It's a faaaaaaake!

The latest addition to my Commodore collection.  NO, it isn't one of the VERY rare golden Commodore 64's, although I have given it a new coat of gold paint to make it look like one!  This C64 was in bad shape - the case was badly marked, and the computer would not even power up. The original owner was going to throw it in the bin, but I was lucky to grab it before that happened, along with a good working C64C. Thanks to a spare C64C motherboard which I had lying around, a C64C keyboard and SID 8580 chip, I've been able to bring life back to this wonderful machine. It now works perfectly and looks quite snazzy too.

I have no intention to pass this off as a golden C64 - for a start, it's pretty obvious it isn't a real one (if you know what you are looking for), but it does look nice, especially next to my black painted C64C.

Erasure - Live at the Roundhouse - 25th October 2011 - Video

Well, it has only taken me just over a month, but I have finally taken the film which I took at the Erasure concert off from my mobile phone and uploaded it on to the web. I've done a little tinkering with the videos, and here they are! Hope you enjoy them. I didn't film the whole show although I did manage about 45 minutes, but you'll see just how fantastic the night was (in case you didn't go).

Updated 14th October 2013 - The videos should now be back online.

Sono Luminus, Live at The Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011


Always, Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011


When I Start To (Break It All Down), Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011


Oh L'amour, Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011


Sometimes and A Little Respect, Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011


Stop, Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011


Breathe and Victim of Love, Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011

Fill Us With Fire and Breath of Life - Live at the Roundhouse, Camden - 25th October 2011

Erasure - Live at The Roundhouse - 25th October 2011

It's been a long time coming, but finally to coincide with our visit back home to Essex, we also got the chance to see Erasure live at The Roundhouse in London on Tuesday 25th October. The last time we saw Erasure was way back in May, 2003 during "The Other Tour", and this time was just as fantastic! The venue, the setlist, and the atmosphere was incredible and we can not wait for our next time (we're not going to leave it so long!)

Kicking off with "Sono Luminus", they then wowed the crowd with timeless classics like Oh L'amour, Sometimes, Stop, Victim of Love, and many more. They also played some tracks from their new album "Tomorrow's World", including When I Start (To Break It All Down), and my personal favourite Fill Us With Fire.

Two days later, my ears are still ringing. What an amazing time we've had. Such a shame we have to go home today back to Evesham... and to work.

Mastertronic - What if?

I've been meaning to add these to my blog for several months now. Those of you who are my friends on Facebook may have probably already seen them. Because I have WAY too much time on my hands, I thought I'd mess around with putting together some fake Mastertronic covers for modern computer games.

Incase you are not aware (or can not remember), Mastertronic were big in the mid to late 1980s and were a major budget software label in the United Kingdom and produced a large number of cheapo games and re-releases for the Commodore/Spectrum/Amstrad/Atari 8-bit computers (and some 16-bit too) - most at a pocket-money-friendly £1.99!Just a bit of fun really, but what would modern games look like if Mastertronic still released games like the good ol' days? Well, here you can find out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can view more of my fake Mastertronic covers by clicking here





A week in the life of an IT Manager in a school!

Well, the kids are now back in school, and everything is pretty much back to normal. 6 weeks of upgrading the student and staff workstations from Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 Professional has been a rather stressful time which I am happy to say has proved to be quite successful (thanks to having a fantastic team). On top of that, two classrooms have been kitted out with brand spanking new PCs with Intel I5 processors - Lucky kids!!!!! (I had to make do with RM Nimbus PC-186s when I was at school - oh and some BBC Masters), in additon to upgrading one of our servers to MS Server 2008, migrating user accounts and printers and many other things.

Now one week in to the term and school year, I am knackered, counting down the days until half-term, but less stressed (now knowing everything has worked reasonably well) - infact, this picture of Sophie pretty much sums up how I am feeling at the moment!

What will the next week bring? Who knows, but for now I'm going to sit and watch Back To The Future with Kieran (again) while I recuperate from cleaning out our two garden sheds. I'm then going to have a retro-fest with some Commodore 64 classics, before playing some more Resistance 3 on the PS3 - I've got my weekend sorted!

On so begins a new term, and new year!

And so ends another summer holiday, and the start of a brand new school year. What fun and excitement will it hold? How many students will come up to me this week saying that they've forgotten their passwords?

I've got to give a shout out to my excellent team (Ben Drewery, Ben Plawustiak and Adam Gisbourne for all of their hard work over the holidays - oh and of course Mike Ibbotson) Well done guys.