I CAN’T COMPETE WITH THE RIDERS IN THE OTHER HEATS [323]

You might be surprised that people continue to use Microsoft Internet Explorer but, these days, there are people that will never have used it. Since I registered www.leighspence.net, Internet Explorer accounts for only 1.3% of all access to this site so far – two thirds of access was made by Safari for iOS and iPadOS, distantly followed by Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and the desktop version of Safari. Hardly anyone used Opera to access this site, despite it now being used on more desktop computers than Internet Explorer, which held a 95% share of all desktop computer web browsing in 2003.

I have only just found out that Microsoft is finally withdrawing Internet Explorer on 15^th June 2022 – people who upgraded to Windows 11 have already found it has disappeared, and it will not work if a re-download is attempted, but considering the last major update to the browser was made in 2013, you are only looking to continue using it if you need it. Microsoft’s other browser, Edge, retains an “Internet Explorer” mode so people can continue to access older systems, in some cases the server access sites they need to continue working from home. My moving from PC to Mac means that compatibility issues are both expected, and accounted for – if I work from home, signing into one web page starts a program that will bridge any gaps between my computer and the server at work – but forcing progress on PCs has been slow.

 

The “Internet Explorer” mode on Edge was meant to have been provided from 2015, when Windows 10 and Edge first appeared, before it was decided to push the browser as the new one that people should be using, despite the untidy situation created of supplying an operating system with two web browsers. What causes the difference is the browser engine used, which renders the HTML code used by the browser into a viewable page: Internet Explorer used its own proprietary engine, MSHTML, while Edge, which originally also used its own engine, now uses an open-source engine also used by Google Chrome, Opera, Amazon and Samsung. Decisions on which engine to use determine how the internet develops, as proved when Apple announced they would not support the Flash plug-in on its browsers in 2011, forcing developers to use alternatives for web graphics.

 

I know I can download any browser I want, but I use Safari on my phone and computer because it was simply the browser those devices came with, and I have not had a specific reason to need a different one. In bundling Internet Explorer with later updates to Windows 95, then Windows 98 onwards, and insisting new computers using Windows came with the software, Microsoft created the impression that a web browser is part of your device’s operating system, before it became the most used part of it. Even if Windows is not the only operating system anymore, and a PC is not the only computer, this perception persists, as viewers to my site have perhaps proven.

AMBITION AND LOVE WEARING BOXING GLOVES [124]

Until I recover my pictures, this is a cautionary tale.

We choose to use old digital cameras. We choose to use technology from two decades ago over our smartphones, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to frustrate and drain the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is not one we should have been willing to accept, one we are willing to postpone, and one which we intend to win, or not, just give me a break.

Whereas John F. Kennedy proposed reaching the Moon to push the United States into the future, using an old camera attempts to catch the past within our present, reframing what we see now in an evocative and familiar fashion – usually a less detailed, less colourful version of now.

I tried to replicate this effect using what I already own, but reducing the resolution of pictures taken on my iPhone 7, or even on my Sony CyberShot camera from 2009, down to the 0.3 million, 640 x 480 pixel-size standard for digital cameras twenty years ago, only gives you smaller versions of well-taken pictures. Buying a camera that uses film was out of the question, as were the costs now involved with developing film (such as travelling to somewhere that still does it), so finding something suitably old almost took me back to the beginning of digital cameras. The first consumer digital camera was 1994’s Apple QuickTake 100, but I was able to find an Olympus Camedia C-420L, from 1998, for a modest amount on eBay... However, it could not read the memory cards inserted into it, so I then found a C-830L, released the following year.

Both Olympus cameras could be mistaken for a 35mm film camera, perhaps to make them easy for first-time digital users. To take a picture, you have to look through the viewfinder window at the top – there is also a screen, but you have to turn it on first, with the rest of the operations controlled by the buttons and LCD screen along the top. The cameras have no internal memory, requiring you to load a SmartMedia card (a large predecessor to the SD card) like you were loading film – the C-830L takes cards of up to 16 megabytes in size, enough for nearly 100 pictures, or only 24 pictures in high resolution (1.3m pixels). The cameras do not simulate the click of a picture being taken, as enough mechanics remain for it to make that noise anyway.

So far, so good, but this is when progress in computer technology starts to eat away at your resolve. We are so used to plug-and-play devices, USB connections, cheap controller chips, and common software and file formats - we expect everything to be read first time without question or issue. This is an incredibly recent luxury – even adding a mouse to your PC once meant loading a program to make it work. In addition, Microsoft Windows has been through about seven different versions in twenty years, meaning old software will no longer work on new computers – this is why businesses continue to pay Microsoft to maintain support for Windows XP, which dates back to 2001.

Here is where I stand: I have a camera that should have some pictures on it, in some form. I could not connect it to my computer – what I thought was an old-style serial port turned out to be a monitor output, so I have sourced a USB adaptor. The software provided for my camera is so old, my Windows 10 computer cannot read it. To create a computer that can read it, I downloaded Oracle’s VitrualBox program, which can simulate a virtual old-style computer within your regular one, but even that requires its own operating system to work - as a result, I bought an unopened copy of Windows 98, the first version of Windows that provides proper USB support, for £10 on eBay. All I need to do now is to get it to recognise the ports on my computer, and I should reach the end of my journey.

I refuse to be beaten by this - I have come too far. This is no longer about nostalgia, or even about the pictures: this is about the will to succeed. When the time comes, I shall share the results, but until then, the journey continues.