posted by Neil
I'm home. Got off the plane last night.Today was a dead day. The most exciting things I did were 1) have a long soaky bath - my first in many weeks, it's been showers all the way for over a month - and 2) not put shoes on.
Looking for a card reader for my camera (I took lots of walking-the-dogs pictures, but can't get them off the camera tonight) I discovered my ancient Atari Portfolio notebook. I put new batteries in and was amazed to discover that it worked - I can't have turned it on for about 14 years. And I thought about Moore's law. It has a handmade memory card I bought specially, filled with tiny text files.
It's a 2 megabyte memory card, covered in warnings, which replaced the 256K card that came with the computer. I don't have anything that can read Portfolio cards any longer, although (I just checked) I pulled everything off it back in 1997, when I did have something that could read it.
And the Portfolio made me think about this essay/speech by Ben Hammersley which I read last night, and am still pondering.
I wrote short stories on the Portfolio in chunks - "Murder Mysteries" was about five files, as I'd start a new file on it when the old ones would fill. Clicking around on it I found forgotten poems and story ideas (some very good ideas and less good poems, mostly). And it was cutting edge for portability in -when did I get it? 1988, I suspect. Perhaps 1989. (Also, it ran on 3 AA batteries that I'd change a couple of times a year.)
So the Portfolio works perfectly, and I suppose that when/if I actually get around to giving my papers and stuff to a library, I'll put it in too.
...
Still digesting the last six weeks. There was some really good stuff, and some hard real-life stuff too. I'll fill in a few of the gaps over the next few days - I'm waiting for some photos to come in.
The last couple of days were exhausting - I travelled with Amanda and her band to Vienna and from there on to Amsterdam, mostly because I wanted to see Jonathan Carroll in Vienna. Amanda had warned it would be rough, and it was. I'm so glad I'm not a touring musician. But I'm happy I spent time with Jonathan Carroll. That was worth any amount of time in airports and sleeping sitting up on planes.
Actually
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