Back when I was a little nipper, the first computer we ever had in our house was a ZX Spectrum 128 (I’m pretty sure it was the 128 model anyway). I loved the system, played a lot of the games (probably played them better than I could now-a-days) and generally was quite addicted to it. The system was sold a few years later, along with all the games.

About a year ago I took the notion of going back to my childhood days and started buying Spectrum games from eBay. They are great items for collecting since [a] they provide a great sense of nostalgia, and [b] they’re cheap. Anyway, recently I joined the Retro Gamer forum, and, even more recently, spotted someone selling a good old Speccy +2 System (yes, its an Amstrad, but I’m not a purist so don’t really care) with a few games for a smashing price. I couldn’t resist. So here it is in all its 8-bit glory (hooked up to a high definition TV, no less, haha).

…and here’s my rather small collection so far! (though I accidentally forgot to include 3 other Dizzy games I have, d’oh)

This looks fantastic! Its a freeview viewer which allows for Sky+ type features such as pause, record, rewind, etc. Whats best about it is that its coming to Europe first! :)

Today was rather great weather-wise for a winters day: clear blue skies, warm sunshine, dry ground. Its got me completely in the mood for summer sunshine, and craving those sweet 2 weeks in the summer where nothing really matters. God knows if the weather will actually be good during those 2 weeks though. It also got me in the mood to flick through some of my photos on Flickr, reminding me that, as much as I usually loathe my local surroundings, there are parts that can be pretty damn beautiful in the right light. Bring on the sunshine!

PS. The images look some of their crispness in the blog-conversion process.  Click the images for better quality and larger versions.

Derry/Londonderry quay

Harvey’s Point, Donegal

Altahullion Wind Farm, Limavady

Enjoying flying a kite on Benone beach

More photos on my Flickr page.

So I finally got around to putting a proper video up for Sky Surfer. It pretty much runs through most of the levels (except for the ones at the end which I can no longer finish since I’m rusty!). Check it out…

Edit: Just added a second shorter video.

Some people obviously have plenty of time of their hands, but I have utmost respect for this, as I’d love to spend my time with such interesting ventures. Anyway, Toni Westbrook has developed the Shredz64 project, a game which interfaces the Guitar Hero Playstation guitar controller through a Commodore 64 allowing for potentially the most awesome nuskool-to-oldskool port I’ve ever seen.

Just seen this on a friend’s blog and laughed my head off. Gifted, eh?

Why the hell are they so big?  I just went to play Super Stardust HD and I have to update the latest version in order to play it, and the update is a whopping 111mb!  For people who don’t own an Xbox 360 that maybe doesn’t sound too bad, but typically on the 360 updates would be no bigger than a couple of megabytes.  Seems with the PS3 I pretty much have to download the entire game again all for a few minor changes.

Thank God I changed ISP recently, otherwise this would take about 3 hours to update, rather than 5 minutes.