Colin Hoad

@colinhoad.com

466 Followers 234 Following

Senior Data Engineer. "Vintage computing enthusiast" - The Register I run a YouTube channel and blog dedicated to the Beeb and all things Acorn, Psion and more: colinhoad.com Discord: https://discord.gg/zjvSBjG7rw Pixel Art: Syarifudin Mahfud

Boromir
Hermann Hauser signing my Beeb
All your favourite bits of Colin
Barad-Dûr, often incorrectly referred to as "The Shard", Borough, London.
Civil disorder CIV screen
Zoom lolly
My desk looking unusually tidy (it won't last) with my new Compiler Explorer desk topper
The BBC Master keyboard layout: original and best.
First ever Virgin New Adventures novel "Timewyrm: Genesys"
Two young souls contemplate the Lament Configuration
Screen grab from LinkedIn heckler's bio claiming to be from a "British military family with Blue Star and Gold Star heritage"
My YouTube channel dashboard showing 3,003 subscribers as of today
Toshiba Libretto 70ct with banana for scale
Shut up, Wesley
Sending a BASIC program over Piconet
Sending a snippet of BBC BASIC via the Piconet NOTIFY command from my laptop to my Electron!
Demonstrating Piconet
SD card interface plugged into the Plus-1
Sockets 4 and 5/6 with 32k SRAM and 32k EEPROM chips installed
The SatAn antenna from Kathrein. Beaming Satan directly into your home!
Bounce: dog
Photo of my haul: two ZX Spectrums, a Psion 3a, lots of Spectrum games on tape, multiple vintage programming books, a Packard Bell mouse and White Knight Mk2 for the Beeb on tape
Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry in "Micro Men"
Homer Simpson preparing to eat something he shouldn't
Starbucks PR email promoting something horrifying called "protein cold foam"
Jim'll Paint It of the Alien Queen on a conference call
My newly refurbished Psion netBook
Me holding Gary Numan's "Intruder" album on newly issued cassette
Clearsky.app screenshot of the @attie.ai account showing 114,996 users blocking said account
This site can’t provide a secure connection www.abuglive.co.uk sent an invalid response. Try running Windows Network Diagnostics. ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, and full time idiot
Playing Chuckulus on my Elk
Very poorly Beeb
The IC crowbar
Beeb with lid off sitting next to a soldering iron station, multimeter and several other tools
Mode 7 panic crash
Segment of the bitshifters Bad Apple demo running quite badly on my Beeb
My Beeb with Thrust on screen and the lid of thd computer off
Select Your Brian screen from Brian Butterfield's "Buttertendo" entertainment system
BBC News screen grab talking about how BA123 took off at 8pm but was ordered to turn around a third of the way into the trip.
Voices From A Future Passed: How the British Broadcasting Corporation, Acorn Computers and ARM changed the world - book by Rob Napier
Mini Beeb getting packed into my work rucksack, suitcase in the background
Jean Daniel
The most 90s show ever made: Bugs
Allister Heath: Labour's terrifying BBC Micro masterplan will condemn us to a new Dark Age
General announcement: removal of AI content from my channel Over the weekend I had a cleanup on my channel to remove the few bits of AI-generated content that I have - in hindsight - deeply regretted using. It wasn't extensive, but there was enough of it to have drawn some notice recently and I decided I should do the right thing and get rid of it. This has included: Cutting segments of the introduction to the "Repton Series" video to remove several AI images Cutting the introduction entirely from the "Imogen" video to remove several AI images Removing a segment from the "Polymer Picker" video to remove an AI image Replacing all the thumbnails for the 2024 Advent series to get rid of "AI Santa" YouTube doesn't permit sophisticated editing of existing videos besides chopping out sections, so that's what I've had to do (it was that or deleting and re-uploading, but that would result in all views, comments, likes etc. being lost, which would be a shame). My use of AI images was a mistake that I first made in the latter days of 2023, and one I've definitely learnt from - and won't be repeating. Please be assured anything you see on my channel now will be solely my own creation, or else the work of human artists I may commission, from time to time. Thanks for your continued support.
KERNEL PANIC! Linux purple screen of boot failure on my laptop
Still from an AI-generated ad that depicts a woman with three arms assembling the hosepipe
Your new love language: Pistachio (Screenshot of an email received today from Starbucks)
The Official Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition guide!
Me firing up a spot of Duke Nukem 3D
ERII firing a massive gun
Not to be deterred, Bloomberg recently revealed that Meta execs had discussed whether to double the total production run of the AI specs, from 10 million units to 20 million. A source familiar with the matter told the publication that production could reach as many as 30 million units by the end of 2026, assuming demand justifies the supply bump.
Discworld MUD map of Ankh-Morpork
Using Usenet
Who is the Site Administrator? Being a site administrator is a thankless task! The site administrator is the person whose job it is to make sure everything is running smoothly, and to deal with frustrated users. Most ISPs have a helpdesk, who you can call or email to discuss problems you might have with their service. These contact details are very important for new users (and even some of us old ones). When you talk to or email your site administrators, please remember they are there to help you, but sometimes events are beyond their control. They weren't born knowing the nuances of every piece of communications software ever written, and generally don't have intimate knowledge of every modem ever sold!
My hand holding my copy of the 6502 second processor user guide