Although there are some great museums like the National Museum of Computing doing there best to preserve computing's rich history so much computing heritage has been lost. One problem is that data stored on obsolete formats often cannot be read any more. This website illustrates the problem, the CROOK operating system for a Polish minicomputer called the MERA-400 was sought. A copy had survived but it was on magnetic tape and there was no easy way to read the media.
Luckily with some ingenuity and hardcore geekdom a way was found to read the tapes. In the end they found multiple copies of CROOK, other old operating systems and some other thought-lost software which can now be read and saved for humanity.
ICL tape drives at the National Museum of Computing
Its been a few months since i've visited Stafford station and as it was a nice day (the Sun was shining anyway) i went up there with my camera. Stations like Stafford are always better to visit on a weekday because more freight is running. Today there was the incredible sight of a five locomotive light engine movement. I've never seen that before, three a few times but never five!
You can see my photos here. After some damp and grey days recently it was lovely to feel the Sun on my back.
Redditch is the final destination on the Cross-City Line and so is on a direct route from Erdington. Despite that i've never been before so i went there on Saturday to take a few photos of the station for a future post on my "Calling at..." station blog. Next to the station is a large mall which i made the mistake of entering, when i came out the other end i seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The town centre must be elsewhere, i really should have looked at a map first before i came. Well there is always the next time!
This new series will review tie-in novels to popular movies and TV shows, especially those written in the 60s and 70s. I've always been a fan of tie-ins such as Star Trek and CSI novelisations though this series will tend to go deeper into the past...
Enter The Dragon by Mike Roote
Enter The Dragon, the classic Bruce Lee kung-fu epic is one of my favourite films, can the martial art skills of Bruce translate into prose? Well yes the author does an unexpectedly good job. As the film is one of my favourites i have seen it many times of course, so that makes a tie-in novel in this case an interesting experience. Will the book stay true to the original screenplay? Will it add anything new?
Well yes to both really. The novel is fairly true, there are a few differences in structure for example the flashbacks near the start of the film are presented in the book in linear fashion at the start but that's fine as it probably works better in print. The overall plot and feel of the film is adhered to with some differences in detail (but this may have been changed from the screenplay the author worked to anyway).
Does the novel add anything new? Well amazingly yes, it helped clarify some parts of the plot which perhaps were not that clearly laid out on screen. So overall a hit. The cover artwork is basic but effective, a classic still of Bruce in his epic fight with Han. No bullshit.
