Cynthia Spencer Project
What happens when you make a few phone calls to Friends to help create something to benefit a Charity providing Palliative and End-of-Life Care to people? We created this amazing Jewellery where all profits benefit Cynthia Spencer Hospice, that's what! Have a read to find out more.
AWE v1.0 – A Childhood Passion, 43 Years in the Making!
AWE (Advance Willy Editor) v1.0 is here! Create and customise Manic Miner caverns without writing a single line of Z80 assembly. Free to download, endorsed by original creator Matthew Smith, and packed with possibilities for ZX Spectrum enthusiasts. A childhood passion, 43 years in the making!
Escape of Water, the Insurer and Week 25…
What started with a slightly wrinkled piece of wallpaper became 5,000 litres of water, 25 weeks of delays, a dismantled kitchen, asbestos and an unexpected new role: unpaid programme manager for my own insurance claim. When everyone owns their little square but nobody owns the chessboard, who actually owns the outcome?
Space Invaders for Windows Returns
What happens when you find the source code for a DirectX 7 game you wrote 26 years ago and try compiling it on Windows 11? Rather unexpectedly, the bloody thing still works. Space Invaders lives again, now with the entirely unnecessary Who's Your Daddy Mode.
Nearly 30 Years Later… My Lottery Checker Lives Again
One thing that genuinely surprised me is just how portable it’s become. It now runs on Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, Windows ARM64, under Parallels on Apple Silicon Macs… and even under CrossOver on macOS. When I started writing it, Apple still made beige Power Macs and “ARM” was something you found attached to your shoulder. The thought of running the same executable on an M4 Mac simply wasn’t a thing.
Looking Back at a 1992 Amstrad CPC Music Encoder
A look back at a 1992 Locomotive BASIC utility I wrote while converting Money Matters from the BBC B to the Amstrad CPC. What began as a quick and dirty way to encode an arrangement of Fiddler on the Roof into three-channel sound turned into a small music compiler, using note parsing, CPC sound periods, and interrupt-driven playback to keep the menu music running smoothly in the background.
Enter the Dragon – BASIC10 Entry by Bazzargh Converted to the CPC by Muckypaws
A stunning procedural dragon created in just 10 lines of BBC BASIC for the BASIC10 Liner Competition 2026. After discovering Bazzargh’s clever use of trigonometry and plotting, I converted the code to the Amstrad CPC — proving that even 40-year-old machines can produce something truly striking from pure maths.
Knights Tour – My First Entry into the 2026 BASIC10 Competition
A look at my first entry into the 2026 BASIC10 Liner Competition for the Amstrad CPC: a Knight’s Tour solver written in just 8 lines of Locomotive BASIC. Using Warnsdorff’s heuristic, the program solves a centuries-old chess puzzle in real time while drawing the board, rendering a knight graphic, and displaying each move on screen.
Pavement Panic – My Second Entry into the 2026 BASIC10 Competition
My second entry into the 2026 BASIC10 Liner Competition is Pavement Panic, a fast-paced ghost-dodging survival game for the Amstrad CPC written in just 10 lines of BASIC. Inspired by simple road-crossing games, it starts gently, then quickly turns chaotic as the ghosts speed up and survival time becomes your score.
Voltmaze – My Third Entry into the 2026 BASIC10 Competition
Voltmaze is my third entry into the 2026 BASIC10 Liner Competition… a procedurally generated maze game for the Amstrad CPC written in just 10 lines of BASIC. Inspired by classic 8-bit design and powered by a stack-driven depth-first search algorithm, it’s a small game with surprisingly sharp teeth… electrified walls, flickering hazards, roaming hunters, and a new maze every level.
That Bargain SD Card Might Be Lying to You… Here’s How to Check
Cheap storage can come at a hidden cost. In this post, I explore the risks of fake and refurbished SD cards, how fraudsters manipulate capacity, and how you can test your storage on Windows, macOS, and Linux before trusting it with your data.
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Escape of Water, the Insurer and Week 25…
What started with a slightly wrinkled piece of wallpaper became 5,000 litres of water, 25 weeks of delays, a dismantled kitchen, asbestos and an unexpected new role: unpaid programme manager for my own insurance claim. When everyone owns their little square but nobody owns the chessboard, who actually owns the outcome?
Space Invaders for Windows Returns
What happens when you find the source code for a DirectX 7 game you wrote 26 years ago and try compiling it on Windows 11? Rather unexpectedly, the bloody thing still works. Space Invaders lives again, now with the entirely unnecessary Who's Your Daddy Mode.
Nearly 30 Years Later… My Lottery Checker Lives Again
One thing that genuinely surprised me is just how portable it’s become. It now runs on Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, Windows ARM64, under Parallels on Apple Silicon Macs… and even under CrossOver on macOS. When I started writing it, Apple still made beige Power Macs and “ARM” was something you found attached to your shoulder. The thought of running the same executable on an M4 Mac simply wasn’t a thing.
Looking Back at a 1992 Amstrad CPC Music Encoder
A look back at a 1992 Locomotive BASIC utility I wrote while converting Money Matters from the BBC B to the Amstrad CPC. What began as a quick and dirty way to encode an arrangement of Fiddler on the Roof into three-channel sound turned into a small music compiler, using note parsing, CPC sound periods, and interrupt-driven playback to keep the menu music running smoothly in the background.
That Bargain SD Card Might Be Lying to You… Here’s How to Check
Cheap storage can come at a hidden cost. In this post, I explore the risks of fake and refurbished SD cards, how fraudsters manipulate capacity, and how you can test your storage on Windows, macOS, and Linux before trusting it with your data.
Amstrad and ZX Spectrum DSK Tool
I found myself needing a command line tool to investigate and extract files from DSK Image files used by Emulators, after archiving my own 1980's hack disks. I wrote my own and made it opensource for you to use, amend or even improve on if it helps your projects.
MHS35 Touchscreen LCD on Raspberry Pi – 64 Bit OS
Bought during lockdown, forgotten in a box, found at the weekend. Getting the MHS35 3.5" TFT touchscreen working on Raspberry Pi OS Trixie (64-bit) is straightforward once you know the correct approach. The instructions in the box are out of date, the product page has been updated but leaves gaps around rotation and touch recalibration. This guide covers the complete setup from fresh Trixie install to a correctly oriented and calibrated display, including what the installer script actually does under the hood and why.
Speedlock 1987
Speedlock '87 was a prolific Tape Protection System and Turbo Load for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum. In this post I look at the protection system and how to hack to it using the same tools available to me in 1987 as a young teenager.
GreaseWeazle
Via the Retro community I learned of the GreaseWeazle, and at a fundamental level it works by recording the magnetic fluctuations on the disk surface and therefore doesn't rely on a specific disk interface to decode those signals. As such it makes it perfect for making digital forensic copies of disks in the past.
Knights Tour
A nostalgic dive into the classic Knight’s Tour puzzle — solved with Python, animated in ASCII, and backed by smart heuristics. From elegant algorithms to satisfying visualisations, watch logic come to life square by square.
Escape of Water, the Insurer and Week 25…
What started with a slightly wrinkled piece of wallpaper became 5,000 litres of water, 25 weeks of delays, a dismantled kitchen, asbestos and an unexpected new role: unpaid programme manager for my own insurance claim. When everyone owns their little square but nobody owns the chessboard, who actually owns the outcome?
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AWE v1.0 – A Childhood Passion, 43 Years in the Making!
AWE (Advance Willy Editor) v1.0 is here! Create and customise Manic Miner caverns without writing a single line of Z80 assembly. Free to download, endorsed by original creator Matthew Smith, and packed with possibilities for ZX Spectrum enthusiasts. A childhood passion, 43 years in the making!
Space Invaders for Windows Returns
What happens when you find the source code for a DirectX 7 game you wrote 26 years ago and try compiling it on Windows 11? Rather unexpectedly, the bloody thing still works. Space Invaders lives again, now with the entirely unnecessary Who's Your Daddy Mode.
GreaseWeazle Trouble Shooting Update – Amstrad 3″ Disks
Are you experiencing the following error? Reading Track 0.0...Command Failed: GetFluxStatus: No Index This article covers some of the troubleshooting to help you get that drive up and running to enable your GreaseWeazling adventure!
Is AI Really the Energy Villain?
Is AI really the energy hog it’s made out to be? This blog explores the real energy impact of LLMs like ChatGPT, comparing it with always-on digital habits like YouTube, TikTok, and cloud gaming. Backed by data, this piece calls for balanced scrutiny, not headlines.
GreaseWeazle
Via the Retro community I learned of the GreaseWeazle, and at a fundamental level it works by recording the magnetic fluctuations on the disk surface and therefore doesn't rely on a specific disk interface to decode those signals. As such it makes it perfect for making digital forensic copies of disks in the past.
Amstrad and ZX Spectrum DSK Tool
I found myself needing a command line tool to investigate and extract files from DSK Image files used by Emulators, after archiving my own 1980's hack disks. I wrote my own and made it opensource for you to use, amend or even improve on if it helps your projects.
Tip Toe Through the Tulips…
That said, and pain aside, what I have noticed is the joy of walking again, how much I missed it, and the bitter sweetness of it all, given Janice was pushing for exactly this so we could tour the world together.
Widowed and Dating
Have you thought about whether you're capable of Love after Death? Do we go through the motions? How complicated is it? This is my story and experience of Love After Death.