Gadget wantage

I’m not really the sort of person who buys stacks of gadgets. I don’t have satnav, I don’t have a fancy digital camera, and it’s only in the last two years I’ve had a mobile phone. Computers, yeah (although I don’t upgrade them every five seconds like I used to), and consoles, of course. But gadgets? Not really my thing. Until I saw this. It’s a HTC “Athena”, which is now being sold as the T-Mobile Ameo over here in …

The demise of the Playstation 3

Or even, PLAYSTATION 3, as Sony had decreed that you must spell it in all caps. You know, like eleven year old idiots do when they post on online forums. Over here in the UK, the Playstation 3 (I’m not 11) will be released next Friday. Just like the 360 and Wii launches, the media is in a frenzy and retailers are being swamped with pre-order enquiries. Unlike the 360 and Wii launches, however, the enquiries are “Can I cancel …

Tiny Laptop

I found this today. I knew I had it, but had completely forgotten how small it was. Like, 24x17x4cm. Which is VERY small. Shame it only has a 233MHz CPU and no built-in network card.

Stupid design #145: Canon MV930

The Canon MV930 is a cheap MiniDV camcorder. We buy a couple of camcorders at work each year, and they’re normally Canons. So this one arrived last week. And nice it is too. It’s got all the features we need, and it records onto SD cards and stuff, and is reasonably rugged and simple to use. However. It has one glaring problem. You see the big white button on the back? That’s the Record button. You press it, and it …

Galaksija

No, I didn’t sneeze. According to “resident” of #spin (a super top-secret geeky IRC channel, for super top-secret geeks, and me) Tom-Cat: Galaksija is a Z80 based computer built in ex-Yugoslavia during the best computer years (80’s 😉 ). I have no idea what it is. At all. Anyway, Mr Cat (I’m not really on first name terms with him) has written a Galaksija emulator. For the Spectrum. As you do. I downloaded it, read the Readme (which didn’t really …

My blog, from 10 years ago

Ten years ago, blogging didn’t exist. Well, it did, but not in any way the same form as it does today, and certainly the term hadn’t been invented then. And who would want to read a load of rubbish about what you did today and stuff? Well, in 1997 I found a program for my Amiga called, I think, Captain’s Log. It was a simple journal program where you just type stuff and it timestamps them. You may recall that …

My love for Castlevania

How did this happen? I’ve always liked Castlevania games, and was quite excited about 18 months ago when Dawn of Sorrow came out, even though I hadn’t really played a Castlevania game since the SNES one about 12 years previous. But good as it was, it didn’t propel me into buying any other, older, Castlevania games. Last year, however, when the first details of Portrait of Ruin for the DS were filtering onto the internet, I thought I’d best pick …