'You're such a sentimental old weirdo,' said my mum when I sent her this photo of the thoughtfully chosen screensaver for my new MacBook Pro.
Yes. I am both these things. The idea of the BBC computer intro screen juxtapositioned with a laptop that's more powerful than 1987 could ever have imagined, makes me rub my hands with glee, until they too become pixelated.
My mum is not so nostalgic. 'It reminds me of so many lost OU essays,' her forlorn text read. That makes me sad. I wish the BBC could have been better at looking after my loved ones. I, on the other hand, used it solely to write endless Nedso stories and play Podd; desperately hoping that one day I'd get him to poo or speak Japanese:
So I'm guessing she probably won't be jumping to accompany me to the next Vintage Computer Festival, then. Yes, you heard correctly. It's at Bletchley Park where the National Museum of Computing (yes, you may wet yourself with excitement) resides. Last year, they even had Twitter loaded onto a dusty 1982 ZXSpectrum. See, old and new, old and new. They think like me and I didn't even know they existed until today. And something else I learned: that the BBC Micro was responsible for the graphics in some Dr Who episodes, including the terrifying Five Doctors - one of my earliest memories.
I think this is all coming together rather nicely, and I should celebrate with a pilgrimage to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. That's if I can get Podd to fly me there...
Nostalgic geek? Guilty. In the meantime, here is the BBC Computer Literacy Project Owl.
A spectacle of analogue fluff. The most impressive low-res animal of the Microcumputer-woodland. Hope he doesn't scare my mum too much. He's too cute to bring back bad memories, surely?
"Boo."
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