Posts by LesC
86 posts • joined Wednesday 9th June 2010 10:57 GMT
TTL Heaven!
Jeezus look at all that LS / TTL decode logic, 74154 and all these latches, counters and w.h.y. It's been a very long time.... had me reaching for the manuals, um, Google as i'd forgotten what a 74166 and what not did! Excellent.
Wot...
No zombies shuffling around then wanting your braaaains?
http://www.decayfilm.com/
Posted in Movie review: Oblivion
Oblivion is probably where this Tom Cruise vehicle will end up. After a spell on Sky Turkeys, erm, Premiere and then bargain basement DVD's in your local Asda, Tesco, Walmart or w.h.y
Mines is the one with the Razzie in the pocket.
LC
Re: Fuels
Didn't the A4/V2 run on T-Stoff (hydrogen peroxide) and C-Stoff (hydrazine hydrate / methanol / water)? The Germans certainly had hydrazine. Hydrazine is still in use as a propellant.
John D. Clark's book 'Ignition' is a terrific read and is quite amusing at times... and freely available.
Nuke as Nork rockets probably use HTP and hydrazine
LC
Re: Obligatory
Adobe X1 struggles with this but it's a fascinating read - if you're fed up with Iain Banks or Sector General then give this a try. It's a blast from the pioneering days of rocketry. Literally.
Wot, no Roger Corman?
Attack of The Crab Monsters.
Piranha.
Battle Beyond The Stars.
That is all.
Posted in Honk if the car in front is connected
This is all going to end in tears...
Just wait until the mission creep sets in and everyone and their dogs can gain access to your personal motoring data under crime, terrorism or kiddie protection legislation. Reminding you that your MOT / tax is due is fine, as is letting you know there's something wrong with your engine or you've got a nail in your tyre is fine. AutoPhorm, location tracking, letting SonyBMG know you've been playing Susan Boyle content leeched of l33torrentz and driver profiling is not.
Posted in SimCity 2000
SC2K came with half decent scenarios too - the fiendisly difficult Flint was a right pig to achieve without resorting to cheating. ISTR was achievable by issuing some bonds, putting schools and colleges everywhere and raising taxes on low tech industries.
WATER who managed to get enough.... putting pumps around lakeshores and suchlike never seemed to get any more!
Power was always hydro / fusion. Putting schools and colleges everywhere ensured hitech. High taxes and high spends always worked quite well in hitech... maybe the authors were closet socialists?
Plymouth Arcos rock... make sure you put a police station by them.
You could also get rid of roads altogether and have nothing but trains ISTR.
Still have this old gem and play it to this day.
LC
Thunderbirds Are No Go
Please, spare us. Unless the scripts have been written by Brian Clemens and it's been done by Sylvia Anderson. No Frakes, please.
'Old' B&W on 625 lines is still 576i and gigabits per pixel I've still got an old KB CVC VALVE tv set that works fine off my old VM Pace box. It's easy on the eye to watch.
LC
Of course the DNA database is anonymous, we all believe what HMG says is above reproach. Until it's monetised and flogged off to the highest bidders by some cash strapped government... leaving poor Joe Publick mystified why he can't get life insurance or anything else as he / she's got the p53 or BRCA1 gene...
Didn't the BBC touch on this a few years ago with a series the name of which escapes me?
Oh, No
BBQ Turkey Meatballs in Apple 013 contender.
I stick to old computer names when doing PDC's in dental IT: Usually from this lot:
LLANDRU - Star Trek
COLOSSUS - Bletchley Park and, of course, The Forbin Project
GUARDIAN (The Forbin Project)
ZEN (Blake's 7)
QUEEG (Red Dwarf)
GEORGE - The (Original) Avengers, Steed & Co
TENCH889 (A Maze of Death)
SID (UFO)
BATCOMPUTER (original Batman)
KITT (Knight Rider)
etc etc
So much better than PDC01...
Looks like she'll lose her heart to a starship trooper after all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Tkx6BgRFE
Mines is the coat with the old '70s hits in it....
Sci - fi for Tom Cruise. That'll be Ai! Pedrito! then.
Seriously now:
The Jedi of Waverley Place
Annakin Montana
The Suite Life On The Death Star
My Babysitter's a Jedi Knight
101 Ewoks
So Darkside!
...etc etc
LC
Re: Please won't somebody think of the minions?
From Villainsource.com, natch
http://villainsource.com/
LC
Posted in Vote now for the ULTIMATE BACON SARNIE
The Horn Cafe A90 behemoth has been a lifesaver for us dental IT contractors when coming from the wastelands around Aberdeen, when I'm doing dental IT in the many practices scattered around there! An excellent mention.
Posted in Chinese man's six-ton balls save lives
Re: Prior Art
Didn't Wil E. Coyote have an Acme 'Indestructo' steel ball in the 1950's?
Mines is the ones with the Chuck Jones cartoons in the pocket.
Posted in The Dragon 32 is 30
Not you? Then log in here.
These was a Dragon 32 in a machine shop just up the road from here that had an S-50 bus hanging off it... used to do all sorts of process control shehanigans using it's built in BASIC plus a smattering of machine code.
Those were the days... the 6809 made it into craploads of industrial control stuff plus quite a few pinball machines there must still be a few still chugging away!
Mines is the one with the Babani 6809 book in the pocket.
LC
Posted in Jackson’s Hobbit becomes a trilogy
Bernard Matthews R.I.P
Is it only me that thinks these have "TURKEYS" written all over them?
Mines is the one with squashed tomato in the pocket.
LC
FTL Velociraptors
Couldn't you get the dinosaurs to bugger off on big spaceships in SimEarth after you'd achieved nanotech?
Beer, as the Vogons are coming...
Help Ma Boab!
Dundee outfit (and rather conservative) DC Thomson is of course the company that also brings you such delights as the Sunday Post, People's Friend, The Scots Magazine and The Friendship Book of Frances Gay. So all this nostalgia stuff is old hat for them. At one time they published "The Bimbo" magazine, strangely enough not a celebrity obsessed mag on who's had new Bulgarian funbags or who's been seen with whom this week. Crivvens!
Penguin as the brewers of Tactical Nuclear Penguin are just up the A90 from here (and you'd need a few to wade through the Peoples Friend)
Elite.Frontier
Knife, meet David Braben for this atrocious space sim..
That is all.
Pot, meet Kettle
Isn't this a bit rich from the company that trialled Phorm without its subscribers' knowledge and from the other one that uses Son of Phorm for it's so-called 'award winning' parental control software that allegedly tracks everywhere you go?
Must try harder
Got this off Technet first thing this morning and installed it on a mediocre by today's standards Tosh laptop. 7 hours later - have just restored Windows 7. What a steaming pile of total carp.
I've got easier access to my network shares with my Nexus S.
LC
No surprises here
To avoid passport loss, ID theft, fraud, terrorism, etc it's only a matter of time until these devices are implanted into a body cavity, and once the refugees, non-EU immigrants and such like the are dealt with the citizens of the UK will be next.
Looks like that ID card database wasn't partitioned with a chainsaw after all...
5% ABV?
Next time you're in Birmingham try the Wellington - a few pints of Coastal Erosion Dark at 8% should have the desired sliding under the table effect., there'll be a few dotted around the southwest that also sell this stuff.
Failing that Fraserburgh outfit Brewdog sell Tactical Nuclear Penguin in all of its 32% liver pickling goodness.
LC
Simply Plight
Sounds like fun but does anything in it go at mach 7.5 like that Orbiter Delta Glider effort (with the scramjets on at full blast)?
ISTR there wasn't much in FSX, apart from that Shuttle add on.
Train sims are positively exciting compared to that shipsim on Steam in which you can sail the Titanic. Trainz or trainsim 2011 makes a refreshing change from Portal 2 or (my favourite) Team Fortress 2.
Mines is the anorak with the Ian Allan book in the pocket.
625 lines
... but it's interlaced so it's 312i? So not quite HD, but is as near as dammit VGA with infinite shades of grey on a b/w set. It all seemed alright at the time with a properly set up set it was well watchable.
Mines is the one with the dual standard valve TV in the pocket.
LC
Posted in UK lays carbon plan before Earth Goddess
15%
There is plenty reason for doubt - the Germans are raking in our 15% extra cash. Our German electricity suppliers (RWE, E-ON) are charging us 15% more than their German electricity (RWE, E-ON) suppliers and I suspect the same applies to our Spanish & French electricity suppliers. Apart from Scottish & Southern all our electricity utilities and nuclear power stations (belong to EDF - Electiricitie de France) do not belong to the UK people any more.
Posted in Samsung Galaxy Nexus Android smartphone
Nice...
Looks like a good 'un. Unfortunately I'll have to slobber for another 6 months or so for one as that's how long I've got to go on my Nexus S - for which ICS is arriving soon... allegedly :/
Paris, as she probably uses Dildroid.
Get Ryback
Sorting the perps out would be all in a day's work for Steven Seagal, after all he did precisely this in Under Siege 2.
Mines is the one with the O'Reilly Big Book of Satellite Hacks in the pocket.
What about...
Flash Gordon? Excellent 1980 Brit camp rockfest.
For those of us who remember that 'Camp Rock' isn't (c) Disney.
I don't know if the BBC2 Arena strand 'Hawkwind - Do Not Panic' counts...
LC
Posted in Go back to the future with Red Dwarf
Oh, No
If it's anything like that crossover abomination 'Back to Earth' it'll be definately slated in September 2012. Hopefully Naylor or whoever wrote the script didn't listen to the RD fanboi wailing dervishes this time.
Fail as there's no Grant as far as I can see.
Now We're Stealing It Back..
NTK - So that's where they went.
Mines is the one with the tatty Elite teeshirt in the pocket.
Got your ears on?
1-9 for a copy, surely?
In my student days I used my (not very) portable CB to get lifts up & down the UK.
Mines is the one with the Harvard walkie talkie and lantern batteries in the pocket.
Pylontastic!
There is plenty more British pylon goodness here at Flash Bristow's site - go and look you know it makes sense if you can distinguish your L8's from your PL16's:
http://www.gorge.org/pylons/envision
Then go join the PAS.
LC
Posted in Windows 7 overtakes XP - finally
XP Builds - !!
Anyone that has the misfortune to do an XP build nowadays can easily expect to wait all day for updates to go through.... starting with an XPSP3 + OIffice 2003SP2 base build can easily download and install 800Mb+++ extra (even WSUS doesn't really help) and on the slower PCs XP tends to run on you're backwarding and forwarding for hours watching all these updates install. Slooooowly. These days I just sling the old tech and get the client nice shiny new W7 stuff, job done in a fraction of the time even after 300mb of post sp1 update stuff.
<Insert Conspiracy Thoery Here>
The database doesn't happen to be down for scheduled maintenance by the NSA / FBI / MI5 or the Saudi government does it? For the purposes of terrorist / rioter / insurgent / protester detection (delete where appropriate).
Mine's is the grubby one with the G-men hat on top.
50 years..
50 years ago there was the C-Stellerator (US) and Project Zeta (UK) fusion projects, both of which were promising electricity too cheap to meter in the late '50s. Whatever happened to these?
TheZetaStellerator 2.0 will probably also go the same way for this discussion to be repeated in 50 years time.
Wouldn't it be better for the boffinry to concentrate their efforts on the JET tokomak rather than fragmenting / forking?
Horse Droppings
Wasn't it the BBC that tried driving an electric 'mini' from London to Edinburgh and it took *four* days istr? A four horse + coach team could do it faster than that over a hundred years ago. Or one of the fledgling trains of that time as the East Coast Main Line opened in 1871.. The main problem was battery charge time and the frankly pathetic distances these things could go between charges.
It would be easier - and faster! - using an electric train and then getting an electric car / hybrid / bike / rickshaw or whatever at the station. Not very practical if you carry a stock of IT server spares in the boot but it keeps the treehuggers happy.
Nuke as fission is going to be around for a few years yet.
Posted in Here lies
/^v.+b$/i
Dos?
What about -
@echo off
REM Check for heartbeat
:ALIVE
GOTO LIFE
IF NOT EXIST HEARTBEAT ==0 GOTO ALIVE
REM No heartbeat
END
:LIFE
REM carbon based life functions in here
GOTO ALIVE
The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits
Considering that Sky Movies shows Bernard Matthews' 25 finest turkeys in rotation over all the Sky Movies channels I'm surprised anybody watches them at all!
Also, where were the Competition Commission when Sky bought up and killed half off half of Virgin's output - admittedly mostly carp too but I miss Future Fighting Machines on Bravo...
Paris, as the Hottie and the Nottie is always being shown.
Posted in Who needs a million NFC tags?
Do you want fries with that?
Am I the only one that thought they were going into telephone boxes? You could cram a lot of phone numbers for, um, Vietnamese masseuses or dominatrixes on one of these devices, one swipe and you're sorted. Saves all that hassle with collecting postcards, too.
Mines is the one with the Nexus S in the pocket.
57p
Greggs are the Amstrad of the sausage roll world for all of 57p you can have masses of artery - hardening goodness. Have one of these with a plate of poutine and you're set up for deat-, erm, life.
You can get 'em even cheaper on the Greggs on their use by date bargain shop on Newcastle's West Road, cheap student and low income sustenance, yum.
Their stotties are good though.... but you're not going to get these in East Grinstead.
Nuke as eating this would have the same effect.
Jolly Hockey Sticks
It was only this (Wednesday) morning that the BBC had the usual tofu eaters bleating on about how AGW was real and going to be the the end of all of us. The University of East Anglia must be getting a bit cash strapped and need to fund their bad science a bit more, presumably with a rise in green taxes. Now if the News of the Screws could hack these characters' phones...
There was nothing about global cooling at all. There is no global cooling on the BBC website.
I really wish they would make their minds up. Is it going to be thermogeddon or earth sized snowball?
Mines is the one with the drowning dog in the pocket.
Posted in LucasArts Day of the Tentacle
Tie Fighter
Keep an old Pentium 400 running DOS 6.22 & Windows 3.11 with the os2 workplace shell on an old Biostar mobo (+ full sized Cirrus VLBus VGA) for Tie Fighter to this day - along with an original SB AWE32 with the old type simm sockets and Pana interface. Was just about enough firepower for you to join the dark side... The same machine normally runs Cakewalk and a dumb Fatar midi piano for SWMBO and has done since the mid '90s.
Amazingly enough Windows 3.11 is still available for Technet subscribers!
The old Quickshot joystick + 8 bit ISA card still plugs on.
Loved the TIE Fighter mods (shields, torpedoes) missions and the freighter called Etmon Orlac that needed inspecting :)
Posted in Has UK gov lost the census to Lulzsec?
"We Never Forget Who We're Working For"
As Lockheed Martin's tagline:
EH?
<conspiracy theory>
Presumably Lulzsec has got the the gen on the UK at the same time as the NSA / FBI / CIA / Department of Homeland Security then?
<\conspiracy theory>
Underground Low Life
[quote] d) Tremors (of the underground worm kind) [/quote]
That'll be Graboids, then. Not too dissimilar to the Buckfast - fuelled neds that frequent the place weating to grab you from behind and relieve you of your watch / mobe / cash / whatever.
.
Mines is the one with the phone running Zombie, Run! Live Edition in the pocket.
ICT?
Isn't part of the problem the degredation of ICT from learning how to program in BASIC / FORTH / machine code or whatever into how to format a Word Document or embed a picture?
I've had a few conversations with my older daughter's ICT teacher on the merits of 6502 / Z80 or using VDU25,85 and a lookup table to draw circles on the Beeb B, as well as researching undocumented oswrch calls by hacking Basil's Copyall :)
This kind of bread and butter stuff may make the kiddies more prepared to use bash or a cron job.
