Robert Hampton

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15th March 2013

Techno techno techno techno

ComputersIt’s hard to imagine now, but when this blog was founded, I had to write the entries by creating a series of punched cards, which were then sent by first class post to a laboratory in Cambridge, where a man in a white coat would feed them one-by-one into a mainframe computer to create each blog post.

OK, that’s obviously not true. But technology has moved on in leaps and bounds in the last decade, often in new and unpredictable ways. In 2003 there were no YouTube videos to embed, no tweets to RT, and if you poked someone in public, you could expect a slap in the face in return. Google was a search engine company rather than an… everything company.

As for me, in 2003 I was still using RISC OS, the operating system designed by Acorn Computers for their ARM-based systems. Acorn had shut up shop in 1998, but the OS was still being developed by an independent company and I had fun playing with the latest versions as they were released. I was also still using it to do web design work (still haven’t found an app as good as Draw for quick pictures and diagrams). So when my machine started developing hardware faults, I was alarmed.

When computers develop hardware problems, my usual attitude is something approaching blind panic. I never did a backup (I meant to, but never get round to it), and I never paid attention when the hard drive started playing up last year (I meant to, but never got round to it). Procrastination 1, Rob 0.

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1st September 2009

Fruit and Nut

I’ve been pondering Macs again. The Mac Mini is available starting at £499, which is affordable enough, even when I consider the additional cost of some software (I would probably need to splash out 70 quid or so for the Mac version of MS Office, for example).

I’ve considered switching to Macs before. The first time I seriously thought about it was around the time Windows Vista was released. I was looking to replace my creaking PC and MacOS X looked preferable to Vista, which was getting a slating in the press. After careful consideration I eventually chickened out and went for a Dell PC, like a spineless corporate sheep.

So why did I reject the Mac? For the explanation, we have to go back to early 1993, when your humble webmaster was 10 years old. Having finally convinced my parents that my creaking Commodore 64 was not going to cut it, we set out to acquire a new computer. The one I settled on was the Acorn, because “that’s the one they use in schools”.

And so, I came home from the shop clutching an A3010 (the cheapest and nastiest of all Acorn’s models, fact fans), complete with 1 megabyte of RAM, floppy disc drive and a bundled copy of Zool (never got past level 2).

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21st April 2008

I’m going for a walk, I may be some time

I’ve finally managed to massage Windows Update into offering me Vista Service Pack 1 — I have the install dialogue box up now, and it’s telling me that I will not be able to use my computer for an hour while it installs. Oh, goody.

Will I come back to a usable machine? Stay tuned to find out!

UPDATE: My computer has NOT — repeat, NOT — melted… yet.

16th March 2008

That’s what the REM keyword is for

On impulse, I purchased BBC BASIC for Windows, for one reason and one reason only: to port my magnum opus, MadMaze, over to the dark side.

One problem I’ve encountered is that BB4W is based on a BBC Micro-type environment, whereas MadMaze is of course written for the 32-bit Acorn machines. So I’m going to have to change all the RISC OS system calls to BBC Micro-type calls. And where is no BBC Micro equivalent, I’m going to have to find the Windows equivalent and use that. Oh, and the sound system is different. Oh, and I wish I’d commented my atrocious code better.

But it works… after a fashion:-

MadMaze for Windows

10th March 2008

Vista Beef Curry

This time last year (more or less), I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of my new PC with Windows Vista preloaded. This excitement soon evaporated when it became clear that Vista is actually a bit poo.

This New York Times article reveals some interesting internal wrangles at Microsoft over the development and marketing of Vista. To be honest, it makes for quite depressing reading.

I’m starting to think I should have gone with my first instinct, waited a few months longer and spent a bit of extra cash to get a Mac with OS X Leopard and the ability to dual boot MacOS and XP.

The real problem, of course, is that the best solution failed. 🙁

3rd January 2008

You heard it here… last

A cheerful notion from John Naughton in last week’s Observer:

We may finally discover what the Storm ‘botnet’ – the colossal network of compromised Windows machines someone has been covertly building over the past year – is for. My hunch is that the net is headed for its own version of 9/11.