K9 and Company: a curious Christmas gift to you

Posted on January 7, 2025 by blogmywiki

I finally watched K9 and Company. And I have questions.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, K9 and Company was a single 50 minute TV show made in 1981, a spin-off from Doctor Who that was intended to be a series, making companion Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen, into the lead character, fighting evil with K9, the robot dog companion she’d never worked with in Doctor Who itself. The series was never made, although a similar concept was eventually to resurface many years later in 2007 on the CBBC channel as The Sarah Jane Adventures.

I’d been aware of the programme, mainly because it’s possibly best known for having one of the worst title sequences ever made, much derided and parodied. But the show itself… I wasn’t prepared for it. It was nothing like I expected. I can see why a series was never commissioned, but not for any of the reasons I might have assumed. It left me utterly discombobulated, needing to watch it again. And write this. (It contains spoilers, so if you’ve not seen it, go and watch it before reading this).

I’ll skip over the music, because I don’t want to go there, and also skip over just how bad the titles are, but I want to talk about tone. A lot of my astonishment with K9 and Company is about tone.

Sarah Jane drinking white wine whilst typing outside a Cotswold country pub

From the titles you’d assume this is going to be a bit of a crazy, kooky knock-about adventure, perhaps a little bit cosy. Sarah Jane drives around in her soft-top Mini Metro, getting into scrapes, jogging in Pineapple-era dancewear, knocking back the odd glass of white wine outside a pub whilst filing copy on her portable typewriter (let’s hope it’s not a Sam Smiths pub with technology like that) and solving mysteries with K9, her plastic pal who’s fun to be with.

Artistic lady of a certain age introduces herself to Sarah Jane on the phone

Then the show starts. And tonally, we are not in Croydon anymore. We’re not even in Doctor Who, it’s like we’re in something more like a 1970s ATV Thriller, or an episode of Tales of the Unexpected. Sarah Jane has pitched up in her Aunt Lavinia’s massive country house in the Cotswolds. VT interiors, grown-ups talking in grown-up ways in drawing rooms. Juno Baker looks like she has pampas grass in her front garden. The pace is slow. The whole thing feels a bit dated even for 1981, and it certainly does not feel like a show made for children.

Gardener played by Colin Jeavons says 'There's more to growing than science'

Things seem to be getting back on track when Colin Jeavons appears, playing the gardener. I love Colin Jeavons, and I feel like he was a staple of children’s film and TV when I was growing up, or grown-up programmes that appealed to kids like me, usually cast as small-time villains.

The unboxing of K9. 'It looks just like a dog, a metal dog.'

The unboxing of K9 by Sarah Jane and her aunt’s ward Brendan also feels more appropriate. The very existence of a character being a ward seems to give us some kind of link into the long history of wintertime children’s TV adaptations of classic stories.

Locals in goat masks chanting 'hecate' at night in the ruins of a church

However, the mystery as it unfolds takes us, for me at least, somewhere utterly unexpected. Aunt Lavinia has disappeared after writing a letter to the local newspaper about witchcraft being practised in the area. Sarah Jane, Brendan and K9 uncover a plot, of course, but not some cosy scheme. Oh no. It’s a full-blown Hammer / folk horror satanic cult, comprising all the local dignitaries, who hold rituals by night, in masks in scenes that literally appear to be straight out of Hot Fuzz. If that’s not scary enough, they then kidnap Brendan and decide to make him a human sacrifice.

Laughter at the end. 'Human sacrifice.' 'Oh, you're human, are you?'

So, who on earth was this aimed at? Let’s look at the evidence:

The titles look like a low-end kids’ show. The programme itself is filmed and paced like a late 70s adult drama. Its main plot concerned a satanic cult and human sacrifice. And it was broadcast to millions on BBC1 at 5.45pm on Monday 28th Dec 1981, then repeated a year later on BBC2 on Christmas Eve 1982 at 5.40pm. Very mixed messages, possibly even so much so that it’s a bit on the nose even for someone like me from the ‘haunted generation.’

The other reason for my discombobulation is that, although I’ve heard of it, I don’t remember watching it at the time. Which is very odd. I was the right age for it in 1981, I was (and am) a fan of Doctor Who in general, and Sarah Jane Smith in particular. How could I have missed both showings? I was in the habit at the time of circling programmes I wanted to watch in biro in the Christmas double-length Radio Times, how could it have eluded me? We may even have, just, had a VCR then, but could a schedule clash, or just tea-time have been the reason? Or is there some sinister reason where I had amazing adventures in time and space just after seeing it, causing me to have my memory erased before being dumped back into North Somerset on Christmas day 1982? Is that why there is strange satanic incantations (ok, Latin body text) on the web site of one of the locations?

A web site full of Lorem ipsum body text

There is another possibility. One of my older brothers was friends with Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who created K9 for ‘The Invisible Enemy’ Doctor Who story in 1977. I’m away from home right now and can’t check Bob Baker’s autobiography, which my brother worked on, but I wonder if there was some beef over Bob & Dave not being involved in K9 and Company and I was encouraged not to watch it? Or maybe it’s just that my holographic memory circuits are failing, mistress…

K9 and Company is currently on the BBC iPlayer.

Posted in BBC, Doctor Who, nostalgia, TV | Tagged , | Comments Off

The terminal problem with AI assistants

Posted on May 5, 2024 by blogmywiki

A terribly clunky thing I tried to make in 2012 using an Arduino LCD shield that would attach to our fridge and show weather and tweets etc

The thoughtful and very watchable reviews of the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1 AI assistant devices by Marques Brownlee have been doing the rounds (see below). His Rabbit R1 review is especially interesting towards the end where he talks about how shipping barely functional products has been normalised. You can kind of see how tech companies pulled this trick with devices where software and firmware can be updated ‘tomorrow’ to add new functionality, though it’s harder to see how that worked with the Tesla Cybertruck, which is, and always will be, a rusty brick, but anyway.

What really strikes me about these AI assistant devices, though, is not just how far behind smartphones they are, it’s that I don’t think they can EVER compete with phones. There, I’m sticking my neck out. I think they are either a doomed class of device, or they will morph into something much more phone-like.

Both the Humane AI pin and Rabbit R1 devices require these things:

  • an internet connection to cloud AI services
  • a user interface involving voice recognition
  • a speaker or Bluetooth headphone connection
  • some kind of display
  • a rechargeable battery
  • a camera

Phones already have all of these things. They have all of these things that work far better than anything in either device. They also have apps which allow you to access all kinds of services now and in the future. The Rabbit AI is going to have ‘Large Activity Models’ to watch how you use other apps and services and mimic it? Well, I mean, EUWWWW, but even if you’re deranged enough to think this is a good idea, there’s nothing to stop Apple or Google or someone else adding that functionality to a phone.

For those AI assistants to find a niche, there has to be something paradigm-shifting about the form factor and / or UI. Maybe the Humane AI pin’s projector and gestures comes close, but I still don’t see how it’s easier than using a phone. So even if more services are added, and if the woeful battery life of these devices is improved, I still don’t see them finding a niche alongside your phone, let alone replacing them.

I’m probably wrong. Ping this back to me in 5 years when everyone has abandoned phones and has a little gizmo with an annoying personality stapled to their shoulder.

Update – 6 May 2024

You may find this article on Rabbit’s co-founder quite interesting: https://www.wheresyoured.at/rabbit-holed/

Those Marques Brownlee review vids in full

Posted in computers | Tagged | Comments Off

Computer Lib / Dream Machines at 50

Posted on March 31, 2024 by blogmywiki

From time to time, Coloured version of the cover art of Computer Lib - a fist over a punched card. Looks like an agitprop poster, I’ve posted snippets from Ted Nelson’s 1974 book(s) Computer Lib / Dream Machines on various social networks but, now it’s fifty years old, it seems like a good moment to pull together some of the eye-catching quotations and reflect on the book(s) a little.

Who is Ted Nelson, and why does a fifty-year-old book on computing matter today? Ted Nelson is probably best-known as the man behind Xanadu, a wildly ambitious hypertext system he first described in the 1960s and has been tinkering with ever since. In a 1995 article, Wired magazine called it ‘the longest-running vapourware project in the history of computing.’ As far as I know, almost thirty years later, it still hasn’t shipped (although Ted Nelson is still alive.)

Magazine spread THE CURSE OF XANADU from Wired, 1995

Computer Lib / Dream Machines is, even by the standards of its age, an odd book. Self-published by Nelson in 1974, its appearance is shambolic but oddly charming, like a samizdat political pamphlet or fanzine. Its hand-drawn headlines, type-written text at odd angles is reminiscent of early editions of the British satirical magazine Private Eye. It is, in fact, two books in one. Which book you started reading depending on which way you picked it up, as they were printed back to back.
a 2 page spread from the book showing its chaotic layout
Computer Lib is more of a political or social manifesto, a treatise on what computing had become whereas Dream Machines looks ahead to what computing could become, focusing on computers as machines for manipulating and creating visual arts and writing.

Both books are fascinating, partly as a snapshot of computing history immediately before the microcomputer revolution (which Nelson saw coming), but also because so much of it still seems relevant today. Much of what he says about the social impact of computing is relevant to today’s AI mania, and he even explicitly discusses AI, then in its infancy, in ways that I think we would do well to be mindful of.

Here’s Ted on ‘cybercrud’ – using computing as a ‘smoke and mirrors’ term to hide ulterior motives. Replace ‘computer’ or ‘cyber’ with ‘AI’ as you read it:

CYBERCRUD.
A number of people have gotten mad at me for coining the term “cybercrud,” which I define as “putting things over on people using computers.”
But as long as it goes on we’ll need the word. At every corner of our society, people are issuing pronouncements and making other people do things and saying it’s because of the computer. The function of cybercrud is thus to confuse, intimidate or pressure. We have all got to get wise to this if it is going to be curtailed.
Cybercrud lakes numerous forms. All of them, however, share the patina of “science” that computers have for the layman.
1a) COMPUTER AS MAGIC WORD
The most delicate, and seemingly innocent, technique is the practice of naming things so as spuriously to suggest that they involve computers. Thus there ls a manufacturer of pot-pipes with “Data” in its name, and apparently a pornography house with a “Cyber-”
…
2) WHITE LIES: THE COMPUTER MADE ME DO IT
Next come all the leetle white Lies about how such-and-such is the computer’s fault and not your decision. Thus the computer is made a General Scapegoat at the same time it’s covering up for what somebody wants to do anyway.
“It has to be this way.”
“There’s nothing we can do; this is all handled by computer.”
“The computer will not allow this.”
“The computer won’t let us.”
The translation is, of course, THE STINKY LOUSY PROGRAM DOES NOT PERMIT IT. Which means in turn: WE DO NOT CHOOSE TO PROVIDE, IN OUR PROGRAMS AND EQUIPMENT, ANY ALTERNATIVES.
Now, it is often the case that good and sufficient reason exist for the way things are done. But it is also often the case that companies and the public are inconvenienced, or worse, by decisions the computer people make and then hide with their claim of technical necessity.
(Computer Lib, p8)

Sometimes the stand-out anecdotes are just sweet. This story about children interacting with computing resonates with me deeply:

I know a high-school boy (not a computer expert) who programmed a computer to type out a love story, using the BASIC “print” command, the only one he knew. He could not bring himself to write the love story on paper.
The best example I can think of, though, look place at the kids’ booth at a computer conference. One of the more withdrawn girls was sitting at an off-line video terminal, idly typing things onto the screen. When she had gone a sentence remained. It said:
I love you all. but at a distance.
|—————————————————|
(Computer Lib, p9)

This next idea is also intriguing – that computers need not have been named after humans who carried out mathematical operations. They could have been called something else:

THE ALL-PURPOSE MACHINE
Computers are COMPLETELY GENERAL, with no fixed purpose or style of operation. In spite of this, the strange myth has evolved that computers are somehow “mathematical.” Actually von Neumann, who got the general idea about as soon as anybody (1940s), called the computer THE ALL-PURPOSE MACHINE. (Indeed, the first backer of computers after World War II was a maker of multi-lightbulb signs. It is an interesting possibility that if he had not been killed in an airplane crash, computers would have been seen first as text-handling and picture-making machines, and only later developed for mathematics and business.)
We would call it the All-Purpose Machine here, except that for historical reasons it has been slapped with the other name.
But that doesn’t mean it has a fixed way of operating. On the contrary, COMPUTERS HAVE NO NATURE AND NO CHARACTER, save that which has been put into them by whoever is creating the program for a particular purpose. Computers are, unlike any other piece of equipment, perfectly BLANK. And that is how we have projected on it so many different faces.
(Computer Lib, p10)

Perhaps we would do well to remember that AI systems, even generative AI systems, are also perfectly BLANK until trained – by humans.

Nelson offers this ‘helpful comparison’:

A HELPFUL COMPARISON.
It helps sometimes to compare computers with typewriters.
Both handle information according to somebody’s own viewpoint
Nervous Question: “Can a Computer Write a Poem?”
Helpful Parallel: “Can a Typewriter Write a Poem?”
(Sure. Your poem.)

“Can’t Computers Only Behave Mechanistically?”
“Can’t Typewriters Only Behave Mechanistically?”
(Yes, but carrying out your intent.)

“Aren’t Computers Completely Impersonal?”
“Aren’t Typewriters Completely Impersonal?”
(Well, it’s not like handwriting, but it’s still what you say.)
(Computer Lib, p10)

What might a helpful comparison for AI look like?

Nervous Question: “Can AI Write a Poem?”
Helpful Parallel: “Can a computer Write a Poem?”
(Sure. A poem trained on poetry written by the programmer or other internet-connected humans.)

Nervous Question: “Can’t AI Only Behave Mechanistically?”
Helpful Parallel: “Can’t Computers Only Behave Mechanistically?”
(Yes, but carrying out the designer’s intent.)

Nervous Question: “Isn’t AI Completely Impersonal?”
Helpful Parallel: “Aren’t Computers Completely Impersonal?”
(Well, it’s not your thoughts, but it’s still what other humans might say.)

In Dream Machines Nelson tackles AI head on. I think this stands up pretty well for something written fifty years ago.

THE GOD-BUILDERS!
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE… sort of
“Artificial Intelligence” is at once the sexiest and most ominous term in the world. It chills and impresses at the same time. In principle it means the simulation of processes of mind, by any means at all; but it generally turn out to be some form or another of computer simulation.
Actually, “artificial intelligence” has generally become an all-inclusive term for systems that amaze, astound, mystify, and do not operate according to principles which can be easily explained. In a way, “artificial Intelligence” is an ever-receding frontier: as technique become well-worked out and understood, their appearance of intelligence, to the sophisticated, continually recedes. It’s like the ocean: however much you take out of it, it still stretched on — as limitless as before.
Unfortunately laymen are so impressed by computers in general that they easily suppose computers can do anything Involving information. And public understanding is not fostered by certain types of stupid demonstration. One year I heard from numerous people about how “they’d seen on TV about how computers write TV scripts”- what had actually been shown was a hokey enactment of how the computer could randomly decide whether the Bad Man get shot or the Good Guy gets shot — both outcomes dutifully enacted by guys in cowboy outfits. Duh.
(Dream Machines, p12)

Computers don't actually think. You just think they think. (We think).

Computers don’t actually think.
You just think they think.
(We think).
(Dream Machines, p12)

Thinking about AI was not new in 1974, but the field was about to enter one of its ‘winters’ where innovation stalled, which makes Nelson’s timeline of AI past, present and future fascinating to read today. Can someone tell me, are we at ‘sexy unknown’ or ‘El Beyondo’ now?
a hand-drawn timeline of AI development showing 1974 as being in a phase of neural nets, and the future having flatworms, frogs, dogs and humans. In the far future, 'El Beyondo', there are gods and supergods.
Just as early 1970s computing magazines like People’s Computer Company / Dr Dobb’s Journal are full of things that are unexpectedly relevant today, Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib / Dream Machines is full of nuggets that make me wonder what the world would have been like if he’d been more listened-to, and indeed more successful.

In a similar vein, of paths not taken, I commend this 2013 video, imagining what a talk on the future of programming given in 1973 might have looked like:

Has Computer Lib / Dream Machines really aged well? Well, no. There’s plenty of sexism in there. There’s language that we would not tolerate today, although its context justifies at least reading it today, if not re-posting it. But I guarantee that if you have any interest in the social impact of digital technology, or just its history especially in the creative arts, if you scroll through it, you will find something to surprise or interest you. There’s a lot on cathode ray tubes, for example. CRTs are now obsolete technology, but I read Ted Nelson with a tinge of regret at what we’ve lost: light pens and vector graphics, purer than any blocky, pixellated bitmap rendition of a geometric shape.

A Ladybird book diagram of all the different spheres computing touches, such as space, weather and a similar hand-drawn diagram by Ted Nelson.

1971 Ladybird book on computers (left) and a diagram from Computer Lib (1974) that reminded me of it.

Useful links

Computer Lib / Dream Machines at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/computer-lib-dream-machines/page/n93/mode/2up

The Curse of Xanadu, Wired magazine, 1 June 1995: https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/

How it Works: The Computer (Ladybird Books, 1971) at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/How.It.Works.The.Computer.1971.Edition.David.Carey/page/n39/mode/2up

People’s Computer Company / Dr Dobb’s Journal magazines at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22People%27s+Computer+Company%22

Posted in computers, nostalgia | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

The Legend of the Merry Milkmaids

Posted on January 14, 2024 by blogmywiki

Cover of a book 'The Legend of the Merry Milkmaids' by Giles Booth. A single standing stone in green. This Christmas and New Year I was going to delete this blog, or archive it and start again. I was going to finish writing one of my many unfinished novels. I did neither, but I did write a short story for New Year.

It’s no longer ‘New Year’ but here we go, a silly story I wrote to amuse myself, like the Christmas one I wrote in 2014.

A couple escape from London to the country after New Year’s Eve to celebrate a badly-timed birthday, and are haunted by a ghost of birthday past.

It’s a free download in 3 formats:

I’ve not tested the ePub or mobi formats on an eBook reader, only my laptop so let me know if they don’t work.

Many thanks to Ray Newman for graciously allowing me to use his photographs of the Stanton Drew stone circle in North Somerset. I wonder if one day the Common Market will ever return there? (Adge Cutler joke for the kids, there.)

Posted in fiction, literature | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Surias – writing a program can be fun!

Posted on June 29, 2023 by blogmywiki

Me in 1981 using a Commodore PET to play Surias.

This is an unpublished article I wrote in around 1981 about a game my brother and I wrote for the Commodore PET. I am yet to find a program listing or cassette for the game, which I would love to spin up in a simulator! Incidentally, the Chris Howland mentioned in the article turns out to have quite an interesting life – born in Britain he became quite famous in Germany as a DJ, musician and actor.

After the initial novelty of having a computer in the house wore off, realising the limitations of the system (i.e. ‘IT’ wouldn’t wait on us hand and foot, answer the door, write best-selling war games) we thought about writing a good, solid, and maybe even an epic (-ette, -ish, sort of) program. Perhaps that was a mistake, but this is the story of our program, and how it was written. This is the story of SURIAS. A legend in its own FOR/NEXT loop.

Around the end of 1978 (yes, that long ago!), we (my brother Laurie, and myself) felt there was a lacking of interactive war games (except the infamous Star Trek) for the PET. This, of course, means the 2001 series (8k). We still have our old PET, and so this program runs in 8k, and was written in the old BASIC, although only two lines don’t work for new ROM PETs. A friend of Laurie, Andrew Shorney, who, by a meaningless coincidence, writes programs in COBOL for a supermarket chain, and himself, were in a pub getting rather drunk. (If there are any eligible Surias followers out there, it was the Naval Volunteer in Bristol). Andrew came up with the concept for the game. That was just the idea that you move armies from one county to another, and you have a stronghold, to which troops arrive by sea, and that the army of Surias has to defend its own country. You are, therefore, invading a country, in a time when the two opposing sides confronted each other on the battle field.

The name ‘Surias’ was invented, also, by Andrew (It’s an anagram of a certain large, well-known communist country). One evening Laurie told me the concept, but he couldn’t remember the name. “It’s an anagram of a large Communist country’: he said. A few minutes later I said “Surias?” I had re-discovered the name, and therefore claim a tiny fraction of the fame for the name. One Sunday, after lunch, Laurie took our PET over to Andrew’s house. By that evening the PET was back in our house with the map graphics on tape. Full credit for the graphics must go to Andrew, who before then, had never used a PET. Influenced by Chris Howland’s ‘Something Bit Me’ we began to try to write Surias.

That was a mistake.

A few days later: “We’re just being far too ambitious. It’s impossible”

Six months later. With the added knowledge of dimensioned variables (things like ?V(X) ) I decided it was possible to write Surias on our PET. Yes. Dimensioned variables, or as I call them, variable variables, they were the thing. In a few days time you could move troops, and it would print the numbers on the screen.

Now a few words to those thinking of writing a game on any computer, but especially the PET. A ‘Programmer’s Toolkit’ is very nice, and it makes life a lot easier, but it is not a necessity. To be honest, renumberers are necessary, but machine code versions on tape are just as good. Access to, or preferably ownership of, a printer is a huge help. We got our printer about halfway through the development. The toolkit came too late to be of much use.

Now back to the development. I put in the tests to check if there were enough armies in a particular county, and soon ‘Surias’ began to take shape.

Co-writing a program is a good idea. Many a time I would declare something impossible, returning a few minutes later only to find that Laurie had solved it.

Probably the biggest mistake we made, apart from starting on this whole venture in the first place:, was to structure the program badly. This is a direct result of not thinking how we would tackle each section of the program, in advance. I know that is the correct procedure, but those who are against letting a program take shape as it is written are probably the ones who stated a few years ago, that it was bad programming practice to use a ‘GOTO’ statement in a program. This may sound odd, but programming is more fun this way. Certainly, it is a lot less efficient, but programming becomes more of a pastime when done in this way. Heaven forbid, though, if people like Andrew wrote their COBOL programs that way!

There are many classics of space wasting in Surias. There are two different sections for winning and losing, with statements like “BATTLE IS UNDERWAY, SIR” being repeated. The table of POKE locations for the screen is repeated, but you need only enter it once, and change the line numbers for the second, or not at all, if you see the end of this article. These ‘faults’ are mainly due to the lack of a printer and toolkit when the main program was structured. The most useful toolkit function, apart from RENUMBER, we found to be FIND, which will find any variable, word, command, sentence, etc. in the whole program, and list it.

Soon the program was playable, and feeling pleased with ourselves, we showed it to my brother-in-law, saying we had just bought it from that PET orientated SOFTware house, for £5. He played a game, and remarked on what a bargain it had been. He now, of course, knows that we wrote it, and has a version running on his Nascom-1 under Xtal Basic. My other brother, Ashley, who has a KIM, has yet to implement Surias on his machine!

The July 1980 cover of Practical Computing magazineThe program was left alone for some time, but then we started making little additions. The random sundry assorted disasters, for instance, or the summer and winter messages. One day we took our big box of software over to a friend’s house, Ken Otway, who looks exactly like the Tuscan designer on the cover of July 1980 Practical Computing. We showed him our latest version of the game. He gave us two very good ideas to improve it, incorperated in this version. One was to have battle reports being printed at the bottom of the screen, instead of the screen clearing every time. The other was to have something flashing on the screen where a battle is taking place. Should you be embarking on the process of writing a game, get as many people as possible to play it, and make suggestions.

The program is in no way intended to be at all historically accurate, or geographically correct.

February 1981: Shock! Horror! Bug Time

“Here,”said Laurie. “Get this American Cream Soda down you…you’re going to need it.”

I needed it. He had just discovered that if you capture counties 1-6 in any order, you won the game instantly. (Well as quickly as it takes to get counties 1-6). Bye bye, good times. Hello headaches.

April 1981: What was wrong with the program, is really rather embarrassing.

Many moons ago, when you could only hike through the galaxy on radio, I had this ace little routine that stopped any enemy armies accumulating in county 6, if you surrounded it. There was, however, a little snag…it didn’t work! Ho-hum. What could we do when inquisitive hackers asked what the routine did? “Oh yes,”came the reply. “That’s our fingerprint routine:” And there it remained. Infact, it was that, combined with line 550 being where 3395 is now, that messed it all up. The line to check if county 6 was lost had always read:
IF N(6)=0 THEN 1870

Due to friendly negative numbers popping up, we changed it to:
IF N (6)<=THEN 1870
...only going to prove that we're human, I suppose.

I hope you enjoy the game, and to save you thinking them out, here are some suggested alterations:

a) Give yourself more armies. (Line 270)

b) Give the PET fewer armies. (Line 310)

c) Make a 'disaster' less likely to happen. It stands at 1 in 20 at the moment. To make it, for instance, 1 in 50, change line 2170 so:
2170 PY=1:M0=51

Other possible refinements, if you have the memory, and/or money, could be CB2 sound, light pen (we've got one, but not enough memory to add the facility!), levels of difficulty, colour graphics, hi-res, and so on. Perhaps you might prefer "'Ark at they soldiers, sire:" in line 1520. There's no accounting for taste...

Thanks once again to Andrew Shorney, for thinking up the concept at Gateway's expense, and doing the map, Ken Otway, for helpful advice, and to Roger Horsman, for making us feel like well-known Pet Pundits. Also to Chris Howland, another 'calcaholic' like myself, and for giving us the sheer nerve to write a program.

Posted in computers, nostalgia | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment