Posts Tagged ‘birthday’

On This Day…

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
  • In 1838 Samuel Morse successfully tested the electric telegraph.
  • In 1907 the first Montessori opened in Rome.
  • In 1912 New Mexico became the 47th US state .
  • In 1938 Thomas Edison submitted his last patent application.

The following people were born on the 6th of January:

  • 1367, Richard II, King of England.
  • 1412, Joan of Arc, French heroine.
  • 1920, Sun Myung Moon, Evangalist[1].
  • 1925, John De Lorean, Car Manufacturer.
  • 1943, Terry Venables, football manager.
  • 1946, Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd.
  • 1954, Anthony Minghella, Director.
  • 1955, Rowan Atkinson, Comedian.
  • 1956, Angus Deayton, TV Presenter.
  • 1960, Nigella Lawson, TV chef.
  • 1964, Mark O’Toole of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
  • 1980, Steed Malbranque of Sunderland and France.
  • 1986, Paul McShane of Hull City and Ireland.
  • 1986, Alex Turner of The Artic Monkeys.

The following people died on this date:

  • 1884, Gregor Mandel, Father of Genetics.
  • 1918, Georg Cantor, Mathematician.
  • 1919, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the USA.
  • 1945, Edith Frank, mother of Anne Frank.
  • 1993, Dizzy Gillespie, jazz player.

The following events take place today:

  • Sherlock Holmes birthday.
  • The BT Young Scientist Exhibition starts in the RDS.
  • Black & White 2 is released.
  • Download Day for Hillary Duff new single.[2]
  • vBulletin 3.7.5 is released.

And why am I posting all of this? Well today also happens to be my birthday.

  1. Read nutjob []
  2. It hurt to type that. []

ZX Spectrum is 25 Today

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was released 25 years ago today.

We got one in the mid-80’s and it was a great machine. I was overawed at what this simple machine could do, though it did have it’s faults – the rubber keyboard was dreadful, the games took ages to load, made a horrible screeching noise while doing so, and would frequently fail with undecipherable error messages. (They were undecipherable to me anyway.) The games were simple, but they were amazingly fun to play. I could spend hours playing Jet Pack.

I remember when my Dad brought it home, and set it up inside a wooden box to protect it. He hard-wired the Spectrum to connecters inside the box, which in turn were hard-wired to the power and TV cables outside the box. In this way, it was just a matter of plugging in the power cable connecting the TV and opening the box.

This was well before the Internet was available to the general public, so getting new games wasn’t all that easy. We did know one person who could get games and he would copy the games on to cassettes for us. So even before p2p networks took off, piracy was a problem!

While the ZX was our first computer, it wasn’t until we got an IBM XT and AT that my interest really took off. But it was the Sinclair Spectrum that started it all. So to Clive Sinclair, I say “Thanksand Happy Birthday”. Where would we be today without the ZX?

Birthday Celebrations

Monday, January 8th, 2007

Well it’s over. Done and dusted. My twenties are over. And it was not as bad as I expected. I made it to 30 in one piece.

And while I thought that turning 30 would be difficult, it was surprisingly easy. All I had to do was wait around, and I magically went from 29 to 30. Though the copious amounts of alcohol may have just helped it pass much quicker.

So thanks to all of my friends that turned up for the party on Friday night. I enjoyed it, and remarkably enough, I can actually remember it. Maybe it’s my new found maturity.

Birthday Party – Open Invite

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006

I have finally given in to peer pressure and decided to have a 30th birthday party. So to all my friends and family, I hereby issue an open invitation to my birthday bash on the 5th January 2007 at The Stables at 9 PM.

There will be food, and drink. Lots of drink.

I get the feeling that I’m going to need it.