The Comms Room

Dan

12:18 PM

@Chopper3 Me either, but they're so cheap!

Chopper3

how much are they going to be when they're released? they're not ready yet are they?

Rob Moir

I'm quite keen to see how they do

There was an interesting little thing on Radio 5 this morning where the education minister has woken up to the fact that current "ICT" education in schools sucks enough to pull a bowling ball through a small straw and wants to have it overhauled (fsking hooray) and wants Google and Microsoft to make it all better somehow (FAIL... bail out!)

Dan

Well, they're being manufactured now. It says $25 on their hompage. I reckon £30 - 40

@RobMoir They don't get it do they. People don't become good at IT because they learn about MS or Google or whatever - they get good because they're given the freedom to experiment and find it interesting

Rob Moir

yep

Chopper3

do you ever have a day when you're just faffing about, getting lots of little stuff done but nothing actually important - well I'm having one of those today

Dan

12:23 PM

I still remember my dad setting me up with an old BBC micro and some breadboard with some LED's and a light sensor. Or QBASIC on a PC

Chopper3

@Dan oh sweet

@Dan I remember the day the original IBM PC was launched - that's how old I am :(

Dan

@Chopper3 They can do 1080p through HDMI, too which is just baffling

Rob Moir

I remember starting fiddling with computers in middle school where the school got two BBC model Bs. We were lucky to not just have one, as I remember

Dan

@Chopper3 Haha! I didnt' meant it so much like that - but rather being given the tools to explore

Chopper3

the GPU is actually quite capable, pretty similar to an iphone 3GS's in fact

Rob Moir

12:24 PM

the staff just loaded up BASIC and let those of us who were interested experiment

and i fell in love with fiddling about with computers and that's what took me on to where I am now, such as it is...

Chopper3

I know I've bored you all before now but if any of you recall the Sinclair QL - well my first paid job was writing an RS422 driver for that, that's how old I am

Dan

@RobMoir Thing is, being able to make a computer do what you say is just amazing at that age. I remember getting a copy of Visual Basic and being able to make applications that looked and felt like the 'real' ones - I was so chuffed

Rob Moir

i remember the QL!

Dan

@Chopper3 Christ

I mean, wow!

Rob Moir

I remember wanting to buy one because I had a spectrum

@Dan I know what you mean

Chopper3

12:26 PM

I got one as part of the job but it was an early one with the 'dongle' :(

Rob Moir

@Chopper3 none of your fancy dev environments to help you either. Not even a decent keyboard ;-)

my first job was for an oil exploration company that was an offshoot of Texas Instruments that was just being sold to Haliburton when I arrived

Chopper3

My whole family come from the computer world, my dad used them in the 60's, my uncle ran the unix bit of burroughs/Unisys for a couple of decades etc so I was always going into that area

Dan

@Chopper3 Looks like it can be powered over USB, too, which is lush as my TV has USB

Chopper3

@RobMoir this was pre production, actually wrote it on a spectrum - there weren't many 68k assembler coders about at the time

Dan

@Chopper3 I have literally no idea where you'd start for something like that

Rob Moir

12:28 PM

When I was being shown around the datacentre, they showed me the IBM mainframes and they also showed me a Texas Instruments mainframe that was a bit of a beast that actually took punched paper cards. I don't just mean it could if you wanted to, I mean that was how you did the IPL at the very least - boot using key sequence on the front of the box to bootrap the OS from punched card

they told me it was being replaced bv the IBM boxes.. but guess what the last thing we powered off when we wound that centre down 7 years alter was...

Chopper3

@Dan it was just a gated fifo buffer with some slightly odd timing, took a whole easter holiday but nice to be part of

@RobMoir even I missed out on production paper-tape systems, although they had the actual rolls in the museum bit of the college I went to

actually I have achieved something, booked the car in for a service - yawn

Iain

@RobMoir I remember bootstraping PDP8s off a keyboard (and later a hex pad) to an RK05 disk

Rob Moir

heh at least i'm not the only person to see this stuff!

They wanted to replace these old TI machines but there were a few jobs they did that we just couldn't get the IBM machines to do right

the punched card was great. We used to get people submit jobs on it. So if they were an asshole, just trip over in front of them, mess the card order up and shrug at them...

</bofh>

Chopper3

I have to say though that the closest I get to coding these days is just scripting and web stuff, can't remember the last time I actually wrote any proper code, sometimes change some source code and recompile but that's nothing

kinda miss it I guess

Dan

See, though I've never programmed professional I do love that I can knock out a decent script, or a C# app

Rob Moir

12:40 PM

i have to say i prefer being a sysadmin who can code a little to being a programmer who can understand what the sysadmins are doing

Dan

Yeah, I wouldn't want to code all day even if I was good enough

Rob Moir

I just don't enjoy coding as much as sysadminning

Dan

I have this terrible 'thing' whereby I'm interested as hell until the challenging bits are done

Rob Moir

but i think whatever side of that fence someone is on, you're better at your own job just for having an appreciation of the other 'side', I think

Chopper3

I'm always a bit contended because I love just working on my own on a bit of code but generally that pays utter shit, whereas whoring myself around as a high-level designer is less fun but pays the bills

Rob Moir

12:43 PM

ah...

Chopper3

@RobMoir I agree, in particular because I've been 'management' before I can act as a good bridge between technical guys and them - I can see both sides

Dan

I think varying your skillset is great no matter what

Rob Moir

yep, I think its true whatever two "sides" we're talking about

Dan

1:02 PM

Homemade bread sarnies for the win!