cyberferret

I can totally relate. I started programming at around 18, writing games and utilities for DOS and other OSs at the time. I am 56 now and still actively writing code for my own SaaS.

I expect that when I eventually retire, I will end up writing code for Arduino devices and other things because it is what I truly love to do, and I never want to stop learning something new.

I don't know if it is guys like me skewing the numbers here, but I have a not insignificant LP collection that I've had for over 30 years now. I got rid of my record player decades ago when moving house but carted my LPs around, with the intent to buy a decent home stereo setup once I got established again and had the disposable income to buy something decent.

I am at that stage now, so will invest in a decent HiFi kit sometime this year. I guess I am also a bit old school in that I don't really listen to music while working etc., so things like Spotify and Apple Music etc. are not my thing. I treat listening to music as a bit of an event, that harkens back to my younger days of having album 'listening parties', so I expect I will still consume my music that way again once I get my record player.

SET BLASTER=RIP SIM WONG 1955 2023

Interesting - I was just having a discussion with my son the other day about the term "horsepower". Quick research showed that the average human can generate 1.2 HP in a burst, or 0.1 HP sustained. Is 0.5 HP the accepted measure for sustained output while riding a bike?

Wow, this is an honour indeed to interact with you! I've actually gone back on Youtube and watched a few episodes again - ah the memories.

Loved re-listening to Rendoosian again - wonderful language that has enough of a hint of actual English that you understand what was being said or implied. Also loved the intro Rendoosian glyph fonts.

Thank you for bringing such a wonderful and different cartoon to the world!

EDIT (Translation): Binti Boo mit ur magnificibifici Cartoon grandi-max

Wow. I have a 6 letter Instagram account handle that actually matches a popular (Western) name and initial out there. So far I get about one fairly polite request per month via DM to sell my handle to them, which I always decline, but lately I am seeing a rise in the number of 'password reset' emails I am getting from Instagram. It's gone from about one per week to sometimes 2 or 3 per day.

That fact, plus the stories in this article is making think of really closing off my social media visibility a lot more than it currently is.

I concur with this. Whenever I recommend Blackadder to friends or family, I encourage them to start with 2, then move forward, then go back to watch 1 if they become a fan. This was the exact path I took when I became familiar with the series.

In every instance where I know of people who watched 1 first, they are almost always put off by the silliness and don't continue.

I think BA2 will always be my absolute favourite of all as it was the first one I watched, and it also endeared me to the delightful characters that Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry and Tony Robinson brought to the show. Only Hugh Lawrie in BA3 came close.

You are so right about how the seriousness was always there and revealed itself at the end. I too was fairly young when I first watched it, and I think it really framed my propensity for adding humour to otherwise serious situations as a coping mechanism.

Someone once told me - "British comedy is about making fun of yourself, whereas American comedy is about making fun of other people", and I have found it to be true in a lot of shows I've witnessed. Probably why I personally tend to prefer British comedies over American ones. I have a thing against people having a laugh at the expense of others.

Pingu was a favourite to watch with the kids when they were younger - so much going on with no words. Also loved "The Flying Adrenallini Brothers" which was an animation with a made up language but so many visual gag laughs.

Memories! One of the things I had to do in my first ever job was swap the backup discs in a Vax PDP-11 that ran a big pharmaceutical inventory system. All that time waiting for those huge discs to dismount and re-mount...

Anders was one of my early heroes too - way before people like Gates or Ellison were on the scene. I too graduated from BASIC to Turbo Pascal, and couldn't believe the speed differential, and learning about things like recursion etc.

I never met Anders, but I did meet someone who used to work with him at one point and who marvelled at how he use to write blocks or Assembly code off the top of his head when everyone else had to plot the instructions and registers on paper first.

Re: Your point (1), I read somewhere that the match took longer than watching the entire "Queen's Gambit" NetFlix series start to finish. (To put it in perspective for readers who may not realise how much time is spent at the board during these sorts of games).