I'm lost for words (but not for long)

And for those of you that know me, will realise that doesn't happen very often.

I've plonked myself in front of the goggle-box (hilditch dictionary for TV), laptop on the lap, ready to blog about the fun I had last week, re-discovering my inner computer-geek. However, an item on Channel4 news has just floored me. At the practice laps for the Catalunya F1, Lewis Hamilton has been on the receiving of racial abuse (bbc report). He is quoted as being "saddened" by events. Bloody hell, I'm saddened, but it also makes me angry. I can't help but admire Lewis Hamilton. It seems that the qualities of focus, self control and discipline that have made him a great F1 driver have also equipped him to handle such events with great dignity. What a remarkable young man.

So, my inner computer-geek. Back in 1980-something, I loved messing around with computers. My parents bought me a sinclair ZX81 (complete with 16K memory extension pack) as a Christmas present one year - and I was hooked. At school I went on to do prograame in BASIC on a Commodore Pet (who remembers a memory-mapped screen.... and that 32768 was the address for the top lhs??) and then a BBC B. The BBC B used to have a two-note sound on booting up. In (about) 1990 there was a KLF track that had a sample on it, that sounded remarkably similar - I've always wondered if the BBC B was the source or inspirations for it! I guess that little sound was a fore-runner of the intel "da-da-da-da". Somewhere in our understairs cupboard, I think I still have a the floppy disc with some of my early programmes! However, since university, I've been a regular computer user, rather than a technical-whizz. The nearest I've come to coding anything over the last fifteen years is knocking together a few VB macros in excel. Well, no more. I've had a re-awakening.

Last week, I spent a few days on course looking at the technical side of web development. I've gotten my head round html, xhtml, css and a splattering of jsp and asp. Not that I'm contemplating a major career change to geekdom, but I think I'll now be a better "commissioner" of such projects. It was the first time I've been "back in the classroom" in many years, and I really enjoyed learning something new (although it did amuse me that the basic operations of programming haven't actually changed that much). I definitely experienced what I understand the psychologists call "flow" - I became so absorbed in what I was doing, time flew by.

J