Old Computer Magazine Adverts

Posted By Mark on Dec 16, 2012

I recently bought a set of DVDs containing a ZX Spectrum emulator, hundreds of games, videos, and magazine scans. Ah, what a wonderful trip down memory lane they’re providing. Yes, I’m enjoying playing the games – some I had and used to love, most I’ve never played (or heard of) before – and I’ve even tried my hand at some very simplistic but satisfying programming since that’s where it all started for me, but by far the most fun I’m having is reading the old magazines; titles such as Big K, Your Sinclair, Computer Gamer, and others that I remember fondly from my youth. The articles are great, the predictions are dreadful, the program listings fill me with nostalgic bliss, and the adverts… heaven! I, like many thousands of people, spent a stupid amount of time playing Football Manager for the Spectrum. As a young teenager on the weekends it was not unusual for me to stay up through the night trying to get Portsmouth out of the fourth division and winning the F.A. cup. This advert featuring the bearded visage of Kevin Toms was a common sight in the magazines of the day and it’s interesting to see that nearly three decades on he’s still working on the game, this time for the iOS platform: http://blog.kevintoms.com/ I was not familiar with System 3 Software (although they’re still going today: System 3) or, at least, not with the games promoted above but this advert jumped out at me because of the wonderfully, obviously unlicensed versions of Star Wars and Tron, Deathstar Interceptor and Lazer Cycle respectively. I think it’s the blatancy of the games that hits me most; you couldn’t get away with something like this today. It also doesn’t quite fit in with the blurb on the company’s About page which describes their “development ethos for producing truly original gaming experiences for everyone” but that almost makes it even better. I don’t know who Keith Dean was (or is) but I am quite interested in finding out whether he ever got any of the hackers he was after. I never bought the “fabulous Cassette 50 from Cascade” but I remember seeing the advert a lot in the 80s and I remember being very tempted. Fifty games! Fifty! Still, maybe I was demonstrating some of the skepticism early on that would serve me well in later life because there’s something not quite right about the description: “it is impossible to tell you everything about the 50 games on Cassette 50”. Indeed. Still, something might have been nice. Finally, Llamasoft, and the games from the mind of Jeff Minter. Who...

Smart Lunch

Posted By Mark on Dec 12, 2012

There's an art in picking out lunch. It's got to be tasty, not too filling that the afternoon becomes a struggle, not too little that time until home seems to slow just to spite your grumbling stomach. There's luck in finding a place away from the crowds to eat. Somewhere that you won't attract the birds, somewhere that you won't get bumped by the bustlers, and fate is smiling on you. And there's being smart. You make yourself a small target, you hunch over a little bit, you position yourself so you're not easy to reach, and you realise that you can't be looking everywhere at once so you get out your smartphone and keep an eye on it while you eat. And relax. Because now you're safe. He's trying to look innocent as he sidles up behind you but the Sarnie Thief is being monitored and he's in for a 200 decibel shock if he dares to make a move. Protect your egg and cress lunch with the No! That's My Sandwich! app available on Windows Phone and Android. #StreetPics   Google+: View post on...

The Importance Of Information

Posted By Mark on Dec 12, 2012

Five o’clock, one evening at work. It’s dark. A message comes in from a customer to my boss: The home pages for the international stores on UAT(*) have suddenly all gone blank! (*) UAT = User Acceptance Testing. When we produce sites for our customers they’re developed locally, then pushed to a virtual copy of the live environment called UAT which allows the customer to agree to the site’s functionality as per specifications, identify bugs, or request further changes; when everyone’s happy the site then gets moved to the Web Staging environment which is a duplicate of the live environment running off the same data as a last chance sanity check before it gets transferred finally to live. You don’t get to be boss by fixing issues like this so a message goes from the boss to me first thing the following morning: The home pages for the international stores on UAT have suddenly all gone blank. Can you take a look? Strange, I think. I was on UAT at four o’clock that evening and it all looked fine. I take a look and yes, the pages are blank. Very odd. I load up the local environment from which the UAT system was deployed. The pages are fine as I’d (if not expected, at least) hoped. So, something happened on UAT after four that caused all the home pages to go blank. I hope it was nothing I did but, then again, I didn’t do anything; I was just double-checking the layout conformed to certain requirements so as to properly reply to an email. Okay then. I “take a look” as asked/instructed. Has someone tampered with the home page views, I wonder? I look and they’re all indicating that they’re untouched. I compare them against the local versions and, yes, they’re matching just fine. I compare against the current live views since they shouldn’t have changed and confirm that everything is as it should be. Has the data been erased somehow? I compare with a copy of the site and check some URLs that should be referenced on the home pages and they’re all showing up just fine. I launch a remote session onto the virtual machine and run some smoke test queries against the data. Nothing obvious comes up. Maybe it’s the access permissions! I could check individual access rights for the user I’m logging in as against the content that should be displayed or I could simply hit the “Rebuild access control permissions” button in the configuration section and see if that fixes the problem; it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve needed a kick up the...

Moments To Live

Posted By Mark on Dec 11, 2012

He shouldn't have stopped. He shouldn't have let the adrenalin cascade through his system; the pounding, pounding, pounding in his ears that muffled the sounds around him and left him so much more isolated. He shouldn't have started sweating but no amount of willpower could prevent it. He should have kept moving calmly, breathing normally, looking straight ahead, and just, simply got out of there but he did none of those things. Their nostrils picked up the scent. Some animal sixth sense detected the wrongness nearby. And one-by-one they turned towards the centre, stalking, circling, hunting the prey fixed with fear. He didn't stand a chance. Google+: View post on...

Emily

Posted By Mark on Dec 8, 2012