Monday 23 August 2021

I'm Not Gone, I'm Just Thinking ...


... About matters of no special significance.

For inst.: the very large number ten duotrigintillion (10^100) a.k.a. googol has no special significance (in mathematics), according to Mr. Wiki. 

The term googol has been around as a handy shorthand for the mind-bogglingly-big number for a century now but I've only now taken a pause to consider the cultural side of this, courtesy of a weekend binge-watch of the old telly chestnut from 1981, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wherein the Even Bigger Number googolplex (10^googol) makes an appearance. Viz:

"And are you not", said Fook, leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979

Mr. Douglas Adams, of course, was a man of wit and was fully expected to be making merry whimsy with big numbers when he thunk up the Googleplex Star Thinker. And yet ... the makers of our oft-quoted friend around these pages, who'd each be of the geeky variety, if imagination serves me correctly, maintain that it was a mere misspelling when they coined the name Google in 1997 (whence came their Mother Ship Googleplex) and not a tipping of the hat to Mr. Adams.

Perhaps these geeky inventors had never read or heard of The Hitchhiker's Guide? Hmmm ...

And another matter of NSS: Mr. Wiki's entry on Mr. Adams speaks fulsomely of his attractions to Apple Inc. and its Macintosh, (and thus a man after Mr. P's heart), and was indeed one of their celebrity endorsers, but also references his once owning an Apricot computer. Hullo, now!

Your Correspondent, as may have been mentioned, studied Computer Science & Pure Mathematics at University around the time the Personal Computer became a thing. [Commodore 64, anyone?] For those students with luxe taste and the pesos for such things, the highly desirable PC was the 1984 Apricot, made by the British firm, Applied Computer Techniques. 

But it was the introduction around then of Graphics as a new subject that shoe-horned the Apple Macintosh into my university's quaintly-named Computer Room, housed within a specially-installed glass cubicle and chained to desks.

Those Graphics students (not Pipistrello) gained supervised entry to what was otherwise locked away from the grubby mitts of those who sneered at the beige boxes, while making this forbidden fruit yet somehow more desirable. 

Ah, Marketing ... 

And yet, InfoWorld Magazine wrote glowingly at the time of the Apricot being "clever, inventive, cosmetically attractive and easy-to-use" and "Apricot's manuals are all beautifully printed and very well written. They even have stylish white-metal spiral bindings. The people at ACT are relentless in their concern for detail!" ... A Manual?!!

The Apricot. A completely different animal to the fruit of Apple's loins.

Adriaen Coorte shows us what's desirable
Still Life with Five Apricots, 1704



Image credit: 1:  via GIFER; 2: Mauritshuis, The Hague


29 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Darling Valentina, how lovely to see you again around the traps! Thank you! xx

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  2. Dutch artists must have loved the simple lines and smooth surfaces of apricots (and peaches). And not just Adriaen Coorte. Balthasar van der Ast, Jan Davidsz der Heem, Jan Mortel and everyone else.

    Stuff Apple's loins! Go for real beauty.

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    1. Ha! And food for thought, dear Hels. I rather expect, like any skill mastered, there's much fun to be had when you play around with painting, like getting the light right on the velvety surfaces of our delectable apricots.

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  3. YOU ARE TOO FUNNY!
    ENJOYED THIS VERY MUCH!
    XX

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  4. And did not once Linus tell Lucy their odds to get married were one-to-googol?

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    1. A very close remembrance, dear Sean. Lucy was mad for Beethoven-loving Schroeder but even the googol-to-one odds against marriage could not quench her burning love for him!

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    2. Uff, of course! How cometh instead the name of the Beethoven-loving I wrote Linus?
      Suppose my subconsciousness did not wish me to type the name of a certain Ex-Chancellor whose only merit within four years turned out to be a "No", when transatlantic warmongers, officially represented by a moron claiming to have every morning breakfast with his God, hustled others to become part of a so-called coalition of the willing.
      Ah, better to stop. It's getting hard to keep contentance ...
      The peace of the night!

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    3. A mere trick of the light, Sean, to have us think (or avoid thinking) one thing and type (or not type) another. But I rather fancied it was the concurrent referencing of olde computers that pushed the trickster Linus to the fore, as his namesake gave us the open-source operating system Linux.

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    4. You are too kind, Lady Pipistrello. After all, as from now I can explain Lady J. and others that it is the light that has me avoid thinking.
      And tomorrow I shall check if the C64 is still alive.

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  5. I'm still waiting to sample one of Adams's 'Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters'. Maybe I never will.

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    Replies
    1. Ho! It would be the last thing you ever taste before you keel right over, so do pick your timing if you ever get that chance, dear Cro!

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  6. Hello Pipistrello, I love apricots, but although they originated in Asia and China, I have never seen them in Taiwan, and apricot-related products (dried, jam, etc.) are almost non-existent. My former life was as a computer analyst and programmer; I did not work with those early models you mention, but my first ones were primitive indeed compared to current models.
    --Jim

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    1. How curious, dear Jim, to have such a gap in your fruity market. I'm surprised some canny entrepreneur hasn't resurrected the apricot before now. Opportunity knocks for someone one day ... Those computers of old, what quaint machinery we lived with! But, for my money, so utterly unimaginative and spartan in the industrial design department.

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  7. I was placed in front of my very first computer around 1990 when I took a job with a state government agency (Deaf & Hard of Hearing). It was a PC and I was sent to classes to learn DOS and all that crazy stuff. Within a few months they changed to Apple products - loved them so much more and have never used anything else since!

    Hope you and yours are well my dear.
    -Mary

    P.S. I love apricots too, and my mother made the very best apricot jam when I was a child in England!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, dear Mary, we are all hale & hearty, and I'm very happy you've been able to start gallivanting about again!

      You have my sympathy for enduring those tedious and short-lived exercises in futility required of we workers at the cusp of the computer revolution. As a Life Skill, they hardly rate on the worthiness scale :)

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  8. I like my Apple but give me apricots any day. I tried to buy some this week but they were poor imitators of Adriaen Coorte's luscious offerings. A delicious French Apricot Conserve will be the order of the day if only I can find some.

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    Replies
    1. And yet this is the season for them in your neck of the woods! What disappointment, dear Rosemary. A fancy conserve is just the ticket then. I've recently resorted to a jar of preserved apricots as I had a fancy for making some sort of cake or flan with them and that's all to be found in the off-season.

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  9. Dear Pipistrello, I glaze the apple-tart with apricot jam - delicious.
    The first computer I ever met stood in a bank where we students had to sort things - the computer was as high as the wall, and sooo huge! it worked with punchcards (if that is the right expression :-)

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    1. That does sound delicious, dearest Britta! Yes, I remember even rooms dedicated to enormous banks of computer equipment - so very Sci-Fi - but I only got to work with punchcards once when I went on a Mathematics Summer School as a teenager at a nuclear facility, of all places.

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  10. Nothing wrong with contemplation. In retrospect, geeky computing projects were always challenging and enjoyed. I also liked the CAD/CAM industry followed by medical instrumentation. Let's walk down geeky lane...

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    1. Dear Susan, yes indeedy! For inst. the prospect of 3D-printed custom joints for all will be just around the corner, hopefully just as the ol' frame starts to seize up.

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  11. I was glad to see you posting
    At work I am nicknamed Arthur Dent, as I am known to wonder about looking for the tea.

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    1. Dear Ur-spo, you are a man of many monikers, it seems! I rather hope you don't wander around the workplace in your dressing gown, however charming it is on AD to wander about the universe thusly.

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    2. I’m reasonable on the computer but, anything mathematical and I glaze over !!!!!
      I love apricots especially fresh and French apricot and almond jam. I buy Bonne Maman Apricot Compote …. Delicious. XXXX

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    3. Apricot jam is divine, dear Jackie! And glazing over is welcome anytime, with or without the help of Bonne Maman :) xx

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Bats In The Belfry