roistrdn

gaming

Spectrum 128K

I think now there are more learning opportunities, it's more within reach

For years, I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K box staring at me from the top of the closet. 
I was small and curious, so I always asked about that box. The answer was always the same: "It's your brother's, but it doesn't work." Turns out my brother had bought it back in 1987, when I wasn't even born yet. But not knowing how to connect it to the TV, he sent it to the closet where it stayed for over a decade.

Years later, I took it down from the closet. I grabbed the manual and managed to connect it to the TV; it wasn't that hard. The machine took a while to boot up, but I waited watching those colored stripes and listening to the system beeps, until the RoboCop game loading screen appeared. But the most interesting thing was something else: reading the manual, I discovered stuff I had no fucking clue about: commands, syntax... I didn't know what the hell a programming language was.

The thing is, my brother didn't bother to read the manual. A machine that cost a fortune in the late 80s, with real programming capabilities, ended up in the closet. The Spectrum 128K wasn't just a console; it was over ten years of lost learning. That machine could have been teaching programming logic, problem-solving, algorithmic thinking...

Curiously, the same brother who abandoned the Spectrum for not reading the manual was the one who bought me both the Game Boy Color and, later, the PlayStation 2 at launch. The Game Boy Color became my usual companion with Pokémon Blue and Wario Land. The PlayStation 2 arrived on launch day with a brutal technological leap, but it was already a machine for consuming content (as a kid, I was delighted).
Playing Pokémon Blue, like any kid of that era, I heard rumors about Mew. That Pokémon that supposedly could be caught with "weird tricks": go to Cerulean City, position yourself so a trainer detects you, press START just when he's about to talk to you, use Teleport to escape, and then fight the Slowpoke of another specific trainer.
As a kid, I would have loved to know that trick was a glitch so I could show off to my friends. What really happened was that by pressing START at the exact moment, you interrupted the trainer's loading process in memory, and by using Teleport you kept that corrupted data. Then, when fighting the Slowpoke, the game read that corrupted data as if it were a valid Pokémon, and since the Slowpoke had a specific ID that matched Mew, it appeared. It was a brilliant memory exploit.

The reflection is this: how much knowledge is lost through intellectual laziness, and even more, how many opportunities are lost when a child asks with curiosity and that curiosity isn't exploited. My brother had in his hands a machine that could have taught him programming fundamentals in 1987, when that knowledge was gold. Instead, he preferred to declare it "broken" out of laziness.

But beyond that, when I was little and asked about that box in the closet, the answer was always "it doesn't work" instead of "let's see what this is." When a child shows curiosity about something, exploiting that curiosity can change their life. Instead of closing doors with vague answers, entire worlds can be opened.

That abandoned Spectrum represents something deeper: the difference between consuming technology and understanding it. Bitcoin also represents that dynamic: the difference between being a passive user and being someone who can create with the tools they have. The real cost of not reading manuals isn't just a machine in the closet; it's a decade of lost advantage in the programming world.

The lesson isn't just about technology, but about intellectual curiosity. And above all, about the responsibility we have when a child asks what is that? because that question can be the beginning of a completely different life.

No resentment, just learning.

Music

Daily Discussion Thread ~Music Saloon!

Public_N_M_E

This guy has composed a lot of interesting stuff, I always come back to listening to him

Wario Land 3 for Game Boy Color

k00b

Wario Land 3 and Pokemon Yellow were my favorite games   on my Game Boy Color which I still have 🕹️

Aphex Twin completely blew my mind and opened me up to genres I never knew existed. He changed how I listen to music forever.

https://youtu.be/6yy-Es6rp3U?si=LX4CqF8QmB9HoXl7