Catmachine

All that talk of the Rockwell 8R that I indulged in last time reminded me of something I discovered way back then but never really shared with anyone until now. The next model of calculator up from mine was the Rockwell 18R which was a very similar device except that it had the benefit of a memory . Imagine that. Only the rich kids in school had calculators with memories . You'd have thought that what with my four function calculator being my proudest possession (aside from my clunky LED digital watch) I'd have treated it with kid gloves, but far from it. I was always obsessed with taking things to pieces. I'm not sure why - it's not as if prying the back of most machinery would have given me any insight into how it worked, but I used to do it anyway. Once I was convinced that if I swapped the connections for the aerial and the loudspeaker on an old valve radio I'd have built myself a radio transmitter. Anyway, I pulled the front off my calculator and was surpri...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C Clarke My old iPod broke down irretrievably the other day. Well, I say irretrievably, but I'm sure someone out there knows how to replace the hard drive for a tidy sum, but in the meantime it's quicker and easier (and probably not that more expensive) for me to buy a new one. After all I've had it nearly five years - that's an eternity for a modern gadget. It was good to finally have a proper reason to visit the new Apple store in Churchill Square. It had been sitting there between River Island and the Build A Bear Workshop for a few months now, a tempting technological candy store for the kid in me. And now I was finally going shopping there. I decide to go for the middle of the range iPod Touch. With a capacity just over that of my previous iPod, I decided that it probably had what it takes for all my music and podcast listening needs. What I didn't realise was how many o...

For the first time in a while I've booked a day off work. In theory it's in a bid to catch up with any number of the millions of things I seem to have to complete just to keep my life ticking over, but in truth I've just been lazing around. I think I need to though. After working flat out for what seems like a decade it probably does me good to kick back and not do very much for a while. It's a shame it makes me feel so guilty. Where does this apparent "work ethic" come from? I've long been comfortable with the fact that I'm a lazy sod and probably have been all my life. I still remember what one teacher said to me. " The problem with you, Limb, is that you're bone idle. " If I am - and who am I to contradict a teacher - I'm doing a very good job hiding it. To paraphrase The Cure : however much I think I do - it's never enough, never enough. In these enlightened days of course no teacher would dream of speaking to a pupil like th...

The psychology behind Hate Week is precisely that of working up both party members and proles into a frenzy of self-righteous hate for the enemy, pushing out of their minds all thought of the unsatisfactory lives that they themselves are living. George Orwell 1984 If we return to our old friend Thugg the Caveman, whose antics are always handy when it comes to trying to explain modern behaviour, it's straightforward to see why we human beings find it so easy to hate. The Other Tribe at the far end of the dirt track that would one day be the M6 are in competition with Thugg's gang; there are only so many sabre-toothed tigers to go around. In order to maximise the chances of Thugg's people making it out of the Stone Age in one piece they have to be able to kill members of The Other Tribe without a moment's thought if necessary. Chromosomes are ruthless bastards when it comes to ensuring that they're passed on. The only problem of course is that in its journey toward...

I find it oddly satisfying that this evening many people will be celebrating something far older than Christianity. I'm talking about Halloween of course which, despite a determined hijacking by the greeting card industry and modern association with horror movies, is still basically the modern interpretation of the Celtic festival of Samhain which was being celebrated before Jesus was even a twinkle in the Holy Ghost's eye. It's surprising that a relatively small scale meme as Samhain has survived the two thousand year onslaught of such a powerful meme-complex as Christianity, which is fundamentally opposed to it. The word Halloween itself is a Christian invention. In an attempt to stamp out the popular pagan celebration, Pope Gregory III moved All Saint's Day (and therefore obviously the previous day, All Hallow's Eve ) from mid-May to the beginning of November. All he ended up doing was giving it a more catchy name that's easier to spell. So what is it abou...

Copernicus could have got in a lot of trouble when he suggested that the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Somehow he managed to avoid getting embroiled in controversy (perhaps by dedicating his book to the Pope - what a creep) and it was poor old Galileo that took the heat the following century and was the focus of the church's wrath and ended up spending the last ten years of his life under house arrest like a seventeenth century Salman Rushdie. The church's reaction to the geocentric scientific beliefs of the day being challenged seems a bit over the top. What had it got to do with them anyway? It seems that they were getting ideas above their station, interfering in scientific circles, but of course back then you couldn't get a higher station than the church, and what's more they had the might to back it up. But, putting the church poking their oar in aside for the moment, you can understand why the old Ptolemaic system, whereby the Earth is immobile and...