BBC Four - Electric Revolution

For a bit of 8-bit 80's nostalgia in musical form.... http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/heyhey16k.swf

Came across this advert on an old (1984) VHS tape today:

http://www.tvidworld.com/online/Ktel.flv

Hmm, I was going to say writing a batch file is technically programming.
Admittedly it's very limited even when you compare it to the programming solutions of the home computers of the 1980s. With those, as was demonstrated in the program, you could draw things on screen with them. Can't really do that with batch files.

That ad is also on one of the files on my YouTube channel as part of a Thames off-air from Christmas time 1983.

Loved "Micro Men" last night, great performances by all involved, an effective mix of archive material interwoven with the story, and I didn't end spot The Fifth Doctor as the bank manager!

Can't wait for "Synth Britannia" either

Micro men was terrific - Alexander Armstrong's makeup wasn't though!

Was Clive Sinclair really such a nutty professor? I suppose he must have been.

Loved the scene in the shop when the sales assistant was telling a shopper what the Spectrum could do - "You can change the colour of the border to red".

"What else can it do?"

"Err.. I can change the border to another colour.."

That is exactly what I remember when I used to get the bus to town to look at micros in Laskay's and WH Smiths. We ended up buying (or at least, dad did) an Acorn Electron - as it was the more "worthy" machine, and the company had the all-important backing of the BBC.

Nice little scene showing the BBC's micro programme (archive footage) with the actors playing the techies being superimposed in setting up one of the machines for a demo.

Not sure why the programme was on so late last night - I went off to bed before the end, so I'll be rushing home to catch the end of it tonight.

If you didn't see it, I wholeheartedly recommend it!

I guess you were watching the late night repeat as it was first shown at 9pm. It was a fantastic programme though.

Oh, I didn't realise. I had company earlier.

Ta.

I'm just watching the repeat of the show on BBC4 at the moment. It really is a wonderful piece of television. The detail in the show is spectacular with the old WHS cube logo on the guy's badge.

I note a broadcast is due on BBC HD on wednesday. How fab.

also YAY at the ancient Gavin Estler & Alan Sugar footage

I note there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the show, that stated some scenes were made up-- took a 24 Hour Party People approach to the story I think. So I would guess his temper tantrums may have been over-played... I believe the pub fight was true though, and the other significant events; otherwise a bit of comic licence was used, I imagine

I see what you mean about Alexander Armstrong's make-up, did the best they could under the circumstances I suppose.

Had to LoL at the last bit of that song . . .

for n=0 to 2
those were the days
next n

. . . and the memories of typing that sort of stuff in BASIC code on my ORIC-1 then an Amstrad CPC464!

And so Electric Dreams draws to a close on BBC Four. What a really wonderful series it was.

The episode of the 1990s decade. Very early Sky television, the Playstation 1, "brick" mobile phones, paging! Dial-up Internet and Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

Thought it was quite amusing when the boy could make the BBC Micro do all kinds of weird and wonderful things ten "years" previously yet couldn't work the fax machine. It was very scary to find out none of the kids could work a public payphone.

As expected, none of today's websites work under a Windows 95 browser so the concept of dial-up internet had about as much appeal to the kids in the programme than it did in 1997. Useless today, probably even more useless back then. Six million people online in in the UK in 1997? 45 million+ in 2009? I'm more surprised there were six million of us online in 1997 at a time when you'd have to had to pay both your connection fee AND the cost of the calls to go online.

Did I see a clip from C4 show Gamesmaster being used during one of the skits with regards to the consoles and the games? Though it may have been a clip from Newsnight or whatever going into details about what may have drove the murderers of Jamie Bulger to do what they did.

Fair point, but I've just watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7O65dk3SeQ&feature=fvw

In it, Charlie is talking about Bob Geldof asking for our "f***ing money," although it goes unbleeped. I could only assume this is because it's in context, but I'm not sure. I'm sorry to bring it up yet again, but it's a myth I'm desperate to solve.