Popular opinion is that the whole of the UK was against Blair’s invasion of Iraq. Over a million people marched in London.

I wasn’t one of them.

I’m not sure that I was as politically engaged then as I am now, but the main reason that I wasn’t there was because I wasn’t entirely against the intervention. Sure, I never believed the justifications that they gave. The whole ability to attack in 45 minutes seemed unlikely, and the connection to Al Qaeda didn’t seem plausible either. Blair deserved all resistance he got for such obvious untruths.

A few years ago I had a job where every new recruit would go through a long process of shock and gradual acclimatisation to the main software product.

What it did doesn’t matter as much as how it was built: it was an application developed on top of a proprietary programming language and user interface designer. The reaction was always the same. Why? Why?! Why would you reinvent Visual Basic on Unix? Why would you inflict a programming language even worse than Basic on developers?¹

Empty shops, rising prices, the laughing stock of Europe, our place in the world in question, people out of work and fuel shortages. But that’s enough about late 2021, I decided that I wanted to learn more about the Seventies, the decade that brought, well, me, the Winter of Discontent, power cuts, the three day week and shocking fashion sense. There are a few books that cover the same timeline, but I decided on “Crisis? What Crisis?”[affiliate link] by Alwyn W. Turner.

I’m still fascinated by the computers of the eighties. Without well known standards, every machine was different, not only from those of other manufacturers but also older machines from the same company. As as user it was terrible. Back the wrong horse and you’d be stuck with a working computer with no software and no one else to share your disappointment with.

But looking back, there’s a huge diversity of ideas all leaping onto the market in just a few years. Naturally, some of those ideas were terrible. Many machines were rushed and buggy, precisely because there was so much competition. Going on sale at the right time could make or break a machine.

Eric Schmidt says Google is the new Microsoft and it’s winning the war against Apple. I think he’s missing some perspective.

One of the key things that Steve Jobs realised when he returned to Apple in the late nineties was that the industry is not necessarily a zero sum game.

“We have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”

You’ve probably seen that it’s the Sinclair Spectrum’s thirtieth birthday today. There are lots of great retrospectives — this is probably the best single source I read — so I’m not going to rehash all that. But I thought it might be worth a few words of my own.

Like many Brits my age, the Spectrum was my first computer. Technically it was the family computer, but after a few weeks I was pretty much the only one who used it.

• The Myth of Japan’s Failure – “Japan has succeeded in delivering an increasingly affluent lifestyle to its people despite the financial crash. In the fullness of time, it is likely that this era will be viewed as an outstanding success story.”
• Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues – Technology: making life simpler.
• Merry – Sat here with my newborn son and wife, with all my family staying nearby, this post rang bells. It’s sometimes important to realise what you have.

• On this day in 1996, Apple acquired NeXT – Fifteen years ago today Apple effectively started its upward trajectory.
• Why big companies can’t change – “At the polar opposite position from big industrial companies sit startups, nearly every one of which begins with an effortless expression of why? Big companies ask What? then How? but almost never Why?”
• Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011 – “I’m not going to say R.I.P. I don’t think Christopher Hitchens is at rest. I don’t think there is anything left of him to rest. I think he is dead. But tonight, I’ll be raising a glass of Scotch in his honor. The world is a better place because he was in it, and it is a sadder, less interesting place now that he’s not.”

• The BBC Micro turns 30 – Pretty much every Brit around my age will remember the Model B. It felt so… professional after using the Sinclair Spectrum!
• Thanksgiving Is Un-American – Socialism and illegal immigration… Why thanksgiving is un-American.
• Coders are creatives too: Where’s our love? – “How did a person whose greatest educational achievement is crayoning without going over the lines get termed ‘a creative’, when the people who built our world are dismissed as geeks and bottom feeders?”

• Coders are creatives too: Where’s our love? – “How did a person whose greatest educational achievement is crayoning without going over the lines get termed ‘a creative’, when the people who built our world are dismissed as geeks and bottom feeders?”
• Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004! – In a way this stated the whole microcomputer… I hate to say “revolution” but I can’t think of a better word.
• Steve Jobs: The parable of the stones – “It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people ‘here’s this great idea,’ then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product.”