had to fax some stuff

[winterbadger]

Sitting here doing settlement on my mum's house long distance with a PC and a scanner...

In the meantime I've been browsing (shallowly) the iTunes store for things to put on my iPod touch.

And found a *free* app that contains all the works of William Shakespeare. Plays. Poems. Sonnets. Everything. In a flash, sent over the tubes and condensers of Teh Intrawebz to this little thing that fits in my pocket.

Young people, please remember in your amusement at my astonishment that I had been out of college and in the job market for at least ten years before anyone (outside DARPA) had email or websites. I used to play Star Trek text-based games on the computer when I was a teenager, but only because my brother in law at the time had access to the Yale University mainframes.

I feel very, very old. And I'm only 45.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'm 10 years older than you. Yeah, much has changed in terms of data density in our time. I have a 250 GB USB drive that probably represents more computer memory than was available on the entire University of North Texas campus when I was a graduate student.

[silme.livejournal.com]

Hush about the feeling old thing. You're three years younger than I am. ;)

In high school, we had access to mainframes at West Chester State University. Right after I graduated from university, though, one of my best friends and off-and-on housemate was working at NCAR; she used the Vax system there and the Cray as well. We could access all of that at her house, which was fun (Moria in 1983 was so advanced ;), but we also used it to for SCA reports and grad school work.

[aitkendrum.livejournal.com]

Wow! Mainframes. You remember the Auld times! Tell us a story of them, Wise One.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Amazing isn't it. And someone's just compressed wikipedia down into a self-contained iPhone app. And these guys are about to release a free public transport route planner app which tells you how to travel from place to place in 400 cities world wide.

btw I'm the same age as you and I think I've had an email address constantly since 1986. Before that I only had sporadic access to email starting in 1981-2. That's maybe unusual. I can remember thinking despairingly how much more sensible it would be if normal people had access to the internet, instead of just computer professionals in universities. All these years later, maybe sensible isn't the first word I'd choose, but it's great nonetheless.

[reasdream.livejournal.com]

Oh! I got that app for my iPhone! It makes me happy because I live in a place without 3G (shakes fist at ATT) so I can't eazily access the MIT searchable complete (plain)texts of Shakespeare. And now i can read sonnets and my favourite scenes from 12th night any time I want!

*bounce*

(pardon the enthusiasm, I just got back from the theatre - points to recent post)