I seem to remember most of the teachers at our school being quite sane, they might of hated kids and drank a lot but generally even the bad teachers were mentally stable. Its the kids that managed to be psychotic in lessons, one throwing a mug at our art teachers head and the other worst occasion was a physics teacher cracking under the constant verbal harassment by one delightful boy. Teacher attempts to 'escort' said pupil from the class and ends up being pinned against the blackboard. I think our teachers deserved war zone medals!

I am amazed at how much people can remember from their Chemistry lessons!

I took o -level chem in 1985, and we had to do the timetabled lessons plus one hour extra 'voluntarily'on a Tues evening. I got a 'B', but couldn't tell you a single thing I studied.

Our school wasn't like that; the kids were qute sane and well-behaved (well, most of us were sane) but the teachers were several kinds of fruitcake (with some honourable exceptions). Of course, if they had had more money or a seat in the House of Lords they would only have been eccentric, but from where we were sitting they were bats. I remain convinced to this day that one of them was a psychopath. Seriously.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I did my 'O' levels in 86. I was severely tested the other day when one of the technicians was asking me all about group I metals bond with various things (group VI and group VII elements). All kinds of stuff about numbers of electrons in the outer shell, how they form ions etc. was dredged up. I amazed myself !!

Our teachers were generally OK. Quirky but OK. I remember a history teacher who had done this data-base thing for his ZX81. (I have no idea if it had a genuine use.) Anyway, you had to put in the sex of the people (M/F). He'd done this bug check where if you went
Sex ?
'Yes please'
It responded with 'Don't be silly' (white on black - height on sophistication with the ZX81 graphics !)

I still have no idea why he was so proud of this that he had to show it to a bunch of 12 year olds ??? Or what happened if you said 'no thanks' to sex with a ZX81 ? The mind boggles...

ZX81's - Now I think I can remember these but just to check, were they the one's with a black keyboard, with rubberised keys? I didn't have much knowledge then of computers, apart from the BBC/Acorn computers at school, sinced renamed as "Acorn Antiques". One above punch cards they were. :)

Yes, that was the ZX81. I had something even worse - the original unexpanded ZX80. It had 1K of memory, and the challenge was to write a program for it which would do something worthwhile within that highly restricted area. That led to some interesting evenings, I can tell you!



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Sarah - 1K of memory! By today's terms that seems more impossible than challenging. I take it you did manage to write something for it?

I did indeed, though for the life of me I can't remember what. Later on I managed to get hold of a second-hand Amstrad, which was good enough for word processing and also had a few games written in BASIC. I hacked them a little for added enjoyment - for instance, there was one called (I think) Breakout where you had to knock down a series of walls without losing the ball you were using to do it. I became so good at this that I could regularly knock down all the walls on one ball, so I hacked it so that they would rebuild automatically when the last brick disappeared.

My problem is that I spent too many years without a computer at a time when everything was changing, hence my desperate attempt to catch up and attain True Geekhood!



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

I mostly missed out on the early home computing wave. I can remember 'Pong' but I can't recall what machine that was played on. The first computer game to have me truly addicted was Tetris, I would play that until I closed my eyes and see the blocks still falling!

Truly beating computer games is like the man who gave up golf. You've only beat them when you can stop playing them.

I used to be ace at a variety of them, but then I fell in love; after that I spent a year and a half playing video games to forget. But when the machines were gone, I still hadn't forgot. I had to fall in love again to do that.

Games tend to be disposable enjoyment for me, I'll have a phase where getting to an end of a game is a pastime (obviously linear story ones rather than simple puzzle type thing). Then I'll leaving gaming alone for months.

The only consistent thing is books :)

Tetris. Never played it meself, but a friend was World Tetris Champion (Arcade Version) in about 2000.

Don't mind tetris. Rather like Sherlock, myself.

I nkow what Belochka means - I'm prone to getting fixated on a game for ages, and will then suddenly stop playing it. I'm currently trying to get through to the end of GTA3 - it's childish, crude, offensive and strangely addictive. There's a nice vein of subversive humour that I enjoy, and it's enough to justify it for me...



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

PSD - Thanks to the comments about GTA3, its reminded of something else. Well the bit about crude and offensive anyway! I'm not going to justify my taste here but the latest edition of Viz has something that made me laugh very hard indeed, a melding of Samuel Pepys Diary with Samuel L. Jackson's character from Pulp Fiction. Strong stomach and low humour recommended :)

I enjoyed this thread so much I printed it off and took it home last night. Sorry I didn't have any chemistry cock-ups to add, all I've got to offer are crusty computer systems and why windows is sucky. My Physics practical work ran so smoothly there's nothing to tell.

I rarely play computer games, so haven't got any further than the orginal GTA, even though I have GTA London too. I love the music - I sometimes steal a pickup just so I can listen to the spoof country song. I even named a character in one of my westerns after the miner in the song.

sarah: I thought the zx81 had the flat-touch keyboard? The Spectrum had the rubber keyboard. I think we were one of a select group who had 48k Speccy which worked out of the box and didn't have to go back to the shop...

*sings* "When they lost the golden nugget, Grandpa said 'Ah Darndit'"....



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Perhaps my memory's failing me - I could have sworn the ZX81 had a halfway decent keyboard by comparison with the ZX80. The ZX80 _was_ flat-touch, and truly horrible.



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah