Megatheriums for Breakfast

I can’t think of any product about which more has been written, both before and after its announcement, than the forthcoming Apple iPad.

So I might as well add to the flood.

The speculation before Steve Job’s announcement of the iPad on January 27, 2010, had reached hysterical levels. Hysterical in every sense of the word -absolute madness, and absolutely funny. I was secretly hoping that Jobs would stride onto stage that day and tell the world that Apple had no intention of producing a tablet, just to see what the reaction would be. He did acknowledge the silliness of all of the speculation by throwing up a slide showing Moses on Mt Sinai and a quotation from the Wall Street Journal:

The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.

What is even more interesting, really, is the almost equally hysterical commentary about the Apple tablet after the details were released. This seems to range from near fury on the part of some commentators due to disappointed (I would say misguided) expectations and what they see as the shortcomings of the device, to sensible and thoughtful comments from people like John Gruber.

Now I am not an Apple fanboy, far from it. I’m basically a Windows user and a Windows programmer, and I have been for a very long time. But I remain fascinated by Apple and by Steve Job’s strategic approach. And I’m a huge fan and user of the iPod and the iPhone.

Personally, I think the iPad is an absolutely brilliant device, and more importantly it is an extremely clever strategic move on Apple’s part.

Much of the negative comment and outright hostility to the iPad seems to be based on the concept that this thing is meant to replace a laptop computer or a netbook and that it doesn’t have what it takes to do that. Paradoxically, I think this is both very true and at the same time very misguided.

I think that the iPad will replace (actually, displace) laptops and netbooks for some people, for some usages, in some circumstances. Circumstances alter cases.

Think about it. If you are in what I call ‘couch mode’ – you want to sit and relax and maybe read a book, or surf the web, or look through your email, or admire your photos, or play a casual game, or watch a movie or even attend a lecture – all of these things can be done much more comfortably on the couch rather than at your desk. And if you are in that mode, a laptop is a damn uncomfortable device. It weighs too much, it’s hard to handle, and it gets uncomfortably warm. A netbook would be better in some ways, yes. But an iPad would be best of all.

So for many, many people who like to go into couch mode (surely almost all of us), the iPad would be a brilliant device to have on the coffee table.

I myself wouldn’t be interested in using an iPad to sort out my taxes, or edit video, or develop software, or update my web site design. But Apple isn’t suggesting that you would.

The genius of Apple is recognising that there are millions of people (like seniors, for example) who are uncomfortable with computers in general, and who have no other use-cases than those I mention above – accessing the Internet, reading and answering email, admiring photos, being entertained. People who might not today even have a computer could easily pick up and use an iPad as a simple appliance, as Farhad Manjoo identified before the announcement.

Apple are into re-inventing the whole idea of computing.

And the real sting in the tail for companies like Microsoft is the fact that Apple will sell versions of its iWork applications – Keynote, Pages and Numbers – specially designed to work with a touch interface – for only $9.99 each. Think about this for a moment. For only $30 you will be able to buy the functional equivalents of Microsoft Office to run on your iPad.

Sure, you probably won’t want to write a novel that way.

But can’t you see the pathway? Someone who is a reluctant computer user gets hold of an iPad and really enjoys it. They decide to use it for writing some family history stories, perhaps, so they pay the trivial $9.99 cost to get Pages on the iPad. Then they decide they are confident enough with computers to get really serious. They are now familiar with Apple products. They are now familiar with Apple software. If they are in the market for a laptop, what are they going to buy? A Windows-based machine, with expensive Office applications? No way. They will buy a Mac.

I am predicting that the iPad will have a slow start, but then become a roaring success.

Oh, and it will kill the Kindle stone dead.

Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.

– Sir Walter Ralegh

Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

– Thomas Mann

A long time ago (maybe 20 years ago), I started to become interested in my family history, but then let it drop.

But in the last couple of months I have returned to the research and I have discovered some interesting things.

In this I was inspired and assisted by my wife, who is studying her own family tree. She signed up to the Ancestry web site (www.ancestry.com.au or www.ancestry.co.uk). This isn’t free, but it does have some very useful and valuable features, and these quickly drew me in.

In particular, I have been following the surname of Grigg back, studying my father’s line of descent. He was born in Durham, England toward the end of World War I, and named William Snaith Grigg. He hated that middle name! In fact, my father’s name was exactly the same as that of his own father, my grandfather. The ‘Snaith’ comes from his mother’s maiden name.

But the real interest in the story as I worked my way back through time is to do with the occupation of my ancestors, and their movements around the United Kingdom during the 19th Century.

I had always thought that the Griggs had been coal miners in Durham (the far north of England), stretching back for many generations. My grandfather certainly spent almost all of his working life working at the coal pit, and my father went down the pit at the age of 14 and worked there until the outbreak of World War II, when he was called up and went off to fight in North Africa and Italy as part of the British Eighth Army. My uncles also all worked as coal miners, and I had been given to understand that my grandfather’s brothers (my great-uncles) also worked as miners. So I had made the assumption that this tradition had begun long ago, certainly for several generations. However, this turns out not to be the case.

The real family tradition of the Griggs, I now discover, was in glass-making.

It took quite a while to tease all this out, but it began when I got hold of the birth certificate of my great-grandfather, who was called James Anderson Grigg. He was born in 1862. His father, Samuel Grigg, is shown as being a “Glass Blower Journeyman”. His mother was Mary Sked (or Skade) Anderson. The family address is shown as being in Hedley Street, Sunderland, Durham. Then I found the marriage certificate of James Anderson Grigg and Louisa Snaith. They were married in 1884. James’s occupation is listed as “Colour Maker” and his father’s as “Sheetglass Maker”.

Well, that was interesting enough, but at that stage I had no idea what a “Colour Maker” was, or what trade it involved.

The real key came when we joined Ancestry and I used the wonderful facilities on that site to start searching for census records. I was quickly able to find some matching records for the family. In particular the 1871 census, taken when James was 9. The family is still living at the same address as when James was born, and Samuel’s occupation is now listed as “Sheet Glass blower”. The surprise was seeing Samuel’s place of birth. It was “Smethwick, Staffordshire, England”. Now that was a puzzle, because Staffordshire is a long way south of Durham, in the English midlands. And I had thought that in those days people (certainly of their class) didn’t travel about much. Why would Samuel have moved so far north, presumably away from his family and friends?

Given this clue, though, I was able to find other census records for Samuel Grigg down in Staffordshire, and started to do some other research. Things started to become, shall we say, as clear as glass?

In 1841, Samuel Grigg was 4, and his family is living in Spon Lane, Smethwick. In the 1851 census, he is living with his brothers and cousins. Samuel is listed as “Labourer at glassworks” and his brother and cousins are all employed in the same industry. In a separate entry in the same census, his father Emmanuel Grigg is now living in Newton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire at the Crown Glass Works and is listed as “founder at glassworks”. Samuel grew up and married Mary Sked Anderson in 1859, when they were both 22 years old.

A little research shows that there were major glass works in Smethwick. In particular, a major glass factory was Chance, Hartley & Co, which produced all of the glass for the famous Crystal Palace. Note that second name, Hartley. That’s from John Hartley. John Hartley’s sons, James and John Hartley, established a major glass works in 1837 in Sunderland, Durham. It doesn’t take much imagination to suggest that young Samuel was recruited by the Hartley company to move north to work at the new factory, the Wear Glass Works. In the 1861 census, just two years after their marriage, we find Samuel and his wife living in Sunderland, not far from the Wear factory.

Skilled glass workers were by all accounts, highly valued, and their skills were in great demand. This meant that they often moved around the country, and were far more mobile than the average worker.

But the story doesn’t end there. Samuel’s bride Mary Sked Anderson was also born in Smethwick, Staffordshire. She was the daughter of James Anderson, and Janet Hartley. James Anderson’s occupation was “Glass Cutter”, and he and his wife came from Dumbarton in Scotland. So here is another instance of a glass worker travelling very far from home to work in the industry.

But wait a minute – Janet Hartley? Does that name ring a bell? Sure enough, we find that James and John Hartley, the founders of the Wear Glass Works, and responsible for many innovations in glass making, were also born in Dumbarton in Scotland, where their father John Hartley (a Yorkshireman) had gone to run the Dumbarton Glass Works. For a wild moment I thought that Janet might be the sister of these two luminaries of the glass industry, but not quite. It turns out that she is their first cousin, the daughter of Abraham Hartley. It looks like the elder John Hartley (born 1775) took his older brother Abraham (born 1773) with him to Dumbarton when he started work at the Dumbarton Glass Works, or else Abraham followed him at a later time.

So, looking back to my great-grandfather James Anderson Grigg, his own trade of “Colour Maker” now makes sense as someone with the highly-developed skill of mixing ingredients for coloured glass (or glass painting).

Hartley Wear Glassworks were also one of the earliest companies in the world to produce coloured glass which was used mainly in churches. James Hartley would occasionally make a gift of entire windows to local churches. One example was the large geometrical window in Park Road Methodist Church, Sunderland in 1887. Its value was £125.00.
(Wearsideonline.com)

James Anderson Grigg’s heritage comes from several generations of glass-makers on both sides of his family – through his father Samuel Grigg and his grandfather Emmanuel Grigg; and through his mother Mary Skade Anderson to her parents James Anderson and Janet Hartley, the latter from a family with impressive credentials in the glass-making industry in Britain.

Unfortunately, it seems that he eventually had to leave the glass trade. Business started to go sour for the Wear Glass Works in the 1890s as it fell behind in key technology and lost market share to other glass-works in Britain and in Belgium. It eventually closed its doors in 1894. Even before that, James must have lost his job, because by the 1891 census we see he is now working as a “Shipyard Laborer”.

And this explains why my grandfather William Grigg didn’t continue to follow the glass trade. According to family tradition, he started work in the shipbuilding industry in Hartlepool, Durham, but not long after his marriage moved to Trimdon and started work as a coal miner.

I find all of this absolutely fascinating, and quite unexpected. Real “Who Do You Think You Are” stuff.

References:
Chance, Hartley & Co Glassworks, Staffordshire
Hartley Wear Glassworks, Sunderland
Dumbarton Glassworks, Scotland
Newton Glassworks, Lancashire
Hartley Family

My occasional highly-erratic summary of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

Because of the long gap (three months) since my last summary, this is going to be a set of very brief comments on what I can remember!

It’s also startling to realize just how many books I read in a three-month period!

Black Echo

Angels’ Flight

The Poet

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

Library Hardback, Ebooks and Trade Paperback

Yeah, OK, so I’m addicted to popular thrillers. But I like Connelly’s outwardly hard-bitten but often personally vulnerable hero, Harry Bosch. Black Echo is the first book in this series, and I’ve only just read it. Stupidly, the territorial copyright system prevented me from actually paying the author for an electronic version, so I resorted to borrowing a free hardback copy from the local library. Anyway, it was interesting at last to read of Bosch’s first encounter with Eleanor Wish, a relationship which continues on and off throughout the whole series. Angel’s Flight is another in this series. Both books have interesting and not wholly predictable plots, and I enjoyed them both.

The Poet doesn’t feature Bosch, but instead journalist Jack McEvoy, devastated by the apparent suicide of his twin brother, a police officer. Of course in the way of such novels, it turns out that it was no suicide but a murder instead – indeed, part of a series of such murders. As the case becomes handled by the FBI, McEvoy becomes involved with an agent, Rachel Walling, but then starts to have doubts about her… I enjoyed this a lot, and would consider it one of Connelly’s best. Not so The Scarecrow, a sequel featuring McEvoy and Walling, which I thought was a very lightweight pot-boiler, and a real disappointment.

Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

Hardcover, my own collection

This is the third in a series of – what? re-imaginings, re-visitings, re-workings – of Niven’s Known Space science fiction books written in the 1960′s and 70′s. As such, they are really quite intriguing, as the events and characters in those old stories are woven into a wholly different framework seen from an alternative angle. Niven always has plenty of imagination, and wrote stories which really appeal to those who like speculation on the grand scale. But his dialogue and characterization have never been his strong suits. It’s when he teams up with others who are much stronger in these areas that he has done his best work – with Jerry Pournelle, for example, or here with Edward M. Lerner.

The previous two books in this series are Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds.

Infernal Devices

A Darkling Plain by Phillip Reeve

Paperbacks, my own collection

These are the last two books of the Mortal Engines tetralogy. I talked about the previous book Predator’s Gold here. Really superior (if occasionally a bit violent) science fiction for early teenagers, with strong characters and really interesting (if slightly unbelievable) premise of a future world in which cities have become mobile on great traction engines. I, of course, am no longer a teenager. But it doesn’t stop me really enjoying books written for that audience.

Illegal Action by Stella Rimington

E-book on my iPhone

This is the third in a series of thrillers written by the ex-head of Britain’s MI5. She certainly has the background knowledge and isn’t a bad (if not great) writer either.

American Empire: Blood and Iron

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

American Empire: Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove

Audiobooks

Turtledove is, as they say, the master of alternative history. But gosh this is a long-winded series! So far I have listened to over 160 hours of Turtledove’s vision of a world in which the Confederate States won the American Civil War in 1862. After that event – now called “The War of Secession” – we had the “Second Mexican War” in the 1880s, and “The Great War” in 1914-1917, at the end of which the Confederate States (and their allies Britain and France) were defeated by the USA and Germany.

The “American Empire” group of Turtledove’s novels covers the aftermath of that defeat and leads us up to the 1940s. It’s fascinating how the author spins an entirely believable tale of how a disgruntled sergeant in the defeated Southern army, embittered by his experiences and filled with a conviction that the South was “stabbed in the back” by “traitors” in the government and by an uprising amongst the still-mistreated blacks, goes on to join and then lead, a new political party. Turtledove so cleverly shapes his story that the realization of the parallels with events in Germany in “our” timeline is slow in coming. By casting that story in utterly convincing terms in an American setting, he makes us see those “real” events in a much deeper way.

And so on to the next four novels and the opening of the equivalent of World War II. Lots more reading to do!

Once Upon a Time in the North by Phillip Pullman

Small hardback, my own collection

Very brief but enjoyable prequel to Pullman’s “Golden Compass” series, telling the story of how Lee Scoresby first meets up with the armored polar bear Iorek Byrnison. This is a small-format gift book.

Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan

E-book on my iPhone

Well, this was free (from Baen Books), and worth about what I paid for it. I read the original SF novel in paperback years ago, and I seemed to remember enjoying it, so I read it again for curiosity. I was surprised, though, at how poorly written it was. The plot is all driven by a series of revelations rather than by the actions of the characters (let alone by the interactions of the characters).

The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell

Trade paperback, on loan

The latest Wexford novel from Rendell. Cleverly done, and well-written, if not particularly deep. Rendell writes so many, and so many very excellent, books that I’m sure she sees these police-procedural Wexford books as a relaxation from her more challenging works.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. (Ebook)
• The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell (Audiobook)

I know I haven’t updated this blog for three months, no doubt disappointing my tens of thousands of regular readers*.

The main reason for this long gap is that I was pushed a bit off balance by the death of my 91-year old father, Bill Grigg, in October.

Though it had been clear for some months that his health was declining rapidly, and he had gone voluntarily into a nursing home in June, it was still a blow when the end eventually came. It was particularly hard, of course, on my mother. They had been married for 60 years.

I don’t want to publish very much about my father here – I’m not much in favor of publishing very personal material to the wide world of the Internet (so call me a dinosaur in this era of twittering every random thought).

I did put together a photo tribute to my father on DVD, which was played at the funeral service, and I also spoke about how, by his example, he contributed greatly to my love of reading, and particularly reading science fiction and fantasy (he was a great fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Speaking of which, I’ll try to catch up in a separate blog, however, briefly, on the reading I’ve done over the last few months.

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* Well, disappointing my daughter and my mother, anyway, and possibly two or three others. My wife, I think, doesn’t see much point in reading my blog since she hears most of this stuff from me directly.