Thursday 08/26/2021
Did the aerobics. Buzzed off to Shustek for a day of cataloging. Left early so I could attend the annual Trustee-Resident meeting via Zoom. The meat of this is the financial report. Bottom line, Channing House is solvent.
Some on-going things. I have a couple of what should be quite valuable early books from Xerox PARC, that came in a box of donations. Both were published in 1976. One is Personal Dynamic Media and is basically a manifesto for the use of computers in education. Although the author is given as the “Learning Research Group”, I believe that was basically Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg who in the early 70s developed a lot of fundamental concepts at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, including little things like the whole idea of a graphical user interface with overlapping windows.
The second is Smalltalk-72 Instruction Manual by Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay. Now you can find lots of copies of the Smalltalk-80 Instruction Manual in the used book market, selling on eBay etc. for like $10. But this is an earlier version from eight years before and there are no, zero, zippity doo copies of this book anywhere. Either of the books. That’s great, it means they are rare. But without comparables, what are they worth? We usually set used book prices based on what the same books are selling for on Amazon or eBay. But here we got no guidance. This has been the subject of lots of emails between me and other FOPAL people.
Another on-going thing is, lower back pain. I’ve been bothered by a nasty pain around my left hip and up into my lower back for several days. Only very particular movements bring it on, and fortunately it doesn’t happen when walking. But certain specific movements when sitting or in bed bring an ouch. I expect it will go away like this kind of shit does. But I wanted to note it here.
Codgerville 