Posted by Karen on
June 6, 2006
Mining the Memory
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Plunging back into the mists of time I tried to capture my earliest memory. Ghosts of remembrance flit across my mind’s eye as I try to pin down the earliest one. I’m two or three years old and we’re living with my Grandparents at the Army Barracks in Kildare, Ireland whilst Dad was posted for eleven months to Christmas Island to play with Atomic Bombs.
Anyhow, I remember back then Uncle Liam had a black Austin car. It had red leather seats which smelt great, and a wooden dashboard. I would sit in the front seat and I was so low down I couldn’t see out of the windscreen, except to see the sky. As we would drive to the big gates of the Barracks there was a pot hole that we would have to drive over that always let me know we were going out of the gates. I thought I was so clever to be able to tell when we were approaching the gates and Uncle Liam would deliberately drive over the pot hole so I could get to big note myself.
Whenever I sit in a car with leather seats (even if they’re not red), I’m immediately thrown back to that time. This is my favourite photo of myself, taken around that time. I’ve always loved this picture and the memories of those days that are evoked by it.
Posted by Karen on
June 2, 2006
The Apple IIe - Ah, the good old days
Can you remember your first computer? That chunky, probably beige, hunk of metal and glass that opened up a whole new world to you.
My first computer was an Apple IIe. Waaaay before Macs were ever dreamt of and back when IBM distained to grubby its fingers in the world of personal computing. Hard drive!!! What hard drive? This state-of-the-art supersonic baby had a 64KB (extendable to a whopping 128kb) RAM, 6.25in floppy disk drive and a colour monitor — well, green and black are both colours aren’t they? Armed with the 
VisiCalc spreadsheeting program and the Zork game, this machine rocked.
Who needed GUIs and graphics? The World Wide What? These were the ‘covered wagon’ days of personal computing, pioneering stuff. We didn’t realise we had just committed ourselves to a future filled with upgrades and the ongoing quest for more power, speed and resolution. We couldn’t imagine the seductive vortex of the internet just around the corner which would change our lives for ever. We couldn’t conceive of blogging!!!!
My favourite game was a little number called Tai Pan; a pirate/trading game with those text based graphics thingys.
Many hours of my life were lost to that game. I was sad to see it go. But guess what? I found a freeware verson of it on the Internet just the other week. Now if I can just get hold of an Apple IIe….
