Number 10 responds to the petition to save Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes, about 50 miles north of London, was the British nerve centre of second world war military code-breaking and the birthplace of the modern computer. Within the last twenty years its historical significance has been recognised and the remains of the wartime site now has a museum dedicated to explaining its past, as well as the reconstructed Colossus hosted by the National Museum of Computing (passim). But funds are tight and the supporting organisations failed to get grants to ensure the site’s survival in the medium or long term. As linked through from this page, a petition was lodged on 28 May with 10 Downing Street via their excellent MySociety–built online petition page. The official response was published today.

Although HMG itself is not going to intervene directly, Downing Street points out that things are being done by a variety of bodies such as English Heritage and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to help Bletchley Park survive. The actions so far include £900,000 of aid towards critical restoration work. Votes of confidence. I look forward to a brighter future for this strange and unique place.

The Number 10 response to the petition

SVG for IE

As (slightly innaccurately?) posted on Slashdot, a Google Code project to create an SVG plugin for Internet Explorer has gone public with a little video showing what their software can do.

Actually, as SVG is vanishingly rare on the web I think we could all do with a refresher. If you watch the video turn the sound off though.

PS there’s a natty embedded SVG and Javascript logo animation on my homepage. The SVG is loaded into the DOM using some rather flaky AJAX. Been there about three years and nobody’s ever asked me how it works ;-)

Edit: oops, incorrect syntax in that first link tag

Another edit: should have credited Slashdot for the link.

Computers find a new home

Last weekend I foisted a couple of my old computers (old as in fifteen years, not fifty years) onto the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. It was great to meet some of the volunteers including Pixelh8, who seems to be capable of making any old computer, no matter how brusque its exterior, sing sweetly.

NB. Don’t take stuff to Bletchley Park unless you have contacted the Museum to check that they can accept it. There is precious little space available for storage and, as ever in the museums and archives sector, little money to pay for it.