David Rickard

Argos Catalogue 1993 (Autumn/ Winter)

a group of cartoon characters are sitting in chairs and one of them has a shirt that says genius ALT: a group of cartoon characters are sitting in chairs and one of them has a shirt that says genius

It always bothered me that you can see her hand turning the knob underneath.

Still a funny joke.

Oh hi.

Photo of the screen on a DAB tuner showing Bucks Radio.

Bucks Radio (the spiritual successor to Mix 96) is on DAB now!

The fact that these aren't road legal in the UK and Europe is HILARIOUS.

I enjoy it just the right amount, which is 'a lot'.

The spammers are moving in.

The news is getting all goofy and weird again. It did this a few years ago.

I disapprove.

Yeah, same with Mix 96 becoming Greatest Hits Radio. Then again, I quite like GHR.

But they do live in in spirit as Bucks Radio (not that I listen to it, I'm waiting for them to appear on DAB).

A diagram showing how pi is encoded in the Pentium chip. The Pentium has a ROM to hold constants in the lower right. Zooming in on the ROM shows how it holds exponents in the left and the signficand in the right. Zooming in more shows the individual transistors in the ROM. Eight bits are indicated with arrows, the binary bits that start pi.

Intel's Pentium processor (1993) can compute sines, logarithms, and other special functions. To do this, it has a ROM with 304 floating-point constants. I reverse-engineered this ROM and extracted the constants. You can see pi in the ROM, binary 11.001001..., encoded in the transistor pattern. 1/n

We're still all the poorer for losing Mix 96 and Fox FM.

Photo of an unpopulated PCB

Close-up of the PCB which reads "Hello, Cave Dwellers..."

Recent arrival from JLCPCB - replacement PCBs for the Mac Classic I've got (with a buggered logic board).

Rather a lot of desoldering to do.

Morecambe and Wise clip show on BBC2, and it's in 4:3. This pleases me far more than it ought to.

.
Peruvian owls always hunt in pairs.

.

That's because they're Inca hoots.

The thing with AI spouting random nonsensical shit it saw on social media as fact - is that's scarily true to real life as 'real' people do that anyway.

🤦🙃

I've noticed a big difference between British/EU and American factual programming, is the sparing use of music in the British stuff (if at all). US stuff often has constant music. I find that carries over into YouTube depending on their location.

A very faded ball that looks like the Central TV logo.

And now on Central...

I'll try and track that down, thanks!

Watching Grand Designs from the beginning of late. There's a real shift around the time it goes wide-screen (2003 I think), the direction becomes more arty, and Kevin stops 'helping' with things. Possibly a bit more critical.

I.e. The GD we know today really.

Boy 1 has been playing this a lot on the Mame cabinet. He keeps asking how to play the other characters... Now I know.

I'm not adding two more sticks!

A doughnut shop in America is still using a Commodore 64 for their daily business. Original source Tony Lyon.

A dirty Mac Classic

The logic board is quite badly battery bombed, but not the worst.

The internal chassis is very badly damaged by acid.

Picked up this Mac Classic. Oh dear.

There have been many TV and Movie versions of Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'.

The best, most faithful version, I feel, is Scrooged.

Milton Keynes Costco

Went to Costco this morning. It wasn't ludicrously busy.

Stornoway are a bloody marvellous band.

Two modded Gotek floppy disk emulators, with their lids missing. One is powered on.

Bought a couple of Goteks on AliExpress. They're now FlashFloppy modded with upgrades.

JVC TV showing the Android boot menu.

Definitely an android TV.

Aren't these things amazing?

Bring back Network South East you cowards.

Yes I am old.