Is it possible that, at 25, I was a bit of a prig?
I think it is.
A letter to my mum and dad, typed in my flat in Poplar, on a Mac Plus, printed on an Imagewriter (signed in brown ink?).
The story here is that I'd just got my first post-college job (I was a bit of a late starter), working in what used to be called an 'output bureau' in Fulham - the kind of place you used to go to get your typesetting output to film (there was a huge Linotype imagesetter with a Postscript processor stood next to it) or a document printed on one of those new laser printers (the revolutionary Apple LaserWriter).
I was running a brand new department. A department that consisted of me, a desk, an awesome Mac II and a machine that 'printed' Powerpoint (and Aldus Persuasion, natch) presentations to actual 35mm slides. I told a young person about this recently and they a) didn't believe this was a thing and b) couldn't accept the idea that Powerpoint was older than they were.
This bit of kit had a very very slow CRT in it which very very slowly exposed a roll of 35mm film - essentially a slide scanner running backwards. It would take hours and hours to output a single roll and, since we offered a (very expensive) overnight service, I would often set the thing running at going-home time, come back at midnight to pick up the film, then take it over to Joe's Basement in Wardour Street and sit around while it was processed. Then I'd take it back to Fulham and mount the slides ready for the couriers in the morning.
And if the presentation was longer than 36 slides I'd have to load another roll of film and do the whole thing again. Likewise, if the film had got stuck or the computer crashed (which it did, all the time), the whole process would have to be repeated. As we began to win business I was barely getting any sleep… It's making me twitch just thinking about it. Luckily they fired me for general incompetence before I died of exhaustion.
Is it possible that, at 25, I was a bit of a prig?
I think it is.
A letter to my mum and dad, typed in my flat in Poplar, on a Mac Plus, printed on an Imagewriter (signed in brown ink?).
The story here is that I'd just got my first post-college job (I was a bit of a late starter), working in what used to be called an 'output bureau' in Fulham - the kind of place you used to go to get your typesetting output to film (there was a huge Linotype imagesetter with a Postscript processor stood next to it) or a document printed on one of those new laser printers (the revolutionary Apple LaserWriter).
I was running a brand new department. A department that consisted of me, a desk, an awesome Mac II and a machine that 'printed' Powerpoint (and Aldus Persuasion, natch) presentations to actual 35mm slides. I told a young person about this recently and they a) didn't believe this was a thing and b) couldn't accept the idea that Powerpoint was older than they were.
This bit of kit had a very very slow CRT in it which very very slowly exposed a roll of 35mm film - essentially a slide scanner running backwards. It would take hours and hours to output a single roll and, since we offered a (very expensive) overnight service, I would often set the thing running at going-home time, come back at midnight to pick up the film, then take it over to Joe's Basement in Wardour Street and sit around while it was processed. Then I'd take it back to Fulham and mount the slides ready for the couriers in the morning.
And if the presentation was longer than 36 slides I'd have to load another roll of film and do the whole thing again. Likewise, if the film had got stuck or the computer crashed (which it did, all the time), the whole process would have to be repeated. As we began to win business I was barely getting any sleep… It's making me twitch just thinking about it. Luckily they fired me for general incompetence before I died of exhaustion.