Technology | Joe's Jottings https://joepritchard.me.uk Being the homepage and blog of Joe... Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:55:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.1 Small fires in jam jars https://joepritchard.me.uk/2016/12/small-fires-in-jam-jars/ Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:11:45 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=7869 By the time I got interested in radio and electronics – when I was about 10 years old, in the early 1970s, most new radios and TVs weren’t using valves anymore; you’d still find old stuff in junk stores (or in the homes of older relatives) that were stuffed with valves, and TV sets still […]

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]]> The Why of Spam… https://joepritchard.me.uk/2016/11/the-why-of-spam/ Fri, 25 Nov 2016 09:12:04 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=7847 Not the delicious and non-nutritious tinned pork product, but the unsolicited email. Spam has a long history: “On May 3, 1978, the Internet witnessed a glorious and not particularly welcome birth: The first ever spam email. Gary Thuerk, a marketer for the Digital Equipment Corporation, blasted out his message to 400 of the 2600 people […]

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]]> The end of the road for paper maps? https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/08/the-end-of-the-road-for-paper-maps/ Sun, 26 Aug 2012 13:25:02 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1538 I’m always a bit behind with what I read online, and this is a story from about a month or so ago.  Are paper maps dead? For those of us of a certain age who did things like the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme or were Scouts or did military service, we can be put in […]

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]]> There’s one thing we got to get, Heyes…. https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/07/theres-one-thing-we-got-to-get-heyes/ Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:12:05 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1533 …and that’s out of this business!” One of the TV highlights of the week for me in the early 1970s was the TV series ‘Alias Smith and Jones‘, following the adventures of two outlaws on probation, Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, as they attempted to stay ahead of the law and out of trouble. At […]

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]]> The Last of the Magicians https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/06/the-last-of-the-magicians/ Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:53:20 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1465 “He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.” So wrote John Maynard Keynes about Sir Isaac Newton […]

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]]> ‘Does Microsoft move the cheese too often?’ https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/06/does-microsoft-move-the-cheese-too-often/ Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:49:33 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1468 Every now and again I bother to read something about my profession.  I know that this sounds rather bad – continuous professional development and all that stuff – but usually I’m too busy doing stuff to read about what others are doing or what I might be doing in 2 years time.  And so I […]

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]]> And Facebook carries on downwards…. https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/05/and-facebook-carries-on-downwards/ Wed, 23 May 2012 07:25:14 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1499 In my last post I questioned the value given to Facebook in their IPO.  It became clear at the close of first day trading that things hadn’t gone according to plan; the usual ‘Day One Spike’ associated with high profile technology IPOs just didn’t happen, and I have a feeling that the only reason that […]

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]]> The obligatory Facebook IPO post….or…Hey! Zuckerberg! You’re my bitch! https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/05/the-obligatory-facebook-ipo-post-or-hey-zuckerberg-youre-my-bitch/ Sat, 19 May 2012 08:33:35 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1487 Well, despite the state of the world economy, Facebook finally managed it’s IPO today and ended the day at roughly the same level as it launched at, having had a high point of about $42 and a start point of $38.  Now, when I were a lad we did IPOs differently – take the VA […]

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]]> Happy (Belated) Birthday Speccy! https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/05/happy-belated-birthday-speccy/ Mon, 07 May 2012 10:19:25 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1426 It always takes me a while to catch up with things, but it was recently the 30th Birthday of the Sinclair Spectrum. Like many of a certain age, the Speccy was one of the computers on which I cut my teeth.  I was lucky enough to have been exposed to most of the popular home computers […]

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]]> Google Drive…to get your stuff. https://joepritchard.me.uk/2012/04/google-drive-to-get-your-stuff/ Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:14:10 +0000 http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/?p=1456 I’ve always had the attitude that any company that has to remind it’s staff to ‘Do No Evil’ is either employing the wrong sort of people or is trying hard to hide the fact that they might not be paragons of virtue. This week my increasingly hardcore anti-Google attitude was turned up another notch by […]

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