The worse thing about anniversaries of the debut of home computers is they make you feel so old. Granted, my first Spectrum was rubberless – I got the 48k+, where the keys fell off if you took it out the box the wrong way – but I was still there or there abouts, taking early tentative steps in computing that would lead to me posting this, and you reading it.

Clive’s no doubt beaming at the mere thought of it.

There’s always, of course, the temptation to go misty-eyed when recalling the so-called ‘good old days’. But much though I admire and owe a lot to the Spectrum, here are some of the memories that never seem to make those grinning retrospectives:

* Spending several hours programming the damn thing, only for a) the power pack to come suddenly loose, or b) the notoriously wobbly tape save to go wrong. There’s a c), too. I remember when Star Wars was first broadcast on ITV, and there was a big power surge in our area that led to a power cut. Just as I was finishing off the game that would make me my fortune. That’s bloody George Lucas’ fault, I reckon.

* Listings in computer magazines. Rarely accurate, and it took me three months to work out that those REM statements weren’t compulsory. I was, in my defence, only ten at the time.

* Football Manager: the most hideously overrated game of the era. It was awful then, and it’s awful now.

* Games with little playtesting. A bit like receiving a Christmas present off the market, after it’s failed every EU safety standard going, Jet Set Willy continues to be revered, despite the fact that it was impossible to finish it.

* That printer. What. A. Waste. Of. Time.

* The endless hours lost with the BEEP command. A relation of mine once, and this is true, got out of the doghouse for forgetting his wife’s birthday one year by programming his Spectrum to sing Happy Birthday to her. And, get this, she was impressed. Impressed by that! It must be like being serenaded a late 90s mobile phone ringtone.

I could go on, but my point is this. The Spectrum was a machine with umpteen problems, lots of flaws and the catalyst for rants that these days the blue screen gets instead.

But it’s still great, warts and all. Let’s, though, not pretend it was all plain sailing, but I’ll be more than happy to raise a glass to the machine that mattered more to the UK home computing scene than any machine before or after it

Human beings are full of the most wonderful and downright scary surprises.

My mind, for instance, has been poisoned this week by a revelation made to me by a colleague of mine. Most of what I know about this person has been discovered electronically, through blogs and e-mails. Yet this week, a rare face-to-face conversation told me things that made me wish I’d kept my communication electronic.

Clearly I’m not naming names, but I will give you a profile of the person concerned. An upstanding professional. Loves computers. Fond of a tipple. Talks about cars.

And yet, staggeringly, he also had a bag containing no less than seven cuddly toys under his desk, that he was perturbed he’d not had a chance to arrange. There’s a slight bit of hypocrisy to my words, of course, as my own desk is adorned with Beau Brummie, a stuffed Birmingham City mascot who’s been less charmingly christened Asbo Brummie in the past. But I like to think my colours there are firmly nailed to my mast no matter how you communicate with me. I certainly don’t have a bag of surprises lurking underneath my desk.

Strangely, though, it never fails to take me aback when I find out real life information that flies in the face of my electronic perceptions. It’s daft, perhaps, but I can’t help it being true.

Perhaps I just need a beer…

Hurray for LG! A hybrid player that plays both Blu-ray and HD DVD content has been showcased, and heck, if that’s not a common sense way to solve a silly, expensive, futile format war, then my name’s Bob.

But what’s this? A £999 price tag! Double hurray! Not content with coming up with a good solution, the IT industry does it again, and pulls the proverbial rug at just the right moment!

It’s not LG’s fault per se, as they’re forking out two lots of licencing fees now for the individual technologies, but if my sums work, that £999 will buy a standalone HD DVD player (£250), a PS3 (£400 and dropping!), some grand surround sound speakers (£250) and even a fair few overpriced Blu-ray discs!

So a great looking product, at a hideous price that nobody in their right mind will pay. Never let it be said that this business doesn’t learn its lessons…

Sitting on the train this morning, a fabulous announcement came over the address system. It simply went: “The seat reservation system is working today”.

Is that where decades of technological advancement have brought us? To a place where, when technology works as it should do, it’s required to point this out through a public address announcement? As if we should celebrate the fact that a tool for a given job is doing what it’s told?

Even factoring in a bit of Monday morning fever on my part, I can’t help wondering where this could lead. Can you imagine, for instance, sitting on a long haul flight and being told that the on-board control computer is working today? Or perhaps sitting in the third row of your local fleapit, and before the film begins you’re informed that the speakers are switched on this time?

That announcement is either a case of stating the obvious, or a perturbing sign of the times. And quite probably both.

[And as an addendum to this, the same announcer gleefully told us we’d arrived, after the train had pulled into the station and half the people had disembarked. Marvellous.]