Advertisement · 728 × 90

Posts by Richard Downer

Post image

Love the things you can find in continental European airport departure shops! Cubi-doo, anyone?

1 week ago 0 0 0 0
I know the tweet is Al generated when they use " ," before and.

I know the tweet is Al generated when they use " ," before and.

“I will NOT sacrifice the Oxford comma. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They assimilate the em dash and we fall back. They capture ‘not just X but y’ and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

1 week ago 7461 2075 160 320
Preview
Doney Brionvega television: the first cult television since the 90s Doney TV by Brionvega: the first fully transistorized television in Europe. Directly from the 90s, an iconic regenerated product with an unmistakable design.

They are branded Brionvega, which I've learnt is an Italian design brand. It seems that they reconditioned some of these screens and sold them for collectors and exhibitions! www.brionvega.com/en/products/...

1 week ago 0 0 0 0
Shelves with vintage TV sets - most showing pictures - and other electrical items

Shelves with vintage TV sets - most showing pictures - and other electrical items

A vintage TV set

A vintage TV set

A vintage TV set, showing a picture with an events calendar for this venue

A vintage TV set, showing a picture with an events calendar for this venue

Fascinated by the arty odds in this hotel - was surprised to see so many CRT TVs in working condition, with very good quality pictures. At first I thought they were fake - modern panels behind a lump of glass - but on closer inspection they are the genuine article!

1 week ago 1 0 1 0

When your life's in a mess, take the National Express 🎶

1 month ago 0 0 0 0
A fragment of a comment at the top of a C source code file. The relevant parts are:

QSORT.C

Well, I actually implement a merge sort here, because I have no idea how much stack is available for a quick sort.

A fragment of a comment at the top of a C source code file. The relevant parts are: QSORT.C Well, I actually implement a merge sort here, because I have no idea how much stack is available for a quick sort.

My whole life has been a lie! Well, the couple of years between learning C and the end of the Amiga, and only the bit of my life that is programming-related. From the source code of the DICE C Compiler, at the top of the file that implements qsort(), the Quick Sort routine in the C standard library:

1 month ago 2 0 0 0
Massive purple lit letters outside Edinburgh Airport. It should read “EDINBURGH” but I have “hilariously” cropped out the first  five letters so it says “URGH”

Ha ha ha ha

Massive purple lit letters outside Edinburgh Airport. It should read “EDINBURGH” but I have “hilariously” cropped out the first five letters so it says “URGH” Ha ha ha ha

Edinburgh is great for this stuff

2 months ago 18 4 1 0
Advertisement
A fancy wine glass full of Irn Bru (a luminous orange fizzy drink) and a dish of also luminous orange jelly babies sweets

A fancy wine glass full of Irn Bru (a luminous orange fizzy drink) and a dish of also luminous orange jelly babies sweets

Celebrating Scotland's greatest poet Rabbie Burns' birthday with... Irn Bru jelly babies 🤣 (haggis in the oven for later!)

2 months ago 0 0 0 0

AMX Paint! I haven't seen that since I was at primary school 😁

2 months ago 2 0 0 0

Let's talk about generative AI, contaminated information, and rhubarb.

Once upon a time, Europe was at war.

Food was scarce, and the government of the quote-unquote United Kingdom looked for alternatives. 1/

3 months ago 1265 883 2 130

In 1908 Jack London wrote "The Iron Heel" which is arguably the very first dystopian novel.

The plot is also ridiculous... extreme wealth disparity causes socialism to become popular, so the oligarchy class uses their wealth to put politicians they own in power, who brutally repress any dissent.

4 months ago 37 1 1 0
A photo of an Amiga 500 with matching mouse, external floppy drive, and monitor, taken from the computer's Wkipedia page. It's a beautiful grey wedge of a machine that appears as if it's mostly keyboard.

By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=350965

A photo of an Amiga 500 with matching mouse, external floppy drive, and monitor, taken from the computer's Wkipedia page. It's a beautiful grey wedge of a machine that appears as if it's mostly keyboard. By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=350965

Sleek, simple to use, powerful, and boots directly into games when required but is also a versatile machine capable of running desktop software? Plays nicely with TVs and monitors? Great controller support? It can only be...

Huh? You were expecting a photo of a Steam Machine?

4 months ago 155 35 8 0
Preview
Google boss Sundar Pichai warns 'no company immune' if AI bubble bursts Speaking exclusively to BBC News, CEO Sundar Pichai said the artificial intelligence boom had been an

The absolute selfishness of tech bosses 😡 creating this tech, pushing it in our faces, overhyping it, putting up our prices to justify it, and setting us up so that if it fails, we all to suffer.

Google boss warns 'no company immune' if AI bubble bursts - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

4 months ago 0 0 0 0

I can’t believe how stupid everything is

4 months ago 12198 1205 572 114
A terminal window fragment showing a crash dump. The opening words are "Guru Meditation", a reference to the system crash message of the Commodore Amiga computer in the 1980s

A terminal window fragment showing a crash dump. The opening words are "Guru Meditation", a reference to the system crash message of the Commodore Amiga computer in the 1980s

I'm trying out ESP32 programming for the first time (early impressions: pretty impressive). I accidentally caused a crash bug and was very surprised to see the below appear on the serial console - Amiga is clearly still influential in modern computer systems! #Amiga #Commodore #GuruMediation #ESP32

5 months ago 2 0 0 0

Back on retrocomputing this evening, writing some new code for the Amiga - this time, for the new (to me) ReAction GUI toolkit that is now the OS-supplied standard for UIs!

5 months ago 0 0 0 0

Really REALLY starting to understand the tech landscape today as the age of "loss of consent". My settings don't stay set. Features are forced on me either forced upgrades or by inclusion with a critical security patch. I increasingly have ZERO CHOICE in my interactions with computers.

6 months ago 95 21 12 4
Advertisement

As a parent with a kid who’s starting to play games on the iPad, I’m so pissed at the predatory state of kid’s games.

1. I pay $7 to remove all ads from this game. Yet catch my kid watching ads - even after paying they are offered to watch for in-game rewards. WTH

2. (cont’d)

6 months ago 599 54 60 3
Cartoon strip by me who is Stephen Collins. The imagery of the comic starts off with a single electron and then each panel zooms out one step - first to the microchip, then the OLED screen, then the iPhone, the person holding the iPhone, and onwards

Script: 

An electron, forged in the first fire of the Big Bang


Courses through a deeply intricate maze of transistors and diodes 


mined with unfathomable ingenuity from our planet’s deep geological past


and assembled from all over the world


Into a device perfected through centuries of technological evolution


to perform a beautifully synchronised pixel dance on an OLED screen  


in an intricate moving pattern of shifting light 

[Show a phone screen with an Instagram post featuring Ryan Gosling and bearing the legend:]

WATCH RYAN GOSLING EAT A PASTY FOR THE FIRST TIME!  

whose choreography is powered by an global information network of unknowable complexity 

which is specifically tailored to the interests of the being observing the screen

who is a member of the most advanced species on Earth

[Show a shlubby looking GUY idly looking at the Ryan Gosling/sausage roll Instagram reel on his phone while sitting in his pants and a stained t-shirt and eating a massive bag of crisps] 

with a brain perhaps more capable of reconfiguring these signals into conscious thought than any other for billions of miles around

[Guy has a thought]:
“Mmm…"

in this endless, silent void. 

[Pull back to show the Earth as a tiny blue dot among the stars with a thought bubble coming from it] 

"… I want a pasty.”

[ends]

Cartoon strip by me who is Stephen Collins. The imagery of the comic starts off with a single electron and then each panel zooms out one step - first to the microchip, then the OLED screen, then the iPhone, the person holding the iPhone, and onwards Script: An electron, forged in the first fire of the Big Bang Courses through a deeply intricate maze of transistors and diodes mined with unfathomable ingenuity from our planet’s deep geological past and assembled from all over the world Into a device perfected through centuries of technological evolution to perform a beautifully synchronised pixel dance on an OLED screen in an intricate moving pattern of shifting light [Show a phone screen with an Instagram post featuring Ryan Gosling and bearing the legend:] WATCH RYAN GOSLING EAT A PASTY FOR THE FIRST TIME! whose choreography is powered by an global information network of unknowable complexity which is specifically tailored to the interests of the being observing the screen who is a member of the most advanced species on Earth [Show a shlubby looking GUY idly looking at the Ryan Gosling/sausage roll Instagram reel on his phone while sitting in his pants and a stained t-shirt and eating a massive bag of crisps] with a brain perhaps more capable of reconfiguring these signals into conscious thought than any other for billions of miles around [Guy has a thought]: “Mmm…" in this endless, silent void. [Pull back to show the Earth as a tiny blue dot among the stars with a thought bubble coming from it] "… I want a pasty.” [ends]

Zoom out 🙏 🤩 #wonder

6 months ago 337 97 7 8
Me wearing a dark green t-shirt and holding a coral (orange-ish) jumper

Me wearing a dark green t-shirt and holding a coral (orange-ish) jumper

Family have just pointed out that I'm wearing orange and green just like the new album theme colours 😂

6 months ago 1 0 0 0

Taylor Swift launch day, and wife and daughter have been listening to it for the last hour while making friendship bracelets! Radio 2 have just played Fate of Ophelia and it's exactly the kind of sounds I'm in to. LP is in the post and cinema tickets for the launch party tonight are ready!

6 months ago 3 0 1 0
Post image Post image

Angela Rayner accidentally pays less tax than she should have, resigns, and the media gives her hell.

Nigel Farage deliberately pays less tax than he should have, and the media gives him a free pass.

That, right there, is the problem.

7 months ago 3768 1697 116 64
Post image

Logical fallacy detected 🤖
Artist credit: Michele Rosenthal michelerosenthal.com

7 months ago 36 14 0 0
Preview
Microsoft Releases Historic 6502 BASIC - Microsoft Open Source Blog Explore the original 6502 BASIC—now open source! Dive into retro code, history, and emulators. Fork it, run it, and relive computing's roots.

Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC is now Open Source opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09...

7 months ago 412 148 17 15

Same here - many clubs and groups rely on it, so I can't dump it completely. However the "Social Fixer" Chrome extension makes the experience a LOT better, I'd recommend trying it.

7 months ago 0 0 1 0
Advertisement

"And after that, collapsing on the sofa to watch TV only to doze off halfway through an episode. My musical tastes include K-Pop Demon Hunters and Taylor Swift because that's all I ever hear these days."

7 months ago 2 0 1 0
Start:
"I want to reply to this!"

First decision:
Is it an opinion?

Yes → Do you know them?

No → "Why would somebody who doesn’t know you care what you think?" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Are you a recognized expert?

No → "Why would somebody who doesn’t know you care what you think?" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Will knowing this be useful to them?

No → "Don’t give people useless information" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Say the thing!

No → Is it a fact?

No → Is it a joke?

Yes → Is it funny?

No → "Laugh quietly at your inner thoughts" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Who will they think it’s funny at?

Them → "Don’t be a douche" → Do not say the thing

It’s unknown → Is it a question?

Yes → Could you Google for the answer?

Yes → "Turns out there are stupid questions" → Do not say the thing

No → Are they likely to know the answer?

No → "Turns out there are stupid questions" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Will they be happy to hear this?

No → "Don’t be a douche" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Say the thing!

No → "Laugh quietly at your inner thoughts" → Do not say the thing

No → Can you prove it’s true?

No → "Don’t give people useless information" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Will knowing this be useful to them?

No → "Don’t give people useless information" → Do not say the thing

Yes → Say the thing!

End states:

Green circle: Say the thing!

Red circle: Do not say the thing

Start: "I want to reply to this!" First decision: Is it an opinion? Yes → Do you know them? No → "Why would somebody who doesn’t know you care what you think?" → Do not say the thing Yes → Are you a recognized expert? No → "Why would somebody who doesn’t know you care what you think?" → Do not say the thing Yes → Will knowing this be useful to them? No → "Don’t give people useless information" → Do not say the thing Yes → Say the thing! No → Is it a fact? No → Is it a joke? Yes → Is it funny? No → "Laugh quietly at your inner thoughts" → Do not say the thing Yes → Who will they think it’s funny at? Them → "Don’t be a douche" → Do not say the thing It’s unknown → Is it a question? Yes → Could you Google for the answer? Yes → "Turns out there are stupid questions" → Do not say the thing No → Are they likely to know the answer? No → "Turns out there are stupid questions" → Do not say the thing Yes → Will they be happy to hear this? No → "Don’t be a douche" → Do not say the thing Yes → Say the thing! No → "Laugh quietly at your inner thoughts" → Do not say the thing No → Can you prove it’s true? No → "Don’t give people useless information" → Do not say the thing Yes → Will knowing this be useful to them? No → "Don’t give people useless information" → Do not say the thing Yes → Say the thing! End states: Green circle: Say the thing! Red circle: Do not say the thing

Just remembered this flowchart I made many years ago for Twitter. Still very relevant to BlueSky.

8 months ago 108 28 5 2

Thanks, appreciate your reply. I get a bee in my bonnet about this stuff, so much interesting content in the retrocomputing community is in 20+ minute YouTube videos that I just never have the time to watch and I'm tired of missing out. This one was pretty short so was perhaps unfair of me.

9 months ago 1 0 0 0

Please can we have these kinds of things in press releases, blog posts, websites - video announcements are so frustrating 😫 - I'm so rarely in an environment where I can stop to watch and listen to a video in full so I end up missing out. How many people are being excluded!

9 months ago 1 0 1 0