Nostalgia Nerd

It's the Bad Influence Christmas and New Year Special from 1993. I know I'm a little late, but I thought it would be better to roll this now rather than half way through 2018. So here's series 2, episode 15 of the CITV classic, Bad Influence!

Some of you asked how and why I had a Starfox 2 cartridge sitting on top of my SNES Classic Mini. Well, here's a very brief video to explain it to those interested (links for further info. below).

Way back in 1995, Brain Works released various themed PC accessories, including a mouse, keyboard and screen surrounds. Along with Nickelodeon, The Flintstones and Spiderman accessories was Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection. You could get a Monitor Mask, Homework Holder, Keyboard, Mouse and even a Disk Holder shaped like a shuttle. I remember seeing these Star Trek TNG accessories in the February 1996 issue of PC Zone, and it caught my attention, and remained in my attention until now. So join me as we boldly go where no one has gone before and investigate the Star Trek Collection by Brain Works.

We've all seen TV snow. Whether because the TV is detuned, or just because we're trying to tune our Mega Drive into a new channel. But why, on a colour TV is this static still presented in a monochrome format? Why aren't these random signals also random colours? Well, let's delve into a byte size episode to find out a bit on how TVs work, and why colour only appears for certain signals.

.COM .BAT. EXE... these are a few of my favourite things. Ahhhh MS-DOS. A beautiful command line driven operating system which filled our hearts with glee. Core to this glee filled life was file formats and the programs lurking within them. These would come with either a .com .exe or .bat extension so they could be executed by a few taps on your keyboard. But what exactly is a .com file and how does it differ from an .exe or .bat file. Come to think of it, why do I care?.... I can't answer that question, but at least I can tell you how these files differ. So here we go.

As strange as it seems, Santa (Father Christmas to us in the UK), was actually online before most other people. In fact, during 1983 Santa was already electronically sending and receiving Christmas letters via. electronic mail. In 1986, he opened his electronic arms to the UK, via. Telecom Gold and MicroLink, which allowed people to communicate over Bulletin Boards using their home micros and a modem. The thing is, some of the messages which Santa received during this time, were, shall we say, somewhat less than helpful. You could almost say Santa was trolled. Happy Christmas!