Posts by I Like Heckling

The memories come flooding back.

I too have fond memories of this game, and others like it on the C64. Both of the Summer games, Winter games, Track & Field and Hyper Sports and of course the one everyone seems to forget about Daley Thompsons Decathlon... which was one of the best sports sims around in my opinion... Sure it was a total joystick killer, I must have gone through 4 or 5 on that game alone... But it was the first game I ever saw that had a loading graphic that drew a picture on the screen as it loaded from tape... Stunning for the early 80's.

But then I have very fond memories of the C64 and the hundreds of games I accumulated between 84 and 91 when i finally sold it on and replaced with an Amiga and an Atari ST.

Cheap games like Kickstart I & II which cost £2.99 and provided hours and hours of entertainment, creating your own scramble courses and so forth.

It's one of the reasons I have a MAME setup. :)

Sky Hub does something similar too.

Almost every night between 2-3am (if I am up, which is quite often) I lose internet access for a few minutes. It normally comes back up right away, occasionally a reboot of the router is required.

Sky are of no help at all, they replaced the router about 6 months ago but the same thing happens.

It's no big deal, unless you happen to be in the middle of a live stream of the Nye vs Ham debate like I was a few hrs ago or if you're in a video hangout with friends in the US as I often am.... But the frequency of it does get annoying.

This is why....

I only turn on my GPS when I'm actually using the GPS functions like navigation.

I also check permissions and if an app wants too many of them, I won't install it.

Think of it from the other side

Instead of looking at this from the youtube side of things, take a moment to look at it from the G+ users perspective.

Most of us don't want comments from our shares of YT videos posted to that site, conversations on shares often digress and having them posted on YT isn't wanted. So a lot of G+ users are pissed off about that, because not only are your public shares now posted on YT... it's retroactive, so all of your past shares are on there now.

But the worst part is that those trolls, spammers and so forth that remain posting now show up as comments in your G+ posts... A lot of use don't like that either and wish there was an option to turn it off.

I actually went back through my past shares and deleted all YT videos I had shared, which is a lot.

There is a simple way around it though, don't share public, just share to your extended circles.

But there is a good side to this change that I completely understand, forcing users to use real names (like they can't just make up a fake name ffs) is an attempt to limit the trolls and spammers... If it helps get rid of the 12yr old bigots and other idiots then I count that as a good thing.

As for the lady in the vid, she isn't looking at the wider picture... G+ is a perfect platform for people like her, it's full or artists and musicians and is the perfect place for her to expand her limited view of social media. I have personally seen talented people go from doing crappy jobs to becoming artists full time because of the people and support they found on G+.

I know... a post telling you about the virtues of G+ will go over like a lead balloon on a forum that allows anonymous comments, so I fully expect the downvote fairies to do their worst. But FB and G+ are different types of social platforms. FB is for connecting with people you already know and slowly expanding that, but you have to friend people in return. G+ is for connecting to new people who have similar interests and you can circle who you like without the need for them to circle you back... There's no 'Like this page before you can view it' mentality... sure the data mining still goes on, but without intrusive ads, which is a much better way of doing it that FB in my book.

There's a reason I left FB and moved to G+... and it's not because it's a ghost town, I have friends who have hundreds of thousands of followers and the latest statistics show in excess of 300 million unique users using it daily.

Tired of the G+ barren wasteland bullsh*t

Let's get one thing straight... G+ is not barren, it's not a wasteland... it's the fastest growing social platform at the moment and has achieved far more than facebook had in the same amount of time. It's grown to about 50% of the size of FB and has a higher number of active daily users (people spend more time on G+ than they do on fb).

On G+ you are not bombarded with ads, the look is cleaner and easier to manage... and it doesn't require you to friend everyone. I've got several thousand people following me, and less than 500 that I follow... In that regard it's like twitter.

But what's different about G+ is that it's more about creating new connections instead of trying to reconnect with old ones that you probably lost touch with for a reason. It's about content creation and sharing.

It's obvious to anyone who has taken the time to actually use G+ and discover it's merits... but instead you still get sloppy attempts at journalism that can only regurgitate tired and inaccurate bullsh*t that was only true when it launched.

I've made so many new friends n G+, some of them i've met in real life and others I plan on travelling half around the world to meet at some point.

The killer app for G+ is the hangouts... up to 10 people at a time video chatting and having fun. In almost 2yrs using the site (I joined in beta in July 2011) I have met some amazing people, I'm now friends with people who are celebrities in their fields... beit tv, music and the arts. I've become friends with scientists, chemists, biologists. The people I've become closest too have been the ones I've met through hangouts.

So please stop suggesting G+ is barren, a wasteland, a ghost town... You will get out of it what you put in... and the problem is that most people are too lazy to put in the effort and discover how much better than fb it really is.

If you needed any indication of how worried fb is about G+... you only need to look at the changes they made in the last 12 months to copy features from G+, they're even starting to copy layout ideas too.

I already had Sky+, as well as phone and internet with them... because it offered the best deal where I lived. I get close to the 20mbs, it's truly unlimited with no caps and I only call landlines on it (use the mobile for mobile calls). So upgrading to HD for the extra £10 and getting the box free and £100 in M&S vouchers was fine with me. It's effectively costing me £20 extra this year as I swapped the vouchers for cash with the folks.

If it goes on a pay basis next year, I won't be buying it and I'll be out of contract by then and will dump the HD pack. I can realign the dish and get a freesat box instead and get the RTL feed and use 5live as others will be doing.

I can then flog the HD box on ebay, they go for around £100 or so. :)

Of course... when I tell sky I'm cancelling... chances are I'll get the F1 for free to stop me leaving.

Not a fan of Sky at all, but I love the F1 and if there's a way to watch it that's not going to cost me loads of money I'll take it... if the price goes up, I'll look for an alternative way.

I left facebook in Oct and now exclusively use G+, so far about 25 people I know have joined me but they tend to use both still.

But with each passing week, and each change on FB... they are slowly starting to prefer G+.

So many good times

I sold my Atari 2600 and all my games to put the money towards a C64 for xmas, the folks chipped in the rest and on xmas morning I unwrapped it.

I was 13yrs old... I set it up, plugged in the tape drive and opened the two games I had been bought. The Hobbit txt based adventure game (which came with the book too, and is my all time fave book) and Jeff Minters Hovver Bovver.

We read the instructions, set it up, plugged in the joystick, switched it on and loaded Hovver Bovver... 5 mins later we discovered the joystick was faulty... this has been a tradition in my family for over 40yrs... something gadgety/electrical would always be broken in some way when opened on xmas day.

So we loaded The Hobbit instead and aside from xmas dinner, the top of the pops special and a few movies... all 5 of us sat around playing the Hobbit.

I tried programming on it, but wasn't very good at it... But I kept the C64 until 1990 and had hundreds of games for it.

I discovered the joys of twin tape decks on my dads stereo, and me and friends would swap games, another friend got a cartridge (can't remember the name), load a game press a button on the back and record it back to tape or disk.

I've lost count on the number of games that cemented my love of video games... that as a 42yr old is only just starting to wane (mainly due to stupid kids, so I stick to single player and RTS type games now)... but I broke more than a few joysticks on Daley Thompsons Decathlon, perfected my skills on Summer Games I/II, Winter Games & California Games, pursued the llamas in Jeff Minters timeless classics,... Uridium, Paradroid... oh the memories have brought a smile to my face on a cold winters night.

I used to go to a computer club on a Monday night, and took my C64 with me... I saw kids with Atari 400's, Speccy 48k's and at the end of my time there a few speccy 128 and C128's.

But every week a crowd would gather around my C64 (or one of the others... depends who got in early and bagged the biggest colour TV (normally me :) )) and play the latest games... or simply load up the voice emulator (something none of us had ever seen or used before) and get it to say the things a group of 12-14yr old boys would. :)

I got an Atari ST 1080 in 1989 and had that for a couple of years, then got a couple of Amigas in the early 90's (one with the 1mb upgrade)... but they never held the same appeal as the C64 did, nor did my Megadrive, SNES... I guess it was my chipped playstation I got in 96 that reinvented console gaming and moved it back along to my age range (mid 20's by this time)... followed by my first CDRW in about 98.

I had a PS2 and an Xbox... but I skipped the 360 and PS3 and just have a Wii for when friends visit as even my 69yr old disabled dad can play the bowling on that... it's the first time he's ever been truly interested in video games in my entire life... same goes for my sister and mother, and if my brother was still alive... he'd have loved it too.

Strange... I'm not enjoying computer games much any more, as my eldery parents and older siblings were.

Happy birthday C64... you gave me and my friends many, many years of fun.

....... and this is why I got rid of my facebook account and moved to G+ in Oct.

The Wii was the first console that ever made my dad want to play games, he's now 69 and suffers from Parkinsons... and yet he loves the bowling games, it's about the only ones he can play (when his illness allows him to).

To get my dad interested in a gadget, let alone a games console is nothing short of miraculous. I bought the Wii because I loved Mario Kart on my original SNES (because I'm a 40yr old gamer and remember the original) and the number of games I have can be counted on 1 hand (I game on my PC).

But the Wii allowed my dad to play with the rest of us, and it's appeal goes a lot further than that. My 76yr old Aunt went and bought one, and she loves to play table tennis. Neither her not my father are in good health.

So the Wii U raises a couple of concerns for me... holding the larger pad with touchscreen could be difficult for them, making controlling things more difficult will stop them being able to join in... it was the simplicity of use that made the Wii such a massive hit... I hope Nintendo don't lose sight of that. I was telling my folks about the new Wii U the other week and I could see gleams of interest from both of them... but if it's too complicated it's going to be a waste of time buying it.

I imagine the bigots will be posting on this soon... seems like fat people are the last legitimate target left... can't get done for slagging of the fat people like you can other groups.

Not that it makes those types of bigots any less twatish. :)

I've hired a focus and insignia, both 2011 models and the Focus was not the most comfortable thing to drive, the seats were too hard and narrow... I drive a coupe with more bucket like seats that hug you, the focus's seats dug into the outside edge of your thigh because the seating position doesn't suit a tall person like me, with the seat right back, I still have to bend my legs slightly, which means my knee is against the door... Didn't have to do that in the insignia, nor do I in my own car.

Why not design them for taller people too... I wanted an MX5 at one point, until I realised that with the roof up I cold get in, but not out unless I crawled. :)

I loved the last 2 films... I think they've brought the character bang into the modern era and given the character a more human and darker edge.

I pretty much love all of the Bond films, each one was fitting for it's time and each one doesn't hold up today.

I would prefer to see some remakes, but only if they were to put them back in chronological order so to speak. In the books On Her Majesty's Secret Service comes before you only live twice and deals with the events of OHMSS, giving a much harder and darker version of JB... Personally I'd love to see Daniel Craig given the opportunity to make those two... although they did touch upon the subjects in CR and QoS.

I was also under the impression that there was going to be a 'trilogy' story with the 3rd taking the underlying story to it's conclusion... no idea if this is still the case or not.

<comicshopguy>

dumbest list ever

<\comicshoppguy>

This pandering to a dead man needs to stop now... it's getting beyond pathetic.

It seems like companies are trying to get through as many of the 'silly' patents as possible before the changes to the USPO come in.

When that happens, there is a 9 month window for objections to be made against any patent. With any luck it will allow them to be shot down before any litigation can be started.

There are a couple of brief moments within the ringtone that are ok, and that I'm pretty sure I heard in other ringtone entries.

But the overall effect is one that repulses me, and the two teens I played it too.

Well done Nokia... dropping the ball still.

I've used their hand driers in some motorway rest rooms, and they're brilliant... so much more efficient than the old style hand driers.

If these work on a similar principal I can imagine they'd be quite effective... but those rest room ones are rather on the noisy side... quieter than the old hand driers, but still noisier than I'd want in my home.

I do like their vacuum cleaners though.