Fuzzy Bits
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. (Stan Kelly-Bootle)
That quote, which I saw by way of Jeff Atwood’s latest, reminds me of what may be my favorite Stan Kelly-Bootle story. Stan worked on the EDSAC which stored memory using what were called “mercury delay lines” — long tubes of mercury, down which they would send an audio pulse, which would echo off the far end and return some brief amount of time later (thus useful as a rapidly-changeable datastore). Naturally, the resulting signal was pretty noisy, even in the best situations. So Stan and company had a cardboard ruler that they’d hold up to the oscilloscope — “Mmm… that’s a 1 … 0 … call it a 1 … ”
I always suspected that working with mercury might not have been entirely coincidental to Stan’s legendary wit.
I think my even-more favorite Stan Kelly-Bootle is from his 70th birthday party. He was in the corner of his garden, drinking Grey Goose from the bottle with a beautiful girl, 45-years his junior, on his lap and two more at either shoulder. Two fellows in tweed jackets straight from central casting were hunched at another table, single-handedly generating the nicotine and Guinness atmosphere of an English pub. “‘Ows ‘e do it?” Lamented one. The other leaned in, tapping the table significantly, “‘E’s got what yer call … charisma.” The other nods and despondently says “Charisma.” He takes a long drink from his pint glass and summarizes what separates we mortals from the Stans of the world: “Ya’ can’t fucking fake charisma.”
