treescaper

Fun times are returning

2010-01-27T23:00:00.004Z

What an excellent day it's been!
End of post.

Moore or less?

2010-01-26T22:37:00.007Z

I woke up in the small hours thinking about Moores Law - as you do.

There are just 5 weeks and 3 days left before Treescaper bails out of the IT industry after 34 years, possibly permanently - the jury's still out on that one. Back in 1975, we wrote computer programs with pencils on 'keypunch forms' - 80 column line by 80 column line - then sent them through the internal mail to the 'keypunch girls' who transcribed them onto punched cards and sent them back - with luck the same day. Coffee was drunk, newspapers were read, telexes were answered and eventually the deck of 80 column cards would arrive, bundled in the original coding sheets with elastic bands. We'd read them through, single out the typos, take some blank cards to the 0129 keypunch machine and make corrections. When we were happy with the deck, we'd place it in the basket for collection by the DP courier who'd run it over to the machine room to be run. The massive watercooled IBM 360 series model 70 would eventually load, process and churn out the resulting listing on a fraction of the processing power of the tiny netbook I'm using to write this blog entry.

A few cycles of the process would eventually result in a 'clean compile' and testing could begin at the same leisurely, almost geological pace.

That antique process and hardware enabled a team of less than a couple of hundred folk in a temporary building in Havant run the entire administration, manufacturing and support systems for the IBM World Trade Corporation. The company was truly global, the systems all multicultural with specialist components built by distributed teams. The Argentine 'Billing 370' team, for example, were the hyperinflation experts who provided the interlocked pricing and billing support for fellow suffering countries like Israel.

The 37 hour week ruled back then, the weekend was sacred, and a hell of a lot of fun was had by all. The clubhouse had a bar, the local pubs did good business at lunchtime (which actually existed) and the company's business boomed.

In 5 weeks and 3 days time, the last of that experience will leave the building. In that 34 years, thanks to Moores Law, the bloated layers of operating software and a ragbag of aquired and rebranded application software , we leave the company far less efficient than the one we joined.

Never mind... India holds the answer to all our problems. (I shall now extract my tongue from my cheek and turn in for the night)

It isn't what she's got to say....

2010-01-25T23:56:00.004Z

A lyric, of course, and one which takes me back to pre-history, an album first bought on vinyl in 1968 and just refreshed as a remastered CD. Music keeps me sane, which is more than I can say for gardening. I drank my morning cup of tea looking out of the kitchen window at the pyracantha which I swear was enjoying a laugh at my expense. It's tempting to get out the chainsaw - my favourite gardening tool - and dispatch it back from whence it came.

An intriguing day involving a free lunch, a confession, a bit of meditation and some CBT. Five weeks and four days to go..... not that I'm counting.

Pyracathana, Peroni and Punctures

2010-01-24T22:08:00.002Z

Water, Fall
Originally uploaded by Treescaper

Licking my wounds from this afternoon's wrestling match with a pyracantha, aided by a large medicinal Peroni and accompanied by the Hissing of Summer Lawns.

It's amazing how the wounds inflicted by this thorny beast of a shrub don't become apparent until long after you've packed away the tools and chilled out with a beer. It's then that the scratches up the arms, the thorns under the fingernails and the puncture wounds in the fingertips really start to make their presence felt.

Why do so many people plant the bloody things? Every single house I've ever lived in has had at least one...

Today, I did something amazing

2010-01-24T17:35:00.004Z

Well I'd like to say it was this, but sadly I was stopped from doing that a few years ago - sadly because it was the couple of times a year that I actually felt I was doing something of use to society. No, today the amazing activity was 'gardening', the link being that I gave liberal amounts of beautifully oxygenated A-Negative to the pyracantha in the back garden.

The race is now on to get the cuttings tamed, bagged up and removed to the local amenity tip in the back of the Hertz car before my own comes back from its sojurn at the body shop. Bodily it's fine, but since last weekend's unplanned potholing expedition during which I reinvented a wheel, it's been taken away to have its suspension checked out while they track down a replacement alloy wheel to match the other three (round) ones.

It's been good week, considering all things. Six more to go......

In the shade of the freeway

2010-01-23T10:36:00.005Z

Feeling positively cheerful and contemplating gardening - is this really me? Must have been the tea, toast and marmalade that did it. Also having posted a Jackson Browne related picture earlier, I decided to play some more to accompany breakfast. The first couple of lines of 'The Pretender' describe my little haven well and the rest of the lyrics strike a few chords as well.

I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

Ah the laughter of the lovers
As they run through the night
Leaving nothing for the others
But to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight

I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put out dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again

I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Thought true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender

Branching out

2010-01-23T07:37:00.002Z

Fountain of sorrow
Originally uploaded by Treescaper

The Treescaper blog should now be joined at the hip to the Treescaper Flickr account meaning that there can be no further excuse for lack of action here!

It seems that the evil Google empire now has Treescaper firmly in its grip.

Turning corners

2010-01-22T23:00:00.007Z

OK... this might be the year that I get a bit more active in the blogosphere. Having managed just two posts in 2009, it's tempting to actually delete them both and pretend the year didn't exist. The low points of the year actually plumbed depths I never in my wildest nightmares could have imagined. High spots there were, however, the most notable of which was the gaining of the finest of sons-in-law in New Jersey in July. 2009 was also the year in which I discovered the Peak District. So much did I enjoy that experience that I spent the last day of the year soaking up the views and the snow around in five dales around Tideswell.

2010 is starting in a much more positive light. Having been joined at one hip to the IBM Corporation and the other to Mrs Treescaper for the past 34 years, I will shortly sever connections with both and set a new direction. The related surgical removal of both residence and pension leaves me turning to Annie Hill for inspiration on how to make the best of nothing!

The trick is going to be to see how far I can get in 2010 before I have to start earning a living again..... So far in the planning stage is a Eurostar break to Bruges and a return to the eastern seaboard, from Montreal down to New Jersey via New York.... not to mention a few more excursions with the camera in Britain.

Here's to 2010!

Down below the borderline

2009-11-12T20:33:00.004Z

Waking up after the ice age and staring an uncertain future in the face, December 11th looks like an interesting date for the diary. Whatever the decision I make before 5:00pm, I'll be down at the Cellars at Eastney in the evening in the company of Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett. Now that should make it an evening to remember, and one with so much to look forward to....

Waking up after the ice age...

2009-09-15T23:56:00.004+01:00

I've decided it's time to reawaken the blog. It's happened before, but this time it might actually stick. 2009 has been a year to forget, with the exception of two highlights. The first - the Round the Island Race - was but a minor high compared to the wedding of the year in New Jersey.

Eating into my rest time...

2008-02-21T23:27:00.006Z

Earlier this week I was put through an induction process in order to be given a site badge for a global customer of ours. Nothing unusual about that, you might say... just another wretched photo ID badge to leave behind at home on the wrong day. The ritual brainwashing was, this time, a little different. This particular company has a more refreshingly honest approach to the European Working Time directive.

For example:

(3) Time-off - Daily Rest. A worker has a right to 11 hours uninterrupted rest a day, between shifts/work patterns

(4) Time-off - Weekly rest. A worker has the right to one day off in every week, but can be averaged over two weeks - e.g. 2 days a fortnight

Now working includes "working lunches, travel as part of their work, job related training, on call when required to be at the place of work', but does not include include travel between home and work, or rest breaks (a concept I'm not sure I understand anyway!) The working lunch is a well known curse, and the clogging up of laptop keyboards with baguette crumbs is a well known hazard of the workplace these days.

Once I take my 4 hours of commute (non working time) from my rightful 11 hours of rest, I'm left with 7 hours to myself. It's merciful that I get by on six hours of sleep a day, or I'd never have time for a shower and a shave.

This leaves me thinking that the Working Time Directive enables me put in 78 hours a week, while commuting for a further 20 hours, enjoying a day to myself on a Sunday before getting another 42 hours rest the following week.

At least they're honest! The small print about the 48 hour 'maximum is just that, small print.

It's an interesting fact that when I first joined the industry, 32 years ago, we worked a strict 37 hours week, had no laptops so couldn't take our work home, no mobile phones or Blackberries, and yet it really does seem that we were at least three times as productive as we are today... What's going on here?!

Rip Van Treescaper stirs...

2008-02-17T22:52:00.004Z

... did I drop off just now? So it's 2008 eh?

It's been an 'interesting' couple of months or so re-living a game from my youth. Long ago and far away, in the days before the X-Box, the Wii, the Playstation or the bicycle helmet, my mates and I used to hurtle around the town hanging onto the backs of buses and trucks to supplement peddle power - clearly the forerunner of the modern hybrids and dual fuel vehicles. While we were ahead of our time in some respects, we were also frequently to be found deeply immersed in that age old role playing strategy game, 'Cowboys and Indians'. This memory has haunted me recently, though with undeniably incorrect political overtones. My first visit to the Great Sub-continent - the subject of the previous post - was followed by my first visit to the Bible Belt of Oklahoma. Since then, my working day has split between contacts five and a half hours to the east and six hours to the west - culture shock in both directions.

Call it escapism if you like, but there's something about Tulsa that fascinates me. Much of what was there in the twenties has been razed to the ground and turned into parking lots, but there are still a few real art deco gems in the buildings that remain.

Having played with this blog for a week or two last year, I've decided that it would be a useful distraction from the daily frustrations of corporate information technology and the equally incomprehensible challenges which appear to be associated with my private life! I am increasingly finding escape from both by walking and taking photographs. The former requires no technology other than a stout pair of boots - my refusal to indulge in GPS toys will be as sincere as my resolve to go to my grave never having seen the Sound of Music. Photography, on the other hand, has become a complete overdose of technology in this digital age. In its defence, the Nikon D200 that I've been using for the past two years is still a beautiful piece of kit which never fails to impress me. I've not felt so much at one with a camera since I bought an Olympus OM1 - the ultimate manual mechanical SLR camera - a few short weeks before my daughter was born in 1981.

But I'm rambling! While out walking and taking photographs, I find myself reflecting on a wide variety of subjects and putting them to rights. Where printable, some of these ramblings I'll commit to his page, interspersed with a few pictures. Sometimes, a picture just 'works' for me, and some of these I'm going to put up in future posts.

This one is not the best side of one of Tulsa's downtown buildings, but it got me thinking of the good ole 'Red White and Blue' - colours that we share with the US, and in a way also with India. To misquote George Bernard Shaw, "Three countries separated by a common language."

'Cowboys and Indians' is the new player in the game of IT outsourcing.... with the UK stuck in the middle, wondering where the hell colonial power ended up...!

Live from the Great Sub-Continent

2007-11-23T08:29:00.001Z

The treescaper is currently out of his natural habitat, on a business trip to Kolkota.

A word of warning...

2007-10-23T23:59:00.001+01:00

...about the post which follows. There are virtually no trees in either of the lands referred to. At least, not trees as you or I would know them....

So feast your eyes on these, then read on

The Norse Treescaper sagas

2007-10-23T23:14:00.001+01:00

Long before the turn of the century, the younger Treescaper spent a couple of summers sailing among the islands of the North Atlantic , two of which served to make Denmark the largest nation in the emerging European Community.

The answer to this geographical riddle can be found in words which used to be part of the ritual brainwashing of all good primary school children in England in the fifties:

“From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand;

Where Afric’s sunny fountains roll down their golden sand:

From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain,

They call us to deliver their land from error’s chain.”

The fact that the message in the lyrics was lost on most of us post-war children is probably viewed by most of Treescaper Senior's generation as the root cause of the collapse of the British Empire and the rise of the dreaded Europe.

This particular schoolboy used to stop singing midway through the first line, mumbling the rest of the words distracted by the concept of Greenland's icy mountains. Ignoring the subjects of religion and empire for now, let's stick with geography which at that tender age was all the song meant to me. When I first saw these mountains a few years later, my life changed. I grew up. I lost my geographical virginity and set foot on what seemed like an alien continent, steeped in Viking history and almost completely unpolluted by the rest of Europe.

The Treescaper Greenland sagas are likely to figure in these pages from time to time given the influence those months had on my life, but for now I will turn to a smaller outpost of the 'Danish Empire', the Faroe Islands.

Half way between Scotland and Iceland, this archipelago populated by puffins and frequented by pilot whales left an even stronger mark on my life. A tiny community in European terms, made up of people who really understood what the word community actually meant. Over the course of five days in 1971, I learned to love this tiny land of contradictions and its people. A land that had more sheep than humans and yet, inexplicably, imported sheep's heads from Aberdeen as some kind of delicacy. A land where alcohol was illegal and yet where, after 8:00pm, a sober adult islander seemed a rare sight indeed. A land financially dependent on Denmark, yet one free from the influence of state television. An emerging nation with a distinctive flag and a new national newspaper reintroducing the old Norse language of their forebears, an act of intellectual aggression frowned on by the Danish government. Above all a land where the young people of my age looked to university in the bright lights of the Danish cities simply as an educational diversion in their island existence rather than the start of some longer term migration.

Thirty six years later, much has changed and yet nothing has changed. A friendship forged in those five days all those years ago resulted in an e-mail received last night containing a link to an Australian broadcasting company's website showing a documentary program about the islands.

Watch it, learn from it, understand why I'm an active supporter of Greenpeace and yet am proud to have eaten whale meat, but above all realise that there's more to life than the rut you and I are both in!

Turning up the heat, turning down the noise

2007-10-13T22:58:00.000+01:00

This week has seen an increased focus on the risks, inevitabilities and factual inaccuracies of global warming.
Shown here is the government's answer: 'Protect and Survive', 2007 style. Read the leaflet carefully and it will show you how to build an ark suitable for carrying yourself, your family and your pets above the ever rising high tide mark. Made from the old doors from your house, and with assembly possible within hours of the alarm being raised, this kit is the perfect home DIY project for every responsible Briton.

....eloquent profanity, it rolls right off my tongue

2007-10-13T00:21:00.001+01:00

I'm sat here with half an eye and both ears on BBC4's Emmy Lou Harris evening which has got me to thinking about the weird lyrics that hang around inside my head.

Feeling Single, Seeing Double kicked it off and reminded me of a drive a few years ago from Tehachapi to Tonapah and then onward to Winslow Arizona. It was a rented silver Ford Taurus wagon which did a sprint from San Francisco down through Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon over to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Flagstaff and back through the Joshua Tree National Park (a homage to GP) to LA then back up the Pacific Coast highway. After a day at the Canyon, 10,000 maniacs had accompanied us out across the Painted Desert, and by the time we'd returned to NY, a good time had been had by all.

A great trip, funded by Pan Am miles and Marriott points - the airline sadly took the last 69,000 miles I had with them when they collapsed in a heap in the early '90s

I never did get a picture taken standing on that corner though....

Relief from acronyms and machine types

2007-10-12T06:41:00.001+01:00

After last night's overdose of numerical nonsense, a few trees to calm things down...

Not an acronym or product code in sight!

A museum piece in a small world

2007-10-11T23:11:00.001+01:00

While I was sat on the left hand side of the chairman at Monday's epic steak and kidney pie extravaganza, I noticed that each of the members present wore a little pin in the lapel of the obligatory jacket, with a little blue name tag close by. Glancing to his right, I was surprised to see a name long forgotten beneath a face astonishingly unchanged - and I'm talking decades here rather than years. In those days I was a student, between school and university earning a bit of cash as an agency temp working for a local computer manufacturer, and Geoff was the manager of the operations department - the first person ever to interview me for a job, and unbeknown to me then, the first manager I ever had in a company that more by accident than design became a life sentence. He had no recollection of me, a mere temporary student, hardly surprising given the number of employees he'd seen prior to his retirement. He, however, was instantly recognisable to me once the name index in my brain clicked in. He hadn't changed, it was as if it were yesterday. By a bizarre twist, I'd resigned from his employment to undertake the very sailing adventure that I was there to talk about. Now if that isn't a small world, I'm not sure what is.

Recently, I visited the splendid new Information Technology offices of a public sector customer in Plymouth. There, in the reception area, protected from the masses by glass screens was a lovely selection of equipment that I had grown to love and hate during those days as an underling in Geoff's department. Wonderful technology like the 0029 card punch, the 2260 display , the 1403 printer, the 1041 terminal and more.. I'll stop before I give myself away as a complete geek. However, this brings me round to a theme which comes around often enough in the IT industry. What real advance has been enabled by the dramatic evolution of technology since that time? I've seen processor power multiply according to Moores Law, hardware prices fall through the floor, operating software footprint go through the roof, the advent of the PC, object technology, the web, broadband, wireless and more.

With all this, are we any more productive? Of course not! The saddest part of all is that we're just as unproductive now, working 60-70 hours a week against a reported 37 hours as we were back then when we actually did the 37 and still had time for fairly regular pub lunches! There's a variant of Moores Law at play here, though I'm not sure it has a name as yet.

Fortunately, the answer to all our woes lies on the Indian sub-continent.

.... or does it.

(Watch this space)

tree·scape [tree-skeyp]noun, verb, -scaped, -scap·ing.

2007-10-11T05:22:00.000+01:00

a section or expanse of rural scenery with objects of arboricultural interest, naturally illuminated and seen through the viewfinder of a Nikon D200.
a picture representing pastoral, woodland or coastal scenery with trees of note
[Fine Arts] the category of aesthetic subject matter in which natural scenery with trees is represented.

A free lunch for a charitable cause

2007-10-10T23:23:00.000+01:00

A rash offer made over a year ago came back to haunt me this week as I joined Treescaper Senior and his merry band of retired 'professional and business' contacts for their monthly lunchtime get together.

A rare insight into his secretive movements for those three hours a month over the last few years, which turned out to be not quite as steeped in mystery as a Masonic Lodge, but nevertheless a curious male only gathering. Topped and tailed by the saying of the grace, the reading of past minutes and the ritual humiliation of members in arrears with their subscriptions, this monthly event is a three course lunch of modest ambition followed by a guest speaker.

Over lunch, the Chairman was at pains to warn me that there were those in attendance who would likely fall asleep during my 'surely inspirational' talk. 'Do not be offended' - a warning hardly necessary since I am well aquainted with the effect that a three course lunch centering around a steak and kidney pie would have on Treescaper Senior.

The time came, the lights dimmed, and a hundred or so faded transparencies later, the visual wonders of the Arctic seemed to have left their mark on the handful of those still awake. Appreciation in the form of a cheque for £20 to the Stroke Association made the exercise worth while, but perhaps more satisfying was the broad smile on Treescaper Senior's face - still wide awake, the exception to prove the rule.

Roll on retirement?

Maybe I'm not quite ready for that yet!

The start of another bad habit

2007-10-10T21:55:00.000+01:00

Where next...?

2007-10-10T21:14:00.000+01:00

I once went into print online, inviting friends and family alike to have me certified if I ever started a blog.

So here, while the balance of my mind seems temporarily disturbed by a blood/alcohol imbalance, the dreaded event looks like it may have happened. The end of one era, or the start of another?