The Register has a nice write-up charting the rise and fall of the Archimedes range. OK, so some of it was cribbed from Chris Whytehead's Acorns site (with credits), but it's nice to see a 4-page writeup on a major tech website.
 
We have cake here in the office, but apparently it's not for this, it's for something else going on next week.
 

Tech-centric news site The Register have an article up that gives a brief overview of Acorn, the BeagleBoard, and the fact that RISC OS runs on it. Not exactly new news to the average RISC OS user, but the article is still worth a look just for to see the comments from old hands such as Eddie Edwards, Heyrick, and Hugo Tyson, and some extra trivia tidbits linked to by commenter jlocke.
 
Now, who wants to be the first to enlighten Peter Gathercole that adding (working) pre-emptive multitasking to RISC OS is in no way "trivial"?
 

This was going to be a pretty dry fluff piece about the gaming events going on in my home city, something I'd pop in to between renewing my travel pass and getting some new shoelaces.  Then something slightly surreal happened to me.
 
I've just spent around an hour in the company of one of the men partly responsible for getting me into computers in the first place.  And I didn't recognise him.
 

And so farewell to another part of RISC OS; as noted in our forum, longtime RISC OS news and articles website Drobe has closed... or, rather, entered "archive mode". (Note to all other websites: please do this, rather than just disappear, taking your content with you.)
 
A full announcement is to follow, but it's been clear for a while now that the time to run the website just hasn't been there. Many thanks to Chris Williams, original founder Peter Price, and everyone else involved in Drobe over the years; for all the occasional controversy, Drobe did a fantastic job at covering RISC OS online, comprehensively and intelligently. And that's a harder and more time-consuming job than it looks.
 
UPDATE @ 22:40: And here is that announcement. Whilst the main news and articles service is ceasing, the plan is to build the site up as a RISC OS resource site; anybody interested in helping with this is encouraged to get in contact. User webspace will also continue, and a new message board is planned. Any future updates to the site will be announced on their new Twitter feed.
 

Here's the plan: take an old Mac mini, blow the dust off it, and repurpose it as a media centre. In particular, I wanted it to:

• Watch and record Freeview channels
• Watch shows on BBC iPlayer
• Play downloaded videos

Here's how I got on.
 

Anyone reading this will have seen it by now, but just in case you gave up hope (but, erm, kept coming back to us for updates), Drobe has - after a few sparks of life recently - now relaunched.
 
There has been some criticism of the new design; visually, I think it looks great, but then I've always enjoyed websites that are clean and simple and uncluttered. My biggest complaints with the old design were that the masthead looked too busy, and there wasn't enough white space; both of these issues have now been addressed. (Although can we have the logo back in colour? Pretty please?)
 

Gareth Moore wrote in to let us know that, as foretold in the forums, the "Brits Who Made the Modern World" series is a big rip-off of the book "The Backroom Boys". No, wait, that wasn't it.
 
The final episode airs on August 22nd at 7:30pm on Five. Go on, guess what it's about.
 
  12 comments in the forums

Yeah, that whole "updating a website" thing. We're quite shit at it, aren't we?
 
We do have some good stuff coming up, though. In the meantime, if you've not seen it, I recommend watching Hyperland - a 1990 Douglas Adams documentary. To say much more would spoil it, but it's fascinating stuff, especially considering when it was made.
 
Pity about the snipe at Filthy, Rich & Catflap at the start, mind you. (Indeed, the snipes at telly are pretty misjudged as a whole.) It's utterly wonderful, and I recommend you buy the DVD if you haven't seen it. At £6.99, what is there to lose? Well, apart from £6.99, of course.