Blast from the past.
My first PC was a 486 which ran at 100MHz[1] running Windows 95. Yeah, no DOS[2] for me, baby.

I have a vivid memory of unpacking the white PC onto my parents’ dining room table, powering it up and being greeted by the magical Windows 95 startup screen with its little fluffly clouds and the promise of a miraculous world of buttons and scrollbars inside.

Win95 Startup

Imagine my glee when, upon the boot process completing I heard this – the Win95 startup sound, or to give it its correct title the MS Sound.
I can still, without hearing it, recall it almost perfectly. It goes, *boong*, *griiing*, *ding*, *ding*, *ding*, *ding*, *ding*, *aaaaah*.

I read a few years later[3] that the MS Sound had been created by Brian Eno.
Here’s the deal.

Q: How did you come to compose “The Microsoft Sound”?
A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, “Here’s a specific problem — solve it.”

The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.”

I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

I really appreciate the sentiment; the importance of working within such seemingly arbitraty constraints (3.25 seconds)[4].
Thinking about it, it makes sense that the system engineers had had some process that they needed to run before they could load the desktop and therefore needed to amuse the user who had already patiently waited out the boot time.
It’s neat and clever and hilarious.
It is also one of my enduring memories of computers.

Pity that I hate the fucking devices so much.

[1] Which means that I missed out on the really hardcore 386 Norton Utilities days.
[2] Remember autoexec.bat!?
[3] By which time I had moved on to Win98 or possibly even Linux.
[4] However, as the world will have it, of course, you’ll notice that the actual sound is not 3.25 seconds long – it’s more like 5.75.

If there is one thing that I am really fearful of[1] it is losing my memories.
Only our memories and the knowledge and judgement which we develop as a result of these episodic experiences and re-use has real value[2].
This fear drives my interest in Alzheimer‘s disease since it lurks on the horizon for so many people.

Looking up at the sky I see the neurons in my head.

Salon have a pretty standard interview with an author on mid-life memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s – Cathryn Jakobson Ramin.
It’s not revolutionary, but here are some bits.

Does anything about our brains improve with age?
Vocabulary. You keep learning new words and you don’t forget them. But that does not mean that you can produce them! As we get older we blank and we block. We can’t retrieve the word in the middle of a conversation.

I remember hearing that older people are better at predicting outcomes?
That’s true. We can make certain valid assumptions based on previous experience, that younger people cannot. You can look at your daughter’s boyfriend and realize in about 20 seconds that this is not going to work. But it will take her about two years.

So what is memory to us?
Memory is everything. Memory is who we are. When it goes, there is nothing left there. It’s what we know about our lives. When it goes — as it does in Alzheimer’s disease — people don’t necessarily lose the ability to get up or eat a meal or go for a walk or sit in a chair. They lose themselves.

[1] Other than severe pain or a violent or slow death – things that the neurons fear.
[2] This, of course, excludes the elaborate material bulk that I move around to ‘improve my quality of life’.

From Vanity Fair of December 2006.

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions and haven’t been in the habit of observing this (trite?) tradition.
But this year I ended up making two resolutions – the one easy, the other something that I’ll have to get a little out of my skin for.

In February 1996 I had my hair cut at a hairdresser in Stellenbosch[1] and for some reason really hated it. I decided, on the spot, that from then on I would cut my own hair.
This started a tumultuous ten year relationship with various pairs of scissors which included some vicious chops, an artificial receding hairline, some ok cuts and some minor disasters.
I liked the fact that few people noticed that my dodgy hair – one less social nicety to observe.

So, when on New Year’s Day, while checking myself out in a car window[2] it dawned on me that my hair looked crap, I resolved to move on and get a normal haircut.
Back in Toronto I headed out on Queen street and dropped $35 on a standard short and simple cut. I feel a lot better now.

The reason for my relief is that the whole cutting-my-own-hair thing really isn’t part of my identity anymore[3].
It’s just not part of what defines me anymore. It used to be one of the things I used to remind myself[4] of my being an individual, but there’s no need for something like that anymore.
To tell the truth there’s been no need for it for some years[5] and it’s turned into more of a habit than a choice.
And for that reason alone it should go.

*

My second resolution will be more of a challenge.

A good friend of mine went through a process of re-evaluating his views/behaviours/etc. in 2006 and had a lot of benefit from this.
The last offshoot from this was that he was challenged to become involved and make a contribution to his community.
Enough with the self help, get out there and do something from within and for his community.
Even more, he was challenged to not just dump a bunch of his money, but to involve other people and use resources available in his community.
His input would be the human capital of sincere interest and cooperation.

I’m really not a community type – really not.
Frankly it’s not part of my comfort zone. But the fact is that at some point all this jibber-jabber makes me a pitiable fool.
It’s not that I believe that whole it-takes-a-village blah blah or those types of groovy lovey-vibe goodness.
I’m certainly not an altruist or even a humanist[6]. I’m perfectly convinced that real actualisation and fulfillment can be totally introspective.
But it is undeniably true that I am dependant on the communities in which I move and, in some ways, those communities are dependant on me.

And so the second resolution; to become more involved in at least one of the communities of which I am part, and to originate or be part of some project within and to the benefit of the community.

[1] during a short but fateful stay in that University town.
[2] as is my wont
[3] c’mon, don’t lie, we _all_ have an identity and we know it.
[4] and to reinforce
[5] the last time I consciously decided that I’d like to represent myself in this way was just before my wedding to Anita some 4 years ago.
[6] though I do think that humanism has some interesting ideas and contributes to a balanced view of how we work.