Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!

I think it would be really cool if someone codey could make it so under our avatars or signatures, a little icon appears if you've filled in the PSN, Xbox Live or Wii code boxes in our profiles. Then, at a glance, we could see who has which console and may be up for a game of something. I mean, I know everyone (more or less) has a 360 thanks to their gamertag signatures, but for PS3s and Wiis I have to head into profiles to find out.

If I haven't explained myself properly, maybe nick the tiny icons off Eurogamer (or find some other ones), and have them appear under our avatars/somewhere amongst our posts, if we've entered something into the relevant profile fields. Would this be possible or a massive ballache?

Obviously, it's just an idea, but I think would be pretty handy.

I fully support this proposal providing there is a humorous addition for Amstrad based products so that I can feel included.

Yes, this would be even better!

$ ¥ (|)

I think this is an excellent idea, but would suggest something other than the Eurogamer icons, as they're not really distinct enough in shape (apart from colour which is fairly meaningless in this context); I can never make out which is supposed to be which.

Oh yeah, I agree Nik! It wouldn't be too tough to knock something up, perhaps in the style of the Dimlies to fit in with the site. Of course, this is all depends if it's actually possible and not annoying to implement.

I'd go for cleaned-up/dimlified versions of these:




Also shrunk a bit, obviously.

Yeah that'd work! Obviously a bit smaller as well...

FTFY.

FTFM!

Sod off Acorn freak! Nobody likes you. Not even Oric owners.

810 bananas. UNLIKE THE ACORN USERS.

BBC Micros FTW, 80s bitch.

i don't want any of that crap (except for the amiga logo of course). Lets try to be grown-ups at least once.

Harsh - I could have stuck a Yamaha logo and an MSX logo together, to be really obscure.

The only people who owned them were schools and people whose parents thought they should have a Acorn because the school did.

Still was always nice to see the Acorn kids openly weeping in the newsies at the lack of games in budget racks.

"Mummy, but why are there no Acorn games for sale?"

"Don't worry little Mr Chris, we'll load Fun School up when we get home. Again."

Wow, did your 80s Retrospectacles get stamped on by the cool kids? There was a metric fuckton of decent games for the BBC. I should know as we pirated enough of them.

No, we got ours before the school did; thus my career as an IT technician in educational establishments began early.

Also, I used to copy games rather than buy budget ones.

While you're here, chinny, I have my second question for you in one day. This one's about CPC 464s: was it normal to have to send them away every few weeks to get the tape heads re-aligned? Surely even Amstrad (whose computers seemed to be masterpieces of engineering compared to their "hi-fi"s) wouldn't release something of such poor build quality - I'm guessing my mate (who subsequently turned out to be a massive cunt, for unrelated reasons, but that's neither here nor there) was just unlucky. (Serves him right.)

I've just downloaded what seems to be a complete set of them for emulate-o-nostalgia joy.

Send them away? Blimey, did one gets one's butler to press play on tape also?

We C64 owners bought a screwdriver and got on with it

Yes. And I hate you all.

To be fair, this guy was a complete cock who got upset if you touched the power button on his monitor. He was a bit weird basically.

Maybe I graduated to 5.25" floppies too soon for it to be a factor, but I don't remember ever having to do anything to tape heads to make things load.

The image of a smiling Dickie Davies saying this will haunt me for some time.

The 464 had a standard tape deck which you could align yourself if you needed to. But they were pretty well built so you'd have to be some kind of hamfisted moron to be causing it to go out of alignment.

In short I suspect he was a moron and the local computer shop was diddling him.

HOW DID YOU MANAGE IT? You give him an inch... Chinny! Stop derailing the thread with Amstrad talk!

After 5 or so years use the C64 datacassette units tend to need to be realigned after they've had a good clean. In my experience anyway. I actually expect most units regardless of format to need the same. I had a +3 and 6128 so I replaced my cassette deck every few years. The best I had was a Sony but I dropped it. I had a shit Tandy one that fused my +3 power supply and damaged the board.

I had a little knob (phnaaar) on top of the slot (phnaar) which you could twiddle (phnaar) to sort the tracking. After we got that deck (cost about 4 times as much as a normal one iirc) our loading problems were significantly reduced*





*Which, for a C64, meant it only froze on 9 out of 10 loading sequences.

Yeah, the datasette build quality was pretty poor. However, the need to adjust the alignment was more critically about being able to play tapes that had been dubbed on your mates hitachi twin-deck ghetto blaster. And some of the dodgier Commodore Format covertapes.

With commercial stuff, normally, the setting could be a mile out and still work.



Yeah I had one like that too! Ideal for the tweaking (fnarr) needed for the above piracy reasons (yarrr).

Oh my god...

Your suspicions are not without foundation.

Good, he deserved it.

Anyway, Forum Icons. Can't really see the need but no harm in doing it if the relevant parties have the time and inclination to hack it.

Personally I'd prefer dimlified ones if anything.

Yes!

What? What am I doing? Who are you people? Who let y7ou in my house? NO YOU CAN@T HAVE YOUR BALLS BACK!

He can do them AFTER he's done markgs birthday doodle from last year. AND NO CUPASOUP EITHER!

Yay!

I wanted to bully Grim into doing forum acheevs too. I'd had some ideaRs for some of them. Just little 10x10 or 20x20 icons. "Wrote An Thing for U2J", "Accurately predicted a Celebrity Death", "Won An Mafia Scum as An Baddy", "Won An Mafia Scum as An Town" etc etc. But he's a bit bigger than me and actually enjoyed having his nipple tweaked.

A bit cringingly cliquey for my liking.

Yeah, great ay it?

I bet they would be awesome icons though.

You're just worried you wouldn't get any.

'Drank a badgers wank'

'Likes the same food as Zardoz'

'is orange'

Craster could just have 1, 3000x5000 pic of a steaming turd. With flies.