I’d never met anyone like her…

She was logical, clever, loved games, looked cool – would entertain me and my friends for hours on end, you could even say be one of the boys. When I felt like playing and fooling around, she was always up for it. When I felt introspective and searching, she’d sit for hours, and listen to my random ramblings. Half the time I didn’t even make sense to her, but eventually, she taught me how to speak her language.

I was too poor to bring her back to mine, so I’d meet with her in boots, a silly ginger scruff of an 8 year, old, but she thought I was great…

  1. 10 print "George is GREAT"
  2. 20 goto 10…

She was a spectrum 128k, of course. She was the first of many computers I programmed.

I started coding when I was 8. Back then it was kinda cool and there was no money in it (at least not for 8 year olds). Back then we were seriously poor (as in, no food to eat poor, not the keeping up with the Jones’s variety) – I had no chance of owning a computer like a 128k, so I’d take myself down to boots. They seemed to like me down there, I mean, the computers back then were super naff..at least these days they play demos, back then, they’d just sit their zapping the staff with cathode rays.. (do you remember how electronic shops used to feel?), doing not much.

I’d come in, and code up little apps: “what’s your name?” “Sarah-Jane” “You are very pretty Sara-Jane”...

it did kinda work, ya know..I was the trampiest 8 year old ever to be chatting up 13 year old girls (don’t worry, I gave up that habit nearly 2 decades ago).. You see, I come from a mentality that computers aren’t about money, they’re cool. They’re fun.. back then that kinda worked..

Well, I went on to make some cpc464 apps, a whole bunch of games, eventually graduated to an Amiga 500, then a 1200.. Back in the days when you needed an extra 512k of ram to run Prince of Persia, or Amos basic.

I used to make a whole lot of games in Amos, as it goes. I guess that’s where I really got my shit down in the end – I’d make ridiculous copies of street fighter 2, that were so naff that you couldn’t turn round, so you’d have “gentleman’s rules” if you jumped over your opponent, and have to moonwalk back to a reasonable fighting position. Clearly this wouldn’t bode well with the modern day young generation.

Well fast forward 15 years, and I’m sat here at dawn, entering this on my Mephisto blog. The ginger is mostly gone, follicly speaking, and basic has turned into actionscript 3, flex, ruby on rails, Java.. but I guess this, my first post, is to say thanks to those chaps in Boots, who spawned (instantiated?) this coding fool, sitting here now, tapping away, the happy computer geek that always was.