Explosion of Data

I've just added 512MB of memory to my laptop - bring the memory in it to 1GB. It cost relatively little and appears to have breathed new life into the machine. It had started to feel very sluggish - and had occasional fits of spinning the disks and not doing a lot else! But the question is why do I need that much memory in a PC? The first computer I "owned" had 16K in it and no usable external storage - unless you count my parents tape deck and the audio tapes that played high pitched noise into the system to reload code carefully typed in - or games bought at relatively great expense... OK, that system only had 16 colours and did very little - but you could program it and it entertained me for hours... The next system the family owned had the incredible amount of memory of 256K - and 3 inch removable drives - we upgraded the box to 512K and added a 720K drive to the original 180K one... Two books, complete with diagrams, got written on that machine... I've just add 1000 time that as an upgrade - OK the modern machines does things we'd never dreamt of - but 18 months ago 512MB in a laptop was a lot! My first lap top had 64MB, and the second maxed out at 256MB. But is was only 20 years ago that 512K was more than enough to support a very usable system - at that rate we'll be putting terabytes in personal system. We are already approaching that in large system today - I was going to say in super computers - but they have even more because we've moved to building super computers from hundreds, if not thousands of separate boxes. The conclusion I draw, the software writers have shares in the companies that make memory. [I also personally think the day of a true software developer is dead - most of them these days use a graphical tool to pick items of a menu, then add a small amount of logic to each item - rarely thinking about the consequences of adding a Excel spreadsheet to one of those items, but that is an entirely different random thought] So where is all the data we store in these system coming from. I'd suggest that the human race is probably creating more duplicated and redundant data a month, than useful unique data exists in total... My suggestion - buy shares in the companies that make memory and disks - there is no evidence that the rate of data explosion is going to slow!

New Blog

And then there were two blogs to neglect! Hopefully my mum and brother will help with the latest one - enMatte. A place to record memories and developments in the south of France...

So what has inspired me to start doing this again?

Very good question. While struggling to spell taught, while writing up a particular stressful appraisal, I resorted to a Google search and came across SelfTaughtGirl - it distracted me for long enough to be re-invigorated in the writing I had to do myself!

British Property Market

Having spent the last 5 years watch in the UK property market in wonder - hoping to get on the property ladder, and the last 6 months helping my mother buy a property after she received an offer on her house that was too good to refuse, I think it is time for first time buyers to go on strike. If we all collectively point blank refuse to buy any property in the next 12 months, then combined with the rising interest rates, some common sense might return to the market. If only the government hadn't chickened out on HIPs, it might not have taken 12 months. My impression is that everyone telling us that house prices are rising have a vested interest in that being true. It is the mortgage companies - who can't loose these days, the estate agents - who like the high prices because they get even high fees for hardly doing a thing, and existing property owners who are building up massive unsustainable debt based on a property price bubble. Come on - average property prices six times average earnings, when the historical average is four time is not sustainable.

Improvement in British Sport?

It looks like British sport might be improving - if not off the death bed yet. We have a new young F1 driver who appears to have more skill than fear! And the cricket team have crushed the opposition - even if it was a West Indies team reeling from a World Cup even worse that England's and the retirement of their long term hero. But it might be a false dawn - now all our Tennis players appear to be failing by the wayside - Henman is almost finished, Rusedski has retire and the new young hope has over played and is out injured. And just as the prospect of having to defend the World Cup, the entire Rugby side appear to have gone down sick!