Rob Manuel

If you enjoyed this, I put the same humour and retro computing obsessions into my new book "81 Jokes For The ZX81". Do pre-order it, out early December in time for Christmas. An ideal gift for you or your ZX81 loving partner. I've put so much love into this. Order now: spelk.press/gb/products/...

Bet he's not a leftie. Not because lefties can't be abusers, of course they can, but the Daily Mail would stick it massive letters if he was Labour or Green etc. And yeah, he's a Tory councillor, not that you'd know without clicking and scrolling.

No, NFT buyers, you've not been mocked enough.

New book! spelk.press/gb/products/...

Something happening on @81jokes.bsky.social shortly. FOLLOW NOW.

Good interview with the late Bernie Drummond, artist who drew Batman on the ZX Spectrum. I enjoyed learning how his relationship with the programmer Jon Ritman started because he was in band who were mates with him. Creative people are often shooting out creativity in many directions.

No-one asked why but I told them anyway

This would be much more interesting if I didn't know they were talking about Pac-Man

No YOU lost your mind spending six months hand drawing 81 Jokes For The ZX81 because the title popped into your head one day and you thought the title so absurdly irresistible as a personal challenge that you pivoted your entire life to making a niche as fuck book. spelk.press/gb/products/...

Looking forward to reading this. I agree that the questions we ask can be quite revealing. I did this one based on Google queries in 2020 which reveals much about how the UK reacted in a year dominated by Covid (see alt text; questions best read from top to bottom in date order through the year).

Forgot to newsletter this. Also I'm hearing rumours certain b3tans might be here tomorrow at 6pm. The original Flash* Mob ( * .swf)

Modems are now faster. 14.4 was painful. Your 56k modem is pretty sweet.

Cloning Ed’s work is deeply uncool. Consider yourself officially off the list of cool people.

Had this idea in lockdown, half-built it, forgot about it, remembered it again, though might as well finish it.

B3ta newsletter 1002, out now "Only 998 newsletters until we stop posting. Hooray." * ZX81 JOKE BOOK - RAM pack now in hardback * LOCAL PEDIA - meet the murders in your area * DRAW DICKS - the web returns to core function b3ta.com/newsletter/i...

Just saw someone with a microphone in their profile pic. For some reason it's something that absolutely makes me irritated. They they're amplifying their voice here. Yeah yeah whatever, you get to go on stage occasionally. Well done. Anyway. What minor profile crimes annoy you?

Can you guess what it is yet?

Idly wondered how many Prime Minsiters Fesshole has been under and the first day I asked for confessions was early July 2019, which means it's a Theresa May baby with 5 other PMs rising.

When someone's typo is so good you wonder about adding it your own personal lexicon of things you say

It's probably bad Getty being fucked by AI but at the same time, they really didn't create lot of good will online through the years so there's a little bit of, oh well, sucks to be you.

Stanley Kubrick making Barry Lyndon

This has potential to be one of those things that divides peopple. Journos going, look our job is to get up to speed quickly, and we do that, and devs going what the hell, you opine on "cyber" for a living and PHP is new to you? I'm going a third way and imagining he's like a desk tidy but for Joes.

I am fed up with people misusing the term podcast and it now meaning a cheaply made TV show with dickheads mouthing off with small microphones. It used to be a proper term where Hal closed the pod doors and cast Dr. Frank Poole into the cold vacuum of space.

WE HAVE THE MOOSE ENDORSEMENT! An amazing thing about doing this project is it's outside my comfort zone, I'm not a visual artist/illustrator and it's been absolutely wonderful hearing nice words from people who demonstrably are good at this stuff.

In light of the PHP breach, I am deleting the entire Internet. Apologies if you found it useful – the whole thing has been a figment for my imagination which you’ve been using without my permission and I think it’s time to use my brain space for something more fun like sausage recipes.

Quite excited by this - it's had rave reviews from people whose opinions I notice and his Raoul Moat was excellent. Obviously you should buy it along with my ZX81 book which is also "Profound, desperate and humane, its like nothing else you’ll read all year " according to me.

The project backed by Sister Group which is Liz Murdoch and chums. Doesn't mean it'll succeed or fail of course, but it does mean it's not operating by any of the rules you or I would be operating by should we launch something: capital, connections etc. So, yep, wouldn't write it off just yet.