We're currently having our old windows replaced with nice new double glazing. Many of our windows are old wooden sash windows. Out of the blue, I got called down by the fitters to say they'd pulled a newspaper from the wall cavity. It's dated Monday 28th August 1944, right at the end of the Liberation of Paris.

Attached a couple of snaps. I hope to get the paper pressed and tidied up to allow me to do a proper scan, but it's fascinating to think back to (presumably) a comparable moment just over 67 years ago, and how hugely different the world is now, to then.

Fitters have replaced the paper with a copy of yesterday's newspaper (Scottish Sun). Seemed only apt, and I've still got a few more articles to read on my copy of the Guardian iPad edition... ;-) We've replaced it with a printout of this page, the BBC news page, and a note with everybody's name on.

(download)

Click here to download:

surprise-time-capsule-HesyjCzfIlyfrDdGbAsy.zip (409 KB)

So much has been, and is being written, about Steve Job's death, and I know I'm not enough of a writer to add anything substantially new or different to add to what's been written, other than a few asides. Naturally my sympathies go to his family, friends, and colleagues.

I've spent my working life so far with technology, and much of it over the last 10 years or so has had the Apple logo on it. I use their products because they work (for me) exceptionally well, and let me focus on what's important.

I look at the people behind the technology I encounter on a daily basis, and it's fair to say he's head and shoulders above the great many other innovators and technologists in our industry, whether that's household names like Bill Gates, or technology pioneers like Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google's founders), Linus Torvalds (Linux), and Tim Berners-Lee (the 'web').

It wasn't so much that he helped lead a company to create a great product, but that he did it again and again and again. Both Apple and Pixar are household names. The Mac, the iPod, iPhone. Toy Story. Monsters inc. Somehow he drove the people he worked with to create great things.

The great things he helped create were powerful because of their elegance, their simplicity, their coherence. It's almost a shame that seems so unique, and not standard, in technology circles. But that's because elegance and simplicity is hard, and so it's a real mark of his personal determination that it's now such a hallmark of Apple's products.

One video captures so much of Steve Jobs' character, and I tweeted earlier that if you're going to watch one video about him today, make it this. It's inspiring to the future, and shows Steve Job's legacy is far more than a well known logo and well-engineered products.

*nom*

I'm off on holiday later this month, and one of the primary goals for me will be to go entirely offline. That means handing over the iPhone to F (I'm actually minded to leave it behind, but have a few useful navigation apps on it that might prove useful), and chilling with books, walks, and restful easy runs. I picked up a few books the other day: the 3 for the price of 2 offers are... tempting. Went in for 3, came out with 6. Turns out I'm already 1/3rd of the way through them too, way before going away. 

Anyway, I digress. Slightly. Leaving the phone behind, I'm hoping to find some time to work through a few things, and that process means I need to spend some time writing. I adore the simple delight of a high quality notebook, and a nice ink fountain pen with good ink flow. I love the feel of it all, and the process of manually scratching out lines of ink, and the way it forms the letters, then words, and so with it my thoughts, and the care it requires, particularly compared to anything computer based.

With a fountain pen my handwriting is usually far neater than my biro based note taking scrawl. I do find though the actual process of writing what I want to say quite hard. But then, even if it's not exactly booker prize stuff, and is entirely for my own pleasure, that's what that matters: it's the process of 'serialising' (to borrow a techie phrase) things out that proves so therapeutic, whether or not it makes sense, or even looks nice.

So I've just ordered a few notebooks (moleskin ruled, my preference), and I'm going to go treat myself to a new ink fountain pen this weekend, spending just enough money on it to garner the disapproval of F when she asks :-)

For reasons that seemed good at the time, I decided to summarise what feels like a typical encounter with a hardware support vendor, and why (in my view) 4 hour response times are often over-rated.

This will either amuse you, terrify you, or pass you completely by. Feel free to let me know which, so I can appropriately classify you ;-)

Us: Aieeee! My hard disk. It's crunching! Hard disks shouldn't crunch!
Support: You need to fill in a ticket
Us: We have.
Support: No, on this other <random> system
Us: OK done
Support: We'll get an engineer to call you
Us: *snooze*
Support: We tried to call you, but nobody answered
Us: Did you use the UK dialing prefix?
Support: Ummm. Yes.
Us: OK, try it again. Maybe I was *lies* away from my desk
*time passes*
Support op: *crackling phone*WHAT'S THE PROBLEM*
Us: Have you seen the ticket
Support op: *WHAT TICKET?*
Us: *sigh*
*time passes*
Support op; *crackling phone*I'M IN YOUR CABINET AND, WHILST YOUR BASE IS BELONG TO US RIGHT NOW, I'VE NOT GOT THE RIGHT PART
Us: *sigh*
*time passes*
Support op: *crackling phone*I'VE REPLACED THE HARD DISK*
Us: We noticed as you dislodged power supplies whilst doing it. HOW DID YOU DO THAT WHEN IT'S THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CABINET?
Support op: kthxbi
Us: *sigh*

This morning I heard Rory Cellan-Jones giving details about the 'Domesday reloaded' project, on Radio 4's Today programme. Shortly after, I visited the website and dug out my small contribution to the project ("Wildlife in the Priddy Area"; I somehow managed to work in a plug for my Grandfather's former restaurant!), and had a big flashback to my first year at secondary school, and Mr Cann's history class. You can even see some of us, hard at work no doubt, in this picture.

The Domesday project made a big impression on me. I'd just that year moved up to secondary school, from a school with 36 children, to one with 1200, so it all felt strange and new. It was great to be part of something national, getting coverage on the television. It was exciting, and excellent technology at the time. I remember eagerly (as I was already an enthusiastic techie) using the system when it arrived at The Blue School, and finding my contribution on something as seemingly futuristic - and supposedly lasting - was incredibly exciting.

A teacher interviewed later on in the Today programme made the point that if there were projects for today's school children that were as effective, and memorable, as it was for her (and I), that'd be a great achievement of itself. I do hope school children have a go at updating the reloaded project, and that we all put aside some of the cynicism I think clouds us all at times.

Of course, the story is more recently one of the perils of physical media. The Laser discs didn't last. The readers slowly disappeared. The data was (nearly) lost. But the news of a project to "reload" it, and bring it technically (and it's data) up to date (and independent of physical media) was very exciting. The full story is over on wikipedia. To be able to surf the website on my iPad, on my sofa, is superb, summoning chunks of information written 25 years ago.

I love living in the future.

I think my 12 year-old self would agree.

I've spent a couple of hours today running around Glasgow's Pollok Park with Andy McMenemy, who's undertaking a massive challenge - A Guiness World Record challenge in fact - to run 66 Ultra marathons (50km, or 31 miles in his case) in 66 days, in each of the 66 cities of the UK. Plenty more on the challenge website: http://www.challenge66.org

I was first approached by the council as I'm the Event Director at Glasgow parkrun, and I think they thought there was a ready-made measured course he could use. Unfortunately as it's not a circular course, and is also very "undulating", I winced at the idea of somebody running it 10 times: That'd be 20 times up "that hill" that any Glasgow parkrunner knows is a bit of a killer, and after 55 other ultra marathons, I thought it'd be only fair to find something a bit flatter - as far as you can in Pollok!

So I proposed a single 2 mile loop around Pollok Park (you can see that here), which a parkrunner measured with a wheel (required as part of the Guinness World record stipulation) earlier this week. The least I could do, I figured, was to pop along and help Andy around his first loop (so he knew where to go) - particularly as I'd just heard him on Radio 4's Today Programme plugging his effort. So that lead on to nipping over for a couple more loops at lunch-time. And I figured it'd be rude not to support him around his last loop.

So somehow I've run 11 miles today. Much slower than usual, and probably not really helped my training very much, but what it lacked in pace it made up for in inspiration. Andy's a fascinating chap, with plenty of interesting stories, anecdotes and advice on all things running, and all things ultra. From tips for hydration in marathons, to the stories of soldiers dealing with injury on the battlefield, to mental attitude for dealing with challenges, but also to the fact that Wells (near where I grew up, and Andy had a few difficulties) is not actually the smallest city in the UK as I'd always thought, but the third. The smallest seems to be with St David's in Wales, followed - amusingly - by the the City of London. 

Anyway, a fascinating day with a fascinating individual. Well worth supporting his admirable challenge if you can, either by dipping into your pocket, or popping along to support him at the his remaining 9 events.