Richards Weblog

Hi All,

I thought with this being the start of the year an all that I would make some New Years resolutions. I don’t normally do this as I’m terrible at keeping to them. I thought though that Ishould try this year and at least make them achievable (Winning the lottery never seems to happen).

1. Stop smoking.
   I’ve been trying to stop smoking for years and actually managed it a few years ago for about 6 months. This time it will happen though. I’m currently on my 5th day. I see can a treat of a curry for getting through the 1st week.
2. Eat more healthily and do some exercise.
   Not as many kebabs and Indian takeaways this year. I’ll also try and cut down on the drinking as well. I’m sure a few of you will miss the “rixhamisation” when we go out (you know who you are ) but I think it has to be limited this year.
3. Read up more on the technical stuff and actually come up with an app that may be of some use.
   What I really want to do is get more in to OO programming and learn someVB.Net and some Ruby. This is already in hand and I hope to start looking more at a Ruby app in the next week or so with @marcjohnson and @ashleymoran.
4. Make some positive changes to work practices and become more efficient in projects and management.
   Think I need to do some more reading on Agile management process, OO programming and some more Project Management.

I think that these resolutions are achievable during this year. Most of these have already been started on already.

So what are your resolutions for this year? Maybe we can help each other out?

A hope every one has a great 2010.

Cheers,
Richard

admin Personal

So, many years ago, when I’d just left school my wonderfully supportive parents bought me a BBC Master for passing my exams. I loved that machine. Before then I’d only had a baby Beeb, an Electron. (with a spectrum 48k and ZX81 being previous to that).

Whilst at school I had built, with the instructions from a phiysics teacher, an interface to be able to control motors, take digital and analog input and I wrote some software to control it. All exciting stuff. These days I use Arduino, but that’s where it all got started.

The BeebM was eventually replaced by an Amstrad 1512 when I got to college and wanted to start programming in Cobol and Pascal, but the Beeb has always been my fave.

So, as I suspect many of my generation did after watching Micromen on TV the other week, I started to trawl eBay in search of my youth.

I managed to pick up a Master 128 for £30 (+12PP) which I didn’t think was at all bad. It arrived soon after and has now been sat on the dining room table for the last week, all wired up to the portable tv and tape deck.

After initially thinking it was broken as it came up with the message “This is not a language” we soon realised that the internal battery power had died. A quick bit of googling and we managed to get the old Master up and running. Remembering the good old command AUTO 10 and away we go with the obligitary

PRINT “Please enter your name” INP
INPUT NAME$
PRINT “Hello ” ; NAME$

We were off.

Next, to load some of those old games from tape that I had for the Electron. Tape desk plugged in, cassette rewound. CH. “” , hear the little microswitch go and wait for the tape deck to start. Nothing. Bugger. Still not got to the bottom of this, even after trying many different cassette cables. Will be a job for the weekend.

Next plan, to get a 3.5″ floppy disk drive connected and get that working.

It’s all good fun and keeps me and the kids amused, even if the wife does want her dining table back. She sounds similar to how my mum used to sound when she wanted to put the tea out. Happy Memories.

Now, where did I put that copy of Elite…..

admin Personal bbc, classic computing, master, youth

I can’t believe that Brawn GP won the F1 constructors championship and Jenson Button gets his first drivers title all in the first year of a team that nearly didn’t exist.

This is a fantastic time for F1 and long may it continue. Brawn and Jenson have made a new fan this season (and I presume 1000’s more).

CONGRATULATIONS to Brawn GP and Jenson Button.

admin Personal brawn, button, f1, jenson, world championship