You cannot be Sirious...

I've being tinkering with the speech functionality built into Android again today. Previously I played about with an Android phone a while back and decided to see if things had improved given the additional processing power and memory of newer handsets. Well I can add conclusively that we still have some way to go with this. Running late today at work I decided to text my significant other with a message using voice. The results were amusing enough to make it worth sending to her... Here is the original intended message:-

I will be late tonight it's currently six o clock and I'm just setting off. See you later, Paul

Amusingly this is what I got back:-

I will be late tonight hamsters of hours Cisco pretty good luck of see you later paul

Needless to say she had an interesting time reassembling the rabble at the recieving end.... :)

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The Commodore 64 and a view of mid 80s computing technology

I am typing this on a computer that has a total of 56 processing units inside of it. 8 performance cores. 4 efficiency cores. 16 GPU cores and finally 16 Neural cores. It has 28 billion transistors. It runs at up to 4.5GHz. It has 24 GB of system memory. It has 512GB of solid-state storage. All this compute power in its entirety fits into an enclosure that is 5”(w) x 5”(l) x 2”(h) inches in size. Progress. So let’s go back in time. A time when we had single processor machines that ran between 1 and 4 Mhz. 64 KB of RAM if we were lucky. No onboard long-term storage – for that a tape drive was needed. Or if you were lucky a floppy disk drive. The Commodore 64 was special though. It had special sauce. That came in the form of custom chips known as VIC and SID. Although I guess they sound like two old characters down the local pub VIC (Video Interface Chip) and SID (Sound Interface Device) were extremely important in defining the Commodore 64 experience. The heart of machi...

After nearly seven years its time to fire this blog up again. A new project.

Project: iGame Overview So retro gamers you know the score you have a cupboard full of hardware taking up space, multiple switchboxes to access all your consoles, CRT screens etc. Basically its a PITA to be a retro gamer these days. The pondering begins. What to do with an old Mac SE/30 I've had stood in the lounge for a couple of years? Fishtank I hear you scream? Fate of many an old Mac... no...boring, predictable... then....the spark of inspiration....the idea flows into my mind, fuelled by the mind bending properties of a good brew of Yorkshire tea... a compact retro coated retro gaming station! So the birth of a wonderful project. So here I am now updating this blogspot for the first time in nearly six years!!! 😊 Step one is to find a long screwdriver to get this thing open and start stripping the bits out - although the project will have to start in earnest after I have done a dreaded incoming exam which I am currently (trying) to study f...

At last inside the beast....

It has been a while since I updated the blog on this project so please accept my apologies life sometimes gets in the way a bit! So I received the screwdrivers through the post and proceeded to open up the Mac tonight. Wow lots of interesting old school tech in here... SCSI hard disk... CRT tube... bespoke power supplies.. network card with Made in USA stamped on it - I've not see a sticker with that on for a long while on tech hardware! So now I am in the teardown and strip out of all the components will begin on the next update. In other news thought of a name for the project - Apple Pie. On account of using a Raspberry Pi as the main driver and obviously the Apple computer origin.... Can you think of a better name? Suggest some in the comments... Also thought of Raspberry Apple Pi.... Until next time so long for now. Promise to update this more frequently in future. Allocated a night in the week now to progress this project....

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