Times are a-changing

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The first post on this blog goes back to September 2009 and we are now about to go into 2019. So many things have changed since then.

The original idea behind this blog was to publish periodical tips and tricks mainly related to GNU/Linux and other POSIX operating systems on one hand, and Symbian mobile phones on the other. Guess what... I no longer use GNU/Linux as my main operating system because I'm no longer self-employed and the work that I now do means that using MS-Windows is my only real option. I still use Linux on a handful of Amazon Web Services EC2 machines and on virtual machines at home and at work, but my main workstations are Windows 10 machines.

So, what about mobile phones and Symbian? We all know what happened to that. Nokia discontinued Symbian and switched to Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, and sold the mobile division to Microsoft, who promptly killed it off. A Chinese manufacturer took out a license to build and sell mobile phones under the Nokia brand and that is what's on sale now, although it has very little to do with the Nokia brand of yesteryear.

Not only that but, no longer being self-employed, I don't have the freedom to organise myself as I want, which has left me little time to post anything here for a number of years, although I'm hoping to be able to start posting again in the not too far future given that I will be far less involved in 41 Club in just over 3 months from now, when I step down from the Association's National Executive.

If you've seen my previous post on this blog from nearly 18 months ago (although I have kept it up to date since then!) then you'll know that I've revived a collection that I started when I was in my early '20s living in France, a collection of calculators. Not just any calculators, though. There is so much Chinese crap flooding the market, cheap "4-bangers" (calculators with the 4 basic operations) that cost pennies and flimsy, plasticky scientific machines that look like they'll break if you look at them wrong. I don't want any of that. What I want is well-built machines that feel solid and are programmable and I have a distinct preference for stuff that was popular in the '70s and '80s. I am also involved, on an entirely voluntary basis (I'm not a member of their staff and I don't get paid!), with a Zürich-based company called "SwissMicros", who build calculators that behave like some of the popular models made by Hewlett Packard in the '80s.

Edit: November 2020. I have been working part time for SwissMicros as an independent contractor since July this year.

So, that is how my interests have shifted over the past 10 years. You can now expect a few blog entries about vintage calculators :)

If this is of interest to you then another blog you might want to consider following is Eddie Shore's Math and Calculator Blog.

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