Yeah, I used to work at a large UK university and I saw (helped manage) a vast Excel spreadsheet which calculated students' final degree classifications. It was so complex I never managed to unpick the algorithms, just assumed it was right.
Massive, MASSIVE fan of John and his work. I use a set of apps at home and at work, not because I can't install stuff but for convenience. Things like the auto-prompt for updates are a blessing when installing stuff on non-technical family member's computers. That's reminded me, I've been meaning to go and donate, they deserve some of my money.
+1 for IMAPSync, used it a few times to migrate business and personal email, including into G Suite. It enabled me to offer a very smooth transition for people, entirely hiding from them the complexities of what "move my email" really entails!
As much as I dislike 123-reg, they weren't the only ones who did the 'auto-registration' thing. I don't feel like dropping my registrar in it but they did the same (only it was at the end of the .uk reservation period - I gained 2 domain names, both of which ought to belong to clients of mine). I haven't ever checked if they set them to auto-renew in fairness, my account settings are to NEVER auto-renew so I suspect they followed that.
I had a Toshiba MSX (in the UK) as my first computer. My parents bought me that, convinced by the salesman's hype, when everyone else was buying Spectrums and Commodores. At the time it was a pain because not all the good games came out on MSX, but I loved that thing. It taught me BASIC, got me interested in computer-based music (BASIC programmes with endless PLAY statements) and got me into computing rather than just using a computer. I'll always have a soft spot for MSX.
Pretty much same story here. I got Spectravideo SVI-738 with integrated disk drive. Being able to run CP/M on it didn’t really do much when everyone else were having C64s and playing Pirates. :)
Same but having grown up in Brazil I had a Gradiente Expert [1].
It was a really nice computer console with 2 cartridge slots which were most of the time occupied by a 5"1/4 floppy drive and sometimes a Data-corder [2][3] (to load software - games - off cassette tapes). It was fun to start loading the tape, then going to play in the garden for 30min-1h as it read the tape, just to come back and see that it had failed and then try again - and play more in the garden.
I also learned BASIC, some assembly which was required to add cheats to games before they loaded, and even used to do simple animations from basic geometric shapes.
I was in branch the other week and they were doing exactly that... from Windows XP. Staff member told me they were upgrading to Windows 10 soon and they couldn’t wait.
Where do tools like the Automatic adapter [1] fit in to this? I don't own one but it connects to OBD-II and my understanding is can be used to do things such as clear warnings etc.
This. It might seem odd to some to combine BASIC and assembler but a programmer friend of mine used that ability to start playing with assembler (which he'd never done before) and experimented with replacing some BASIC routines in his games with assembler. As a relative newbie his socks were blown off at the speed-up he could achieve, I feel sure that it spurred him on in his programming career. (Ironically he is now a contract programmer writing corporate software in Java, but there you go...!)
