Thirty Years Ago Today...

So it appears that Windows 95 was launched thirty years ago today.  We remember it well, a big change from Win 3.1 and its variants.  

One of us was shown an early version at a show a few months before.  The conversation went something like:

'Look, this is the new beta test of Windows 95.'

'Great! Looks exciting.  What does you mean by "beta test"?'

'Well, it works fine unless you press the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Then it falls over.'

(We've used this defense for everything we've written ever since...)

The last PC running Win95 left this house last year.  We rather regret that now....

The BBC ran an article about Win95 on the National lunchtime news.  It spent some time with the NW Computer Museum.

Why didn't we know about this?

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years ago today, I was in my office at the British Museum, which looked out over Russell Square. I have a vague memory of a large bang being heard – but if anything, I assumed it was just one of the many noises you get around central London.

Then, about twenty or so minutes later, one of my team came up to see me – they said that a colleague had just arrived in some shock. He said he’d just seen a bus explode. That must have been the bomb in Tavistock Square, although we didn’t know that at the time. And I believe we may have heard it go off, unknowingly.

In fact we weren’t sure what he’d seen. I made suggestions to help get him looked after, and said he could consider going home and resting.

The traffic began to ease off, outside, and we began to hear sirens. The story circulated that there were problems on the tube lines (power failures).

About an hour or so in, one of the Security team arrived to tell everyone to move away from the windows. Yes, there had been a bomb, and a follow-up attack could shatter the glass dangerously.

By now, apart from distant sirens, it was unsettlingly quiet outside. And our mobile phones had stopped working. The rumour started that the emergency services had commandeered the network, although it might have just been overload.

Around lunchtime, I was called across the estate to a senior managers’ meeting. Yes, there had been a number of bombs, and and many casualties. There was a need to keep people inside while the emergency services worked. Then, mid-afternoon, we would all be needed to help the visitors leave and give them directions. This was mid-summer, and there were 15-18,000 visitors on site, many from overseas. We needed to help them understand how to get home, or to their hotels, in the absence of any public transport.

(During the briefing, I finally received a call from my son at school (they had sensibly let the children use their mobiles) – so I could tell him I was OK, and he could pass the message on to the rest of the family).

Once the Museum was empty, we left, too. I remember walking with others through an eerily quiet city. Finally managing to grab a bus home near Elephant and Castle.

The Mayor, Ken Livingstone, was on the news. He was in Singapore – the day before, he had been celebrating London winning the right to host the 2012 Olympics. He looked tired, but he gave the best speech of his life.

I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever...

Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.

Yet there was an increase in racist attacks over the following days.

The next day, I think it was, I was on the bus to work, and the atmosphere was very jittery. Years later, I had a letter published in the Guardian about how the marvellous Betty Boothroyd stood up then, and helped everyone stay calm. (This was written a few days after the Manchester Arena bombing).

A week later, several other attacks were attempted, and failed, more by chance than effective security.

Microsoft Annoyances

 So, we at the Trees have invested in a new computer.  

As we are too old to switch, it is another Microsoft Windows box.  

It is fast and powerful.

But it has taken days to set it up.  Mostly spent switching off all of the 'features' Microsoft now ships, from news feeds from providers we have no interest in, Bing and Edge, Copilot, in fact all AI, prompts in all the wrong places, encouragement to use their version of the cloud (aka someone else's computer) for our files.

And on and on.

Kapcha the Party

 

Graphic Communication

 

Arrival of Wordl...

Into the Third Dimension

 We have acquired a new dimension to our printing...

Kitten

 

Spreadsheet

 

Lansley, NHS organisation and data, and Covid-19

It is wholly unsurprising that local authorities do not have sufficient detailed data to understand local coronavirus prevalence, and to manage hotspots and other breakouts. 

This is at least partly an effect of Andrew Lansley’s benighted reorganisation of the English NHS in 2012, which removed significant access to detailed care data from local commissioners, and moved public health departments to local authorities, where they had even less access to key data - and were also hit by the cuts to local authorities’ budgets over the last ten years.

The Lansley act centralised a lot of key NHS and care data with a single central body, now known as NHSX.  This was in line with a narrative of centralised control of the service and a disempowerment of local bodies. 

This policy has acted as a contributory factor in the Government’s ill-fated attempt to build a ‘track and trace’ app based on a centralised data store.   It is now clear that alongside central direction and guidance, control of the pandemic requires agile local epidemiology and professional management, backed by up-to-date, detailed data, to lead local test, track and trace activities and manage change.  Much of this existed, in depth, before 2012, but has been significantly eroded since.  Despite this,  almost all the successful case tracking currently being done is down to these pre-existing local, experienced public health teams, not Hancock’s vaunted new, parallel structures.

However, what we are now witnessing, finally, is a partial U-turn of the policies of the last eight years.  Data is beginning to move.  Sadly, the paucity of timely local data in the right place will take time to fix properly, as providing it still runs counter to the centralising mindset, and the system will need to create new capacity to get it to where it properly belongs.

The Last Few Weeks in Pictures

We are all currently in social distancing, sensible lockdown.  A lot has been happening.  In no particular order, here are some of the events here at Trees, in the last few weeks, in pictures.

Welcome to my world...

Fifty Years On...

Fifty years ago today, I was told to go to bed.

I wasn't allowed to stay up and watch the Apollo 11 Moon Landing on TV.  I was quite annoyed about that.

Later, I remember going to see the tiny piece of moon rock in the the Geological Museum in South Kensington.  And later still, I joined the Astronomical Society of Haringey and met Arthur C. Clarke.

But, given that first landing 50 years ago, I needed a visit to South Kensington.

When you enter what is now a side entrance to the Natural History Museum, you are encouraged upwards.

But if you look around on the ground floor, you come across this:

This isn't the same sample as the one shown briefly in 1969, nor the later display in the 70s.  But it's still moon rock.

Then next door to the Science Museum...

The LEM is actually a copy of the original, made slightly smaller so that it can fit into the gallery.

But just along the way, in the 'Icons' exhibition, is the real thing.  Charlie Brown:

I asked one of the staff if it seemed likely that Snoopy had really been found.  She hedged her bets, and said that if it had, we wouldn't be going out to recapture it any time soon!

The Science Museum also, now, has its own sample of moon rock:

As an aside, the Apollo 10 capsule is surrounded by other numinous objects of space and technology interest.  Like these:

 The Flying Bedstead, that lead to the VTOL aircraft.

 Puffing Billy - the World's oldest surviving steam locomotive.

A V2 missile, as launched by Germany during WWII.

Anyway, having sated on things Apollo, I spent time exploring the museum further, as I hadn't been there for many years.  Foucault's Pendulum has been revamped, the Information Age gallery is new, and the Mathematics display have been completely refurbished.

And that is where a couple of other iconic objects can be found:

But there were other things of great interest, like the Bill Phillips model of the economy:

And the pioneering statistical work by Harriet Martineau and Florence Nightingale:

The space displays have also been updated in many parts, from a mockup of the Huygens lander:

To a huge replica of Bepicolombo:

But, in and amongst all this new material and the many refurbished displays (and I haven't yet mentioned the changes to the Energy gallery where the huge Watt and Newcomen engines are displayed, nor the special exhibition on driverless cars... They will have to be the subject of other posts. And I didn't go to the much hyped Apollo 11 film they are showing), it was good to find some things remained untouched, as I remembered them.

For example, a model credited to Mat Irvine:

And upstairs, in a corner, this: