MALLORN

I’ve started doing some decluttering in my den, not much you understand, but it’s a start. I think the CDs may get boxed up and put in the loft, as I can’t remember the last time I actually played one.

I also have a pile of DV Video Cassettes, recorded on various video cameras over the years, along with my most recent DV Camera. I’ve offered the camera to Gaz, my son, as he’s shortly to become a proud father, and that’s probably what video cameras are for, more than anything.

But of course I need to download the video from the tapes before I bid farewell to them; and this is where the space thing comes in.

I’ve just ordered a new external hard drive to download the videos, it’s a ‘MyBook’ by Western Digital, it’s costing less than £100 and it holds a terabyte of data. That’s a million megabytes, enough (according to WD) for 75 hours of DV Video or a million minutes of music, which is just less than two years non stop music. Or a pile of floppy discs 21km high.

Those stunning capacities, caused me to cast my mind back to my first PC, an IBM XT which had an impressive 10mb hard drive. My first new PC, back in about 1993 was a Gateway2000 DX2 66, with a massive 450Mb  hard drive. It was bleeding edge for its day, the most powerful 486 processor in those heady pre-pentium days. In fact, as I recall the first peniums were actually slower than the DX2 66 processor. I later (94 or 95) upgraded it with my first 1 gigabyte hard drive which cost £150.

If we go even further back, the first mainframe I worked on (an IBM370) used ’winchester’ hard drives with 70mb capacity.  

I now have a memory stick in my pocket with 8Gb capacity which cost less that £20, and a 1Gb card in my phone which is smaller than the nail on my little finger!

Of course once the drive arrives I will have to transfer the content over, which will have to happen ‘real time’ and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll get round to editing the content and burning back out to DVD.

But that’s another story, for another time.

While nobody would ever accuse me of be a sports fan, or even a sports follower (with the exception of Formula One) this weekend’s olympics coverage has been gripping.

The weekend marked Britain’s best ever performance in recent olympic times, and as I type this ‘Team GB’ are third in the medal tally, second only to China and the USA. This may not last as the schedule now brings in events that we’re less strong in, but this morning, on the train, the newspapers were full of proud, patriotic copy.

Okay, so inflation is on the rise, along with interest rates, ( ‘real’ prices are rising faster than inflation) and this is likely to be the wettest August for nearly a century, but for one brief moment the nation had something to smile about.

And I recounted the cranes… between Liverpool Street and Stratford stations (a distance of about five miles) I counted fifty construction cranes of various sizes.

As even the casual reader may have determined, I’m an avid reader. I devour books, and with the joys of about ten hours a week travelling on what used to be known as British Rail I’m getting through a couple of paperbacks a week.

Last weekend I picked up a Dale Brown book. I’ve read most of his books over the years, and for the most part I’ve enjoyed then. Dale (as opposed to Dan) Brown is a former US Air Force pilot, and his knowledge and descriptions of air-borne warfare are probably second to none.

But…  and it’s a big but… his novels have been following a parallel ‘Dale Brown’ Universe that is similar to ours, but increasingly different. The problem comes when you write about a fantastic new aircraft (such as the EB-52 Megafortress in 1987’s ‘Flight of the Old Dog’) then you’re committed to using it in subsequent novels.

By the time you get to 2004’s ‘Plan of Attack’ - which is the book I’ve just finished - then the world his characters inhabit, the aircraft they fly, the weapons they use and the airforce they serve is so far removed from ‘real life’ that they might just as well be flying monkeys scouring the skies of Oz for the Wicked Witch of the West.

On Friday, while much of the world was watching the opening of the Beijing Olympics, I attended the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) at Earl’s Court in London.

This was the 31st GBBF and (I think) the 19th or 20th I’ve attended.

This was a fairly poignant afternoon, as my good mate Jon Cheese had attended the GBBF with me in the past; Jon died at the end of August last year, and last year’s GBBF was the last time my son Gaz and mate Paul had seen Jon alive.

The afternoon became doubly poignant when we learned that Michael Jackson (The Beer Hunter - not the other one) also passed away last August. In fact he died on the same day as Jon, from a heart attack. They were both 65 - well Jon was three weeks shy of his 65th birthday, but who’s counting.

Jon and I had met Michael on a number of occasions. Jon’s wife Jan arranged for Michael to give a tutored beer tasting at Hornchurch library, and a most enjoyable evening was had by all.

At least we know who Jon’s drinking with, in heaven.

Today marks the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games.

We were in Beijing in September 2004, and saw the ‘Olympic Countdown’ clock in Tianemen Square. Beijing was, while we were there, mercifully free of fog, although a a couple of the pictures look a bit hazy. Check the China link on the ‘Been There, Done That’ pages.

These days I commute through Stratford in East london. Stratford is at the heart of the 2012 Olympic development zone and it’s fascinating to see how the area is being redeveloped. Old, run down industrial estates are being flattened to make way for lavish apartment complexes.  

The skyline, from the train, is scattered  with tower cranes, standing like storks against the pale east-end sky. I stopped counting at twenty five. I am confident that the whole skyline will change radically in the coming four years as the Olympic site is developed.

How impressive the British Olympic offering will be, in comparison to what the Chinese have achieved with ruthless disregard to the prior residents of the sites, and with an almost limitless budget, remains to be seen. I fear that we Brits will deliver some half-baked solution, which looks and feels cheap, but actually cost way over the odds.

That’s just the way it seems to be. Somehow we always end up paying over the odds for sub standard goods and services.

It’s the British way.

And as for today’s Olympic opening ceremony, beamed live from Beijing at 08.08.08.08.08 - I have a prior engagement. I’ll be drinking at the Great British Beer Festival - now that’s something we DO do well, but again, not cheaply.