Stephen Scott

@sassquad

Breaking the web full time. Acorn User magazine alumnus. Made a few arcade games for the BBC Micro, keen to make more. If I can bend time and space however. AI slop free.

1.242 Folgt496 Follower1.371 Posts

Bluesky

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Stephen Scott@sassquad· 15h

Well I had to do it.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· 10d

My remastered version of Professor McBrolly - Gordon Key's 1987 type in game for The Micro User magazine - is now at the BBC Games Archive. I've also added the scan of the original illustration from the magazine - check out the alt text 😀 bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=... #bbcmicro #8bit #retrogaming

Scanned image of the magazine illustration to accompany the McBrolly game from the June 1987 issue of The Micro User, showing a jewel encrusted cavern upon which jam pots and various goblins are sitting. In the middle of the picture, an old man holding an umbrella appears to be falling down a staircase into the cavern. There is no accreditation as to the illustrator.

To a young teenager as yet unaccustomed to typing in games, this image filled me with intrigue as to what the game would be like. I must have eventually typed it in many months later and was very pleasantly surprised that magazine games could be as good as commercial quality ones. Around this time, I would have been typing in stuff from books, which were a lot more variable in quality. McBrolly therefore opened up another avenue from which to find games, and begin my tentative steps towards programming for myself.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· 10d

Without downloading any new pics, where are you at mentally?

Sticky melty dog Thing from the film The ... Thing.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jul 28

Do take care walking through parched forests. Trees are shedding branches of all sizes as a survival tactic, this one is pretty large!

Photograph of a large tree branch that fell recently. Trees are shedding branches in order to conserve water during the dry summer.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jul 22

Phenomenae. Do do do do do.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jul 22

Mmmmm don't we all love a moist meat clown?

Picture of sliced meat clown in a deli counter.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jul 10

Not even been a month since our break in Cornwall and I want to go back already 😔

St Ives harbour, looking towards St Ives town

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 30

And it gets worse. This is a flagrant puff piece for highly mobile and well off couples/individuals.

Another snapshot from the same article, where another interviewee saved money by migrating to destinations across SE Asia and working in international schools. This is digital nomad territory.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 30

And there it is: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Snapshot of highlighted text from a BBC News article featuring a couple who claim they were able to retire early by buying packed lunches for 10 years. The fact that they had good incomes to start with (including a role in a financial firm) kind of undermines the point they make.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 29

Had a helper while washing my car yesterday...

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 25

Nothing to see here, just that we are a few degrees warmer than Malaysia's capital at 5 in the morning 🫠

Snapshot of temperatures this evening in Witley, Surrey, compared to temperatures in London and Hayling Island, England and Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Basically, we are hotter than a tropical country!

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 23

I really hate this 'Show original size' button in MS Outlook. I keep thinking it's a missing font icon 😐

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 23

The cliffs at Holywell Bay in Cornwall appear to have a large green frog at the base.

Photograph of the cliffs at Holywell Bay, Cornwall, England. At the base of the rockface, is a large patch of algae, whose shape resembles a green frog.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 17

It's taken me years, but I finally got to visit St Senara's Church at Zennor, Cornwall. Saw the famous mermaid chair. Made me think of Polymer Picker - changing the diver sprite to a mermaid?

The mermaid chair at St Senara's Church, Zennor. The wood carving is said to be around 500 years old.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 8

Does this mean the Americans will deploy ICE to deal with it? #WorldCup

Today's headline over at LinkedIn - "Heat risks loom over World Cup"

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 7

Pleasantly surprised to see Polymer Picker at page 12 on the games archive, having languished down in the mid 20s for ages. Good to see the fruits of my labour continue to be enjoyed 😸 #bbcmicro #8bit #retrogaming #acorn

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Jun 1

Gonna have to reinterpret this scene from High Anxiety now.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· May 28

Google is just straight up taking the piss now.

Google's response to the question "How many b's in BBC Micro?" is one too many, in both it's answers.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· May 28

Oh dear, Google can't count the number of s's in my name!

Google's response to the question "How many s's in the name Stephen?" is two, then proceeds to spell it out, not realising it's mistake.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· May 28

Thanks Google for the reassuring answer to the question "How many o's in London?"

Snapshot of Google's response to the question 'How many o's in London?' - it has responded with 'There is 1 "o" in the word London (L-o-n-d-o-n). Wait, scratch that—there are 2!'

Stephen Scott@sassquad· May 27

What a mad 4 days. 4 trips. 4 locations. 4 different bits of coastline. 4 cycle rides, including 10 miles down Devils Punch Bowl, then back up again. Knackered!

Stephen Scott@sassquad· May 15

If this quote from Acorn's Paul Fellows is anything to go by, mid-80s OS development source control depended on who had the pink dinosaur on their desk to amend shared files. If you did so without said dinosaur, you would receive a Chinese burn 🔥 rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/201...

Quote from Acorn's Paul Fellows: "We had no source control, we had 7 or 8 guys trying to write an operating system to go into a ROM, so you've got to get it right, and they're all doing different bits of it and some of these share system files. No CVS, no source control, no Sourcesafe, none of that. The solution was the main system header file with all the constants, SWI numbers and addresses of everything lived in. You could edit that if you had the pink dinosaur on your desk. If you did not have the pink dinosaur on your desk you could not edit it. If you edited it without the pink dinosaur, my Australian friend, Brian Cockburn, would come round and see you. I remember a squealing as Stuart had made some interesting macro changes to the header system without the dinosaur and Brian had spent most of the night trying to figure out why his stuff didn't work, and had finally found out and had got Stuart cowering under the desk saying "come on I want to do the other arm", after giving him a chinese-burn on one arm."

Stephen Scott@sassquad· May 5

I'm sorry but I just had to 🤪

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Apr 19

April showers... of bluebells 🪻

A shot of beech trees in half leaf, and the ground covered in English bluebells.

A shot from close to the ground of English bluebells looking up towards the beech trees.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Apr 10

I would welcome mushrooms on our bank notes. But only British Magic Mushrooms.

Cover art of the early 80s video game Magic Mushrooms, written by Acornsoft for the BBC Microcomputer.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Apr 9

Honey Cheerios are full of everything. But so little honey!

Photograph of the ingredients list on the back of a packet of Honey Cheerios cereal. Three of the items have been highlighted - sugar, invert sugar syrup and molasses. The honey ingredient is only 2.2% of the total. So much sugar!

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Mar 23

Watching this unit pork it's way through all the bird seeds, walk away and then come back for a bit more.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Mar 20

Dune film poster with the word 'Covfefe' on it.

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Mar 17

You can never too many updates, according to HP's software. This includes multiple instances of the word 'updates'.

HP Software's Update checker modal dialog containing the following title "Checking for updates" and the following copy: "We are checking for updates. Any new updates will be added to the list of available updates."

Stephen Scott@sassquad· Mar 11

The Tories have to maintain their standards for launching things that fall or drop off...