The photo above may not be recognised by many Erith locals. It shows a building that has been in situ on Erith High Street for as long as I can recall. The small office was once used by the Port of London Authority as their local base of operations. Originally it was occupied pretty much all day every day, but later it was only used occasionally, and nowadays it appears to have fallen out of use completely. It is fenced off and locked, and would appear to be empty, but is still in good repair. The office is one of those sorts of places you walk past but don’t really register (unless, like me, you are intensely curious). It is located right next to the path that leads down to Erith Jetty (a far older structure than the adjacent Erith Pier). It was ideally suited to the use of the PLA, as they could drop staff off by boat on the jetty, and be in the office in seconds. Now, it sits there empty and unused. I think it would make an ideal office for a small start – up company; the site has electricity, and I think plumbing. It might need a phone line running to it, but other than that, it should not be too difficult to get it ready for re – use. I am trying to find out what the current legal status of the building is, as it seems a stupid waste of a building that has a stunning river view and is close to all of the amenities of Erith Town Centre. More news as I continue my research.
Many people in the local area have recently received a card though the post. It is quite likely that a fair proportion of these cards may well have been binned, as many such cards and flyers are advertising for fast food delivery services and the like. The card in question was somewhat more useful – it notified the recipient that Erith and the surrounding area will be 4G phone enabled in the near future, and people who watch Freeview terrestrial TV could possibly have their TV enjoyment spoiled by interference from the 800MHz signals coming from the new 4G mobile phone transmitters. The main location for 4G transmitters and antennas in Erith is on the roof of the block that contains Erith Snooker Centre on Pier Road. If you use Freeview, rather than cable or satellite TV, you may find your television picture becomes blocky or freezes intermittently. If this happens, you can be supplied with a free antenna filter to block the portion of the 4G signal that interferes with the Freeview TV signal. If you go to www.at800.tv they will send you a free filter in the post.
At some point over the last couple of days, the hit counter has clicked over the 250,000 unique page views on this blog. I am quite staggered that the Maggot Sandwich should attract quite the level of interest that it does - I am currently getting something in the region of 23,000 regular hits every month - thank you one and all. I was also pleasantly surprised how many times I was approached by several Maggot Sandwich readers whilst I attended the Erith Riverside Festival last Sunday. Thanks to everyone who came over to say hello; I must admit that I was expecting one or two criticisms of my writing – either relating to the content or the style, but none of it; everyone was very complimentary – thank you. I had intended staying longer than the ninety or so minutes I spent in the gardens, but I was starting to burn – mainly on my forehead; I am not someone who has any kind of resistance to sunlight – I burn almost immediately, even though on the Sunday the weather was not that hot, the UV levels must have been above normal. I think I may need to invest in a Panama hat to go with my sports jackets – tweed has a sun block factor that must measure into the thousands! Smearing oneself in sun block cream rather sends the message that you like to be out in the sun; personally I would rather invest in some dignified millinery than taking the pharmaceutical route to skin protection.
The rather abstract photo is one that I took a few years ago, when I was exploring the possibilities of black and white photography. It shows a section of the so – called Iraqi “Super Gun” designed by Dr Gerald Bull and constructed by Matrix Churchill prior to the first Gulf War in 1991. The section of gun barrel is located outside the Royal Artillery Museum in the Woolwich Arsenal development. Personally I think that Gerald Bull paid for his life for being the mastermind behind a huge confidence trick. The official story is that either the Mossad, CIA, or MI6 had him killed to stop him working on the super gun project for Saddam Hussein, as they feared that an ultra long range gun could drop huge shells onto Israel or Saudi Arabia, thus breaking up the allied coalition, and giving Iraq a strong advantage in any ground war. My own theory is somewhat different. Looking at the size and design of the so called “barrel”, it strikes me that the design was never actually going to work. Gerald Bull had an astounding career in aeronautic engineering and using cannons to launch scientific projectiles containing sensors into high, sub orbital flights in order to monitor weather patterns in the upper atmosphere. These cannons were modified U.S Navy WWII sixteen inch battleship guns, two of which were welded end to end, then re-bored for the sensor carrying shells. The so called Iraqi “Super Gun” was to have been constructed of a large number of sections that would have been bolted together just like bits of large bore gas or water pipe; indeed when the shipment of “gun” parts were intercepted by H.M Customs and Excise (as they then were known) it was widely thought that this was exactly what the parts were. It only later came to light that they were supposedly parts of a proscribed weapon. My take on the story is that the intense temperatures and pressures inside a giant gun would be so high that all of the joints between the sections would “blow” and leak, making the weapon entirely impractical. If you recall the pioneering work on high altitude / long range guns was done with modified battleship cannons – a far more robust and practical solution to bunging a large projectile half way across a continent than a device made of a series of bolt – together sections, which was always going to be intrinsically weaker than the sum of their parts. I think that Gerald Bull knew all this, and was milking the Saddam Hussein regime for as much cash as he could, counting on the defeat and demise of the dictator meaning he would be able to walk away with millions. I think his killers were actually Iraqi secret agents, who were sent to make an example of Bull, after Saddam realised he was being taken for a sucker by the Canadian scientist. I doubt any theory around the true story of the Iraqi Super Gun will come out now, as most of the protagonists are now dead. It makes for interesting reading, however, and the “what if?” scenarios around the idea of Iraq having a secret, history changing super weapon are legion. Fredrick Forsyth wrote an excellent, fictionalised thriller about the super gun project. The book is called “The Fist Of God” and is well worth a read – it would make a potentially excellent movie as well.
Another technical anniversary has come up this week; on Wednesday it was the 35th anniversary of the launch of the original Space Invaders game. It was not by a long way the first video game (the honours for that go to Space War, a game written for the DEC PDP1 minicomputer in 1961/62. You can play the game online in your browser via a modern emulator – click here to play). What did differentiate Space Invaders from other games of the period was the addictiveness of game play, and the dedication of the players. It was so incredibly popular upon its’ original launch in Japan, there was a countrywide shortage of 100 Yen coins that the Space Invaders machines accepted. The heartbeat – like thud, thud sound of the invaders ponderously chugging over the screen slowly got faster and faster as their numbers were destroyed by the players’ shots. This looked like clever programming – with the invaders getting harder and harder to hit as their speed increased. The reason for the speed increase was actually rather more prosaic; the (by modern standards) low powered 8-bit Intel 8080 processor which powered the game seriously struggled to update the screen display and also run the game code when there was a screen full of invaders (this was in an age where the processor had to handle everything – there were no dedicated graphics cards back then). As the invaders got shot and destroyed, their numbers decreased, and the load on the processor went down. This allowed the game to speed up. All clever stuff, which added to the mystique of the game. A lot of people recall that the alien ships changed colour as they moved down the screen; again, this was an illusion – the Space Invaders hardware did not have the resources to support a colour display – it was purely black and white. The screen was covered with a series of transparent horizontal filters of differing colours – the white invaders would make their way down the screen, going through filter after filter, and thus appearing to the player as if they were changing colour – a simple but effective ruse. The game has been ported to pretty much any platform that is capable of playing games. The first official port was to the Atari 2600 VCS games console (more on this below - who says I don't plan these things?). Many people bought the console on the strength of the game – the first instance of a “killer application”. Since then it has appeared everywhere. It also has the dubious distinction of being one of the most pirated software titles of all time, most of this occurring before any decent software intellectual property rights existed. Nowadays every smart (and indeed, not so smart) phone and tablet runs a version of the game that is almost as popular now as it was when it first hit the amusement arcades, pubs and kebab shops of the UK in 1977. On top of all this decadent Western computer technology, the Soviet Union was doing its' best to keep up; contrary to popular opinion, home computers were available in the Communist Eastern Bloc in the mid 1980's, although you still needed a pretty healthy income to be able to afford one - and they were not all cheap pirated clones of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum as some believe. Watch the video below for the full, and very interesting story of the ingenuity and creativeness of the Russian computer enthusiasts in the early to mid eighties. It is eye opening stuff, and something that I too was completely unaware of.
Now for the ending video. As you probably know, I steer very well clear of television talent shows, and anything that involves "celebrity" judges or so called mentors. The product of anything to do with Simon Cowell or his cohorts in mediocrity has absolutely no interest to me whatsoever. If that's your thing, then fine, as I always say "if it works for you". Instead I prefer to listen to music by people like the chap below. He's a 37 year old American former child prodigy. His speaking voice is high and somewhat squeaky, and he's got a head that looks a bit like a badly peeled potato. Not exactly high on the looks and charisma stakes, you might say - and certainly someone like the aforementioned Mr Cowell would take one look at him and walk away. You may not heard of Joe Bonamassa, but plenty of people have. He's the best blues rock guitarist to come along since Dave Gilmour, and many call him "the new Eric Clapton". Whatever, listen to this track, recorded live at the Albert Hall, and see what you think. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Joe Bonamassa, playing "Sloe Gin". Leave your comments below, as always.
