Noise.

For around a quarter of a century, I have been a strong proponent of using public transport. In that period of time I have exclusively used buses and trains to get around until recent events overtook me and I became ill and had an enforced trip in an ambulance to hospital. Back in the very late '90s I had a car but used it somewhat infrequently. For many years I worked a senior IT analyst for one of the very large multinational accountancy partnerships and although I was not an accountant, some of the accountancy practises did rub off on my me. I recall that one day I sat down on my computer and put together a spreadsheet breaking down the costs of running my car including maintenance, MOT, fuel insurance and most tellingly of all depreciation. It soon became depressingly clear that the out-of-pocket costs of running a car for exceeded the benefits I was getting from it. It was also apparent that it was far cheaper for me to either get a mini cab everywhere or to use public transport instead of using a private car. The differences were quite stark so I sold the car and have never driven since. This may seem like a major loss of convenience, but to be honest it was far less of a wrench than I expected at the time. One of the benefits of living in Erith is the excellent public transport especially by bus and lesser so by train, especially since the Elizabeth line from Abbey Wood has opened. There are downsides to using public transport however, which may not always be apparent to those who are unfamiliar with it. It is often said that hell is other people and whilst in many cases fellow travellers on buses and trains are entirely civilised there are nevertheless times when the noise and fuss caused by commuters can be unbearable, especially with school children going to and from school, and at weekends when one encounters football fans on overland trains, who in many ways behave very similar to school children with very little in the way of discipline and often after having a skinful of alcohol. One other problem with the travelling public is not only the lack of discipline, but the level of noise and disruption caused when they play loud music over their mobile phones without using earbuds or earphones. I have in the past written at some detail regarding this inconsiderate and rude action. It would seem that things may be about to change after all.  It is nearly always someone who looks like they would stab you if you complained to them. Why people do this rather than using headphones / Bluetooth ear buds is completely beyond me. The issue has even been discussed in the House of Lords. Back in 2006, The Piped Music and Showing of Television Programmes Bill was presented to Parliament, calling for "the wearing of headphones by persons listening to music in the public areas of hospitals and on public transport" to be made compulsory, although it never made it into law. The phenomenon has even been given a name – it is called “Sodcasting”. "Sodcast [noun]: Music, on a crowded bus, coming from the speaker on a mobile phone. Sodcasters are terrified of not being noticed, so they spray their audio wee around the place like tomcats." To say there is a backlash against "sodcasting", that it is felt to be antisocial, is a massive understatement. The fact that the music played is usually hip-hop or other forms of urban music, often seen as threatening by those who don't listen to that music,  exacerbates the sense, felt by many, that the very practice of sodcasting carries an implicit threat: "You don't want to mess with me." Indeed, back in 2006 a couple of thirty somethings from London launched a Music Free Buses campaign and a petition asking TfL (Transport for London) to ban the practice. "People think they can sit on a bus and blast music out, and when you ask them to turn it down you get abuse, especially from teenagers," they told their local newspaper. Around 4,500 people signed the petition, and in a poll carried out by the campaigners, 84 percent said under-18s caught playing music out loud should have their free travel revoked. Only 2 percent of respondents said they found the playing of music in public acceptable; the same proportion of those polled who were 18 or under. The message was clear: youngsters are the ones sodcasting, and adults despise it. Transport for London (TfL) is launching a campaign to target people who play music or videos out loud on public transport. The posters targeting “headphone dodgers” will appear on the Elizabeth line and other services including buses later next week. A TfL survey of 1,000 people found that 70% described loud music and phone conversations without headphones to be a nuisance. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have said they would tighten the law, proposing on-the-spot fines. Commenters on this action said online:- "I think addressing sound pollution on TfL is long overdue. I enjoy taking public transport because it’s an “in-between” space, of sorts. We’re constantly stimulated by sounds and images, so the train feels like one of the only quiet spaces left".  Another wrote:- "I live with one-sided hearing loss, so all sounds I hear are via my one working ear. For people like me, multiple voices overlap and combine into a meaningless jumbled cacophony. A person in a confined area speaking loudly on their phone, or playing media without headphones, is not just distracting and irritating for everyone affected. For those with hearing issues, they create an extremely unpleasant and stressful environment. When those of us who struggle are trying to get somewhere, we feel trapped, and that really is horrible. While it’s encouraging to see this campaign, it is too soft and needs to be firmer. Signs suggesting that we would rather audio isn’t played out loud won’t work, because people are so absorbed in their phones to look up and actually see the sign". Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

There has been extensive coverage in the popular press over the last week over the 30th anniversary of the launch of Windows 95. Unfortunately, much of the coverage has been somewhat breathless and misleading. Not only did several commentators incorrectly say that Windows 95 was the first computer graphic user interface, which it was far from not. It was only the interface - at the time DOS still sat underneath, actually controlling the PC. They also claimed that it was in some way revolutionary, Which again it was not, although it was very important. Not only did the graphic user interface of the Apple Macintosh and before that its predecessor the Apple Lisa preceeded Windows 95 and indeed Windows 1, 2, 3, 3.1, and 3.1 for work groups and NT 3.1 and if one wants to be very nit picky Windows NT 4, years before any form of domestic Windows or indeed Mac OS was created. There was a separate completely revolutionary computer operating system using a graphic user interface which was pioneered by Xerox. If it had been marketed correctly, it could have made Xerox an absolute fortune and catapulted them into fame and computer ubiquity in the way that eventually became the fate of Microsoft and Apple. The  Xerox Alto was an experimental machine built by engineers in Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the early 1970's to explore new thinking in user interface design, and while never made available commercially – Xerox would sell the Star, an updated version of the Alto, in 1981 – a couple of thousand were made for use by Xerox staff and some were donated to universities and research facilities. Arguably the first personal computer – though some historians consider it a minicomputer – it was also the first to feature a graphical interface controlled by a mouse and to incorporate networking. Well, bear in mind that the Alto was never actually available for commercial purchase, and only between fifteen hundred and two thousand Alto units were hand constructed by Xerox, mainly for internal use, though a handful made it into academia for study purposes, and one made it into the White House. The Alto was the first computer anywhere that had a GUI – a Graphical User Interface, that used the still common desktop paradigm. It had a mouse, used icons, it was able to talk to other Alto computers over an early form of Ethernet data networking. It had a "what you see is what you get" word processing program, it could send and receive Emails with attachments, it could output page set documents to a laser printer and had the world’s first high resolution bit mapped screen. All of this was available in 1973! You can see a short historic TV commercial for it here. It was at least fifteen years ahead of anything else in the world, but Xerox did not think there would be a market for such a computer, and eventually wound the project down. This business decision made Decca turning down the Beatles look small change in comparison. Later, the GUI computer project was restarted, and in the very early 1980’s Xerox released the Star – a high end workstation based on the earlier Alto concepts. Bexley Council had a couple of Star units in their typing pool for several years in the early 1980's, but they were never really used for anything other than word processing – with their distinctive portrait oriented display screens. Their powerful networking and graphical features were pretty much overlooked. A few years ago, before Bexley Council moved out of their old offices in Bexleyheath Broadway as they were due to be demolished, I tried to find out if any of the Xerox Star units were still being stored on site. I had heard vague rumours that at least one unit was stored in the basement nuclear fallout shelter. I had hoped to persuade the council to donate it to The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. Unfortunately my investigation drew a blank – nobody I contacted at the council knew anything about the computers, and they were actually not very interested. Many phone messages and Emails to them went without response, to the point where I got fed up and gave in. Anyone with a Xerox Star, or even more enticingly an Alto stuck in the corner of their basement (it would not have gone in the loft – it was so heavy it would have come through the ceiling) is sitting on not only a very important piece of computer history, but it is worth a small fortune. 

Following the report I made a couple of weeks ago after I received a somewhat unpleasant email from someone whom I suspect may have been suffering from some kind of severe mental illness, disputing whether I was in fact unwell. After my time spent in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, I have received a number of very nice and sympathetic emails from other readers. I wanted to express my thanks and gratitude to those people who have taken the trouble to contact me with their sympathies over my ongoing condition Which is a combination of hyperthyroidism and atrial fibrillation as a result of the hyperthyroidism. Personally, I think the person that contacted me with the malicious message was somewhat mentally ill, which I can fully understand. What I have not released is that for much of the time I was in hospital. I was located in a bed next to a man who was suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia to the extent that he had been sectioned into hospital and was nursed at all times with two people day and night due to the nature of his condition. There were times when he could be incredibly nice and very thoughtful, but quite often he would refuse to take his medication and within hours he would become abusive, shouting and screaming and trying to physically attack members of staff, biting punching and scratching them. I am of the opinion that the person who contacted me via email May well have been the same. The chap in hospital certainly made it difficult to sleep on nights when he was being a particularly abusive to staff and other patients. Fortunately, for some unknown reason he never took a dislike to me, although he did mistake me for a member of hospital staff on numerous occasions when I walked past on my way from my bed. Okay, and I do not think the person that contacted me with the malicious email necessarily meant any actual physical harm. I think he was just letting off steam. If you have any further information about this and please let me know at the usual address.

The end video this week is of the the bell ringers at Christ Church, Erith. Comments and feedback as  usual to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.