Tuesday 24 January 2012

Trailblazers


Some of you might recognise this early OS X shut-down option which I foolishly installed on a 'toilet-seat' iBook designed for OS 9, thereby leaving me with about 3 available megabytes to do what ever I wanted with - i.e. not a lot.

I paid £30 for the iBook (a design classic, even 18 years ago, so I was reminded) and spent the first few weeks getting to know it by wiping every email that had ever been written by the seller, his brother and his brother's son from the hard-drive before finding out that it was still too slow to play movies, and struggled with sending pictures by email on a pay-as-you-go, dial-up server. I still loved it, though. I recently sold it (for £30!) to a woman in a remote part of Scotland, and I hope she still loves it too.

I have the honour of being the first stone-carver in Europe to have had his own website, and the second in the world. As you might expect, the first stone-carver in the world to have a website was an American, and his name was/is Walter S. Arnold. Look him up and say hello from me. For many years we used to send each other Christmas cards via snail-mail, but I have since lost touch with him, though I know he still maintains a web-presence as a sculptor - unlike me.

My host for this website also had the distinction of being the first internet cafe in the whole of Britain, right here in little old Bath. Looking back on it, we were trail-blazers.

The cafe was equipped with top of the range Macs, and we had many American visitors who admired the speed of these machines when surfing and sending emails to loved ones back home whilst staying in Bath. Of course, they would be stupidly slow by today's standards, but in 1994, they were cutting-edge.

The cafe was run by a young woman (who also designed and set up my website for me - html!) who came from Bristol, and my abiding memory is of her telling me a story about how she attended a party where Una Stubbs got a bit out of hand one night - but I cannot go into details. Now, whenever I see Mrs Hudson in Sherlock, I cannot get that image out of my head.

I never got any work from the website, but I came close once. A Texan architect contacted me to price for replacing a lot of carved Portland stone work for a church in the U.S. Virgin Islands which had mysteriously burnt down, as many churches do.

I had visions of overseeing all the work whilst sunning myself on the island, but - in the event - the contract was awarded to someone who happened to live about three miles away from here, and he was contacted by the usual, non-technical channels.

The internet cafe finally went bust, taking my website with it. For several years afterwards though, I kept coming across photographs of mine that used to be on it, floating around in cyberspace, supported by agencies unknown. Now Walter has plenty of other companions.

15 comments:

  1. And could you possibly still be the only UK stonecarver who writes a blog?

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    1. I somehow doubt that, Mise. I'll have to check, but I don't think so!

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  2. You've just given me an idea for my tomorrows post... and nothing to do with 'toilet seats'.

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  3. My computer skills go nowhere near setting up a web site for myself Tom - e mails and blogs are about as far as I go I am afraid.

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    1. Neither did mine in those days. Now it is so easy, that if I can do it, you surely can to, Weaver.

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  4. "Some of you might recognise this early OS X shut-down option "
    ...some of us do not!"

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    1. You'd probably recognise a Microsoft equivalent from the same era, though.

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  5. I cannot change my font much less run a web site. I would also like to pinch Blogger which is not playing nice and not letting me leave comments on many blogs. Wordpress is looking better all the time.

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    1. Go on, pinch them, Olive. I don't like Wordpress myself - to picky.

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  6. Shit Tom, if you wanted an old Mac I've got a bloody room full of 'em! The rotting apple cupboard.

    Always re-format the hard drive to remove the home-made porn Tom. Golden rule LOL.

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  7. I did, Chris.... I think...

    I came across batches of old iBooks on eBay when selling this one, and you could get about 5 in assorted colours for about £25, so I think I did alright in selling mine. The screen was perfect, mind you.

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  8. P.S. I've just put up a picture of the whole thing, so that non Maccies know what I mean by 'toilet seat'.

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