Delayed mercury

Charles Severance visits the Monash Museum of Computer History and talks to Judy Sheard and Chris Avram. The museum is on the Caulfield campus of Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, and hosts CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer and the fourth stored-program computer in the world.

Enfranchised

I've started chipping a little content into Stack Overflow, and have accumulated sufficient reputation points that I can upvote answers. There's a lot of work that could be done in the tag wiki—that could keep me busy.

Still going

Benj Edwards reports for PCWorld on vintage systems that are still in production, running inventory, controlling aircraft systems, generating financial statements. The jewel of this (popup-heavy) report is an plugboard-programmed IBM 402 tabulator in service at a Texas industrial filter factory.

ᔥ Paul Ceruzzi and the IT History Society blog

News item

Evan Sandhaus announces the New York Times's implementation of rNews, a semantic markup scheme for news articles. Curiously, the blog post itself doesn't carry the markup.

Home base

Back at Siteworx Reston after an extended stay onsite, and after a couple of moves and cubicle reconfigurations, here's what most of my work surface looks like now. Oh, and after receipt of peachy Valentine's Day flowers from Leta.

A really nice chair, a big Kensington trackball that they don't make anymore, a monitor and a half (the laptop), and a good-sized shelf for books above. Need to do something about that tangle of USB cables.