive Sinclair who had previously made digital watches and calculators, bought out the ZX-80, then the ZX-81 and then a super-duper colour one which was the ZX Spectrum and as each one came out I bought it and learned to programme. Before those diskettes (the first was a floppy 360b ie a third of a mb) there was of course the cassette machine to record programmes and assuming you got the output level just right, you could load programmes into the different Sinclair computers. They were also programmed in BASIC.

 

Shortly after Alan Sugar released a very popular word processor but neglected to put a fan in it. The casing was made of a very low grade nylon plastic and would routinely overheat and catch fire and what was a WP was reduced to a pile of smoking fat. We would poke fun at these cheapy machines at every opportunity, and I remember him once appearing on TV and talking about his feelings towards The Corporation and the fact that his WP kept going up in flames and he replied memorably and angrily on live TV "If the punters want a F&^%$*£$ fan, then we'll give them a F&^%$*£$ fan". To give Sugar his due that WP had a very loyal and strong following and the later models remained in use for far longer than anyone could reasonably expect simply because they were simple and had just one job .... and weren't used for games. Many famous writers and authors and journalists used them and he found a niche not filled by anyone else for many years.

 

That period moved on and as a Corporation that was heavily controlled by extremely aggressive antitrust laws and scrutiny and then a very agressive trade and monoplies EU commissioner it felt like we had a bit of freedom for a while and could do what we wanted until we were seen to have a monopoly and to become the "industry standard", and it was until then just like the "wild west". When those days passed, and the PC and then printers became more a mainstream core business, the fun by then was gone and the business controled by boring bean counters, and I moved over to become responsible for marketing the Corporations mid-range computer range, an extremely boring job that wasn't really as much fun and eventually gave me itchy feet that scratching couldn't cure.

 

Nice to read everyone else's memories of that time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good morning all,

What great memories shared by Jeff and JP! Jeff, your amber light tactic was brilliant! Yes those were the times... Now I have to share that after so many years of cranking up, looking at, and dreaming of numbers, around ten years ago I exchanged them for letters. It was such a radical decision that, when I go to lunch with my girlfriends, I refuse to check the bill and calculate the tip. All this time I've been trying to catch up with writing and I am so much enjoying myself! Isn't it just great to change yourself once in a while? I'm sure there are lots of chameleon stories to share.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good afternoon Coolers,

 

Cams, lovely of you to say, but I think an apology may well be in order from me to people in the bar and bored in that my recent musings in the origins of computers have been so boring that Coolers have become anaesthetised and lost the use of their posting digits and even possibly the will to live. If so, sorry ..... I will stop the self-indulgent reminiscences about all things PC. :)

 

Cams ... I didn't really understand your post about numbers and letters. Can you elucidate ?

 

Today was welsh lamb.

 

0672099cf18dbe416ed72b5bd1711059.jpg

 

17d9ebfd007e73b119e9401e3a9b3dec.jpg

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jeff, all of us in this Cooler bar learn lots from, and about, each other. Actually, this is the highlight in any bar, isn't it? With regards to numbers and letters, I have an economics degree and worked as such in PR, both for the government and for private consulting firms. When we moved to NY I started working in "costs and rates" for our local utility company, and that was mostly numbers and little thinking. I then moved to the university's central finance division and...numbers, numbers, numbers... The last two years at the university I was able to transfer as senior manager of the Theatre, Film and Dance department and that was a joy! I was bitten by the theatre bug and I write short (10 minute) plays. I now facilitate a "senior" theater group which is a lot of fun. I also collaborate with Roberto writing texts when needed. So there, no more numbers...except Sudoku, which is always a distraction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greetings Coolers!

 

Interesting career changes here! The spice of life! I too went from numbers to words and it does energize the spirit.

 

J...Again meal looks yummy!!! Is that a pretzel in the second pic? YUM! And I have to call dibs on the apologizing! Part of our nation's character. Consider your knuckles rapped J! There are to be no apologies here (according to the Cooler Bar Bylaws) unless personal harm or personal insult is involved. Your posts did not cross any of those lines. So Knuckle Rap!

 

And now for something completely different! So links to new music:

 

Firstly a song by St. Vincent (Annie Clarke) called Los Ageless on her new album Masseduction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz2EbH3xO_8

 

Secondly another song by St. Vincent called New York from the same album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA0duL4Z8gU

 

Lastly a song by Terrace Martin from The Pollyseeds: Sounds of Crenshaw Vol 1:

 

Have a great day all!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good afternoon Coolers,

 

Cams, lovely of you to say, but I think an apology may well be in order from me to people in the bar and bored in that my recent musings in the origins of computers have been so boring that Coolers have become anaesthetised and lost the use of their posting digits and even possibly the will to live. If so, sorry ..... I will stop the self-indulgent reminiscences about all things PC. :)

 

Cams ... I didn't really understand your post about numbers and letters. Can you elucidate ?

 

Today was welsh lamb.

 

0672099cf18dbe416ed72b5bd1711059.jpg

 

17d9ebfd007e73b119e9401e3a9b3dec.jpg

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

Jeff: I enjoyed your musings about the origins of personal computers. I knew one of the creators of VisiCalc when I was an undergraduate. Your musings brought back lots of memories!

 

Karen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good Afternoon All,

 

Lovely to hear that some had enjoyed those "wild West stories" of the early days of the PC. And nice to hear your anecdote Karen. Do stay with us .... we need more people at the bar. M, sorry I didn't mean to sound like a Canadian, but the Netflix programme I mentioned a few days ago does explain about Candian's terminal niceness and their apologising and perhaps I lapsed.The bread is a small olive Fougasse. Camels I'm not the official bartender here I am merely the drunk who sit at the end of the bar in the hope someone will buy me a drink! )

 

I was talking to wifey about the topic on the thread and she reminded me .... I had completely forgotten .... that it was a comment that I had made about the Amstrad Word Processor in the press that had set Sugar off on TV complaining about us and his wonderful remark about having a fan. I think the remark I made was in response to a specific question from a journalist and was along the lines of "We know that the Amstrad Word Processor has a lot of fans but it's a shame they don't spend the extra quid and put an actual fan in the thing and stop it catching fire. Still on the plus side an Amstrad has more function than our PC as it will keep you warmer than one of ours ........." I remember during that announcement a question was also asked about the new large factory The Corporation had built in Boca Raton to manufacture the PC, a place to be completely honest I had never visited. I was asked how large the factory was, and I replied "I cannot tell you the exact size but I can tell you that if you stood at the entrance at one end of it and looked through it to the far end, then you wouldn't be able to see the far end due to the curvature of the earth ........." a bit of over exhuberant prose that stayed with me and followed me for a while.

 

All this I guess is about stuff we all use but by far the best time in the Corporation was before I moved to the PC and it was the halcyon days when selling the real stuff that The Corporation was known for and that was the mainframe computers that no one ever got fired for buying. Those were wonderful days. With extraordinary machines that hummed and twinkled and customers with extremely interesting applications that the heavy metal could manage for them.

2423PH3168.jpg

 

Only The Corporation could come up with such poetic and completely indecipherable prose to sell it like:

 

The Model 168 gained its power largely from a combination of (1) ultra-high-speed buffer storage, (2) operation of the instruction unit's logic circuitry, which capitalized on the availability of instructions and data from the buffer, and (3) a high degree of concurrency in operation. The operation of the instruction unit was overlapped, allowing up to three instructions to be undergoing preparation concurrently so that the next program-sequenced instruction was ready for execution. Introduced with the 168 were an additional register and instruction buffer to increase overlap, and reorganization of the optional 16K buffer to gain speed.

 

New or extended features of the Model 168 were designed for high availability, eased application development, and operational flexibility, with emphasis on the needs of large data base and data communications systems. They also were designed for more flexible growth paths to meet the needs of application development and changing workloads. These features included virtual storage and multiprocessing capabilities and the availability of up to eight megabytes of integrated monolithic processor storage with a Model 168.

The Corporation was a great place to work in those days and of course since then it lost it's way. Edited by UKCruiseJeff
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your lapse is understandable under the circumstances J! :) I did search for Being Canadian on Netflix Canada. Guess what......it's not available for us here in Canada. I guess that is because as Canadians we should already know about Being Canadian. But seriously???? Why would it not be available here? Seems a little short-sighted!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your lapse is understandable under the circumstances J! :) I did search for Being Canadian on Netflix Canada. Guess what......it's not available for us here in Canada. I guess that is because as Canadians we should already know about Being Canadian. But seriously???? Why would it not be available here? Seems a little short-sighted!

 

If you get yourself a decent VPN M, then you can be wherever you want ......... and see whatever you want ... ;)

 

Netflix has different stuff for each country and I find it best to be an American Netflix customer. Netflix seem to think I am based in Pheonix on some days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good Evening Coolers.......late joining the party tonight ...been a tad under the weather today post flu shot....but think it's mind over matter...☺️

 

Jeffers....l don't know the difference between Apple or indeed Pears....but your and others input on the debate has been very enlightening....one learns something new all the time even if we don't quite get it.....so no apologies required whatsoever....

 

I've yet to listen to M's music offerings.......but promise to catch up.....

 

Warm welcome to Karen....do join in at the bar with the freedom to chat away......Jeff's cocktails can at times be very strong particularly during the wee small hours when slumber evades....''tis then that humour prevails .....;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi friends....well, tomorrow is the fashion show.....wish me luck:).....I went to the store last night and we got 2 outfits

I will wear.......each gal is wearing 2 different ones.........they have a gal from Mary Kay who will do everyone's make up too.

Should be interesting:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good Evening Coolers.......late joining the party tonight ...been a tad under the weather today post flu shot....but think it's mind over matter...☺️

 

Jeffers....l don't know the difference between Apple or indeed Pears....but your and others input on the debate has been very enlightening....one learns something new all the time even if we don't quite get it.....so no apologies required whatsoever....

 

I've yet to listen to M's music offerings.......but promise to catch up.....

 

Warm welcome to Karen....do join in at the bar with the freedom to chat away......Jeff's cocktails can at times be very strong particularly during the wee small hours when slumber evades....''tis then that humour prevails .....;)

 

 

Thanks, MissSophia.....I am sticking to a glass of Prosecco this evening. I have been searching for an image of the chaotic pre-PC computer room I grew up with, to compare it with Jeff's pristine vision of computing. Film and processing were so expensive, I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, but I will continue to look. We used Digital machines for the most part, until we started building our own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lois, how wonderful to read about your enthusiasm for you upcoming modeling gig. I am green with envy; I would love to do modeling...but, alas, I am too short and, maybe, old, though I don't feel or think myself as such. Please let us know all the details, and photos if you can, so that I can enjoy myself through you. All others will enjoy too!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Karen,

 

If you wish to share the level of pristine vision I have of anything after "the witching hour", then you'll need to upgrade your refreshment from prosseco to armagnac ...... which seems to do the trick for me .....:D

 

By the way, why did you choose "Sonja"?

 

I thought it would be a good idea to use a pet's name. We never named the fish...so it was either Sonja, our wonderful Bouvier des Flandres, or Lover Boy, my equally wonderful 17h Holsteiner jumper. Somehow Sonja seemed better suited to me. Perhaps if I had gotten into the Armagnac before I signed up, I would have chosen differently. (Both names were given by the breeders on the registration papers, before you ask the next question.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome, Sonja, good to hear from you.

 

Lois, have a great time and enjoy it!

 

MissSophia, sorry about that blasted flu jab. It hasn't done much to me luckily...

 

One week until we board! Such a neat trip. So many interesting places, and things to do. They are bringing on three different local chefs (Ecuadorian to start, Peruvian in the middle, and Chilean at the end). We'll be having a bunch of culinary events geared towards local foods, which is right up our alley. Pisco tasting. A dinner featuring the different types of Peruvian potatoes (there are over a thousand varieties so I doubt we'll taste all of them...). Etc, etc.

 

In Peru we (re)visit Huaca Pucllana ruins, but we stay there until evening where we have a special dinner in a restaurant overlooking the lit-up ruins. We have a flight over the Nasca Lines as one of our excursions, and a trip to the Valley of the Moon as well as the salt flats in the Atacama Desert. In between we'll visit some coastal islands known for their wildlife.

 

When we disembark in Santiago we have a tour set up to visit Valparaiso and the surrounding wine country. Then we fly to Easter Island for 3 nights of exploring that remote destination before returning home.

 

Here is a map of our cruise:

 

8953eb7645725b9e8b1f88d0b0cb223f.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That is an adventure of a lifetime JP! You will have a challenge beating it in future years. :)

 

One which we will gladly accept, Jeff! :D Though the wow factor of seeing the Moai up close and personal may be tough to beat...

 

It's really not a problem. We don't have to make every trip top the previous ones in terms of "most exotic" and "best sights" etc. Even though they are totally different experiences, the more exotic and less exotic trips have both provided a lot of pleasure, and great memories. When we get tired of going to remote places, we can still be happy with the tried and true. I don't think we're in any danger of running out of places to visit, or revisit...but we are very fortunate to have been able to start young, and go to some out of the way places before it becomes too difficult. I can't imagine visiting Madagascar when you're 75.

 

One of the most fun parts of our trips is being able to connect to people when it's totally unexpected. We spent a great dinner in Wuerzburg talking to a local family at the next table, hearing about their trip to the USA. Or a German couple who we met at a restaurant in Rome. Or the Belgian fellow and his Ukrainian girlfriend who we met at a cafe in Berlin, where the four of were chattering away in a combination of French, German, English, and Ukrainian while we drank beer and ate Schweinshaxen. Those memories are just as vivid to me, and in ways the experience was just as good as seeing the Taj Mahal, or chasing lemurs through the jungle in Madagascar.

 

So we can have fun wherever we decide to go. I don't think we're in any danger yet of being bored with travel, even if the next destination might not be as "exciting" as the last one. The experience is largely what you make of it. Though I admit that I am disappointed when I look at the SS mainstream itineraries and none of them really speak to me. These days, we are enjoying Europe more by land than by cruise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

G'Day All......

 

JP that voyage looks wonderful...you and Chris are going to have a fabulous time and great to do it while you are still young!

Thankfully no further problems post flu shot!

 

Karen....love the naming after your pets.....l have my gorgeous black lab here looking after me who l adore!

 

Been busy shopping on line for cruise stuff....not that l need anymore but it's such a fun diversion...

On the subject of cruising can l pick brains on recommended anti mosquito sprays et al...the little critters seem to love landing on moi and it ain't nice.....

 

Happy Day 😊

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lois, how wonderful to read about your enthusiasm for you upcoming modeling gig. I am green with envy; I would love to do modeling...but, alas, I am too short and, maybe, old, though I don't feel or think myself as such. Please let us know all the details, and photos if you can, so that I can enjoy myself through you. All others will enjoy too!!

 

Good morning.....very odd being home at 9am on a weekday:D...........Cam, I am short as well.......the other women

who are modeling are all shapes and sizes.....we are customers who shop at Chico's;).........i met a gal the other

night who is also going and she is taller than I am but is quite heavy set......so it really is all different body types.

And I don't feel old either.........(most of the time).............Anyway, the store is right near my home. I have to be there

about 10:30.

 

Will let you know how it goes:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good Afternoon Coolers,

 

I nearly always spare drinking friends in The Cooler from stuff from Reprieve - some of you know I am a founder member and supporter - but I thought I could be indulged this exception. Whilst the world and US politics have moved on, what has been forgoten are the inmates at Guantanamo Bay. There are currently more than 80 men illegaly held there with no charges been made or the right of a trial or appeal. They have simply been imprisoned with no hope of any release. This behaviour may well catch a few that should be there but also clearly mops up innocent people as well, which is imho both unjust and feeds the causes of extremism.

 

There is now a hunger strike because inmates feel that there isn't the slightests chance of justice. The decision by the Trump administration has now been taken to simply allow these currently innocent men to die there. If you feel as I do that this is wrong, and not worthy of a just society, then you are invited to sign a petition. If not - we all feel differently about these issues - and so please simply ignore this post and I apologise if it offends.

 

Dear Jeff,

 

Yesterday I had a legal call with my client Ahmed Rabbani in Guantanamo Bay. I will have more to follow on the terrible things that are happening to him there. For now, I wanted to pass on a message.

 

I told him about all the people campaigning for him and the prisoners held in Guantanamo. I told him about all those supporting the hunger strike by pledging a 24 hour fast, how they were writing about it and publicising it. This is what he said:

 

First I want to thank everyone who felt for me by going on hunger strike. This is really much appreciated. It makes me feel that I am not alone.

 

But there is more to be done urgently - the new Trump administration practice is allowing detainees who peacefully protest their indefinite detention without trial to starve to death, while denying them access to medical care - even vitamins necessary to prevent brain damage.

 

The situation is desperate and we need to take action. President Trump can end the hunger strike by ending 15 years of abuse and injustice at Guantanamo Bay. He can release the prisoners or give them fair trials. Or, better yet, close Guantanamo for good. Will you help?

 

 

Sign out petition➝

 

In our last call Ahmed told me: ‘They apparently don’t mind if people die because of the injustice here, because they figure nobody cares about Guantanamo anymore, and nobody will notice’.

We changed that. We cared. We noticed. And it has made a huge difference.

 

 Nine men have already died waiting for justice at Guantanamo, and I won’t let Ahmed join their number. We need to raise the alarm about what’s happening there, and renew our calls for 15 years of injustice to end.

We want the Trump administration to know that we’re watching, we’re waiting, we’re fighting. And I’m so glad you’re with us.

Thank you for being a part of it,

Clive Stafford Smith

Founder

 

Information:

https://www.reprieve.org.uk/topic/guantanamo-bay/?_ga=2.221447064.1245885080.1508423991-1602224751.1508423991

 

Petition to close - so far signed by around 20,000 supporters:

https://act.reprieve.org.uk/page/s/close-guantanamo?utm_medium=email&utm_source=reprieve&utm_content=1+-+Sign+out+petition&utm_campaign=fastforjustice-4&source=fastforjustice-4

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...