Observations from a Hill

We've all heard of Photoshop , right? Even those who have never seen, let alone used the software recognise the name as the now common verbal usage of the name: to 'Photoshop' an image, meaning to edit and alter a digital photographic image to some end. Far fewer people would know just how long this raster image editing software - at first a standalone application, then a suite of software, now a full-blown subscription megalith of related media apps, available online, has been around. It's interesting to note, however, that its origins lie in the late 1980s , the brainchild of Thomas and John Knoll . Pictured are the two 1.44 MB floppy disks that contain the first version of Photoshop we ever owned, back in 1989/90. It is the LE edition and was probably bundled with a scanner of some kind. Significantly, the application software in its entirety comes on Disc One, with Disc Two holding all the support stuff: tutorial material, documentation and manuals and such. Th...

Further to last night's scribble, I'd just like to add in a few thoughts I've touched on in the past as a kind of superscript - can't call it a postscript as that implies some kind of finished article - to the vague meanderings that I put out here on a daily basis. Thinking on about all of these amazing notions and schemes about knowledge accumulation, management and retrieval still always brings me back to those seminal days at Apple in Cupertino, when geniuses - I don't use that term lightly - produced some of the most potentially transformative software of the twentieth century, pointing towards future developments that could, indeed should have transformed our interactions with the machines in our daily lives for the better; but which were either left to wither and die or were summarily axed from the corporate thinking of the company that spawned them in the first place. Three technologies always stand out in Apple's history for me, particularly as two of th...

Niklas Luhmann maintained that his Zettelkasten was his second brain. When it came to researching themes and topics for his numerous books and academic papers, its meta-system of links to discrete ideas and references, too numerous for him to hold in entirety in his own brain, formed a kind of physical, paper-based rather than neural network map of his generalised learning process, from which he could inform and enhance his current thinking. Melvil Dewey , in inventing his Decimal Classification system for cataloguing publications - the heart of most of the world's library catalogues, hinted at a method of cross-connection between discrete sources of knowledge to aid further knowledge generation and research. Otlet and La Fontaine extended this idea further and established the notion of data connectivity and correlation with the Universal Decimal Classification system , which took Dewey's concept from the simple cataloguing and indexing of documents - taxonomies of books, p...

The Peter Mandelson affair grinds on; the dark angel's fall from grace accelerating exponentially as he approaches terminal velocity toward the Ground Zero of his own making. The problem is that some of us could see he was a car crash waiting to happen back in the New Labour days. He must have a hefty dose of personal charisma in the flesh, so to speak, as he never came over as anything but an ineffectual political operator, either on screen or by deed itself to us here in reality-land. He struck me back then, a quarter of a century ago, as a bit of a no-mark, and that view hasn't changed since. The biggest sin in all of this affair, though,  is that he managed to schmooze his way back to a position of handsomely-paid influence under a newly-minted Labour government dedicated on paper to avoiding the mis-steps and sleaze of the outgoing Tory mess that preceded them. Starmer's decision to drag out this [old] New Labour fossil was obviously a disaster in the making from day o...

With the Nuclear Doomsday Clock currently standing at 85 seconds to midnight, the current New START treaty on limiting nuclear weapons proliferation runs out tomorrow, the 4th of February. Given the state of the world just at the moment and with two of the most out-of-touch-with-reality men in charge of half of it, gives cause for a modicum of concern, especially when both of these despots would rather not have had the treaty in place at all: Trump's take on the expiry? '..."a bad treaty...If it expires, it expires. We just negotiate a better treaty."...' As for the Russians, they wer never happy being restricted to 'just' the 1,550 warheads allowed under the treaty for each side [both hold far more than that, anyway], and effectively ducked out of the treaty under the cloak of the pandemic in 2020. What of the other nations still holding such weapons? Well, the US and Russia hold ninety-percent of the world's nuclear arsenal. Having said that, the oth...

What did the Romans of the turn of the common era know better than twentieth century structural engineers? Concrete of course. A couple of broadcasts on BBC Radio Four, and a Scientific American article of a couple of years ago prompted me to compare and contrast Roman concrete with the now infamous RAAC [Reinforced Aerated Autoclaved Concrete]. The latter of course is now falling apart without notice in 1960s and '70s built structures all over the UK and beyond, just fifty years into their lifespan. By contrast, Roman concrete dating back 2000 years is still standing and faring very well, thank you: think the Pantheon in Rome: still featuring the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Most people would think, 'well concrete is just concrete, right?', and yes the basic principles are the same, but the mix of materials and how they are prepared are various, and variously effective under various conditions, so to speak. Concrete is essentially a mix of aggregate and...