‘n’ Judy

Some folks took the time to figure out how many punch cards it would take to encode an MP3 file. That's the sort of unrepentant geekery I can get behind.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the humble punch card. A couple of my first jobs required me to use them; somewhere in the basement, I still have a couple of boxes full that I liberated when they were finally retired and used as scratch paper while I was a struggling freelancer who couldn't afford note pads. They were an extremely low-density storage medium but there was something about holding code in your hand, running your fingers over the holes...in the pre-Internet age, it was a way I felt connected to information.

And, of course, they are still in use in many surprising and not-so- places and their cousins, like the piano roll, continue to survive into the digital age.

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