The Unusually Named Blog – Page 2 – Random wibblings from the "mind" of Paul Plowman

SQIJ! – Worst video game ever?

Posted onNovember 6, 2014February 6, 20233 Comments

Recently, I’ve been sorting my retro-gaming collection a bit. Specifically, I’ve gone through all my ZX Spectrum games, seeing if all the tapes/inlays/boxes/etc. match up. Also, I’ve been checking the games against the comprehensive World Of Spectrum online database, just to see if I have anything interesting or as-yet undocumented.

As it turns out, I do have something of interest: I happen to own a copy of the lowest-rated game in the entire database. You might think that in order for a game to be the lowest-rated – especially from an era when there were some really terrifyingly crap games released – it would have to be something a bit special.

And you’d be right.

MPO to JPG converter

Posted onNovember 3, 2014February 6, 2023Leave a comment

It’s funny what interests people on the internet. One of the most popular things on my website is my program for extracting JPG files from MPO files. I originally wrote it when I heard about the release of Fuji’s first 3D digital camera – more as a programming exercise than anything else. I just bashed it out without too much thought, and no optimisation, assuming that there were probably other, better, programs out there.

Hacking the Yamaha PSR-300

Posted onMay 22, 2014February 6, 2023Leave a comment

For one of my projects, I needed something to generate notes from MIDI data. I looked at eBay, and there were MIDI sound modules on there, but they were going for £40 upwards. I thought that there must be a way of doing it more cheaply.

Key Bottle Opener

Posted onMay 19, 2014February 6, 2023Leave a comment

I wondered if it was possible to make a bottle opener out of a key, and it still be usable as a key. It turns out it is. Kinda.

Books and Guns

Posted onJuly 11, 2013

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve been interested in book-safes – those hollowed out books you see in films and on telly, where spies hide secret things like government intelligence, or sweeties. I’ve made a couple in the past which were a bit of a bodge job; they worked fine, but they just looked a bit scrappy.

Manchester History: ABC Television

Posted onApril 16, 2013Leave a comment

On the western corner of the junction between School Lane and Parrs Wood Road in Didsbury, there is a block of flats called Capitol Court. Before these were built in 1999, there stood a building which started life in 1931 as the Capitol Cinema. Within a year the building was completely gutted in a fire, but after extensive rebuilding work it opened again in 1933.

Why you should vote ‘yes’ to AV.

Posted onMay 4, 2011Leave a comment

Tomorrow we get to vote on whether to reform the voting system. Obviously this is a contentious issue, and the arguing has been heated, but a lot of the arguments seem to be completely missing the point, which is – Why do we vote?

Bring me the head of Adam Croot

Posted onJuly 9, 2010Leave a comment

I don’t know who Adam Croot is. I’ve never met him, spoken to him, or – as far as I’m aware – set eyes on him. He’s probably a decent fellow – kind to his mother, careful with litter, etc. – but he’s really starting to get on my wick.

3D Films – A re-education is needed.

Posted onApril 13, 20103 Comments

I’ve decided that it’s time I waded into the argument about 3D cinema with some of my thoughts. Firstly, I should tell you that I love the stereovisual effect – being able to trick your brain into giving the illusion of depth in an image where none exists. It has fascinated me ever since I was a child. At one point I had a large collection of holograms, and even now I own three 3D cameras – two of them use film, and one I hacked together myself to take digital 3D pictures. In the last year I’ve taken more 3D photos than 2D ones. Based on this I consider myself to be far more knowledgeable about the practicalities of 3D than almost anyone else you might have heard talking about it, outside the industry.
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2-4-6-8 Motorway

Posted onJune 11, 20087 Comments

One of the consequences of having a job is that I frequently have to cross the Pennines on that wonder of modern congestion, the M62. If I’m honest, then I suppose it’s not such a bad drive – unless you have to go between junctions 24 and 27 during rush hour, or it’s raining, or both, in which case it’s really quite indescribably grim.
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Indiana Jones IV

Posted onMay 30, 20082 Comments

It’s entirely possible, I suppose, that you’ve awoken this very hour from a long and deep coma; or you’ve just emerged after having been trapped by your father in an Austrian basement for 24 years; or you’ve only recently returned from a long stay on the far side of the Moon. Had any of these scenarios actually occurred, I’m fairly sure that you’d have better things to be doing than reading this ‘blog’, so I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’re aware that there’s currently a new Indiana Jones movie in the cinemas.
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Sweet essence of giraffe

Posted onMay 21, 2008Leave a comment

That great pillar of British broadcasting, Terry Wogan, used to have a running joke on his radio show in which his producer, the late Paul Walters, claimed to have eaten all manner of exotic animals, and that they all “tasted like chicken”.
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My first date with Eliza

Posted onMay 18, 20083 Comments

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Turing test. Alan Turing was an English mathematician, cryptanalyst, and all-round geek. He was one of the pioneers of early computing, and is often regarded as the father of modern computer science. He was such a geek, in fact, that he once wrote a computer chess game, and then, because no computer existed at the time which was powerful enough to run it, he had to simulate a computer to run the game – doing all the calculations himself!
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Beyond Lies The Blog

Posted onMay 14, 20081 Comment

‘Blog’. Ugh! What an ugly word, created by the unholy conjoining of the word Log to the orphaned B from the word Web, thus ‘Web-Log’ becomes ‘Blog’. In today’s high-tech high-speed world, two syllables is just one syllable too many.
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