One of my more eccentric friends has given me a choice of Birthday present:

Dearest Ian ,

I am looking forward to sharing your birthday celebrations and to pottering a little around Yorkshire . I am left with some thoughts as to what to give you with which you might like to choose

• The writings of William Hazlitt

• a historical book on the Lunar Society of Birmingham [ Boulton , Watt, Priestley , Darwin and Wedgewood plus B Franklin].

So please indicate your preference.

Have Fun

Arts versus sciences- recommendations please?

(I was thinking more along the lines of a book token- I quite fancy Roger’s Profanisaurus IV.)

By the way, I got fifteen seconds of fame in the local rag this week:

But no-one went away empty handed as a former Morley councillor, Ian Gray, turned up with a donation of another 60 chocolate eggs.

(Yes, they did spell my name wrong, the plonkers.) 

In the phone business, I’m the proverbial poacher turned gamekeeper. I used to work in the supply side of the Telecoms industry and now work on the user side. Knowing where some of the (old) bodies are buried, I like to pop down to the “Poachers Inn” just to keep abreast of the reality behind the spin. One of the various trade mags has gone digital and perusing a copy today online, my attention was drawn to an interesting article about the early days of answering machines. (Note- opens as some browsing application).

It seems that three students went into business back in 1968 and having to occasionally attend lectures, they thought they’d get an answering machine. However, forty years ago, BT (or the Post Office as it was then) had the monopoly on the network and called the shots. When they looked into getting a machine, they found they could only rent on on a long contract for £35 a quarter, more than £400 in today’s money. Another stumbling block was that you had to wait a fortnight for the Post office to send someone to replace the fixed terminal block with a (chunky) jack plug connector.

With a bit of lateral thinking, they eventually tracked down something from Japan which they called the Juliphone. This was a modern day answering machine but somewhat heath-robinson in its approach. Rather than connecting into the network, it accoustically coupled via the handset, had a microphone to detect the ringing and a mechanical lever to simulate lifting (and replacing) the receiver. The recording was a reel to reel tape recorder and the outgoing message was on a tape loop. Primitive, but it worked, it even had a (crude) remote control and they could sell them for £145, only slightly more than a year’s rental from the opposition. It only worked with one type of phone (the BT 706) but you could only really get one type of phone anyway then for a small business.

It seems the Post Office were not amused though and threatened to cut off anyone found using one, despite the connection to the network being non-electrical. (The typical arrogance of what was a Civil Service monopoly, the legacy of which still distorts the UK market in a regulated quasiopoly). The three lads got round that by a clever bit of wordage- they offered to refund the money to the customer, less £1 a week of previous use. They never had to make a refund!

(Telephone Anoraks will point out that model 746 was introduced in 1967 but I’m sure it fitted the Juliphone just as well/badly!)

I struggled to find an image and in the end clipped it from the Comms Business article, well worth a read.

(There is one in the science museum, you can see a rotatable quicktime of it here, courtesy of Connected Earth, BT’s virtual museum. Warning, not a site to spend two minutes on if you are in a rush!)

The three lads renamed the Business Storacall, still going today, still in the call recording business and with many more strings to their bow.

We got a folded A3 “Morley Patriot” through the door recently but it is the usual mish-mash of “blame everyone else for everything, vote for us and we’ll sort it all” variety, not worthy of even fisking.

A more interesting development is a letter in the paper informing us of a new (unofficial) BNP blog, called Morley Patriot. It mentions discussion about local food production, but when you go over there, the lead story is a link onto another site called Morley Borough Independents Exposed.

This anonymous site mimics the MBI site somewhat in colour scheme (and uses some of the images, probably without permission) but is much more vitriolic, unsurprisingly. However it doesn’t really have teeth, simply rehashing old (and newer) news stories and even letters to the Press.

Of course, lots of people may not know (or may have forgotten) about some of these goings on so as usual, if you throw enough mud some of it sticks.

I checked out the registrant of the domain- an individual who has chosen to withhold his name and address. (not that it will protect them from a court order of course).

So, who is behind this site? They seem to have transcribed most of the articles, rather than cut & pasted them. It could be another Party Activist (probably Labour or BNP) or as MorleyPatriot puts it:

It could well have been created by one of the many disgruntled people who the MBIs have made bitter enemies of over the years.

I am not certain who these bitter enemies might be, other than Labour activists. Whilst myself and several other “politically independent community activists” might dislike their  words and deeds on occasions, they are infinitely preferable to what the mainstream parties have to offer.

(I can assure readers it wasn’t me, I know how to spell “Finnigan”.)

If it is someone from the BNP, then I trust that they will ensure that they find out who it is and stop them in the next week or so before the election starts, after all they complained to the Electoral Commission about Searchlight targeting them during elections outside the scope of electoral regulation and this would be double standards if they knew who it was. (I blogged about this before, but all mention of their discussions with the EC has now disappeared from the BNP website).

In W H Smith yesterday, my eye was caught by a magazine display for a part-collection called “Build a model solar system”. Over 52 weeks you built yourself an Orrery. Now I didn’t actually know what an Orrery was- I thought it was another word for Curmudgeon. (That is Ornery, i.e. awkward squad). It is actually a miniature mechanised planetarium in the original Kepler sense of the word- a model solar system where the movement of the planets around the Sun is in the correct ratio.

Of course, a weekly part set adds up to a fair amount of money, over £300 in this case. However, as well as a working model as an outcome, you will also get 52 magazines explaining the wonders of the Solar System and indeed the Galaxy.

It makes me wish I was a small boy again, so that I could ask my Dad you collect it for me, although I’m not certain David is overly interested. (He is more into Arts than Sciences). When I was a nipper, my Parents bought a number of parts (but alas not complete sets) for two great sets- one was called “Understanding Science” and the other “Mind Alive”, both from the early 60s. They didn’t have any gimmicks but they sparked my interest in all things techy in my formative years.

We have only collected one part set so far for David- an encyclopedia based around Mr. Bean, of all people.

The Orrery has a celebrity endorsement by Sir Patrick Moore, celebrated astronomer and eccentric.

When looking around, I was also amused to find him (and his impersonator) performing Fire Starter on Room 101. Here it is, just in case you don’t quite believe me.

Today we went to the Rex at Elland, another Northern Morris independent Cinema. (this is the one that Womble on Tour was enthusing about recently in comments). The film was “Horton hears a Who”, another Doctor Zeuss spin-off.

It was opened in 1912 but became a Bingo hall for two extended periods through the 60s, 70s and 80s. It re-opened twenty years ago and is still going. It features an organ, with a second (slightly damaged) one next to it and a third in the corridor, along with a Leslie speaker.

This cinema features an interval, the revenue from confectionery being just as vital as ticket sales.