Abigail Brady

Given how software patents turned out (we are still mopping up the damage and it has set technology back years) perhaps someone should start a website accepting user submissions for specific ideas for how 3D printers and other rapid manufacturing technology could be used in the future; so that when these parasites start patenting things that can be predicted in 2013, then they can be shut down by pointing to this as evidence of quite how obvious they were.

Thoughts, anyone? Maybe this already exists?

The ZX Spectrum was launched 30 years ago today. I was not even three, so I don't remember exactly, but we had one by 1983, and it was the best £125 that my parents have ever spent. This was a hefty amount of money to them at the time (by RPI it's £375 in today's money), but they saw that it was the future, and found it. I am profoundly grateful to them.

So, I was dabbling with programming from a very early age. Somewhere, perhaps, there is still a programme listing I wrote out in longhand with very wonky childlike letters testifying that I could programme before I could write. And there was a fair bit of playing games, too. Some of my earliest memories are related to the Spectrum. When we sent it away to get upgraded to 48KiB, and the shop lost it and we got a brand new one. Happily playing in the garden while counting in binary (ugh, can you believe I used to say zero-one-ten-eleven-hundred? I am cured of that now). Playing Atic Atac, which has probably led to my life-long fear of mushrooms. Watching TV coverage of the 128 KiB and being upset that it wouldn't have a joystick. Being really upset when Amstrad bought out Sinclair. (I hated Alan Sugar 20 years before it was fashionable). Helping my father with his football orrery. Learning about machine code and trying to hand-assemble bits of code despite being 9.

I never did anything big on the Spectrum itself - we moved on to the SAM Coupé when I was 11 (that being an attempt to provide an upgrade path for the Spectrum), and my juvenilia is largely for that, in the native BASIC with the odd routine in Z80 assembler. Later we got a PC and I started writing VB and then when I started sixth form college Turbo Pascal. Maybe some of those things would have happened without the Spectrum. But such early exposure had a profound influence on me and how I think.

Can kids today get that experience and come to grok computers? I am a bit worried that this was only possible in a short window. The Raspberry Pi is all very good as a learning platform, but I think it was the excitement at the roll-out of computing, and the future possibilities, that was the real reason so many of us got so into it, rather than the kit itself. That can't be recreated artificially, can it?

It's London. The distant future. The year 2012.

Some friends gather at a house to play D&D. Two of them are catching a taxi there for the first time, and don't know the way, so they find out where their host is at the moment on Google Latitude, and use the "get directions" feature so they can tell the driver where to go. Their hostess knows they are nearby and hears car doors opening. She opens the door to see them looking around trying to see where the door number is.

Shortly afterwards, the hostess is bemoaning that she ran out of codeine. They use the internet to find a nearby Sunday-opening pharmacy, and make plans to send someone out to get some. Then they check the location of people again, and notice that another friend, who is on the way, is at a junction right outside the chemist, probably waiting for a bus. A phone call is made, and codeine is acquired, with no more than say 5 minutes delay to that person's arrival.

(If you want to add me I'm abigailb@gmail.com)

I have a Roomba! (a robotic vacuum cleaner)

It has been tested under supervision in all the dry rooms of the flat and it seems to work great, although it can get stuck under the cover of the sofabed.

I am a little sad to discover that it doesn't try to do mental mapping of the rooms it cleans, it just does simple behaviours tweaked for a good probability of 95% coverage. This isn't the future I was promised. (Mind, even 20 years ago watching Tomorrow's World, I was rather cynical about such robotic dreams, knowing what little I did about programming then... Wolfram Alpha is another in a long line of people solving the easy half of a problem and then assuming the difficult half will be just as quick.)

darkscape_club was very good last weekend. was worried about head but managed to stay out quite late. had hell to pay on the Sunday though. Cafe Scientifique on Tuesday was about ancient Egyptian astronomy and was really interesting. To top off yesterday's excitement, when I woke up and turned my computer on, I discovered that the hard disk had died. Put off buying a replacement until this afternoon and I'd had the phone call. In other news, I have been developing a cold. I'll try not to give it to anyone at zootalures amd 561's wedding on Saturday. (I'm very glad I took the precaution of phoning the hotel earlier this week confirming my booking: they hadn't got it on record. But do now. And I even have an email to prove it.)

Oh, and it's my birthday on Monday. I shall be 27.

so i was looking at google maps today and I noticed something a little different. whee!

Software patent bill thrown out (BBC). Vote was 648 to 14! This is a fantastic result. Now, will this be the end of the matter?

google maps now have more detailed satellite imagery of bits of the rest of the world.

The Oval, The Tower of London, Canary Wharf, Old Trafford, Medway Estuary

Found what appears to be a bridge under construction in Greece - which would be the Rio Antirio bridge.

back in Lesta now.

have discovered that USB cablemodems tend to work better if you plug them into the machine you are actually trying to use them in. introduced secretlondon to sudoku and strangely whilst explaining it got better at it.

read most of Stranger in a Strange Land now. this is probably the least-well-ageing science fiction book i've ever read, due not to any technical advances or anachronisms or suchforth, but to the pervading misogyny in the work. you can tell stuff changed a lot between 1961 and 1966.

also crashes on sgt pepper. think I have localised the problem - it crashes on ogg files with no nominal bitrate set. which appears to include a bunch of very old ones I have.