Thursday, February 27, 2014

Blow Your Own

 Thirty two years ago computing was still in its nerdy bedroom brain box period, the era equivalent of train spotting so up and down the country bearded men, spotty school kids and middle class families could be found at local computer clubs up and down the country extolling the vitues of the z80 chip or 16k Ram packs. It was a naive period but even though it was still early days plenty of computing magazines existed. I started to collect them as I was indeed a nerdy spotty school kid. Looking back they were pretty strange reading.
 Blow your own Eprom, sounds like a quote from Red Dwarf rather than a serious article on creating your own microchips, titters aside the adverts in the magazines were no better.
 Hmmm, upstairs for business, downstairs for pleasure, I can see what you did there but its so, so wrong.
Anyway, last night I was tittering away at the letters section, basically a series of individuals pointing out errors or arguing which machine is better or that they have managed to wire a Sinclair Spectrum into their toilet cistern, all rather booooorrriiiinng although I found them absolutely riveting, yes, I use to be that interesting. (you might need to click on them to read the letters, I warn you some are incredibly sleep inducing)

 But what if they were answered using today's values of blunt rudeness I wonder? I give you Rude Tech, the guy that tells it like it is.
"Well I flicking never, how long did it take you to find that out I wonder, bet you spent so much time tinkering with that little A variable that you didn't notice your wife had run away with the next door neighbour, sold the kids and set up a knocking shop in your bedroom. Far too busy hunched over a keyboard growing your beard and working out the best way to store a string variable. Congratulations you are indeed the first to find a bug in the BBC's ROM and also indeed the first anally retentive person to write in a crow about it."
 Wow, I never thought of recursions support writing in Basic just like I have never thought of trapping my scrotum in a vice so I'm glad you have been able to offer me some direction in something I don't give a toss about. And yes I'm not using a Sharp MZ-80K I'm using that thing called life so my lapse of ignorance regarding recursion is down to having one. BTW you need to change a line in your code, line 30 shoud say 30 PRINT "I'M A TOSSER THIS MANY TIMES ";A
 I found the same thing using my joystick and had to install a whole new supporting roof to cope with the four metal struts that hold the base in place, these four extra bolts you suggested sound just the ticket. It's a bit of a pain as I still get the occasional shock from the electrodes attached to my nipples you advised last issue, do you have any plans on what else I can do to stop it? Mildred is tired of me screaming in pain when I play Jet Set Willy so any help would be grateful. P.S. The love sling we installed for two player games works a treat but the neighbours moan if we have one of our special parties.
 You may look like a wizard but in fact you are incorrect, its actually address 4087 and the byte should be 86. I hope you have learned your lesson, if anybody has followed your instructions you have caused them to hack into the FBI database and will be held solely responsible for their subsequent torture and destruction.
 You switch the thing on, it starts itself, you know electrickery and the like.Drop me a line and I'll explain the small people that dance in the box in your living room.
 Thanks for this program, I was mesmerised for weeks on end watching the combination of sixty four graphic symbols change in glorious black and white. The nights must whizz by at your house. I showed it my cat who unfortunately went berserk and ran off threatening to set up something called the Internet and gradually rule the world. Cat's eh? Can't take a bit of random patterns can they hehehe.
As you can see, thrills were a little thin on the ground but a lot of these people went on to set up the great software businesses you see today. Apart from this one, its a review of a game. You play a bear who catches apples, avoids aggressive acorns, skis a little, runs away from spiders and dies if you haven't eaten enough. Jeeez, did we have some fun times or what.

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