Hmm.. I had to put my bike in for service today. It needed to have the gear cable changed (and as it turned out) the cable slieves as well, a mighty £11.

Anyway, I think it’s about time that I replaced it as it’s now 5 years old which means that it’s done about 11 thousand miles and it’s getting a bit tired.

I’ve been looking around and the closest I can get to my ideal bike would be the following:-

• Giant Motion 7 Gts Bike.
• Shimano FS-C810 front forks.
• Shimano SG-8R25 8 gear internal geared hub.
• Shimano ST-8S20 gear change and brake lever set.

I wonder how much that’ll cost?

Today’s big story in all the media is Prince Harry’s fancy dress costume. It’s taken over from all the really important stories and shows the total lack of perspective people and the media seem to have today.

Here’s the write up on the web version of The Sun (tabloid newspaper for those outside the UK):-

• By JAMIE PYATT
  and DUNCAN LARCOMBE
  PRINCE Harry stunned partygoers by attending a pal’s birthday bash dressed as a Nazi soldier.

  Harry, 20, wore the swastika and desert uniform of Rommel’s hated German Afrika Korps to the party in West Littleton, Wilts.

  Last night he said: “I am very sorry if I have caused any offence. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.”

Now, let’s see how that would sound with only a very few word changes…

• By JAMIE PYATT
  and DUNCAN LARCOMBE
  PRINCE Harry stunned partygoers by attending a pal’s birthday bash dressed as a Hell Demon.

  Harry, 20, wore the set of horns and devil uniform of Satan’s hated evil hord to the party in West Littleton, Wilts.

  Last night he said: “I am very sorry if I have caused any offence. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.”

I wonder how many would have cried foul of that?

Some say that the reason for the hub-bub is that he’s the grandson of The Queen. Well, surely the second one would have been just as bad then seeing as being a potential future king and head of the Church of England he would be being insensitive about Christianity. Remember, wearing a Nazi fancy dress uniform to a fancy dress party does not mean that he condones or in any way supports the ideals of that movement. It’s not even that is shows that he is not horrified by the holocaust etc. It’s a FANCY DRESS COSTUME!!!!

I’m horrified by some people’s lack of perspective and their own moral hypocracy and less so a prince’s costume.

A week ago Alec Muffett posed a question as to what the best beginners’ programming language would be on his blog. He suggested that BASIC was a no-hoper as there are no good, freely distributable BASIC languages available, especially if you want a full procedural form.

Well, I think I’ve just found a possible answer to that problem. Admittedly, it’s a bit more than a pure language, it’s more of an interpreter running under a virtual machine. It’s freely distributable source, or at least the virtual machine is.

So, what is this wonderful thing?

It’s the UQLX Sinclair QL emulator which includes the excellent Sinclair SuperBASIC interpreter. Not only this but it’s been extended to add TCP/IP support, direct access to the UNIX filesystem and displayless scripting. And, of course, people can always download and run QL software or use it as a Motorola 680×0 development system with a downloaded assembler.

I freely admit that this is not at all an object oriented programming language which Alec thinks people should start with. Then again, OOP programming languages aren’t the most appropriate language type for all things, especially if you’re prototyping certain scientific problems where program structure is less important than the thought process when developing a technique. (However, it seems like a GoodIdea™ for big programming projects and those where structure is very important.)

I would be interested in any comments people might have with my opinions, be it with UQLX or programming languages in general.

It’s the revenge of the blinkenlights!

Just wait, the next thing will be blue LEDs glowing underneath the back of the raked keyboard next.. oh and a “Maxpower” sticker.

And so, yet again it’s the last day of my holiday. There’s the drive back to come tomorrow.

I made the decision this morning that I’ll start the process of moving my old computers from here and up to Oxford. It should help my parents clear out their loft a little. As this first step I’m taking back my ZX81, ZX Spectrum, QL and Atari STM (plus floppy drive and software) tomorrow. That will leave behind the Atari TT, Memotech MTX500, BBC B plus various disk drives, dot matrix printer and a couple of monitors. I think that’s all of them. I’ve still yet to find the ZX Interface 1 even though I’ve found the Kempston joystick interface and the ZX Microdrive and cartridges.

I did test the ST this afternoon. A surprising number of the games floppy disks have stopped working. It seems to be mostly the newer games from Electrontic Arts such as Populous Ii and the two versions of Lemmings. The slightly older stuff such as Starglider and it sequel work fine as does the original Populous. Maybe the newer stuff was written on substandard media.

What did surprise me was how slow, jerky and primitive the games now seem. I’m sure they didn’t seem that way when I first got them. 🙂 Memory’s a wonderful thing.

Anyway, I’ve mostly packed. Just a few more things to put away in the morning before putting it in the car.

Woke up and got up very late. Tried and failed to get further on MoH:Spearhead then watched LotR:RotK extended edition. That was pretty much all of the day’s events.

A happy new year to all those deranged people who happen to read this journal. 🙂

Again, not a terrifically exciting day. Not much more than a quick trip into Helston before lunch and little else.

I did start playing Medal of Honour: Spearhead as there was little else to do.

I saw the old year out in the traditional style with my dad watching Jules Holland on the telly and sending a festive e-mail to lots of people as close to midnight as I could.

Only two more days now until I drive back up to Oxford and to the other life. When I’m here Oxford seems like a distant dream. When I’m in Oxford here seems like a different dream. It’s rather strange.