Category: Personal

Categories
Personal SciFi

What's your earliest Doctor Who memory?

Snakedance video coverI’ve been a big fan of Doctor Who for as long as i can remember. It’s part of my DNA as a British sci-fi fan. I was watchiung the Doctor Who Confidential episode after the most recent episode (a barnstormer by the way, where the Doctor barely appears) and they were talking to people involved with the show about who their first Doctor was.

For those of you not in the know the Doctor, kind of like James Bond, has been played by a series of actors since his debut in the 60s. Unlike James Bond, they do make reference to it in the series. As a timelord, the Doctor doesn’t die, instead he regenerates into a new body and, to some extent, a new persona.

David Tennant is the tenth Doctor and i think he’s amazing, but i was trying to remember who my first Doctor was. I always thought that it was Tom Baker, but apparently not. The first story i remember (although almost certainly not the first i saw) is Snakedance, broadcast when i was 6 years old. I remember being really creeped out by it (which is only right.)

I got most of my Doctor Who knowledge from books though. I had lots of books of the stories, as well as an A-Z and a Technical manual. Unfortunately the next Doctor couldn’t compete with the A-Team, but i Did have a fondness for Sylvester McCoy.

I’m so glad the series has come back and is, in my opinion, better than ever. I may be a big wuss but there have been several episodes recently which have almost moved me to tears.

Anyhoo – what’s the first episode you remember?

Categories
Personal Superpowers

I Walk the Line

A representative photo of a low wallOn the way back from a meeting tonight I walked along a wall beside the Main road. I’m not saying it was high up or anything – only about a foot off the ground, but it’s a long time since I walked along a wall like that – a situation not made any easier by my having my “manbag” on my back (it’s black, i carry a laptop in it – it’s not a handbag, it’s a MAN BAG!!!) swinging to and fro. That said, I did not fall off said wall.

I encourage you to walk along a wall and rediscover the joy.

Categories
Personal

Photos from my recent trip to Moffat

I’ve taken to driving to visit my Mum in Moffat via the motorway. It’s faster and easier (especially at night) but it lacks some of the winding majesty of the A701 road to Moffat.

Categories
Internet Personal

okay, now I'm angry

okay, so maybe not angry yet, but annoyed enough.

I’ve been a Telewest subscriber since I moved into my home, and we had it when I was at home. I was happy with the Broadband options and the TV package, but recently I’ve been more and more irritated.

Ever since Virgin Media took over the system, it’s gone down the pan

  1. They lost Sky 1 and some other sky channel. They claim this is all Sky’s fault but frankly they’re acting like kids about it “Sky have taken their ball and gone home”. Stop making childish analogies and get it sorted – I’m supposed to be paying for this service!
  2. Their interactive TV has been pretty flakey recently and, whenever I phone up to complain, the automated message says “our engineers expect to have the issue resolved as soon as possible!” well DUH!! You will either have the problem solved as soon as possible, or expect to have it solved in a specific timespan – stop worming out of it!
  3. I now read that Virgin plans to cut my download speeds. I may rarely go over these speeds, but I do from time to time. If I want to download an Ubuntu install, at around 650 MB, then they’ll kill my download speed. This may affect me only occasionally but you can bet that, when it does, it’s going to be at the worst possible time

So now I’m going to have to go with ADSL and probably SKY TV (I get no reception where i live)

Categories
Personal technical

Happy Birthday Speccy

the ZX Spectrum, 48k
the ZX Spectrum, 48k

No, I’m not talking about me (although I do wear rather nifty rimless specs and did celebrate a birthday a few days ago.) I’m talking about my beloved old Sinclair Spectrum.  According to the good old Beeb, the Sinclair Spectrum is 25 years old this month (younger than me – makes me feel old)  Turns out we share the same Birthday, which is VERY cool.

We got a spectrum when I was really young.  We had a ZX81 before that, with 1kb of memory, bur I was too young for that, and anyway – it didn’t have the rainbow stripe!  I learned some basic programming with the Spectrum.  MY favourite program, which I typed into spectrum computers in countless 80s electrical shops was:

10 PRINT “Brian Rules!!”

20 GOTO 10

See!  Programming Genius!  It would just print “Brian Rules!!” all the way down the screen.  If I’d been smarter I’d have put in colours and automatic scrolling, but that would have taken ages and I wasn’t interested.

I learned to programme by retyping programmes from books, but don’t really remember writing may programmes of my own – not beyond 20 lines or so anyway.  We got a microdrive for it, which was a mini tapedrive and loaded things much more quickly.

The only real way to load games was through a tape player – I well remember the tw0-part loading cycle.  The low hum then the screech, then the low hum and the screech again, which could go on for minutes, depending on how quickly the game loaded.

Aaah – heady days!

Categories
Fun Personal

Great Geek Prank

KeyboardI have a lot of fun in my office, but the other day I was getting kind of peeved. I would keep typing on my new Vista PC and weird stuff would happen. I couldn’t work it out but was swearing at Vista. The application would swap accidentally and strange spellings and mistypings (worse than my usual) were apearing. At one point I was tapping the scren and stuff was happening – very strange.

Turns out the guys in the office had plugged a wireless keyboard into the back of my PC where I didn’t notice the connector, asn were having fun playing with that keyboard with all the bizzarre keyboard combinations. Took me far too long to work it out.

Didn’t stop us trying it out on Paul the next day – classic!

Categories
Edinburgh Personal

That'll leave a mark

I was on the bus to work yesterday when we stopped at the east end of Princes Street. We’d been passing and being passed my a huge vehicle on a lowloader since Murrayfield but it had pulled past as the bus made a couple of stops.

When we got to Princes Street we had to wait at the lights, as usual. Then the lights turned green and nobody moved. This went on for 5 minutes until the driver announced there had been an accident. We were only about 3 buses behind the first bus in the queue. As we drove past we couldn’t see much, but that’s because I was on the lower floor near the door having decided to get off.

Turns out the huge vehicle on the lowloader had gouged a hole in the upper deck of the bus in front. one woman had leg injuries but thankfully that was all – these buses lose a large number of their pasengers just before reaching Princes Street. If the traffic had flowed a different way it could have been my bus that got hit, which is a scary thought.

Anyway the BBC has a more full report, with pictures, no less. Need to start carrying my camera around – need to FIND my camera.

Categories
Personal

My First Valentine (a couple of days late)

loveheartI vividly remember sending my first Valentine. Her name was Pamela
and I was in love. I was about seven.

I walked to school and back every day – not very far. Crossed the
road, down the traffic free lane and then over another road to school.
Five or ten minutes depending on how keen I was. There were quite a
few people who used the lane to get to school and one of them was
Pamela.

I don’t know how it started but we would talk sometimes. No deep and
meaningful conversations, but she was nice to me and I liked that,
plus she was pretty, with long dark hair.

So come Valentines day I drafted my Mum as a co-conspirator. I had no
idea where she lived but Mum did, so she delivered my carefully
prepared anonymous Valentine, no doubt expressing my true feelings
with acronyms like SWALK and HOLLAND.

Walking up the lane on Valentines day I was a picture of nonchelance
(or at least I was in my head) as I asked her if she had received any
Valentines cards.

She told me that she had and I, sure of my secret, asked her if she
knew who it was from.

“I think it was from you” she said, at which point my imagined
nonchelance shattered, resulting in a red face, unconvincing denials,
and an increased pace up the hill.

I don’t remember talking to her after that, although I’m sure I did,
and I’m fairly sure that summer she moved on to secondary school and I
never saw her again.

I was about seven and she was about twelve. Apparently I had a thing
for the older woman.

Categories
Internet Personal Useful Links

Sensible UK Copyright Laws – Sign the Petition

Did you know that if you rip a CD to MP3 files and then copy those onto your Ipod or other MP3 player, then you are breaking the law?
There’s a Petition to the Pirme Minister to look at more sensible copyright laws.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to create a new exception to copyright law that gives individuals the right to create a private copy of copyrighted materials for their own personal use, including back-ups, archiving and shifting format.
You can sign the petition here.

Categories
Fun Personal Video

I'm not much of a dancer

But I remember dancing to this when I was at school discos, circa 1985.