42
If that number doesn’t mean anything special to you, you should probably stop reading now. For the rest of you… did you know it was 30 years since Hitch-Hikers first appeared on BBC Radio Four?
I came to the party late and didn’t get into HHGTTG until the second book (Restaurant At The End Of The Universe) had been published, but I was immediately hooked. I devoured every little thing that Douglas Adams produced - re-read them a gazillion times, until I could quote verbatim from the books. At school, we’d greet each other with a line from one of the books - and the correct response was to quote the next line.
I remember how picky we got when the TV series was produced, and none of the cast looked as we thought they should (except for Arthur - Simon Jones was always perfect casting for that role. Martin Freeman can’t hold a candle to him). Sandra Dickinson for Trillian? Puh-lease!! And why couldn’t they get Zaphod’s other head to work properly?
What I loved about the whole HHGTTG phenomena was the flexibility in the narrative, which made it different in each media. There’s stuff in the radio series that has never been in anything else, the books are different from the TV which is different from the albums which are different from the film. Essentially, Douglas Adams had one idea (whilst lying drunk in a field) and was able to re-sell it to everyone.
Check out this BBC story for a discussion on what 42 really means.
Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the Western Spiral Arm of the galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 92 million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet who’s ape-descended life forms still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Those golden days
Pete over at CodeHappy has been getting all nostalgic recently because it’s 25 years since the Commodore 64 was launched on the world. Reading his post got me thinking about my forays into the world of computing.
The first computer I ever used - and then the first computer I ever owned - was the Sinclair ZX81. A massive 1KB of memory, a ridiculously low resolution (was it 32 x 32? Something silly like that), a ‘keyboard’ that you really had to fight with and, of course, Sinclair Basic. And it was wonderful.
Magazines like Sinclair User and Sinclair Programs used to publish listings of code that you could program into your machine and play (they were usually games). You couldn’t save them unless you also had a tape machine connected to the ZX but that didn’t matter - you were a programmer. And back then we all were; if you wanted the machine to do anything you had to program it. If, like Pete, you knew what you were doing you programmed in machine code but the rest of us just used Basic and - by continually not working as it should have done - it taught us to be structured and lean with our code.
You could, if you were one of the monied generation, buy an expansion pack that gave you a whopping 16KB of memory. The two most popular ones came from Sinclair and Panda. The Panda, as well as being slightly cheaper, was slightly curvier (”shaped to the contours of your ZX81″) but that made it no more stable; all the bashing that you had to do on that keyboard often made the expansion pack move and break its connection to the machine - instant re-set and the loss of the last two hours programming.
Then came the launch of the ZX Spectrum, and this was a major advance in computing power. Colour, sound, higher resolution (up into the 100’s now I think) and ‘proper’ rubber keys, with a choice of 16KB and a massive 48KB memory. Gaming started to really become possible with graphical adventure games like Atic Atac, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy appearing from companies like Imagine and Ultimate Play The Game (who hailed from the exotic sounding Ashby de la Zouch).
It was around this time that Pete’s beloved Commodore 64 appeared on the scene and gave all us Sinclair users a bit of a shock; it had a proper keyboard, it had better colour, better resolution and better sound. Not that we were prepared to admit that, though, and so began the sort of war that is played out today between Mac and PC users - but for us it was fought in the school playground and was much more brutal!
Sinclair tried to respond with the Spectrum Plus (almost a real keyboard) and add-ons like the Micro Drive and updates to their awful thermal printer; they even launched the QL, which was supposed to be a business machine but which was always demonstrated with a 3D chess game. None of it worked; Commodore - with the 64 in homes and the PET in schools - had Sinclair beaten hands down. Eventually Sir Clive sold out to Alan Sugar at Amstrad but it wasn’t long after that that the Sinclair name disappeared altogether from the computing world.
But I still fondly remember those heady days of being on the cutting-edge of affordable personal computing with the ZX range (80, 81 and Spectrum), the Commodore’s, TRS-80’s, VIC-20’s and Oracles with their array of languages - Sinclair Basic, Commodore Basic, Cobol, Pascal and Fortran. And properly written programs.
Something happened on the way to the Forum
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a new link in the sidebar - The New Wolfs Howl Forum.
This is something that I played about with before, when I was just starting out with my Wordpress.com blog. At the time, I used a free service at freeforums.org. I’d been a fairly heavy user of Teh Soapbox and I wanted to see how easy it was to set up a forum that used PhpBB. As I didn’t have any hosting available, I went with a multi-user service.
It was easy to set up and administer, but once that was done it just sat there. I didn’t visit very often and nor did anyone else. Eventually I disabled it.
But now that I’m all self-hosted, I thought that I’d have another go - especially as a new version of PhPBB has just been released; version 3.0 is a much improved experience both from a forum user and forum administrator point of view. I’ve set up various categories and subjects and it’s all ready for some visitors. Take a look and let me know what you think and feel free to start a topic, comment on the couple of topics that have already been started, or just laugh at the amateurish way I’ve gone about it!
Blog365: Posting everyday?
So, I’ve signed up for this Blog365 idea. The challenge is to publish a blog post every day - not necessarily to write one everyday (you can write a whole bunch in one day and then eke them out) but to publish.
I only came across this today, so I’m a little late starting - really should have begun on 1 January - but I’m going to give it a go and see how long I can stick to it. The problem is going to be coming up with something worth writing about (let alone worth reading) on a daily basis. I know that other bloggers manage it, some of them on multiple blogs, but I’m not so sure I can stick to it. I don’t want to end up being one of those bloggers that writes about the tiniest little mundane and boring thing that happens in their lives.
But given that 2008 is also National Year of Reading here in the UK, it seemed appropriate to join a venture that is aimed at giving people plenty of things to read!
So, feel like joining me in this challenge? Click the badge and away you go.
Do you BlogSpeak? Use Wolfie’s new guide
I do a lot of reading of blogs, forums, etc and I often come across abbreviations that seem to be common knowledge to most people but which, for one reason or another, I take a while to work out. I figured that I couldn’t be the only one that felt that way so I decided to inaugurate Wolfie’s BlogSpeak Dictionary.
I’m going to start with the first few that spring to mind for me, but what I want is for you to tell me the ones that you’ve come across that baffled you to start with (or still do) and we’ll see if we can come up with the definitive reference guide. To those of you who are more geekspeak-savvy, these may seem simple but bear with us.
So, in no particular order:
FWIW - For What It’s Worth.
Usually meaning that actually I think it’s worth quite a bit, but I’m trying not to seem overly strident about it. Or else, indicating that there’s nothing anyone can do to fix it, but FWIW, everyone agrees that it needs fixing.
FYI - For Your Information.
You’ve been a complete dick and I think you need to know these facts so that you don’t continue to be a complete dick.
HTH - Hope That (This) Helps.
IMHO - In My Humble (Honest) Opinion.
This is what I really think.
IMO - In My Opinion.
This is what I really think, but I don’t feel particularly humble today.
LOL - Laugh Out Loud / Lots Of Laughs.
Great big belly-laughs were caused by what you just wrote - could be sarcastic!
YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary.
This is what happened when I tried this, but it may not work as well for you.
TPTB - The Powers That Be.
Forum moderators, company CEO’s, Mac in the post-room: whoever’s responsible for making the decisions around here.
OMG - Oh. My. God!
BTW - By The Way
And one more thing, while we’re still arguing…
FAQ - Frequently Asked Question.
As in, “What does FAQ mean?”
IIRC - If I Remember (Recall) Correctly
Please tell me I’m not going insane; it did use to be like that, didn’t it?
AFAICS - As Far As I Can See
But there’s probably something very obvious I’m missing .
b0rked
Something somewhere has gone terrible wrong.
That’s just a few (with some possible indications of how and when they might be used 
) but there must be lots more. Add your submissions in the comments and I’ll start including them in the entry.
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