On I had written a weblog post titled Objets trouvés = found objects. It mentioned the destruction of the Red Bridge in Kamloops. The post was mainly about objects found in Muustrøparken, the sculpture park in Straumen, 13 km east of Cliff Cottage, where we live. In that earlier post, I admitted regret that I had not taken a photo, but promised to include it in a future weblog post. It is a photo of a very simple garage, the one shown above. In it there is space for exactly one vehicle (on the right), and a compact workshop (on the left). I wanted to include this photo because it shows the maximum space most people have at their disposition if they want to work on/ play with a vehicle. I did not want the doors open, because I wanted everyone to use their imagination to envisage the interior of the garage. For example, I would want an assembly/ finishing/ inspection/ test/working/ workshop pit.
Four years ago today, on 2021-10-29, a weblog post titled Downsizing the Garage, updated an eight-year old post, from 2017-10-29, Stuffing a 10-car Garage. Now, it is time to make a new update, Shrinking the Garage. During these three iterations, the number of vehicles has declined from an initial 10 in 2017 to 6 in 2021 to 3 in 2025. Originally, I had been aiming at four vehicles: a pickup, a van, a rural passenger vehicle and an urban passenger vehicle. Then at the end of 2025-04, Slate was announced. It allowed a pickup to be transformed into a SUV = rural passenger vehicle. Then I discovered the Honda N-van E FUN, which was a van/ MPV = Multi-Purpose Vehicle. At the beginning of 2025-04, I had expected to rely on a Hyundai Inster as an inexpensive urban vehicle. At the time it was expected to cost NOK 320 k. However, when the Nio Firefly was announced it cost NOK 289 k. These prices were far too expensive for families with young children. The Hyundai Inster is now being sold in Norway, at a price of NOK 245 k. This is approaching affordable.
The main selection criteria were: 1) small, 2) inexpensive, 3) battery electric. On 2023-03-05 one source said there were 40 battery electric models available in USA. There are now about 70 models available at the end of 2025-04. In Europe, the Alternative Fuels Observatory claims there have been 371 models available up to the end of 2023. In terms of small, I have tried to find something smallish. Most often I have been attracted to Japanese Kei vehicles. Yes, smallness is more of an art than a science.
Perhaps the hardest criteria to meet has been that of price. Price is always difficult because of a lack of corporate transparency. Consumers do not know how the companies allocate the income from the sale of a vehicle. They suspect that profits are whatever is leftover, but they underestimate the greed of investors. There are four large slices of that pie: material and component costs; labour costs; debt costs; and, dividend costs paid out to shareholders. My suspicion is that shareholders want the largest slice of the pie. This is difficult with EVs, because these vehicles have large material and component costs.
Then there is the problem of software. I have not been impressed with the software on Buzz. It is almost adequate. German society does not do software well. Indeed, I worry that almost the entire automotive software industry, outside of China, should receive a failing grade. Everywhere else, corporations are more concerned about mechanical engineering.
Returning to the opening paragraph, people may be wondering why a garage is so important. The answer is Right to Repair. In the neighbourhood where I grew up, there were youths who had constructed their own hot rods, ideally a deuce (= 1932 Ford, with an emphasis on the 2) coupe = a two seater. Others restored Model A Fords, with varying degrees of success. This does not seem to be done any more, as cars have become more complex and have to meet improved safety standards. Manufacturers are putting limits on what people are allowed to do with their vehicles. The Model A Ford was made between 1928 and 1931, with the model year actually starting in August of the year before, so the oldest Model A is about 98 years old. It is only about six years before those deuce coupes reach the century mark.
With the exception of our 2012 Mazda 5, now owned by Alasdair, all of our previous vehicles have been crushed. At one point, I attempted to buy back our 2002 Citroën Berlingo. However, it too had reached its ultimate fate. I regarded it as the ultimate inexpensive family vehicle in Europe. We bought it with the only two factory options available, a left rear door, and ABS brakes.
EVs are increasing in popularity, and improving, technically and in terms of design. Unfortunately, most of this development is happening in vehicle segments that people should be avoiding . This weblog post presents two EVs made by two companies for four different segments on two different continents. During the year this post has been in development, all of four models originally selected have departed the list, and been replaced by others.
The 2025 United Nations COP 30 Climate Change Conference, is scheduled to be held 2025-11-10 to 21 in Belém, Brazil. This is important because it finally takes the climate change focus into the Amazon.
In Europe, auto segments range from A (mini) to F (luxury). In addition there are sports utility (J), Multi-purpose (M) and sports (S). Our current vehicle, a Volkswagen Buzz EV is in the M category.
Pickup
Pickups are as American as pizza, so there would probably not have been many objections if this slot had been filled by any number of American vehicles including, in alphabetical order by brand, the Chevrolet Silverado EV, the Ford F-150 Lightning, the GMC Hummer EV, the Rivian R1T, and the Tesla Cybertruck, There was a time when this list might have also included the Havelaar Bison, the Lordstown Endurance and the Nikola Badger.
With the exception of the Bison, none of the vehicles listed above appeal to me. They are too massive. I saw a Ford F-150 Lightning for the first time on 2024-06-11, on display at TRD = Trondheim Airport Værnes. However, I will also admit, that the first vehicle I leaned to drive on, at the tender age of 14, was a Chevrolet Advance Design 3100 pickup, probably from 1952, in the farm fields of Okanagan Mission, near Kelowna. It belonged to Harry Raymer. Later, in the early 1970s, I drove Ernie Jickles – whose eyesight was failing and was not allowed to drive – around in his wife’s Ford Courier pickup, so we could photograph. The Courier was a rebadged Mazda B-1800. In the late 1980s, in Inderøy, I drove a Nissan pickup working on a lafted house project out in Malm.
I say that because somewhere deep inside me, I am waiting for a 1) battery electric, 2) small size, 3) inexpensive pickup, like the …
Slate
I have actually begun to spell Slate as sla/Te, which can be manipulated to become Te/sla, or even Tesla. Yes, the antithesis of the non-functional Cybertruck. Most of the specifications for the Slate are below the second vehicle under consideration. Slate makes the comparison that its size is similar to to a 1985 Toyota pickup. However, since numerous pickup owners have tried to impress me with their pickup beds, here are the bed statistics for Slate. Yes, that means that almost a quarter of sheets of plywood will stick out. With the tailgate folded down, about 1524 + 483 + 6 (to create a round number) = 2 010 mm of a standard sheet of plywood would be contained leaving 2440 – 2010 mm = 430 mm sticking out beyond the confines of the truck. There should be no problem with width as a standard sheet = 1220 mm in width.
Bed Size
L = 1 524 mm
W = 1 524 mm
H = 483 mm
Honda N-Van e FUN
Honda N-Van e is small, but can carry a lot of stuff. This RHD version has pillar-less entry on the passenger side, and sufficient space to carry a lot of things, or up to four passengers, in the L4 or FUN variants.
The N originally stood for norimono, literally a litter, where two (sometimes more) people carry a high-status person, but which in modern Japanese loosely translates as vehicle. The N-Van is only built for the Japanese market, so it is only available with right hand drive (RHD). This is not a problem, but a customization challenge in left-hand drive territories, such as most of Europe or the Americas.
Current available colours are: Frame Red, French Blue Pearl, Admiral Gray Metallic, Nighthawk Black Pearl, Sonic Gray Pearl and Platinum White Pearl. Discontinued Colours: Premium Yellow Pearl, Surf Blue and Pink. When buying a used N-Van, the exterior colour is not an issue. Indeed to negotiate a lower price, I would even accept some fading, or minor rust damage. I would want to repaint it a fairly unusual colour such as turquoise.
Yes, the darker turquoise in this turquoise and gold wallpaper would look very nice as the main or lower colour of an N-van. The roof could be white, and the wheels gold.
The interior is fully black instead of having grey interior trims seen on many kei commercial vehicles. It is also equipped with a high-performance dust collection filter compatible with PM2.5, an optional special package for driving navigation possibly not suitable outside of Japan, front two speakers, and USB jacks for charging, with 2 quick charging compatible types. Two accessory sockets (DC12V) are fitted, of which one is located at the passenger seat, and the other is at the left rear panel in the cargo area. The rear seats also comes with headrests. The door mirrors are retractable. The front two windows have heat shield IR/UV cut, while the front windscreen has Super UV protection as standard. For the sliding door, rear quarter and tailgate, privacy glass is standard equipment.
So, what is the real reason for promoting a right-hand drive (RHD) vehicle in a left-hand drive (LHD) country? First, it would be interesting to work on a small, inexpensive, battery electric vehicle. Second, I am attracted to vans, not sedans or coupes or even convertibles. Third, this is not a high priority item for me, so I would prefer to schedule it at a time of my life when I don’t have other obligations, such as between 2033 and 2038, when I am between 85 and 90 years old, what some people would call overtime. One of my goals would be to transform it into a LHD vehicle.
There are other models that could work equally well, these include the newly launched design triplet EVs:Toyota Pixis Van, Suzuki Every and Daihatsu Hijet (All made by Daihatsu). These have about 200 km of range. There is also the older Mitsubishi Minicab MiEV. Beyond Japan, there is the South Korean Kia Ray. Of course, another approach is to take an ICE Suzuki Jimney or Subaru Sambar or an older Daihatsu Hijet and convert it to an EV.
This was a British Daihatsu advertisement from 1996. Such a vehicle with a non-functioning engine would be appropriate to have as an EV project vehicle.
This could make a great runabout for Shelagh on her 50th birthday in 2039! Hopefully by then she will have a driving license.
Hyundai Inster
Hyundai Inster with typical customer. Photo: Hyundai
At one time in Norway it seemed that almost everyone over the age of 70 was driving either a Suzuki Swift or a Hyundai i10. The Swift 4×4 hybrid is still available, but I am uncertain how many people are buying it. It costs NOK 345 k. The i10 has been replaced by the Inster. Except, the Inster seems to have attracted younger and more feminine drivers.
Having written a weblog about the Hyundai Casper, I feel no need to repeat myself. Most of the relevant information about the Inster is found at this link. One videograph described the Inster as: More for Less, or was it Less is More.
Company
Model
Segment
Country
Slate
–
Pickup => SUV
USA
Honda
N-Van-e FUN
MPV
Japan
Hyundai
Inster
Crossover City Car
South Korea
Two companies in two countries on two continents, producing four or more vehicle models for assorted segments.
Vehicle type
Slate
N-Van
Inster
Acceleration 0-100 km/h (s)
4.0
Passenger accommodation
2 – 5
4
4
Range (km)
550
230
327
Charging Speed 20-80% (minutes)
20
30
Top Speed (km/h)
200
140
Power (kW)
380
47
71
Mass (kg)
2 000
1 060
1 335
Length (mm)
3 861
3 395
3 825
Width (mm)
1 854
1 475
1 610
Height (mm)
1 676
1 950
1 610
Wheelbase (mm)
2 520
2 580
Ground clearance (mm)
Base Price
Yes, some data is missing, so the table will be completed as relevant data emerges.
Back on 2022-12-17, I had published a weblog post titled, Collectors. In it I had written: I still recall one day, when indulgence took the overhand. I contacted a Norwegian company whose mission is to sell used computing equipment. I asked specifically about its holding of older Asus EEE PCs and netbooks. A white Asus EEE PC 702 from 2007 is arguably the first netbook. With a profusion of good will, one can almost regard this device as a PDA = personal digital assistant! Almost!!
I then mentioned that I might be interested in acquiring an Asus tablet. Originally launched in 2010 as an EEEpad, its name was later changed to ZenPad. Fortunately, they had neither. This obsession with ancient EEE equipment is totally irrational. Despite having no need for obsolete kit, I am still attracted to the EEE netbooks, writing about them in 2016 and 2018. They are totally useless in this modern era.
Totally useless but … back on 2012-10-28, I had bought a larger, and slightly more modern home theatre version, an EEE Box 1501P with an Intel Atom D525 processor and 2 GB of RAM, 230 GB hard disk. It tended to overheat, but was used in place of a video server, attached to a screen.
Did I learn my lesson? No, people like me seldom do. They repeat the same mistakes. Thus, I can now report that I have come even closer to owning a PDA, at least in my own mind, but still referred to as a Netbook by everyone else. It is an Asus EEE PC 1005PX, bought 2025-08-11. Enthusiasts refer to it as the Seashell. The earlier EEE PCs were always inferior because of issues of overheating. With this netbook, the overheating issues were reduced. Reduced, not eliminated.
In the beginning there were books where people stored addresses and telephone numbers. Yes, we do have antiquated address books, most often with historic = out of date addresses. People move. Decades ago now, people transitioned from landlines to cell phones. Yet, we still maintain one physical book recording people we know = Fødselsdagboken = the birthday book, edited by Herman Wildenvey (1885-1959) with illustrations by Arnold Thornam (1877 – 1964). Our copy dates from 1995. Over the years, fewer birth dates and more death dates have been added.
Norwegian bookstores are always willing to sell us what they call system calendars, known as a Filofax elsewhere. The only one I have ever appreciated has a yellow cover in fake leather, and costs NOK 800. Readers will be surprised, given the evidence provided above, that so far, I have been able to resist temptation. I am smart enough to know that this is a real waste of money. Yet, I am not smart enough to avoid buying obsolete computers. In my addled brain, they are investments!
These days, I store names, physical addresses, telephone numbers and epost addresses in electronic address books, that are found on my smartphone, laptop and desktop computers. No, none of these are coordinated, so there can be multiple entries for the same person, and a person noted on one machine may be missing from other machines. Presumably there are digital tools to ensure that entries in one location are replicated in all the other locations.
I admit that much of the content here comes from Jon Y at Asianometry YouTube channel, who published a sprawling, globe-spanning video, [where] we look at the Personal Digital Assistant, the PDA... about the 1980s, new technologies [that] enabled the rise of a new category of electronic tools to replace those books. Those devices’ innovations take us right into the modern era of smartphones.
Jon tells us: The first companies to produce devices to try and replace those paper organizers were the Japanese makers of pocket calculators. This makes sense since they already had LSI = large scale integration expertise and CMOS = complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology for it. In 1980, Sharp released the PC-1210, widely considered to be the first pocket computer. Given a full QWERTY keyboard, its big differentiation was that users could write programs on it using the BASIC programming language. In 1983, Casio released the PF-3000, the first “electronic organizer”. The key selling feature for that one was an address book that stored a person’s phone number and name in Katakana – the phonetic alphabet, not Kanji, a Chinese one. The organizer had a program to help sort those entries, which was seen as a significant improvement over paper address books. Sharp quickly brought out their own organizer. And over the next few years, new functions like clocks, schedulers, and alarms were added.
Y claims that Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are the ancestors of smartphones. That may be true, but I would rather replay the early digital revolution, and state that Calculators were the first digital electronic devices. Pocket-sized devices became available in the 1970s, especially after the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, was developed by Intel for the Japanese calculator company Busicom.
I did not own a calculator until 1982, when I bought a Casio fx-82, scientific calculator with 8 digits precision and algebraic logic. It had 43 functions, 38 keys and a one line LCD (liquid crystal) display. The power source was 2 x AA batteries. The calculator was manufactured in Japan. So far, we have owned four iterations of this model, the last being a Casio fx-82EX Classwiz, available since 2015, but purchased in 2021 and powered with 1 x AAA battery. The reason for its purchase was a need to have a calculator for an exam. Because of concerns with cheating, calculator apps on smartphones were not allowed. This model has a dot-matrix display capable of showing up to six lines and 15-digit precision. Since I have no need to use a calculator on a daily basis, something simple like this calculator meets my needs in terms of its capability and easy of use. Most operations are available on the keyboard, but some are hidden under the OPTN key. Calculators in the Casio fx-82 series are suitable non-programmable scientific calculators for educational use.
In my teaching career, I have also used programmable scientific calculators teaching mathematics. One school provided me with something from Texas Instruments, while another provided me with a Casio product. These were not compatible, so schools had to choose one product or the other. At the time, pupils were expected to buy their own. I think this situation has changed since them.
After calculators came early microcomputers suitable for home use that existed from 1977 to about 1995. These were simple machines that made use of household items such as television sets and cassette recorders instead of dedicated computer peripherals. This allowed families to own a computer at a fraction of the price of small business computers. Today, the price of microcomputers has dropped to the point where there’s no advantage to building a separate, incompatible series just for home users. We were never part of this trend. In 1986, we borrowed a Commodore Amiga 1000 while waiting for our Amiga 2000 to arrive.
The first generation of organizers ran embedded operating systems. Embedded referred to the software being implanted into the device, typically inside ROM = Read Only Memory ICs = integrated circuits aka chips. These ICs can be very fast, but offered limited storage capacity, which meant that these systems were not particularly functional. For a handheld device to offer everything for everyone, then it needed a powerful software platform = operating system plus applications.
Psion
In ancient times (1980s) every device manufacturer would explain that their device was the first real PDA = personal digital assistant, and that the others are fakes, for some reason or other. Of course they used other terms, because PDA, as one will read, was not yet a term. With the benefit of hindsight, computer historians are more agreed. They refer to a British mathematical physicist who founded Potter Scientific Instruments = Psion. In 1984, it released an 8-bit Organizer I. It had a basic calculator-like keyboard and a one-line 16-character LCD screen. It was powered by a Hitachi 8-bit CMOS processor. In terms of software, it had a searchable address database for storing personal data. In addition, it could be programmed using an application pack that enabled BASIC-like programs in its own programming language. For example, users could bring up functions for calculating things like factorials. One of its key differentiators was its adoption of EPROMs = erasable programmable read-only memory for storage. These were a precursor to NAND flash memory = a type of non-volatile computer memory, differ from DRAM = Dynamic random-access memory, because they retain their data even when the power turned off. That was important. Before that tape cassettes were used for mass storage, which were totally impractical for a handheld device.
I remember using EPROMS from my computer studies in Molde in the 1980s. They were invented by Intel. Content could be erased by pulling the chip out of the device and holding it under ultraviolet light for 15 minutes. Yes, the EPROMS were fitted in sockets designed for easy (some would say perpetual) removal and replacement. One had to wear protective glasses during the ultraviolet process.
One approach to enhance performance was to transition from 8-bit to 16-bit microprocessors. This transition started about 1987. Psion began work on EPOC = a new 16-bit operating system. Producing a new OS from the ground up for a very small, 16-bit single-board computer was astoundingly difficult. Psion struggled with this for two years.
In 1989, Psion released The Mobile Computer, with models named the MC 200, 400 and 600. The middle model was powered by eight AA batteries for 60 hours of uptime. Already here, this seems like a misstep, although we have owned rechargers for rechargeable AA batteries. These machines ran a 16-bit EPOC operating system = EPOC16. It came with a GUI = Graphical User Interface, with windows, icons, menus and pointers. It also had its own programming language OPL = Open Programming Language, for embedded systems and mobile devices that also ran under EPOC or Symbian.
It is generally conceded that reviewers generally liked the device. It is also popular in retro-computing communities, because many of its features were ahead of its time. However, users preferred not to buy the model, because of its steep release price, lack of DOS compatibility, and issues with the EPOC OS. For example, OPL did not support MC graphics.
This machine’s development began with a single question: What did they want this device to be? An organiser or a computer? The development team at Psion made a fateful call. Believing that enough people would be familiar with computers by now, they decided to make their next Organizer a computer, leveraging their experiences from developing the MC400. The Organizer Series 3 got a full QWERTY keyboard. Extra time let them give the EPOC some polish and the features expected of a normal desktop: Word processor application, spreadsheet, scheduler, clock, and even modems for communications. The screen was 240×80 pixels and was about 4 inches diagonally. Size-wise, the whole device was about 6 inches by 3 inches and weighed 255 grams. Which is the equivalent of a red squirrel from the British isles or a partially full can of soda. A faster x86 CPU fabbed by NEC allowed it to run on just 2 AA batteries. But even so, the engineers struggled to find a place for those batteries. The only solution was inside the hinge between the screen and keyboard, giving the whole thing a clamshell design. Released in autumn 1991 and priced at just 195 pounds or about $300, the Organizer Series 3, or just Series 3, was the right product at the right time. Psion expected to sell maybe 5,000 units per month. It ended up selling over 100,000 units right out the gate and 20,000 a month. Psion began work on a successor. Targeting the next generation of microprocessors, they started a new 32-bit version of EPOC. More on that later. But when it and its new hardware arrived at the scene, the product landscape will have drastically changed.
Psion kept itself busy with incremental model updates of its Series 3 with more memory, faster ports, and speedier software. They eventually sold 1.5 million units in total. In 1994, they began work on a new, 32-bit version of its EPOC operating system, nicknamed EPOC32, . But the Palm Pilot’s breakout success and Microsoft’s rapidly improving Windows CE product raised the stakes. Even as the company worked on its next hardware product, the Series 5, they faced constant questions about impending irrelevance. Third parties and analysts confidently saying that if Psion did not license their software to outside partners, then they too will fall like Apple and IBM. In July 1997, Psion released their Series 5 hardware. Yes, they skipped the Series 4, maybe because it means “death” in Chinese? Unfortunately despite good reviews, the Series 5 did not sell very well. And worse yet, it had cost 10 times more to develop than the Series 3 – leading to a profit warning for the second half of 1997. The share price had surged in 1996 but took a dump due to this lower profit as well as fears over Microsoft. The questions and second-guessing intensified. Can Psion and the Palmtop continue to fend off Windows and the other PDA challengers? Pen Computing
Organizer II was released in 1986. It remained an 8-bit device but featured a few new hardware changes like an improved EPROM flash memory that eliminated the need to expose the memory cards to UV light for erasure. But the most striking change was the software. The Organizer II’s larger RAM let it add extra capabilities with the help of expansion packs. It could also read Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, using an awkward Comms Link cable.
Casio, Sharp and Sony
The next models out were the Japanese made Casio BOSS = Business Organizer Scheduling System and Sharp Wizard. These had an appointment diary, calendar, phone directory, clock, calculator, and notepad. They could be connected them to personal computers for syncing. IC cards could also be used to expand functionality. Common uses included: note taking, calculations, telephone contact lookup, scheduling with a calendar and alarm functions.
Sony releases the PalmTop PTC-500 in 1990. It did not have a keyboard, but input text into boxes using a connected capacitive stylus. To recognize characters, the PalmTop used fuzzy logic, which evaluated a person’s writing using a bunch of inference scoring rules that output between 0 and 1. Users claim it worked well. Fuzzy logic was a Japanese specialty used in many consumer products, such as rice cookers. Despite its name, the PalmTop was large = 208 x 160 x 35.6 mm and also expensive.
People may not expect to find the Apple Newton in this section, but Sharp was Apple’s hardware manufacturing partner for the Newton, because of their expertise with liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. When our family was going through an Apple phase, I had attempted to buy an Apple Newton, but the product was discontinued before it became available in Norway. Sharp also made ExpertPads, which used a licensed Newton OS. Sharp sometimes failed. The Sharp PV-F1 became a successful product only after it was transformed into the Zaurus PI-3000, released in 1993-10. The physical size of the product was shrunk, a second CPU was added to handle handwriting recognition. They leveraging Sharp’s then-leading semiconductor capacity. This PDA line lasted for over a decade, in many different iterations.
If someone is considering a Japanese based PDA, there are two choices: the Newton, and a Zaurus. The last model launched, was the SL-C3200 (code name Terrier) released in 2006. Some enthusiasts claim that the earlier SL-C3100 model (code name Borzoi) had a CPU that was better, because of its overclocking capabilities. For many users, a software package with text-to-speech software from Nuance Communications and an upgraded dictionary, is important. These SL series devices were only sold in Japan, but it is claimed that there were unnamed companies in Japan that exported them worldwide. The main challenge has to do with finding suitable power supplies. Inside, the Zaurus needs a 5 V/1 A DC supply.
Digression: I have always been a firm believer that size matters, that is, computers should be as small as possible. That was my contention until 2025-09, when we acquired Lian Li 011 Air Mini cases that occupy 43 litres to house our new hardware. These replaced our Asus PN-40 and PN-50 cases that occupied 0.5 litres. This transformation was possible because we moved the computer from the desktop to the floor. Yes, I tell anyone willing to listen that I have gone from desktop to floor computing.
In the PDA world, the transition went the other way, skrinking components to create palmtops (with the first four letters referring to a hand) or even wristtop = wristwatch like computers, in the late 1980s. In 1989, Atari released the Portfolio, produced by British DIP, founded by former Psion employees. The Portfolio’s OS = DIP-DOS, was compatible with MS-DOS. It marketed itself as: the power of the IBM PC in the palm of your hand.
Other palmtops were shrunken laptops with tiny keyboards and screens. These included the Hewlett-Packard 95LX (with the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet built in) and the Poquet PC. Palmtops are notable because they run desktop software. Unfortunately, most of the time it runs badly. Neither the cramped screen and keyboard are suitable.
At this point we screech to a halt at Xerox PARC = Palo Alto Research Centre, founded in 1969 by Jack Goldman (1921 – 2011), chief scientist of Xerox Corporations, but dominated by computer scientist Alan Kay (1940 – ). In terms of PDAs, the most important device was the PARCTab, an experimental mobile computing device, that was an early experiment in ubiquitous computing. Its functionality depends on the user’s location, by receiving location-specific information via infrared sensors from gateway nodes installed in a particular location. It had a touch screen, stylus, and handwriting recognition. Xerox also designed something larger, the PARCPad.
GRiD systems was a subsidiary of Tandy, owner of Radio Shack. In 1989, they released their GRiDPad, an MS-DOS tablet computer equipped with handwriting recognition software that helped people fill out repetitive forms. It was developed by neuroscientist and Berkeley PhD dropout Jeff Hawkins (1957 – ). The GRiDPad sold well, but inspired other pen computing startups, including GO Corporation, founded in 1987 by Jerry Kaplan (1952 -) former chief technologist at Lotus. It was backed by venture capitalist John Doerr (1951 – ) after he saw a demo.
GO made the PenPoint operating system, which let users do things by writing. Someone can delete a word by circling and then drawing an X over it. Or italicize that word by drawing a squiggly line underneath it. By 1991, pen computing was a technology rage. PenPoint was later used by NCR Corporation for a line of tablet computers. In 1991, Microsoft demoed Pen-Windows based on Windows 3.0. It turned out to be a failed approach.
Another mover was the EO released in 1993-04, created by Eo Inc. that was later acquired by AT&T Corporation, and released in April 1993. It was a large personal digital assistant with wireless communications that competed against the Apple Newton. Associated with its design and production were David Kelley Design, frog design, and the Matsushita, Olivetti and Marubeni corporations.
EOs two models, were both named the Communicator but with either 440 or 880 to differentiate them. Thye were produced that are about the size of a small clipboard. Both are powered by the AT&T Hobbit chip, created by AT&T specifically for running code written in the C programming language. They feature modem, parallel, serial, Video Graphics Array (VGA) out and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) ports. The devices came with a wireless cellular network modem, a built-in microphone with speaker, and in USA, a free subscription to AT&T EasyLink Mail for both fax and e-mail messages. The operating system, PenPoint OS, was created by GO Corporation. Widely praised for its simplicity and ease of use, the OS did not gain widespread use. The applications suite, Perspective, was licensed to EO by Pensoft.
Back at Xerox PARC, the DynaBook, was launched. Apple was experiencing difficult times. Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011) was ousted, and replaced by John Sculley (1939 – ) who introduced a second-generation DynaBook called the Knowledge Navigator. Yes, these products are nothing like a PDA, but in 1991 it led to the Newton, previously discussed. Sculley wanted a device that was small enough to put into his pocket. So Newton lead Larry Tesler (1945 – 2020) turned to British Acorn Computer Company, forming a joint venture between Apple, Acorn, and the chip company VLSI Technology. This joint venture produced a new chip, the Acorn RISC Machine, which is the basis of ARM.
In 1992, Sculley finally presented a new device to the world, the Personal Digital Assistant. Twelve years into the history of the PDA and finally the world has a name for a device category that has since stuck. Yet, there is general agreement that this Apple PDA should have been more like the Sharp Wizard, an organizer for professionals on the move. In retrospect, the PDA did not need to accurately read natural handwriting, but it did need to have a cell connection.
Jeff Hawkins made the next import move. He raised money and founded Palm. His goal was to make a consumer GRiDPad. He later named it the Zoomer. To build it, Palm partnered with a consortium of Tandy/Radio Shack, Casio, Intuit and AOL. This large group was adversarial. The product they made was far too large and far too expensive. It ran slowly because of a chip issue related to Casio insisting that the device have 80 hours of battery life on AAA batteries
At this point the Newton, Zoomer, GO and EO floundered. Hawkins had produced Graffiti, a new handwriting recognition system that could potentially fix the handwriting issue, but it was too little too late. Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky (1955 – ) designed a new Palm product, not trying to do everything, just a few things well. It was a PC accessory, not the next PC. This approach required compromises. It had to be able to sync documents with a PC and then print it from there. It had to be small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. It had to be low priced. Its user interface had to be instantly responsive – fast on, fast app switching, all that. And the PC sync process had to be painless. After spending just $3 million on development, they convinced Singaporean OEM Flextronics to assemble what would eventually become the Palm Pilot, that launched in 1996, the Palm Pilot was small (120 x 79 x 18 mm) with a 75 x 125 mm screen, a small planner, address book, memo pad, and todo list. After the 1996 Christmas season, the Pilot had 70% of the market.
To improve the product’s usefulness, Palm released a software development kit (SDK) to let developers build third-party applications. Microsoft felt threatened, so for a second time, Bill Gates tells people that Microsoft was going to kill Palm. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Windows 95 used 8 megabytes of RAM that would not fit on handhelds. Windows CE was written from the ground up to create a companion to the Windows desktop. Unfortunately they created a cramped UI with menus, windows, and the Start button on a tiny screen. Microsoft announced Windows CE at CES in September 1996. The first CE 1.0 PDA devices were NEC’s Mobile Gear MC-K1 and Casio’s Cassiopeia A-10. They looked big and ugly and soon flopped. In 1997, Windows CE 2.0 arrived, correcting many of 1.0’s issues and adding new features. Windows CE never won the PDA market that Sharp and Palm dominated.
Symbian
The mid-1990s saw the rise of cellular phone systems and the 2G GSM standard. As cellular phones got more popular, handset giants like Nokia and Ericsson started adding PDA-like functionality to their devices. In 1996, Nokia released its Nokia 9000 Communicator, an advanced handset with a clamshell setup and QWERTY keyboard. One of the first smartphones, it could make phone calls, send emails and faxes, take notes and record calendar events. Nokia reached out to Psion about a collaboration. Together, they formed a joint venture. Psion’s software division worked EPOC32 into a multitasking OS = Symbian, adopted by Nokia, Ericsson and sometime later Motorola. Symbian went on to dominate the mobile phone OS market in Europe for the next 10 or so years.
By 1999, it had become clear to observers that mobile convergence was starting to happen. This meant that instead of a standalone device for calls, another for PDA functions, a separate camera or a Walkman for music, there was a single device. The PDA was a set of features.
Blackberry devices have always seemed to me to be reserved for older users, those uncomfortable typing on a touch screen, and who wanted the security of a physical keyboard. Older is a term that varies with the age of the person using it. In general it is someone at least 10 years older than the person using the expression.
Should anyone buy an ancient used PDA? I think the honest answer is, no! All of the important functionality has been put into a modern smartphone. Almost every dult I know owns such a phone. There is a movement in Norway to prevent children before senior secondary school using them. They will have to make do with conventional cell phones, sometimes referred to a dumb phones, although there is push back here, about using that term. Just call them a phone.
Unfortunately, smartphones are so smart, and require so advanced levels of human competence, that many people only learn a fraction of their phone’s capabilities. Yes, I definitely fall into that category. It seems everyone has their own favourite smartphone brand, and the reason for that precise choice varies. Like dogs, humans prefer to repeat old tricks, rather to update their repertoire to the new tricks required by transitioning to a different brand. The iPhone from a fruit company, and products from Samsung seem to dominate. For the next few years I will content myself with an Asus Zenfone 9.
That eliminates any need to buy a PDA. Despite this I am infatuated with another phone, a Jolla C2, using a Sailfish operating system, rather than Android. Designed in Finland, assembled in Turkey. Jolla is the Scandinavian term for a dinghy! Yes, I am considering buying one as a spare phone when I turn 80, in about three years!
I am not a fan of William Shockley (1910 – 1989), born in London, with a father who was a mining engineer, and with a childhood spent in Palo Alto, Californa. He initially studied at Caltech, in Pasadena, California, but attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for his Ph.D., before beginning work at Bell Labs, in Holmdel, New Jersey.
Bill was co-recipient of the Nobel prize in Physics in 1956 along with John Bardeen (1908 – 1991) and Walter Houser Brattain (1902–1987), for the invention of the transistor. Bardeen was born in Madison Wisconsin, educated in electrical engineering at the university there, then taking a Ph.D in mathematical physics at Princeton University, in New Jersey. He is the only double laureate in physics, being awarded the second one in 1972, with others. Brattain was born in Amoy (now Xiamen), China, to American parents. Much of his early life was spent in Washington State. He took his BS at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, then a MA at the University of Oregon, but took his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota.
Despite the transistor being developed by Shockley et al, it was invented by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (1882 – 1963), who filed a patent for the field-effect transistor principle in Canada on 1925-10-22, 100 years before the publication of this weblog post. In the 1990s one of Lilienfeld’s designs worked as described showing substantial gain = amplification. Legal papers from the Bell Labs patent show that William Shockley and Gerald Pearson (1905 – 1987), who both worked at Bell Labs, had built operational versions from Lilienfeld’s patents, yet they never referenced this work in any of their later research papers or historical articles. To my mind this is intellectual fraud.
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld was born to a Ashkenazi Jewish family in Lemberg = present-day Lviv, the largest city in Western Ukraine, but at the time in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After graduating high school in 1899, Lilienfeld studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (renamed Humboldt University in 1949), in Berlin, between 1900 and 1904. There he received his Ph.D. in 1905, before starting work at the physics institute at Leipzig University as an untenured professor.
At Leipzig, he worked on electrical discharges in the vacuum between metal electrodes, from about 1910. He was responsible for the identification of auto-electronic emission = field electron emission as a separate physical effect. He was interested in it as a possible electron source for miniaturised X-ray tubes, in medical applications. Lilienfeld was responsible for the first reliable account in English of the experimental phenomenology of field electron emission, in 1922. The effect was further explained by Fowler and Nordheim in 1928.
Lilienfeld moved to USA in 1921, becoming an American citizen in 1934. He also retained Polish citizenship. He worked as an electrical engineer and physicist, and was credited with the first patent on the field-effect transistor in 1925. However, he was never able to build a working practical semiconductor device based on his concept, in part because high-purity semiconductor materials were not available to him.
Lilienfeld married an American, Beatrice Ginsburg, in New York City on 1926-05-02. They lived in Winchester, Massachusetts, where Lilienfeld was director of Amrad owned by Magnavox, later named the Ergon Research Laboratories in Malden.
In the United States Lilienfeld did research on anodic aluminum oxide films, patenting the electrolytic capacitor in 1931, the method continuing to be used throughout the century. He also invented a FET-like transistor, filing several patents describing the construction and operation of transistors, as well as many features of modern transistors. FET refers to Field Effect Transistor. (US patent #1,745,175 is for a FET-like transistor. It was granted 1930-01-28.) When Brattain, Bardeen, and their colleague chemist Robert Gibney tried to get patents on their earliest devices, most of their claims were rejected due to the Lilienfeld patent.
After Ergon closed in 1935, the Lilienfelds built a house on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in hope of escaping an allergy associated with wheat fields, from which Lilienfeld had suffered for most of his life. Lilienfeld frequently traveled between St. Thomas and various mainland locations and continued to test new ideas and patent the resulting products.
The optical radiation emitted when electrons strike a metal surface is named Lilienfeld radiation after Lilienfeld first discovered it close to X-ray tube anodes. Its origin is attributed to the excitation of plasmons in the metal surface. In physics, a plasmon is a quantum of plasma oscillation. Just as light (an optical oscillation) consists of photons, the plasma oscillation consists of plasmons. The plasmon can be considered as a quasiparticle since it arises from the quantization of plasma oscillations, just like phonons are quantizations of mechanical vibrations.
The American Physical Society has named one of its major prizes after Lilienfeld.
Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin (1977) Lokomotivet Tøffe. The cover of a Norwegian language version of Ivor and Friends. In English Ivor works for The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, located in the top left-hand corner of Wales. His friends include Jones the Steam, Evans the Song and Dai Station, among other characters. More information can be found here.
This is a commentary about five generations of the Postgate family: P#1 = John Postgate (1820-1881); P#2 = John Percival Postgate (1853 – 1926); P#3A = Margaret Cole nee Postgate (1893 – 1980); P#3B = Raymond Postgate (1896 – 1971); P#4A = John Postgate (1922–2014); P#4B = Oliver Postgate (1925 – 2008); P#5A Daniel Postgate (1964-2025). Each of them can be regarded as a public figure. Of interest is how one generation manifests itself in subsequent generations. This is far from a biography, for it only looks at some social aspects of their lives.
P#1 was from Scarborough. His working life began as a grocer’s boy at age eleven. He discovered common deceptions in the trade, including the adding of sand to sugar, and plaster of Paris to flour. He subsequently apprenticed himself to two Scarborough doctors. He had taught himself chemistry and botany and went on to become a licensed apothecary in London where he discovered that drugs could often be dangerously impure. He attended lectures at the Leeds school of medicine.
After studying medicine in London, he set up a practice in Driffield, Yorkshire, then Birmingham. He became a fellow of the College of Surgeons in 1854. In Birmingham Postgate was concerned about pollution: 176 industrial chimneys spewed smoke, many streets were open sewers. He published his first reformist pamphlet and called for municipal action, on Birmingham’s sanatary aspects. He also addressed his major preoccupation of his life, food and drug adulteration, proposing a system of public analysts to monitor samples of food and drugs, with magistrates able to levy fines on fraudsters.
A Select Committee of Inquiry in the House of Commons was established, issuing a final report that mimmiced P#1’s proposal. Attempts to enact suitable legislation were postponed, because of opposition from retailers, until the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 was passed.
P#2
P#2 was a very different person, in part because of an austere upbringing. Travel, pamphlets, postage and other expenses absorbed almost all of P#1’s income. His mother, born Mary Horwood (1819–1889), was an educated woman, who was perpetually short of money to feed, clothe and bring up a large family. Thus, there were tensions between the children and their parsimonious = stingy and (apparently) uncaring father. P#2 became a classical (Latin) scholar.
P#3
John Percival Postgate’s daughter Margaret Cole (1893–1980) is P#3A.
In order to understand Margaret, one should also look at her husband, the socialist economist and writer George Douglas Howard Cole (1889 – 1959). G. D. H. believed in common ownership of the means of production, and theorized about guild socialism = production organized through worker guilds. He belonged to the Fabian Society and was an advocate for the co-operative movement.
As a pacifist, Cole took a pragmatic approach to the 1914-18 war. In 1915, he became an unpaid research officer at the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, where he advised the union on how to respond to wartime legislation including the Munitions of War Act of 1915. This role enabled him to escape conscription on the grounds that he was conducting work of national importance.
Cole’s involvement in the campaign against conscription introduced him to a co-worker, Margaret Cole. They were married in 1918.
Together, G. D. H. and Margaret wrote over 30 detective novels between 1925 and 1948. She went into London politics and received a DBE.
P#3B was Margaret’s brother Raymond Postgate (1896 –1971) who was notable as a socialist, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet. He founded The Good Food Guide in 1951, which was ahead of its time in being largely based on volunteer reports on restaurants. He married Daisy Lansbury (1892–1971), daughter of, and secretary to, the politician George Lansbury (1859–1940) who led the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935, and whose biography was among Raymond’s books.
P#3C was another son of John Percival Postgate, Ormond Oliver Postgate (1905–1989), a teacher of Latin and history at Peter Symonds School in Winchester, who retired in 1970.
P#4
In the next generation, Raymond’s children include: P#4A, the microbiologist John Postgate FRS (1922–2014), Professor of Microbiology at the University of Sussex, who was also a writer on, and sometime performer of, jazz. His brother, P#4B, Richard Oliver Postgate (1925–2008), was an animator, puppeteer and writer, who created television series including Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, and Clangers from the 1950s to the 1980s. P#4C Nicholas Postgate,[8] FBA (1945 – ) is a British academic and Assyriologist. He is Professor of Assyriology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
P#5
Oliver Postgate had three sons: Stephen, Simon and P#5A Daniel Postgate (1964-2025). Daniel, his youngest son, was a children’s book writer and illustrator; he inherited Oliver’s company Smallfilms and created a new series of Clangers on CBeebies.
F#1
Peter Arthur Firmin (1928 – 2018) was an English artist and puppet maker. He founded Smallfilms, with Oliver Postgate. The production company was active from 1958 to the late 1980s. Most of Smallfilms’ animation work was produced in a barn on Firmin’s land in Blean near Canterbury in Kent. Firmin made the sets, puppets and backdrops for the programmes, often also contributing sound and visual effects during filming. Between them they created a number of popular children’s TV programmes: The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles’ Wood.
In addition to his work with Oliver Postgate, Firmin made other puppets and children’s programmes. In 1959, with his wife Joan, he devised a programme of nursery rhymes for Associated-Rediffusion, called The Musical Box, which used live cardboard animation and puppets. After retiring from TV production, Firmin produced engravings and linocuts.
Literary connections
John Postgate = P#4B (2001) Lethal Lozenges and Tainted Tea: A Biography of John Postgate (1820–1881); (2013), Microbes, Music and Me. John & Mary Postgate, (1994) A Stomach For Dissent: The Life Of Raymond Postgate, Margaret Cole (1949) Growing up into Revolution; (1971) The Life of G. D. H. Cole. Naomi Mitchison (1982) Margaret Cole, 1893–1980. Note: Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, (née Haldane; 1897 – 1999) Scottish novelist and poet. She wrote more than 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writing and autobiography. B. D. Vernon (1986) Margaret Cole, 1893–1980: A Political Biography. Oliver Postgate (2000) Seeing Things: An Autobiography, illustrated by Peter Firmin.
Note: P#5A was the starting point of this weblog post. Then I discovered that he had an interesting ancestry. The post has had a long development time, more than four years. It was originally worked on: 2021-06-05, being saved at 10:20. It was subsequently worked on 2024-05-05, saved at 08:00. Work again resumed on 2025-10-07 at 11:00, knowing that publication was less than two weeks away.
A fun jacket, made by Trish and delivered to me 2025-05-25. Yes, I like outrageous clothes.
Returning from visiting our son, Alasdair, on 2024-10-07 who at the time had just bought his first house at Åros, near Oslo, I realized that the upcoming weblog post, titled Arts & Crafts typefaces, would not be ready for publication without excessive effort. I then looked to see if one of the 38 scheduled posts could be pushed forward, or if one of the 144 unscheduled drafts could be published. That was when I found this post about fashion. Except, it was too much like another recently published post. So, I decided to delay it another year, to add more content! That year is now up.
At some forgotten moment in time, I was thinking of writing fashionista content, and for inspiration ended up digesting the essence of a website, that no longer exists, titled: Wardrobe, Female, Adult. Schools are social environments, where there are considerable differences in how much money and effort individuals invest/ spend/ waste (select one, depending on your perspective) on clothing. When it comes to women’s fashions, I don’t know how much my tastes have evolved since, say, 1966. The British television series, The Avengers, has had a disproportional influence on my appreciation of women’s fashions. For those unfamiliar with the series, it started out in 1961 as an espionage series with two primary actors, both male. When one of them withdrew after the first season, management decided to have a woman play one of the leading roles. Fortunately, the scripts were not changed, so this leading woman was acting in a very masculine manner. In the series there were a sequence of intelligent, stylish and assertive women , starting with Cathy Gale – portrayed by Honor Blackman (1925 – 2020) more famous for her role as Pussy Galore in the James Bond film, Goldfinger (1963). She was followed by Emma Peel – portrayed by Diana Rigg (1938 – 2020), not quite so famous for her role as Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). Then there was Tara King -portrayed by Linda Thorson (1947 -), who never appeared in a Bond film, but who had the advantage of being Canadian. Much of the clothing worn by these women in the series was designed by Pierre Cardin (1922 – 2020). I believe I can relate to the Avengers more than any other television program because of its creator, a Canadian = Sydney Newman (1917 – 1997), originally from Toronto. In addition to creating The Avengers, he co-created the science-fiction series Doctor Who.
By 1976-7, The New Avengers had arrived. Wikipedia tells us that “scriptwriter Dennis Spooner (1932 – 1986) said that at the end of its run The Avengers had gone as far as it could in terms of parody. For this reason, producer Brian Clemens (1931 – 2015) intentionally aimed for real stories and straight, Len Deighton (1929 – )-type spy stories in The New Avengers.” Yes, birth and death years have been added to the quotations.
From the above text, it might be assumed that I am overly enthusiastic about James Bond. When it comes to espionage, I am more appreciative of Len Deighton’s unnamed hero, who appeared as Harry Palmer (ca 1922 – ?) in several films. The early works shared the same producer, Harry Saltzman (1915 – 1994) a Canadian, who arranged for another Canadian, Sidney J. Furie (1933 – ) to direct the first Palmer film, The Ipcress File. My analysis is that in some way Canadians are able to bridge the divide between the Americans and the British.
Harry Palmer was first portrayed by Michael Caine = Maurice Joseph Micklewhite (1933 – ) starting in 1967. In a 2022 television series, The Ipcress File, he was portrayed by Joe Cole (1988 – ). The Jean Courtney character portrayed by Lucy Boynton (1994 – ) in the TV series is dramatically equal to the role of Palmer. That same role was played by Sue Lloyd (1939 – 2011) who, as an earlier Jean Courtney, also proves to be an effective foil to Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer in a first film version of The Ipcress File. In Bullet to Beijing (1995), she recreates this role. Unfortunately, her scene was cut from the home VHS & DVD releases, but was later made available as DVD Extras. I also appreciated Lloyd’s portrayal of Cordelia Winfield in the 1965–1966 British television series The Baron.
The problem with fashion is that most people are workers. Even though the type of work varies with the individual, most people don’t spend their day posing. Thus, clothing has to be functional, has to fit, and it should be durable. At the end of its life, recycling should transform it into something even if that something is only heat. Currently, in Norway, there is considerable discussion about what is to be done with worn out clothing. The official answer was recycling. This sole answer was recently abandoned when it was discovered that some clothes were actually worn out. So now we are allowed to put worn out clothing in with general garbage. There are still details that have not been worked out.
Recycling clothes in Norway involves delivering whole, clean and dry textiles to collection boxes or recycling stations, where they can be sold for reuse (most often abroad), repaired, recycled, or in a worst case, have their energy recovered. From 2025, there is an increased focus on reducing the large overconsumption of clothing in Norway to reduce the climate footprint.
Lists
In this section, readers are about to read the original content for this post. It originated in an article about three notable women who provided the world with clothing formulas. I am uncertain if it also contained a fictional extremist, or if that came later. There was also some other comments about these formulas, and two magic numbers. The content of these lists, with one three-letter word exception, avoids underwear. Yes, in some circles underwear still remains unmentionable.
Coco Chanel (1883 -1971) has a list that remains unnamed and unnumbered: Black and white. Good shoes. Dresses. Polish. Simplicity. Well-fitting clothes. (No magic number.)
Joan Didion (1934 – 2021) had a packing list taped inside a cupboard “which enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do”, she wrote in 1979: two skirts, two jerseys or leotards, one pullover sweater, two pairs of shoes, stockings, bra, nightgown, robe, slippers, mohair throw (Magic number = 13, but elementary arithmetic says it should be at least 16, perhaps higher, based on the number of pairs of stockings.)
Annmarie O’Connor (1973 – ), You-niform = one coat, three jackets, five bottoms, five tops, one dress, five [pairs of] shoes. (Magic number = 20, although I count 25, since shoes come in pairs.) Her thoughts can be found in her book, The Happy Closet: Declutter Your Wardrobe, Simplify Your LIfe (2015). She also adds: “A You-niform is a network of interchangeable pieces. It helps free the mind to concentrate on other things with the added benefit of not being a drain on our resources (impulse buying, anyone?) What’s more, you get to decide what suits you and your lifestyle.”
In the movie Clueless (1995) the main character, Cher Horowitz, portrayed by Alicia Silverstone (1976 – ) has a wardrobe that necessitates a computerized inventory. This film, based on Jane Austen’s (1775 – 1817) novel, Emma (1815), with its “positive[,] handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition” main character Emma Woodhouse, provides an alternative universe for those wanting to declutter.
My notes tell me that several categories, including bags and accessories, are missing from the lists.
Bags include: clutch, handbags, backpacks, pouches. Some women may even want to include suitcases, since the origins of Didion’s list seemed to be travel. In the past people also had wallets, used to store pieces of identification, as well as money – bills in addition to coins. One of my official driving licences is stored as an app on my hand-held device. There is also talk about having passports as apps, in the coming years.
In terms of currency, it is several years since I have used any. I have an app, and bank cards. Yet, about one month before the publication of this post, a booklet (yes, something printed on paper) arrived in our postbox. It was about beredskap = preparedness, how to survive a war or other crisis. One of the main recommendations was to have cash on hand. Despite this, Trish and I have decided not to bother. We will remain cashless!
At this point I should mention, that when bank cards were first introduced in Norway, ca. 1985-6, we were paid to use them, NOK 1 for every transaction. That stopped, after about six months. However, there are coins in Buzz, that can be used at stores that still require a deposit to use a shopping buggy/ cart. We are deliberately visiting those stores with diminished frequency.
Bags
Men have fewer choices when it comes to bags, the backpack has eclipsed more prestigious bags, such as the attaché case and briefcase, or further back in time, the Rosebery, Gladstone and carpet bags, at least in the circles I frequent. It can be embarrassing to witness someone open one of these elitist bags, only to discover that all it contains is a lunch wrapped in a paper bag! Prior to a trip to Newfoundland, I bought a Samsonite Securipak backpack. It cost about NOK 1 500. It worked OK, but when Alasdair’s identical backpack was damaged, I decided he could take over mine. I replaced it with a Clas Ohlson Asaklitt Casual Business backpack, that cost less than 1/3 that price.
On the friday, a week before the scheduled publication of this post, Trish and I visited a physical store in Steinkjer, with the aim of purchasing two suitcases. We are visiting Oakland, California at the beginning of November, and have more to carry than comfortably fits in a backpack. Epic has been recommended as a brand. Here is a summary of it: Materiale = 100% Polypropylene; Volume = 67 liters; Dimensions = 66 x 45 x 25 cm; Mass = 3.0 kg; Wheels = Dobble AirSpeed™X4; Water repellent zipper; TSA combination lock; Adjustable handle; Best in test!; 7 year guarantee. It is available in pink, green and yellow. We bought yellow, as depicted above.
Accessories
Fashion also involves accessories. These include: eyewear: glasses, sunglasses, protective eyewear in clear and darkened versions; earwear: headsets, earbuds, hearing aids, ear defenders; headwear: sunhats, tuques, hard-hats; neckwear: scarves; wristwear: watches; handwear: canes. There should probably be something called anklewear, but am unsure what it could consist of, apart from an ankle-bracelet, used to register the unauthorized movement of criminals serving house arrest. I am not certain if a belt should be categorized as an accessory, because I find them a necessity, since I need one every time I wear trousers, which is most of the time. Yes, I have four, including one bought in Seattle ca. 1970, that is no longer used but kept for sentimental reasons. The three others in use are identical. They are typically found on 1) chinos, 2) work trousers and 3) hiking trousers. I am uncertain if a hand-held device (smartphone) should be included as an accessory, or put in some other category, or just ignored. Perhaps it is just a type of content that gets stuffed inside a bag, like a pen or handkerchief.
Wardrobes
Apparently, I came across some information about wardrobe subdivisions. A module is a small collection of clothes within a wardrobe. In a module, every top goes with every bottom, at least that was the wording in feminist literature. Consider two pieces of clothing that can be used together in malespeak as a shirt and a (pair of) trousers. If that is all one has, they can only be used in one (1) way. If the number and shirts and trousers are doubled, becoming two (2) pieces each A, B for shirts, N, O for trousers. Then there can be four (4) combinations: AN, AO, BN, BO. Allegedly, this is important. If one doubles the number again so the module consisting of 4 shirts (A, B, C, D) and 4 trousers (N, O, P, Q), there are 16 combinations: AN, AO, AP, AQ, BN, BO, BP, BQ, CN, CO, CP, CQ, DN, DO, DP, DQ. Double this again to 8 shirts and 8 trousers, and one ends up with 64 combinations. Ideally, it seems, one should never be seen in the same combination, more than once.
In some source I learned that there are people who don’t bother to follow a modular approach. One subculture within this group are minimalists. I am assured that minimalists are ruthless, yet chic. I am advised that they refuse to work in an office with a formal dress code, yet manage to avoid working from home. A café is their ideal work location during the afternoon, with parties (referred to as meetings) occupying the remainder of the working day. Originally, in the last decade of the 20th century, they owned two white blouses (females)/ shirts (males) that allows them to be washed at weekly intervals with the obligatory white sheets. No, I do not know what they wore during the washing process. As duvet covers replaced sheets, and pastel colours followed by dull grey tones replaced white, more exotic tops (for lack of a better, more inclusive term) could be worn. Within this framework, minimalists opt for the simple life. Potentially one without Paris Hilton, and her pink GMC pickup.
A pink Alibaba EV pickup, shown with Micah Toll at the wheel, comes at a price under US$ 2 000 (in China). This article appeared in Electrek, 2022-02-26. It was claimed that a production version should be available in 2024, with seating in a crew cab for four (4) adults. Power? a 1.5 kW motor provides a top speed of 45 km/h. Yes, it was claimed that it would be available in any colour, as long as it was pink! It is amazing what one can find on the internet while searching for: pink gmc pickup, Paris Hilton, the simple life.
Off topic note: By 2025, Micah Toll was promoting a new Chang Li Explorer electric pickup with a maximum range of 100 km, a 50 000 km battery warranty, LED lights, leather seats for two, compact format: 3500 (l) 1360 (w) 1680 (h) mm.
Personal stylist Colomba Giacomini tells people to pack an imaginary suitcase with the clothes they want to wear for the next two weeks. The purpose is to edit out nostalgia. “Keep a photo of yourself in the beautiful dress that is no longer worn, but recycle the dress. Avoid the sunk-cost fallacy. Forgive yourself for buying clothes that are never worn, or you didn’t wear, forgive yourself,” says O’Connor. “To clear out your closet, you need to clear out the self-criticism first.”
There is room for individual tastes in clothing storage, but in terms of hanger type and spacing. My own tastes include 50 mm of spacing, between wooden hangers. Some of the hangers even match.
Some people feel that there should be a set number of items across clothing categories to create a functional wardrobe. How many? Yes it varies, with some people suggesting from 20 to 60 pieces in total, excluding under garments. I have now visited my closet and chest of drawers, and discovered I have the following bespoke items: 18 shirts, 10 sweaters, 2 workshop coats, plus many store bought items, 7 chinos, 3 work trousers, 4 work jackets, 1 fun jacket (depicted at the beginning of this post), 1 hiking trousers, 4 suits (in permanent storage), 7 pairs of Allbird shoes. The dark green pair purchased in 2019 is now used where appearance counts, the dull green pair purchased in 2015, are beginning to show signs of wear. Others: turquoise (still in California), pink, red, blue, yellow, work shoes with safety toes (replaced biannually), hiking boots, gum boots. Depending on the counting method, that is either 63 or 72 items, excluding socks and underwear.
At this point I will have to interject a comment about gum boots. This west coast Canadian name for what others call rubber boots, probably has its origins in Norway. However, at Norwegian outfitters for commercial fishers, plastic boots with insulation have replaced rubber varieties. Our son Alasdair has a pair in black. I would also like to invest in a pair, but would prefer them to be yellow.
More fashion advice, from some forgotten source. Begin with a backbone of ten basics items. These should be dependable, versatile, and pair well with all the other items. Add five statement pieces, with bold prints and patterns. Select 5 layering items to add interest to your outfits and serve a functional role too. Shoes alter the whole mood of an outfit. Choose pairs that cover a range of occasions. This advice gets repeated in several other sources, with minimal changes to prevent plagiarism complaints.
I do not understand the use of statement piece. None of my trousers make statements, but are fit for purpose. All of my sweaters make statements. In terms of shirts, none of my work shirts make statements, because they are too busy working. However, most of my other shirts do, at least on some occasions. That is why I spend so much time selecting fabric for them, and have them made for me.
These journalists further advise using a well-defined colour palette with a small selection = 4 to 6 colours. I am not sure I can construct a colour palette for clothing. Most of my shirts are green or red, but with some deviation. I refer to it as individuality. The greens are better at being coordinated with each other than the reds. I have even bought some blue chinos, used judiciously to show that I have survived the excessive blueness of my childhood wardrobe.
A travel wardrobe should suit the destination climate. For a moment I think hot, with temperatures peaking above 30 C. Start with 5 shirts with a focus on versatility. While some people may want a combination of short and long-sleeves, this is not really versatile, because long-sleeved shirts can be rolled up. Once again legwear must reflect the destination. Some people may think shorts, but I remember back to my childhood years in the Okanagan, and avoid them because that would require the application of additional sunscreen. It also presented large areas of skin to marauding mosquitoes. People who exercise in gyms may have a valid reason for using shorts, and no need for additional sunscreen or insect repellent. It may be appropriate to have a pair of swimming trunks, but these should only be worn while swimming, water skiing or engaged in other water sports. Thus, I am firmly addicted to long trousers but have different types for: 1) Casual activites; 2) manual labour, Trousers are fitted with straps for carrying tools, and pockets for carrying fasteners; 3) hiking. There probably should be other categories. I have a Donegal tweed suit for more formal occasions. It was bought sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Virilization
Yes, virilization is a word that generally refers to the biological development of adult male characteristics in young people, male or female. Most of the changes of virilization are produced by androgens. This is not what is being talked about here. Rather, the wardrobe of a male is very different from that of a female, although the two sexes appear to be approaching each other, in terms of some items.
One fundamental difference is how buttons are aligned. Male shirts have buttons on the right side of a garment, while button holes occupy the left side. Unisex clothing follows the male convention, while female garments have buttons on the left side, and button holes on the right.
My own approach is to divide clothing into the following categories from the skin and outwards: underwear, innerwear and outerwear. Then there is sleepwear.
Male underwear consists of underpants, undershirts and footwear (socks). Long underwear (tops and bottoms) also belongs in this category. I make a distinction between cotton socks, worn in the summer, and wool socks, worn the rest of the year, in light and heavy variants.
Innerwear consists of shirts and trousers. Some might want to add sweaters, but I find them tweenwear, somewhere between innerwear and outerwear. However, it might be better to regard most innerwear as daywear, with several different categories, including workwear, officewear, sportswear and funwear. With so many categories adding tweenwear should be easy. Then there is eveningwear which is usually associated with more formal events. Again, there are some difficult categories, such as funeralwear. If it is funeralwear for one’s self, it is a unique situation, but with long-term consequences beyond the control of the wearer. My Donegal tweed suit may have its final use here.
Outerwear
Outer clothing is used to protect the body outdoors from the elements including: excessive cold or heat, rain or snow, and wind. There are two important items: a green spring through autumn jacket; and a purple winter coat. Both are Swedish. The jacket is probably close to end of life, since it was purchased in 2008 and worn daily in season. I intend to find a replacement in California in November. The coat is just starting its career. It was purchased on sale in San Francisco in 2020.
Counting
Clothes are difficult to count. Some articles of clothing come in pairs, because some body parts also come in pairs. Right and left hands result in pairs of gloves and mittens that mirror each other. Right and left feet result in pairs of socks (that are made without mirroring) and shoes (that are). Personally, I find it impossible to count two shoes (or socks or gloves) as one item. They (note the plural pronoun) are always one pair = two items. Except, we also have pairs of trousers and shorts. These I count as one item, as in one pair of chinos = one item. Gender differences add further confusion. A woman may have one bikini, which has two parts, a top and a bottom, while men may have a pair of swimming trunks, which is a single garment.
Note: This weblog post was originally given the title: Wardrobe, Male, Adult. It was to be published 2024-11-22. As the original publication date approached, that date was changed to 2025-10-11, approximately one year after Fashionista (1) was published.. On 2025-02-15 it was re-titled Fashionista 2. I am not so addicted to fashions that I can produce more than one fashion post a year, and still attract interest. More content about Harry Palmer, and others associated with him will be published 2025-11-11.
Princeton University researchers Aviya Litman, Olga Troyanskaya, and Chandra Theesfeld are among the co-authors of a major study on autism subtypes and their underlying genetics. Photo: Denise Applewhite, Princeton University.
With several family members exhibiting some autistic traits, and with a history of teaching autists in my working life, I read numerous articles about autism. Here is one that I found interesting that I would like to share.
Researchers have discovered four autism subtypes that are both clinically and biologically distinct. This research offers a better understanding of the genetic foundations of autism and could support more personalized approaches to diagnosis and care.
Data from more than 5 000 children was applied a computational model to group individuals by shared patterns of traits. Researchers adopted a person-centered strategy that evaluated more than 230 traits per participant, including social behavior, repetitive actions, and developmental progress.
This method led to the identification of meaningful autism subtypes, each tied to unique genetic markers and developmental patterns.
Understanding the genetics of autism is essential for revealing the biological mechanisms that contribute to the condition, enabling earlier and more accurate diagnosis, and guiding personalized care. The study identifies four distinct autism subtypes: 1. Social and Behavioral Challenges, 2. Mixed ASD with Developmental Delay, 3. Moderate Challenges, and 4. Broadly Affected. Each group displays unique profiles in terms of development, medical conditions, behavioral traits, psychiatric symptoms, and genetic variation.
Subtype 1: The Social and Behavioral Challenges group is characterized by core autism features, such as difficulties with social interaction and repetitive behaviors, but these individuals typically meet developmental milestones at a similar rate as their neurotypical peers. However, they often experience additional conditions such as: a. ADHD, b. anxiety, c. depression, or obsessive-compulsive behaviour. This is one of the more common subtypes, representing about 37% of the study population.
Subtype 2: The Mixed Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with Developmental Delay group is marked by delayed developmental milestones like walking and talking. Most individuals in this category do not exhibit anxiety, depression, or disruptive behavior. Mixed reflects the variation in social difficulties and repetitive behaviors within the group. Approximately 19% of participants belong to this category.
Subtype 3: The Moderate Challenges group display autism-related behaviors, but these traits tend to be less pronounced than in the other subtypes. Their developmental milestones generally align with typical patterns, and they rarely show psychiatric comorbidities = the simultaneous presence of two or more medical conditions in a patient. This group makes up roughly 34% of participants.
Subtype 4: The Broadly Affected group have the most severe and wide-ranging symptoms, including significant developmental delays, difficulties with social communication, repetitive behaviors, and coexisting psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and mood instability. This is the smallest group, comprising about 10% of participants.
The findings are powerful because the classes represent different clinical outcomes, and connect to distinct underlying biology.
For decades, autism researchers and clinicians have been seeking robust definitions of autism subtypes to aid in diagnosis and care. Autism is known to be highly heritable, with many implicated genes.
Genetic testing is part of the standard of care for people diagnosed with autism, but this testing reveals variants that explain the autism of only about 20% of patients. In contrast, this study identifies autism subtypes that are linked to distinct types of genetic mutations and affected biological pathways.
People in the Broadly Affected group exhibit the highest rate of damaging de novo mutations = genetic changes that arise spontaneously and are not passed down from either parent. Those in the Mixed ASD with Developmental Delay group were more likely to possess rare inherited genetic variants. Although both subtypes share key features, these genetic distinctions point to separate biological mechanisms underlying what may appear to be similar clinical traits.
“These findings point to specific hypotheses linking various pathways to different presentations of autism,” said Litman, referring to differences in biology between children with different autism subtypes.
Researchers identified divergent biological processes affected in each subtype. Autism is not just one biological story, but multiple distinct narratives. Past genetic studies often fell short. It was like someone trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without realizing that researchers were looking at multiple different puzzles mixed together. They couldn’t see the full picture, until individuals were separated into subtypes.
Autism subtypes differ in the timing of genetic disruptions’ effects on brain development. Genes switch on and off at specific times, guiding different stages of development. Previously much of the genetic impact of autism was thought to occur before birth. However, in the Social and Behavioral Challenges subtype, which typically has substantial social and psychiatric challenges, no developmental delays, and a later diagnosis, mutations were found in genes that become active later in childhood. This suggests that, for these children, the biological mechanisms of autism may emerge after birth, aligning with their later clinical presentation.
“It’s a whole new paradigm, to provide these groups as a starting point for investigating the genetics of autism,” said Theesfeld. Instead of searching for a biological explanation that encompasses all individuals with autism, researchers can now investigate the distinct genetic and biological processes driving each subtype.
This shift could reshape both autism research and clinical care — helping clinicians anticipate different trajectories in diagnosis, development, and treatment. “The ability to define biologically meaningful autism subtypes is foundational to realizing the vision of precision medicine for neurodevelopmental conditions,” said Sauerwald.
While the current work defines four subtypes, this doesn’t mean there are only four classes. It means we now have a data-driven framework that shows there are at least four — and that they are meaningful in both the clinic and the genome.
For families navigating autism, knowing which subtype of autism their child has can offer new clarity, targeted care, support, and community. It could tell families, when their children with autism are still young, something more about what symptoms they might — or might not — experience, what to look out for over the course of a lifespan, which treatments to pursue, and how to plan for their future.
Reference: “Decomposition of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism reveals underlying genetic programs” by Aviya Litman, Natalie Sauerwald, LeeAnne Green Snyder, Jennifer Foss-Feig, Christopher Y. Park, Yun Hao, Ilan Dinstein, Chandra L. Theesfeld and Olga G. Troyanskaya, 9 July 2025, Nature Genetics. DOI: 10.1038/s41588-025-02224-z
