Reflecting On My Computing History

Author

Ian Wootten
September 05, 2021

When I was at primary school, my first foray into using computers was taking books from the library that were far beyond me and copying all the code I could find from them to the BBC Micro in our classroom. I once spent a full day in BASIC animating a boat going along a canal (mostly to avoid what the rest of the class were up to). I didn't know the commands for saving said code anywhere outside its internal memory, so once the day was up and the machine was switched off, it was all lost!

Our family didn't own a machine at home as at £335 in the 80's it was far too expensive for us. In this issue, I link to a book I was really taken with which details how the Micro came to be in many classrooms across the UK. I owe a lot to the Micro and later the Acorn Archimedes - But there's also many other exciting stories of machines I never got to play with.

In other news I've been enjoying the summer holidays with my family, whilst simultaneously looking forward to when they are no longer in the house all day.

Until next time, keep on shipping!

Ian

Thanks to trevkj for this weeks thumbnail image.

Stories

Cal Paterson describes how milk and printers are related to software subscription services.

This article from Bradley Taunt details how he went about putting a SSD inside the keyboard based Raspberry Pi 400 to increase its performance.

If you've ever watched "Halt and Catch Fire" some of this story may seem familiar. Vector Graphic became one of the best-known computer manufacturers of its era, fronted by Carole Ely and Lore Harp.

An Interesting Book

I've been enjoying all those machines that I grew up on this week with a really great book on the history of computers in Britain. Available at a price you name from the folks at Wireframe magazine.

How I Curate this Newsletter

Code

This nice collection of open source Tailwind Components offers a great alternative to premium paid for versions.

How to put a CDN together from a laptop in 5 hours. Useful when your current CDN vanishes unexpectedly (!)

A long list of deals available to startups, who are often trying to make their money stretch.

A Favourite Tweet

I've been creating realistic faces from game characters this afternoon using AI (Thanks to a script from @CorridorDigital).

See if you can figure out who they are! #corridoraiface pic.twitter.com/kMvg65sRi8— Ian Wootten (@iwootten) September 3, 2021