Farewell .....

As you will know by now, I was deeply involved with Prestel, Micronet 800 and other viewdata services back in the 1980s. I even worked for Micronet themselves between 1986 and 1988; that was by far the best job I ever had.

But a new wife, a new child, a new job and a new house took up most of my time, and money, and I'd pretty much dropped out of circulation by 1990.. As such, I completely missed the demise of Micronet until it was over, and never did catch up with most of the people I knew.

Twenty years later, with my life on another new course, and with some spare time, I'm trying to catch up! And I've been sent a pile of pages from the final days of Micronet. Reading all the farewells from the staff and members that I missed first time around has triggered so many fond memories. So many familiar names.

These will all be appearing up on viewdata.org.uk in due course. In the meantime, if any old 'netters want to say hi, please do so - either on this blog, or over at the forum.

Originally posted at blog.irrelevant.com.

Thanks, Comet. Not.

Some time back we splashed out on big plasma TV for the front room. It was seriously expensive, although free credit helped, so we thought it probably best to take the extended warranty.

Now over the last few months, it's had little red sparkles over the dark areas of the screen, so I called out the engineers and they agreed to repair it. It was duly carted away two weeks ago for repair, and Wednesday we got a call saying it was on it's way back, after having had it's actual display panel replaced!

It arrived yesterday. Two delivery men huffing and puffing as they carried it in. They opened up the shipping container, pulled off the bubble wrap and revealed the TV. With the screen totally smashed....

They were gutted. As were we. It's now on it's way back to Comet service ...

Where are they now?

Or... probably more accurately, "do they know who they were?"

As part of my work on viewdata.org.uk I've also come across, and been sent, quite a few pages saved from the various teletext services about at the time. I've started putting these up on teletext.org.uk which, as yet, is really more of a dumping ground than anything informative.

Anyway, when looking through these things, one finds things like this:

This dates from about 1986. Guessing that the kids who contributed would have been about the 10yo mark, that puts them at about 34 now, give or take. I wonder if Maria, Marie, Mariam or Sian knew that their words would still be remembered a quarter of a century later.

Packard Bell Diamond 1200 plus scanner and Windows 7

Just a little post to help anybody else in the same situation.

I picked up this little scanner at a car boot sale at the weekend. It's an old one, only 600dpi as best I can tell, but it's small and light and USB powered, so handy to use quickly when sat on the sofa on the laptop, and when all I want to do is scan documents rather than photographs.

Packard bell's drivers, however, only work on XP or lower, and the laptop is on Windows 7; the disc I got with it refused to load, and windows couldn't find any drivers on it.

Much digging about on the internet however found a reference to somebody using an HP 1200 scanner driver, but that didn't work for me. Somebody else said it was a re-badged Mustek "BearPaw" scanner. Now that makes sense, given the layout of the buttons on it! Sure enough, the 2008 BearPaw 1200CU Plus drivers worked just fine! Indeed, windows actually told me that was what the scanner was, rather than my having to force it.

Result.

Aaarrggghhhh

It's rare that I find myself detesting a piece of software, but I'm sorry, I've got to the point where I now do. And what is the subject of my hate, you may ask? Why, it's Windows 7, and specifically the file Explorer.

In windows terms, I would probably be described as a power-user. I do a lot of work at file level - I prefer to use the file manager, see the files, and decide what I want to do with them there and then, usually using the right-click context menu and often the send-to options. To this end, I usually run explorer in "details" mode, with the folder list enabled, and most of the time I'm using the keyboard to move about in it!

Windows 7, however, has broken me. The folder list is, well, dreadful. No + and - boxes and lines linking folders. Just little triangles that come and go as they feel like it. Change the folder you have selected using the keyboard, and the list of files doesn't change. Not without pressing Enter or clicking. If I'm scanning down a long list of folders looking at the files, this doubles the keypresses, and more than doubles the time, as they are different keys!

And the damn breadcrumb thing in the address bar... what's that all about? I just want the path to the folder.

Oh, and a status bar that doesn't have anything useful in it - like spare space, total of file sizes, etc.

This is, by the way, on a new laptop. Which to add it's own brand of misery has a different keyboard layout to the old one. So I'm forever pressing End instead of Home, and Fn instead of Ctrl and turning the screen brightness down! .. sigh...


I've got Ubuntu installed in a VM. I might see how well I can work in there for a bit, and if I can cope, I will wipe this goddamn awful windows 7 and install an operating system fit for grown ups. Or XP at least.

(Originally posted at http://blog.irrelevant.com/2010/05/aaarrggghhhh.html)

Museum-quality finds!

Ever found something that a museum thinks could be worthy of preservation?

Ever find it in a museum?

This amused me somewhat!

After a heads up from a contributor about a surviving interactive demonstration of Prestel, I made some enquiries with the Science Museum in London. It turns out that yes, they have it, but apparently it "has not been placed on the Science Museum inventory". I read that to mean that it's not an exhibit as such, merely a display item, much like the introductions and signage you see all over the place. And as such, could be removed and destroyed at any time, as a similar item already has been! It might only be luck that it's still there..

I've voiced my concerns, and they are being raised with the appropriate people. In the meantime, I'm hoping for some technical data about it, and maybe a copy of the database. Let's try and preserve this!

Top 5 hit!

I've just discovered I had a hit with a programme I wrote! :)

Back in late 1986 I sold something called "The Beeb Editor" to Micronet for their telesoftware downloads. For my Viewdata site I've been processing the Autumn 1989 edition of LogOn magazine, sent out to all Micronet Members, and just discovered it was number 4 in the top BBC downloads. 3 years later. I obviously missed this first time around.

I've actually still got the contract in my file (in my mum's name, for some reason, but signed by me,) but I have not got a clue what the program actually was any more. I'll have to have a good search through my discs to find a copy and see.. Worse, I don't recall receiving any payments for it, either..