It's a great computer. I am using one to post thi
Posts by PaulyV
104 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jun 2011
The Apple Mac is 35 years old. Behold the beige box of the future
ZX Spectrum reboot scandal biz gets £35k legal costs delayed
Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain
2001: A Space Odyssey has haunted pop culture with anxiety about rogue AIs for half a century
10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10
Computer exhibitions and shows - that takes me back. Being driven out by my Dad to hotels in places like Huddersfield or Grimsby, parking up and being directed to the conference suite. Desk after desk of Vic20's, Oric 1's and Dragon 32's were setup, each accompanied by a chap more than happy to talk about them at length. The BBC B's felt like the best built and eventually our primary school got one, whilst at home my parents splashed out god knows how much on a Dragon 32 which saw me through my youth.
Never had a ZX81, but Dad did borrow an '80 for a week or two from one of his younger colleagues. I still recall tuning it in to the TV.
Vatican sets up dedicated exorcism training course
Home taping revisited: A mic in each hand, pointing at speakers
Home Taping is Skill in Music
Oddly enough only yesterday did I get sent WAV's taken from a cassette of our 1980's Lincolnshire band. My Dad recorded us in the living room using a decent Technics deck (Dolby C no less!) and a crossed pair of AKG D90 mics. Despite being carted around the country in the bottom of various boxes for the past 30 years the quality of the audio held up well enough to rekindle many memories. The quality of the music itself however...not so much. Thank god dance music came along.
https://youtu.be/MAE16JH5bwc
Voyager 1 fires thrusters last used in 1980 – and they worked!
A certain millennial turned 30 recently: Welcome to middle age, Microsoft Excel v2
Blade Runner 2049 review: Scott's vision versus Villeneuve's skill
Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come
What does Elon Musk really need? A personal theme tune, of course!
Foot-long £1 sausage roll arrives
Re: but does it taste any good
You make a good point. I am originally from Lincolnshire and there are any number of decent quality sausage rolls you can still get there for about 60-70p. Nothing artisan or oversized - just decent sausage meat in layered puff pastry...I am often puzzled as to how many places in this country can't get that simple formula right.
Everything you never knew about mail: The Postal Museum opens
Volterman 'super wallet': The worst crowdsource video pitch of all time?
Alan Turing Institute bags a Cray Urika-GX to crunch numbers for next-gen tech boffinry
Oracle CEO Mark Hurd scoops up $17.4m from 350,000 share sales
'Grey technology' should be the new black
Ageing tech users
Could not agree more. I hope we can ensure more is in place as I approach my later life.
I spent the last 20 years watching and helping my increasingly housebound Dad get to grips with his laptop, the internet, a mobile phone etc. Sometimes it was funny, sometimes encouraging and sometimes downright disappointing.
His 17 inch Asus laptop fared quite well over the years, although its touch pad became increasingly difficult to use with his very arthritic fingers. Catching a palm across it could easily highlight and magically delete the 4 paragraphs of text he had spent the previous 45 minutes painstakingly entering.
Windows was also okay but once it started prompting him to upgrade to 10 on a regular basis it became more of a hassle until we disabled it. He used the AOL browser most of all as he had learned his way around it in the late 90's when he had more dexterity. I rather think he imagined AOL WAS the internet despite my explaining the concept of a browser on many occasions.
Smart phones were out the question, as was texting but he did have a natty Binatone mobile featuring large buttons which lived in his pocket. A bargain at £25.
His last Christmas brought an Amazon Fire his way as a toe in the waters of tablet computing. Holding it was impossible, as was typing anything on it given the accuracy required on-screen, but a stylus and stand helped those issues to some extent. Far from ideal though and I can see a change coming surely. It was not as if he did not want to communicate and understand these devices. His last 3 years of life alone resulted in close to 10000 posts on the Guardian forums, this despite being only able to type a single letter every 5 seconds or so as he dallied his way around the keyboard.
Some things will never change however - at aged 80 he did manage to inexplicably change the language on the Amazon Fire to German all on his own thereby bricking it until I visited him once again...
Private moonshot gets the green light from US authorities
German lodges todger in 13 steel rings
'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Star Wars Special Editions
Kids' TV show Rainbow in homosexual agenda shocker
Why are only moneymen doing cyber resilience testing?
So. Farewell then Betamax. We always liked you better than VHS anyway
Skype founders planning non-drone robodelivery fleet. Repeat, not drones
TalkTalk incident management: A timeline
Balloon-lofted space podule hits 30,000m
Made you jump! Space to give Earth an asteroid Halloween scare
Windows 10 mobile upgrade coming in December
Re: Stick with 8.1
In the same situation as you. I went to 4G EE as soon as the Nokia 920 came out. I have had it almost 3 years now and the phone was outstanding when I first got it and is still fine now. During that time however Windows has barely changed and as much as I liked it at the start I am seeing more attractive options elsewhere. Sadly the phone doesn't relay my voice calls very clearly any more - something which seems not uncommon at this age on the 920. The keyboard I could never get on with for some reason - I think that might just be me.
From tomorrow I downgrade my EE contract and am using a Wileyfox Swift which came into stock at Amazon today.
The Lumia will stay on 8.1 and will never leave my car again where it will act as a rather good SatNav - those Here maps are excellent.
The Steve Jobs of supercomputers: We remember Seymour Cray
Hats off to Nintendo’s platform supremo Super Mario Bros at 30
Honor 7 – heir apparent to the mid-range Android crown
Return of the Jedi? StarWars.co.uk bod to fight the Empire (Disney)
Star Wars Domains
Late 1998 I bought ThePhantomMenace.co.uk and ran a fan site from it for 2 years, but was also linking to toy vendors. Got a lot of traffic and did quite well out of it from the affiliate sales and ad revenue, even reviewing the 'film' for Radio 4 and selling stories on the film to the UK and US press. I never heard anything from Lucasfilm, although I always expected to...I guess they were too busy at the time.
At the same time I also ran StarWarsEmail.com giving people free email addresses - again, heard nothing.
Spy: Acres of comedy talent make this smart spook spoof an instant classic
Mad Max: Fury Road – two hours of nonstop, utterly insane fantasy action
Oz father and son team plan suborbital spaceplane
Orion 'Mars' ship: Cosmic ray guard? Go. Parachutes? Go. Spacerock shield? Go!
Why can't a mobile be more like a cordless kettle?
Nokia
I still run my Lumia 920 and dearly loved the wireless charging which was built in to the phone's casing. Alas after a Nokia automatic update (not the windows one) the charging simply stopped working. Oddly enough it turns the phone on when placed on the charger, but doesn't charge any further.
I know this isn't a technical forum, but you know, though'd I'd mention it just in case.
The additional charger wasn't cheap - pressed my sister into getting me one for Christmas that year, but really handy to have one next to the work PC so the phone effectively charges whenever I place it down. I am often surprised it is seen as a gimmick.