The Commodore 64 computer was one of, if not, the best selling personal computer ever made. The thing was really nice to use, and a person with even a modest sense of curiosity, could learn to access all of its tricks and clever facilities. The clicky – clacky sounding mechanical keyboard I’m typing away upon now, reminds me of those heady days of sitting in front of a television screen, wondering what I’d do with the computer. You see, when the thing was switched on, a user would be faced with a blue welcome screen and a blinking cursor, and that’s it. What happened next was up to the user. In these heady days of passive curated content delivery and ever changing high resolution photos, a person back then had to actively do something, otherwise it would just sit there, blinking, waiting…
My grandfather gifted me the computer as a birthday present. In reality it was probably a bribe to keep me attending the more English than the English grammar school which had also only recently been foisted upon my distressed senses. In the old blokes defence, the computer was a more pleasant although equally unanticipated surprise. And sure, I can be bought, yeah, major corporate sponsors please take note! But alas, such offers have been sadly non-existent. Oh well…
So yeah, the old computer. It sure was a fun beast, and the other kids at school who also had the machine quickly learned how to pirate copies of games, and swap them around. I learned the unexpected downsides of that activity though. After spending six hours battling to the utmost depths of a dungeon, I discovered that the clever programmers had foreseen my revenue diminishing activities for they denied me the satisfying conclusion to the game – the cheeky scamps. Not wanting to be tricked a second time, I bought the games thenceforth.
A lot of fun memories though with that machine. At one point, the stamp collection was sold. Mad cash was freed up to purchase books on how to program the thing. The computer was probably one of the last of it’s kind in many ways. A single person could get under the hood and make it do stuff without the team of developers required nowadays in order to go to the toilet, sorry, I meant to type: Produce software. It was even possible to program in assembly language (which is the core level computer instructions) and utilise the full 1MHz processing speed. Wasn’t all that much different in structure to the BASIC language, which a person could enter via the blinking cursor. The thing forced a user to interact with it on a deep level, and it was impossible to be a mere consumer.
No wonder people have such fun and nostalgic memories of the machine, I sure do. Ever since then, computers have been something of a let down. I’d heard rumours that a company had begun making them anew, but with more modern hardware. And no, this is not a review or sponsored content, but yeah, I’d absolutely write one for a free machine! Hint, hint! Sadly that ain’t gonna happen. They had photos of the guts of the back-to-the-future device and it looked rather sturdy, simple and robust. It was like seeing a blast from the past, man.
Long term readers will recall that long ago when dinosaurs may have roamed the Earth, as a young bloke I worked as a manufacturing accountant. Even earlier than that, and I’d actually worked on a production line for computer floppy discs. They were made locally in a factory which was located in what is now a most swanky upper middle class area (South Yarra). Gentrification, clearly being a thing. Anyway, one of other businesses I worked at was involved in making t-shirts, and the cut, fit and materials used was pretty consistent and of decent quality.
Alas, all good things come to an end, and once the tariff barriers were removed by a government who purported to represent the working class with a treasurer who loved nothing more than Ferrari’s and antique clocks, those businesses shut down. The machines were sold off overseas. Who can forget the sad sight of once hard working machines, being crated up and packed off to who knows where. Economists of course well understood that products purchased from the wonderful land of elsewhere, are usually cheaper. This is known in less polite circles as ‘arbitrage’, which can just as equally refer to wages, working conditions, materials and/or pollution. Nice people in these more enlightened days like to forget about the environment in other parts of the planet where heavy industry went to provide them with their stuff.
The standard run scenario from the Limits to Growth study, pretty much tracks this same story, and it is not lost on me that pollution rises, even as industrial output peaks, then declines.
For those whom remain unconvinced, I’ll recount a little story from the other day: I put on a t-shirt of the same brand I used to work for. This one however, was produced overseas. And whilst I confirmed that it was worn the correct way around, the collar rode high at the front, and low at the back. Had the tag been incorrectly sewn on the wrong side, I wondered? Maybe. Let’s do the experiment, and so turning it around felt even weirder. Inside, out was tried too, purely for research purposes. No better. Oh well, the many machinery repairs I do here requires plentiful rags, and that thing had just volunteered itself for this more useful destination.
See more stuff, lower quality and even more pollution, so I now rest my case. Those old Commodore 64 computers were built to last, and I can’t recall any of my school friends and/or acquaintances ever having issues with them. Back in the day, they just kind of worked and lasted, as did many of the devices of that era. Don’t know what the new ones will be like, but knowing something of electronics, they looked simple and sturdy, which sings to my soul a story of resilience. The machine I’m typing this essay upon, probably won’t make 8 years of life based on past experience. And that’s a shame really, because according to the Limits to Growth standard run scenario, in 2034, there will be less stuff to be had.
On Thursday the sun shone brightly with spring warmth. We took the day off (mostly) paid work, and headed an hours drive north to see some open gardens. Cottage gardens are a real treat for the eyes, and it was beautiful to see the multitude of flowers enjoying a climate which is frankly about a month ahead of this cold and damp mountainous locale.
The gardens were located up in the historic goldfields. Back in the mid nineteenth century, plenty of that area was turned upside down in the search of the shiny yellow metal. The ground sure delivered. At one point Melbourne was the second richest city on the planet, with London being the first. Of course alert readers would note that the English overlords extracted a goodly cut of the winnings, which is what it takes to achieve that more highly esteemed ranking.
We had lunch sitting at a quiet picnic table overlooking a huge hulk which is one half of the Porcupine Flat gold dredge and dragline. The massive machine looks like a mobile crane, and it even had steel caterpillar tracks with which to move around. The other half rested in the water, and that was the equally monstrous bucket dredge.
The dredge worked by having a conveyor belt pull steel buckets through and across the floor of the swamp. Alert readers can see the many buckets fixed in their final positions. It sure would have been noisy during operations, and presumably there is still gold to be found, it probably just isn’t economical to extract the stuff. And the machines are so huge, they were abandoned. It’s a good metaphor for our civilisation as a whole.
This week we spent two days splitting boulders for a new and exciting project. Last week a boulder had begun to be split into large and more usefully sized rocks.
There was already a decent pile of large rocks from last week’s work.
It’s a lot of hard physical work splitting boulders. Firstly regularly spaced holes are drilled deep into the granite (a foot deep if necessary). Then an electric jackhammer with rock splitting bits are used to split apart the granite. It’s essentially what the Ancient Roman’s did with feathers and wedges, except we have electricity to provide 3 horsepower (sans food!) with carbon steel hardened cutting tools.
Sometimes the boulder splits easily, and other times, not so much. We have two distinct forms of granite. One is red-ish hued and crumbly, whilst the other is a grey material that is mind bendingly tough.
The Kelpie dogs like to assist at such times, and I generally shoo them away. Ollie is much smarter as he reclines in the sunshine at a respectful distance. These machines make a lot of noise and you’ll notice I always use hearing and eye protection.
When the boulders finally split, it’s a real pleasure to see the cracks forming.
By the end of the first day, some of the large boulder remained embedded into the ground.
During the second day, the boulder was completely done.
Some of the boulder sat below ground level, and we left it there. The plan is to fill soil over that area anyway.
Another boulder which was nearby is made from the much harder grey granite, which fortunately had a natural fissure running through one quarter. That part split away fairly easily, the rest will be tackled over the coming week.
It doesn’t look big, but that boulder is about three feet tall (one of which sits below ground level). The end which split off provided about six larger useful rocks.
By the end of the second day of work, we’d liberated a lot of usefully sized large rocks.
Alas, it’s not enough, and more large rocks will need to be created from the boulders there. Oh well, nobody said life would be easy.
Walking around the other morning, I noticed that an owl had finally eaten one of the possums. Jolly good shot night time predator!
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 10am is 14’C (58’F). So far for this year there has been 1,084.0mm (42.7 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 1,069.0mm (42.1 inches)
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