[Informatics] BookCrossing - Labels

Wed Dec 30 22:29:47 AEDT 2015

Even older computer man story...

Back in the day, I had a computer without hard drive. You could buy "hard
cards" for these computers, a plug in card with a 20MB (yes, 20MB) hard
drive and controller. But these were ~$500 here. I visited Hawaii on
holiday, and noticed they were only $199 there. And then - they had one in
the Tandy store that had been opened, had no packing - $99 - decision made.

So I bought it.

I wrapped it in a beach towel for protection and put it in the top of my
rucksack.

Coming back into Oz, I had a baggage search. I mentioned to the security
guy that the towel had a fragile device inside it - and when he unrolled it
and saw a board with a big metal block on one end, lots of wires and
various electronic components, he decided it was a bomb. Buzzers went off,
various people came out of offices and a long and heated discussion
started. (it didn't occur to anyone that if this WAS a bomb, standing
around the device wouldn't really be a clever thing to do...but in those
days we were thankfully innocent of actual plane hijackings and bombings)

So - a couple of hours later, after they found someone in the airport who
did computer maintenance and verified it was a hard drive, I was allowed to
try to find an onward flight home. I think I got home around midnight.

I noticed the other day that I still have files on my current backup system
that were created on that hard drive. Pity Lotus 123 and Framework aren't
still around to open them...

And even older - here's a 5MB IBM 350 hard drive from about 1955 being
forklifted onto a plane.

 <yorkshire accent> And you tell that to t'young people these days, and
they'll no' believe you.." </yorkshire accent>

[image: Inline image 1]

kp

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 9:48 PM, Andrew Shortell <shortell at get2me.net>
wrote:

> you can also personally hand books over
>
> It is interesting that Mark never used “mark sense cards”
> It was only ten years ago that I “disposed” of about 3 metres of them
> (that is stacked) - that was just one program
>
> Recently put a “spinning HDD” in the little display case at work -
> spinning is so last decade
>
>
> Danger: old computer man story :  When I purchased my first mac I upgraded
> teh HDD before I even walked from teh shop for just $200 (a lot of money in
> 1991 )
> I went from 40 MB to 60 MB  yes Virginia I did write MegaByte
>
> A year later I upgraded teh RAM for another $200  from 128KB to 512KB
>  (yes KiloByte)
>
>
> I am just so pleased we have moved on from those sort of prices and sizes
>
>
>
> Andrew Shortell
> Educator
> CRC Melton
>
>
> shortell at get2me.net (This List)
> @acsbear8 (twitter)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 30 Dec 2015, at 3:42 pm, ken price <kenjprice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Indeed Mark - and now we are also seeing cloud data being "lost" as
> teachers retire and/or die, without a record of where their data lives.
>
> In some cases project or class data is in some secure cloud service, but
> where and via what access process is not alway clear.
>
> In relation to the original story - if you happen to use bookcrossing,
> maybe try some of the less obvious ways to hand on your books - leave them
> on a bus or train, at the beach, a mountain hut, a youth hostel or homeless
> shelter.
>
>
> kp
>
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Mark <mark at vceit.com> wrote:
>
>> It's ironic that while the printed book may well last longer than we
>> will, the metadata about it at bookcrossing.com will probably be gone
>> within a year or two.
>>
>> (Waves cane in air)
>>
>> We're heading for a new digital dark age
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age>, I tell you!  A new
>> dark age!
>>
>> Try reading a 3.5" floppy disk today... even if you can find a drive to
>> read it, the disk is likely to be full of magnetic or physical errors.
>> Now try reading a 5.25" floppy: the motherboard port is extinct and try
>> finding a USB interface for the drive ... well, maybe there is one
>> exception <http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html>.
>> Even a PATA hard disk is virtually inaccessible in these days of SATA
>> ports and drives.
>> And what am I supposed to do with my roomful of punchcards from 1975
>> containing my database of songs by Captain and Tennille about Pet Rocks?
>>
>> Where was I? (Puts down cane).  Nurse? I hope there's jelly for dessert
>> tonight. I like jelly.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On 30 December 2015 at 14:07, Roland Gesthuizen <rgesthuizen at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Here is something that you can do with that old book after you have read
>>> it, before you toss them back into the wild for others to read and enjoy.
>>> Label it with a unique BookCrossing ID to track
>>> http://www.bookcrossing.com via @arran4
>>>
>>> Regards Roland
>>>
>>> http://www.bookcrossing.com/labels
>>>
>>>
>>> *BookCrossing - Labels*
>>>
>>>
>>> Labelling your books with a unique BookCrossing ID number (BCID) is
>>> vital to successful BookCrossing. The BCID you get for each book you
>>> register here will stay with the book for the rest of its natural life,
>>> which of course is probably longer than you or any of us will live. Anytime
>>> during that long, long future ahead of us that someone reads the book, then
>>> comes to www.bookcrossing.com and enters that BCID, they will be able
>>> to see the complete journal history of the book and make a new journal
>>> entry of their own. Cool, huh?
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>
>> Mark Kelly
>>
>> mark at vceit.com
>> http://vceit.com
>>
>>
>
>

-- 
-- 
Dr Ken Price MACS CP ACCE Professional Associate.
President, TASITE http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au
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