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Comment Re:Magazine? (Score 2) 82

It's an add thing, I found the lack of magazines in the US really weird when I was over there and that was 15+ years ago. They only seemed to be in bookshops. Over in the UK, they're everywhere and hundreds of different ones. Newsagents, super markets, petrol stations, music shops, pretty much everywhere except book shops.

Comment Thanks for my life, C&VG (Score 3, Interesting) 82

I started getting C&VG from the first issue. Back then they were mainly a magazine full of BASIC listings for the Atari 800, BBC, Apple, TRS80, MZ80K, ZX81 etc. They also had ongoing tutorials on adventure game writing and the like. More bizarrely, they also had a play by mail space game, which I never played (had to pay as I remember) which featured every issue. You posted your next moves and got a computer print out of the results a few weeks later. You thought waiting for cassettes to load was slow gameplay? Pah! For me though, it was key. I first learned programming by typing in the Atari 800 listings (which never worked first time) by checking the typos then working out 'ah, that must be what changes the colour of the border' etc. Between the monthly listings and a BASIC primer, I was away. Later on I moved onto 6502 assembler and later C once I had an Atari ST. Somehow that chain of events resulted in me writing systems generating millions in revenue for banks. Thanks C&VG! I did stop getting the magazine after a few years but decided to submit a game I had in mind. I pulled out all the stops, wanting it to be the best Atari game they'd published. It had (ignore if you're not an Atari 8bit type) multiple DLIs, redefined character sets, sprites, assembler subroutines and all sorts of twiddly things. I then went and bought an issue to get the address to send my masterpiece to. Arse, they'd stopped doing listings several issues earlier. :-(

Comment Re:price and ROI of solar panels (Score 1) 131

I agree there unfortunately. I did the math a few years ago, during which time the electric price hasn't really risen substantially in the midwest. I basically figured that the cost of installing the PV panels would be recouped at about the same time that the panels reached about 30% of their original capacity... in other words by that point you'd be so close to replacement time that it was almost a wash. It just didn't make sense to me because when I also included costs of routine maintenance (you have to clean PV shingles or panels frequently to ensure maximum efficiency) it really was a net negative.

Now, if electricity prices were higher like in Australia then I could definitely see it making a lot more sense.

Comment Re:Price, plain and simple... (Score 1) 477

Just be glad you weren't into Laserdisc. Star Wars boxed set? $250. Aliens? $100 (or same in GBP if you were in the UK). Over here you can pick up a BR player for about GBP40 and most disks for new movies are about GBP12 versus GBP10 for the DVD so it's not a huge jump. My Sony BR player with a few bells and whistles was GBP25 in a sale (HMV messed up :-) ) but the one it replaced was only GBP40. There's plenty of BR movies for GBP5 if you shop around.

Comment Re:you missed some (Score 1) 477

Well yes, if it's just someone singing to a backing track, I'd agree but most major bands are going to have a big chunk of their 'live' sound coming from somewhere other than the instruments in their hands. As I said, these days it's more likely to be Ableton Live as that gives you a lot of flexibility in a live situation (hence the name) as well as being a good DAW in its own right.

Comment Re:you missed some (Score 1) 477

Yeah, right. Depends on your style of music but usually they'll be any number of sequences, some vocal effects, drum work etc on DAT then the band will play live over the top. For anything outside straight bass/lead/drums stuff you don't have much choice. Especially if you have some particular sound or effect the song hangs off of. Yes, you can sequence a lot but the structure is more often than not fixed. Less so these days as you can do most of this with Ableton Live etc but I'm talking 1990 until 2005 as being mainstream use of DAT this way.

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