The ZX Spectrum is 25 years old. Wow, that’s a long time ago. That machine was my first real introduction to computing, specifically to programming. The early days of what was called “home computing” were very exciting. There were those of us with Speccys and The Other Lot with Commodore 64s. There were also a… (read more)

I first read “Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson shortly after it was first published, in around 1999-2000. I re-read it recently and parts of it made much more sense 🙂 For anyone who is remotely interested in mathematics, computing, cryptography, World War II history and an author who doesn’t shy away from multi-page digressions about the… (read more)

The long-awaited next release of Debian is finally here: Debian 4.0 codenamed “Etch” was released today. Debian releases are fairly infrequent (for good reason), so this is a big day in the Debian world. Some Linux users (especially some Ubuntu users) forget the importance of Debian to the whole community. I do use Ubuntu on… (read more)

How interesting: EMI have said that they will provide non-DRM encumbered music downloads. For a little more than the basic, DRM-ed cost, one will be able to get a higher-bitrate non-DRM version, which is excellent. Long may this continue… And I couldn’t make a post without mentioning: congratulations to MrBen and MrsBen on the arrival… (read more)