Strange but true that I have spent pretty much every minute of my private hours since 1992 in front of a computer. In truth I probably spent way too much time from 1981 to this day punching a keyboard of some form. What is more staggering is that I have pretty much spent every minute of every waking hour since 1995 in front of a computer. Not an issue when you enjoy computers that much... and I do. I kinda hope I will finally expire at a keyboard or computer screen. That would be my wish. And so in all those many years of working and playing on the computer what were my most memorable moments... I would kinda list them as these.
My first data base on the ZX81. The joy of asking a question and the computer giving me the answer from a data base that I created. That was classic, and something I had dreamed of being able to do long before I ever even had a computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81Second was finding out that there was more than one level to Manic Miner on the Spectrum 16K... Also getting the boot which meant infinite lives. That game kept me up for two weeks one Christmas in the early eighties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_MinerThird would be playing River Raid on my sisters Atari. I don’t think I have ever had that much fun playing a game. I had to wait for her to go out and then sneak in to play on the Woody.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_RaidFourth would be creating a text based program using Mallard Basic and getting it to run a continuation program when it ran out of memory. It meant for the first time that my programs could be limitless in length.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard_BASICFifth would be my switching on my beloved Amiga 1200 for the first time. Truly my only friend worth the name. From that moment nothing would ever be the same. A truly life changing event. Just a grey screen with Work and Workbench, but way more significant than any other opening computer screen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1200Sixth would be digitizing my first image using DPaint and then creating an animation from captured images. I had a Sony camera set up in front of a board and that is how I captured stuff and it served me fine. And again this kept me up till it got light and meant an endless supply of high density disks that I used with my special drive to save the creations. Very happy happy hours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_PaintSeventh could have been playing Settlers, or creating the city ‘Flibble’ with Sim City or taking Walsall to the European Cup in Sensi, but I guess in truth it was being guided on the Amiga forums long after Commodore went pop to hook the Amiga into a PC network using Samba. This took me like forever, but it was like pure anarchy to get an Amiga recognised by a tin box. I had taken 1992 technology and shoe horned it into 2000 plus PCs and better I was able to use Broadband. I should think the entire population of this area heard me scream with joy that day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_(video_game)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensible_Soccer_(series)
http://sambaforamigaos.wordpress.com/classic-amiga-getting-started/There have been many more memorable moments... like shedding a tear for the flower girl when she died in Final Fantasy; enduring the struggles of Lara in Tomb Raider; adventuring across Azeroth with my Silver Tabby as a mage in World of Warcraft or creating my dream of a large website to show off my love affair with computers... However, my greatest moment still is the one I am yet to have. There are no bounds to what I enjoy mucking around with computers. I can always find more interesting and fun things to do. And there is still so much that I have yet to do. I wish for only one thing and that is the chance to enjoy my hobby for many years to come.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raiderhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_WarcraftI am never sure whether the computer community today really get the true joy of computers. The guys that I come across that profess to be experts are rather dull compared to the nerds that frequented the first Sinclair Exhibition I went to in Edinburgh in the early 80s. And the magazines today are nothing compared to the machine code rags that I bought from Smiths for the Spectrum. And in truth there has never been anything as wonderful as a half inch thick copy of CU Amiga or Amiga Format that kept me up reading until the very small hours. It was like taking a journey into Alice in Wonderland, an Aladdin’s Cave of gadgets, games, software, gizmos etc etc etc, and so colourful. More significantly I cannot get that excited by apps and ‘ithings’ cus they are bubble gum trivia compared to the trickery that was employed to get the Amiga to perform the endless miracles that it created. And yet there are still magical holes to delve into. You may have to dig a bit harder but they are still there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_FormatAnyway those were my my most magical moments thus far. Maybe you all had the same. I guess so.....
I do not regret the night I went into my local pub and saw for the first time my very very first computer gaming machine playing ‘pong’. It was love at first sight. And I never recovered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong
