Neale 00:09
Lee, thanks for joining us on the Another Bright Spark Podcast. The retro gaming and retro computer movement is huge at the minute. Spectrum Next just completed their £2.6 million Kickstarter to have the latest version of the Sinclair Spectrum ZX made. So the love of retro gaming and retro computing is huge. There must be hundreds of thousands of people who are as enthused as you are. I mean this in the most respectful way. You’re a pretty average bloke. Why aren’t more people repairing their own consoles and getting back into the makers movement?
Lee 00:46
It’s a really good question. First of all, yeah, very average in many ways. It’s something I do wonder about. It’s something I do wonder about. Why aren’t there more of me? Why aren’t there more people like me? It’s something that concerns me because in my local area, and I live out in the sticks in the middle of Suffolk, well actually on the edge of Suffolk, and there’s no big cities, there’s a few big towns around, but I don’t know anybody else apart from one person who I bumped into randomly in a supermarket whilst shopping. That’s the only person I know within an hour of where I live. I wonder if it’s just something that everybody is just hiding because they do seem to be out there. People watch these videos and people are taking part in all of the different things that happen in this community. So yeah, I’m baffled myself, so I wish I knew. It’s a good question.
Neale 01:43
Do you think it’s a fear factor? I mean you say lots of people watch your videos and they do. We interviewed Mend It Mark last year and he’s got a huge following, there are several people like yourself who have a real loyal following. I can appreciate how people might want to watch. I think it’s one thing to watch a video and to go, oh that looks really cool. I’d love to do that. But then is there a barrier do you think to trying to get into it? Is it a fear thing?
Lee 02:10
I think with retro repairs especially, there is a bit of a fear because there’s this misconception that some of these things are very precious and they’re not really are they? I mean the ones that I fixed the most, the ZX Spectrum 48k, they sell millions of the things. You pick or throw a stone in a random street, you’re going to hit a loft and there’ll be a ZX Spectrum inside it. I always say that maybe don’t practice on something that’s precious to you. If it’s something that was from your childhood and has memories attached to it that you don’t want to ruin, then maybe practice on something. Yeah, practice on an old power supply or something.
Neale 02:54
Don’t go for that first.
Lee 02:57
But yeah, I think there is a bit of a fear and I see that sometimes. But then you also see the other side of that where people don’t fear it and they just jump in and then quickly get in over their head. So the way that I approached it myself was to just watch loads of YouTube videos and learn gradually and then just started doing it myself and gave it a go. And I don’t see why anybody else shouldn’t be able to do that and I always encourage people to do it.
Lee 03:27
And there’s a lovely community around, especially we’ve made this amazing Discord community, the Retro Hardware Discord. which is full of people that just want to help.
Neale 03:37
We’ll put the link in the description.
Lee 03:38
Thank you. It’s just full of people that want to help and people join there all the time and then say, I’ve got a problem with this. And you’ll get two or three people that know exactly what they’re talking about, a few people that don’t, but they’re just as enthusiastic and their opinions are just as valid.
Neale 03:55
If not as accurate.
Lee 03:56
Not as accurate, they’re valid, but not as accurate. And slightly dangerous sometimes as well. But it’s all part of the fun of learning these things and that’s what I base all of my passion around is the learning things. Well, there’s a few different things actually. There’s the learning things and then also the community of the thing. So it’s just gathering like-minded people around and giving it a go. So yeah, give it a go.
Neale 04:24
So yeah, I think you hit on a really interesting point there about giving it a go, but not using something that’s precious to you. So I had a SNES that I’ve had since I was, like 13, 14 years old, giving away my age there. And yes, and I wanted to play the games but I didn’t realize there was little batteries in the cartridges. So I really wanted to sort of get involved and do it, but there was a big fear there. It’s like, I’ve had these cartridges for x amount of years and if I damage them, then I’m gonna lose something precious. So advice maybe go to, if you don’t get involved with the community, certainly go to a retro museum, whether you’re selling off stock or go to a community, maybe pick up some retro hardware and give it a go, basically. If someone was to do that, what in terms of kit would you recommend? What would you get started? What do people need?
Lee 05:22
Whoa, that’s a question that could go, that could run.
Neale 05:28
Well, we’ve got about 40 minutes. I’ve got other questions, but we can start with this one.
Lee 05:33
I’ve got a whole video on this. No, I think there’s various things and the thing to hang on to there is some people will think you need to spend a lot of money on expensive high-end gear, but you really, really don’t. For instance, a multimeter. I mean, I’ve got a nice posh, Brymen multimeter, not a fluke, but I consider it to be a good one. And the one I had before that was an AstroAI, which you see a lot around on the YouTube channels. Just really good. But then you could go even, so that was only about 30 quid, but you can go even cheaper. You could get a multimeter for like 10 or 15 pounds and it will do everything you need. The same with an oscilloscope. You can get a handheld oscilloscope that will do it, especially for a retro repair, will do everything you need. The soldering iron is probably gonna be the biggest question. Everybody’s gonna mess. The one that people ask the most is what soldering iron should I get?
Lee 06:36
And there’s a whole range of different choices and value options, but the one I would choose is a PINECIL. PINECIL 64, I think is the more modern one. Again, it will do everything you want. And they only cost about 35 pounds, something like that delivered from wherever.
Neale 06:54
So you don’t need to break the bank to get yourself started, is what we’re saying.
Lee 06:57
No, you don’t. But get the basics, get what you need just to do the job that you want and then just start adding to it a little bit at a time. And then all of a sudden, you’ll get a place full of stuff like this.
Neale 07:10
Just like in the workshop we’ve got.
Lee 07:12
Yeah, you’ll think, what, five years? Where did that go? Where did all these Commodore 64s come from?
Neale 07:21
I’ve just mentioned my SNES and obviously you’re a huge retro gaming fan. You also embrace sort of the more FPGA way of getting into retro gaming and retro computing. What is it? You say in your website, you regress to a teenager minus the acne, I love that line, by the way. What do you think it, why do people, why are we looking back? Why are we looking at this old tech? What’s going on?
Lee 07:46
It’s the classic nostalgia itch, isn’t it? It’s an easy target as well because there’s so many different things that we were interested in back in the day. And I was, you know, as a spotty 12, 13 year old, suddenly faced with a ZX81. and my world changed. And that wonder that you get from, I mean, it has to be something that affected you at some point in your life. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be when you were young. So I’m still nostalgic for things I had in my 20s now that I’m a few decades beyond that. But that wonder that you feel when something changes in your life for the better, is the thing that you try and recapture. I mean, it is something that people were concerned about, that are you going to spoil that memory? But I don’t think so. I think there’s things to be added to it as well. And it’s changed. The whole thing when I started out along my YouTube journey, it just changed my life completely. It’s the whole community that’s opened up in front of me.
Neale 09:00
Yeah, I think that’s really important to the community as well. So certainly when you were growing up and I was growing up -a few months later, if you’re into computers or computing, you were the geeks and the geeks weren’t popular. It’s a lot more acceptable now. So when you find the community, you can share that, right? You’ve got a bigger group of people and the connectivity on the internet, you can find your own tribe. That’s got to be part of it.
Lee 09:28
Well, there’s a couple of things there. When I was young, all through the years, I’ve always tried to go for, I’ve always tried to take on the next big thing. And I can remember having a big mobile phone before people had big mobile phones and everybody going, oh, what are you trying to compensate for?
Neale 09:48
I’m just selling my stocks, man.
Lee 09:50
Bye, bye, bye. So yeah, the community side of it is that when we were growing up, you got the cool thing that you were really excited about. And the first thing you wanted to do with it, apart from you played with it yourself, is to share it with your friends.
Lee 10:07
Plus the whole sharing games and everything, but you got something called whatever it was. It didn’t matter if it was a computer or if it was a new football or something. When you’re a youngster, you’ve got this amazing thing. You wanted to share it with your friends. For me, that’s never changed. All through my years, whatever I’ve got, whenever I’ve got something cool and whenever I’ve got something I think is exciting and worth sharing, that’s the first thing I look to do. And that’s why YouTube became so appealing to me because all of a sudden I could share it with, in the beginning, a few hundred people would watch. This is incredible. And the first thing that I did was build an arcade cabinet. And in fact, I built one before that and shared it on social media. And that started getting interesting. I thought, oh, I might as well just put a camera here. You know, yeah. But yeah, community thing is even more important. There are three hobbies that I’ve got now. Although one of them I now do for a living but it’s YouTube and the actual make you know, the making things and fixing things plus community building. There’s these are the three pillars of everything I do. I need to make these amazing communities and I’m not sure why but I need to do it. But it seems to serve me well. And people seem to like it.
Neale 11:42
It seems like connection you want to reach out. It’s a little bit like oh, you know people write songs or perform music because they want to express themselves. I think it’s the same with technology and building communities by the sounds of it It’s you know, it’s you know, yeah, you said three things, you know building community, fixing things, YouTube. Do you get to time to play anymore? Or is that just not an option for you. You don’t get to enjoy…
Lee 12:07
For the first time in months I did actually, last year while I was doing one of my big community, my big charity events, we were raising money for the befriending scheme I’ve got actually there’s a donkey on my other screen here right now which is part of that whole thing and the people that follow me will know exactly what I’m talking about and After that I worked on that for four months four or five months straight where I was doing 16 hour days just making videos and and working to build build this charity event into this amazing thing that happened at the end and by the end of it I was absolutely shattered there was no energy left in me. I’ve given everything it was all spent but the whole… For the last month all I kept saying was I’m just obsessed with, I want to play this game is Satisfactory was the game. I really really want to play this game and that’s all I could think about was playing this game I’ve always been since the ZX81. I’ve always been a huge gamer and As soon as I started making YouTube videos And the reason that I called the channel More Fun Making It was because I was having more fun doing the other thing than actually playing games. Yeah, but Yeah, last night. I sat down with my laptop and I I fired up Minecraft of all things And I just sat there for a couple of hours just wandering around punching sheep and stuff, but…
Neale 13:34
Fantastic.
Neale 13:35
Well, at least you’re making time for it still. You’ve touched on your YouTube channel a couple times I know they’re gonna be people watching this who follow you, you know part of your community. And there’ll be people also who will be maybe considering starting up themselves. So so let’s go through it. You you got into you know, got back into making things. Was it five six years ago? Se up a few hundred followers. What changed? What was the what was the genesis of going from hundreds to thousands?
Lee 13:36
Oh, that was definitely community again. One of the other communities that I it’s not widely known but we don’t it’s not a big secret or anything is the Big Big Red Arrow Club, which is lots of retro and vintage well vintage tech and retro gaming YouTubers and I was one of the founding members of this and I helped run it and that was that was a catalyst for for turning things into something that was becoming more serious because I was getting more success. But up to that point I’d been wondering, I had all these questions, you know, I’m doing YouTube but I didn’t know what I was doing, I had no idea what I was doing and I would throw a thumbnail together in minutes on my phone, which was terrible. I’ve still got those somewhere and I look just to look back at and but that was when I was building a pinball table from scratch and I was spending all my time doing the actual thing and the YouTube thing was kind of, oh let’s just throw it up on YouTube and see what happens and it needs to be a little bit more than that. But once I hit about eight or seven or eight hundred subscribers, myself and Rose Tinted Spectrum, Watt Hodes Snorkers and Lee Smith’s workshop got together when we created the Big Red Arrow Club and then we started gathering YouTubers around us and then we started sharing ideas and once you do that you learn exponentially faster. I mean community has always been somewhere that’s a huge resource in whatever you do, it’s where you get lots of people, you can learn from other people’s mistakes basically.
Neale 13:36
Well it’s support, isn’t it? It’s a few things, so other people’s knowledge, it’s support, it’s reassurance, it’s being egged on, it’s encouragement, which is the same as being egged on. But yeah it sounds critical.
Lee 13:36
Yeah and so the Big Red Arrow Club was like I say a catalyst, after I joined that things started to jump up and go a bit crazy. I’ve kind of thrown a few spanners in the works almost deliberately along the way because I’ve started a second channel.
Neale 13:36
Splitting you audience Lee, what are you talking… as a marketeer! That’s terrible, what are you talking about?
Lee 16:30
Well this is, I could argue this one but I wouldn’t, I’d probably be arguing against myself because part of me is thinking why am I doing that? But yeah once I got to about, the main channel was at 15,000 subscribers now and the second channel was six and half thousand something like that and yeah they’re kind of growing at similar rates now but the the second channel is something that i started just to put up things to you know that i just didn’t want to spend too much effort on so i just wanted to do like a quick fix record it and put it on YouTube and not worry too much about it and then that got more and more popular and it started getting more popular than the um the main channel for regular views so and I was doing fixes on the main channel. But the thing is when you record a repair, you can record um a simple repair where you get to the solution really quickly and it’s just like a couple of hours but then sometimes that’s going to be a couple of weeks and you’ve got 20-30 hours of footage that you need to edit and that’s all all of a sudden that’s a block and it’s really really difficult to edit that um i’ve done it if uh if you look back at my um earlier ZX Spectrum repairs there’s one there’s the Speccy FROM HELL which is a four part series and it seriously was…
Neale 17:47
That’s that sounds like a Lord of the Rings commitment!
Lee 17:48
Absolutely, yeah! Gollum was involved as well I think it was one who did the soldering originally.
Neale 17:53
Cool, excellent! So if you’re gonna if you’re gonna give some advice then you obviously we talk about community which is really important and we’re going to put some links down in the description so people can take a look and get support because there will be people interested what would your advice be if you’re going to start off you know you’ve got an idea for a channel. Where do people start, what do they do?
Lee 18:12
That’s a really open-ended thing. Because it’s it’s different depending what you do but the most important thing is to actually do it first and then work it out because you’re you’re always going to make mistakes and no matter how hard you try to make the perfect video it’s never going to be perfect it will never be satisfied so just get the get the videos out there first and then see about actually refining things and adding to it so it’s an iterative process just don’t try to run before you can walk basically so grab your mobile phone don’t worry about a microphone just just start and then add add things to that so then add a microphone if you can if you can afford it but it is it’s a money pit pip and it doesn’t it doesn’t matter how…
Neale 19:00
Just to encourage you all out there you will lose money.
Lee 19:04
Yeah don’t expect to do this and and make money because it’s been five years before I turned on, actually being able to make money and and I’d already built a massive community to support me so that’s it’s a lot of work but and I don’t don’t be afraid of actually just trying because that’s the that’s the thing that get people get them wrong first is try to I’ve seen this before and I’ve seen um I’ve got there’s a very specific video that I have in mind where someone actually made a fantastic video their first video and it did really really well and then they just didn’t make any more videos because they’d done it all they they they’d finished their journey so.
Neale 19:45
We had similar advice uh from Fred Dally he’s the uh ElectrArc240 guy um and he was he said exactly the same you know just just get on with it just make a start because you’re going to fluff up your lines I mean we started this episode and I couldn’t get my words out you’re going to make mistakes you know you just you just have to get used to being in front of the camera you have to get used to talking and yeah putting the scripts together and all that kind of thing so no it’s it’s good advice.
Lee 20:10
You say that but um you don’t actually because you can do this without being in front of the camera and you can do it without talking um I’ve got uh one of um the people in the Big Red Arrow Club is a channel called iiiDIY that’s a let the letters iii uh fantastic channel he’s um he does restorations and he’s got one of these uh black gloves kind of restoration channels and he doesn’t talk he just has uh okay I think he occasionally puts subcharts subtitles on yeah he does put subtitles on uh no music um sometimes actually no he does do music sometimes thinking about it but it’s mostly ambient sound and he where he works and films his videos is um it’s somewhere in I think it’s New York and it’s a really busy workplace and you can hear all this noise in the background and it’s it’s all almost like asmr it’s it’s really nice texture to the audio and he’s he shoots with really high end gear because he works in the filming industry so his videography is fantastic and he but he shoots deliberately with just one light source they just had one uh single light source and the camera and it just it has a look that isn’t like anything else. That is one other thing that I would say is important if you are thinking of doing YouTube is uh take inspiration from other people but find your own way find your own path because you can’t do this by being somebody else you’ve got to be yourself and who you are is unique and special and people will be interested in what you’ve got to say if you are genuine um and and exactly like iiiDIY he uh he’s um he’s found this special way of communicating this journey of taking a broken thing to a really very beautiful thing and uh and made it into something that is really beautiful to watch so yeah do that.
Neale 22:09
I think that’s great advice I mean people connect with people, right? And we don’t always know why we like someone we just do and if you’re not your authentic self then people aren’t going to, you can’t you can’t fake it can you you’ve you’ve got to be yourself and people will either be turned on by that or or turned off by that at the end of the day. Great advice! Um so uh speaking of people that people like I called you an average bloke at the start you’re very likable personally, I’ve seen your videos and as you said your YouTube journey has taken a turn you’ve grown and it’s now become something that you have to do admin for. So so what’s the difference let’s go behind the curtain what’s the difference between you know for your day-to-day now that it’s gone from being a passion project that took five years that was a money pit to now actually something that you have to spend time doing admin on. What’s the admin and well what’s involved?
Lee 23:01
I’m not sure it was it’s going to be useful advice for anybody else because I’m in a kind of a unique situation uh well I’m sure there is there are other people like me out there but um I’m not sure the whole all of the pieces of the puzzle are the same but I’m a I’m a full-time carer for my son and that is basically my full-time job and I’ve always done the YouTube thing as my respite as um a way to switch off from the stresses of day-to-day life and um it’s probably not the ideal thing to do turn your passion thing into your work but I swore to myself when I started doing this seriously that I wouldn’t change anything.
Lee 23:44
So I basically do the same things as I did before with a few, there’s less expectation on my time now. So my wife is much more understanding about how much time I spend standing shivering in my workshop.
Neale 24:01
You can just say, I’ve got all these subscribers now, I need to do this and I love it.
Lee 24:06
Yeah, there’s a paycheck comes at the end of it now so that, so I can just-
Neale 24:10
That sweetens the deal, yeah, sure.
Lee 24:13
But also, before I was doing this and earning money from it, I was paying for everything myself and doing this at the level I was doing it, with the quantity of videos that I was doing can be quite expensive. But again, I’m very fortunate in that I’ve got a friend called Paul. Paul Universal Retro Boss he goes for it by the name online and he is someone who’s an enthusiastic collector of things and he buys and sells mostly software, but you often he’ll buy big bundles of things and He he gets me to repair all of this stuff, which I do for free. So that’s all my content basically and that really works really works really nicely for me. But yeah, but in terms of time And how I’m what I do differently the admin side of it is very different because I have to you know you know there tax implications and things like that and you’ve got to make sure that you’ve balanced the books and and record everything and I’m and I’ve actually been fortunate enough to run into somebody who’s a bookkeeper who has offered me a service which is very reasonable that takes care of almost all of that for me. So most of my time is actually spent editing videos and repairing old computers. So yeah
Neale 25:34
As your approach different I mean you say you wanted to keep things the same but now it’s a commercial entity. That must come into it. Right? Is that something that’s in the back of your mind when you’re making it or does that not even occur to you? We’re talking about being authentic. I think you’re being yourself. But is there is there a switch when you get to that commercialisation point?
Lee 25:54
Try not to let it be something that I I think about too much because the the idea of this is, you know, the way that I make my videos is to share the journey, again it’s this thing I want to share I want to share the- For people that aren’t lucky enough to have an amazing workshop like I’ve got here, they’re still interested in the journey of a computer or a games console or whatever being taken from broken to repaired. There’s that you know, it’s a massive a big endorphin payoff at the end of it. And it’s just as good watching it as it is doing it yourself. So yeah, it’s it’s more about actually doing this, you know doing the the work that that brings in the fun rather than the money if you know what I mean.
Neale 26:47
It’s got to keep you interested as well at the end of the day because if you’re not interested in it it’s gonna be good
Lee 26:51
Exactly. I’ve burnt out a few times actually in the five years that I’ve been doing this the the very first time was right at the start when after the big pinball build and I stopped doing anything for six months.
Lee 27:04
So I learned some hard lessons there. But then I took on I’ve done two big charity events now, and both times burnt out quite hard on those so I’m now not gonna do those to the same extent as I did before because they just get out of hand so quickly because it’s such an amazing community that you say to people ‘Right! I’m gonna make I’m gonna raise lots of charity money for this amazing charity and we’re gonna buy some miniature donkeys?’ and everybody suddenly says ‘Excellent! Here are 50 Commodore 64’s, now do something with all of those.’ ‘Yeah, what am I gonna do now?’
Neale 27:39
And also you just said you’re a carer for your son. So, I mean you’ve you’ve got to be there for that and that’s that’s the important thing. So, how’d you reckon if you’re happy to talk about your mental health? How’d you how’d you sort of recognize but how’d you recognize burnout? How do you go about sort of calming yourself down?
Lee 27:58
No, you don’t, I’ve never been able to recognize it. No, you don’t. You don’t realize that it’s happening until it’s happened. The only thing you can do is not put yourself in into a position where it can happen and there’s part of me at the moment saying because with More Fun Fixing It and More Fun Making It I’m trying to run two YouTube channels at once which if you’d have asked me a year ago if it’s not a good idea, I would have said no, that’s insane. Don’t do that. I’m also on More Fun Fixing It trying to release, I’m not trying to I am releasing eight videos a month at least. And and again, if you’d have said to me a year ago, is it a good idea to release a video a week? I’d have said no don’t do that. That’s that’s sure sign of burnout. But I’m and then I’m trying to make these higher quality scripted heavily edited videos on More Fun Making It as well. Which take two three four weeks to make. Again, I would have said don’t do that. That’s a really bad idea, but I’ve been doing this now for five years and I’ve my the way that I work and the way that I record things now because I’m lucky enough to have all of this amazing equipment I’ve got it down to a finite now where I can turn around a video a repair video in a day. And so I can I can work for a week on just repair videos and and have a month’s worth of videos ready to go in a in a couple of days. And that’s not something I know I could see many people being able to do straight away off the bat, but yeah burnout is… you do but yeah… But the burnout thing is don’t put yourself in a position unless you are really sure about what you’re doing. Where you think this might be too much just just come back a little bit, just give yourself a bit of a buffer and give yourself time off as well because that’s that’s another thing but you know not having time away from what you’re doing is is sure, fire way of poor mental health. So don’t do that.
Neale 30:03
Do you think you’re a people pleaser, Lee?
Lee 30:05
Yes Yeah. Yeah, simple answer.
Neale 30:09
I mean, we can recognize our own. Yeah, of course. But I think when it happens to your own detriment, that’s the danger line, isn’t it?
Lee 30:17
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s hard to say no. I am much, much better at it now because I’ve had to be really brutal on saying no because you get so many people that are so generous and that want to help and want to improve your lot, that it’s hard to say no when somebody’s being super generous and saying, here’s this amazing thing, you know, this computer that I’ve had for years or I found over here, do you want it? And I have to say many times, not very often, no, unless it’s something, you know, spectacularly unusual or really, really, really badly broken. I’ve got enough here.
Neale 31:00
Right. Let’s debunk some myths, shall we? So you’ve been doing this for five years. If people want to get into repairs, do they need a degree?
Lee 31:10
Nope. I haven’t got one. No.
Neale 31:13
Okay. Do they need years and years of experience?
Lee 31:15
Oh, absolutely not. No.
Neale 31:16
Okay. Do they just need to get on with it? Is that what we’re saying?
Lee 31:19
100%. Yep. The best thing you can do is find something you’re interested in, find a really good project and just do it. It’s as simple as that. And don’t be afraid or worried if you break something because it’s only going to cost you money. That’s all.
Neale 31:33
Fantastic. I’m going to drop you another deep end here because I should have asked you this question ahead of this recording to give you some time to think about it. So if you do need some time to think about it, we can come back to it, but I’m going to ask it anyway. So Ignys, we’re a electronic product development engine. We, you know, can fit into a large organization, but a lot of times we have people with some funding and some really great ideas who want a workshop, feasibility study, and then prototypes making up. If you were given vast resource, let’s say unlimited resource, and you came to us with an idea and wanted to work on a project, what would that product or that project look like and be?
Lee 32:12
I’ve got two.
Neale 32:14
Fantastic. Go on, hit me. What’s the two?
Lee 32:15
The first one is displays, actually, is in the retro sphere. Displays are the thing that’s, I think, the hardest thing to get right. And because it’s the part that you interface with with your eyes, you know, that’s the thing that gives you the most information. There’s sound as well. And there’s not much tactile feedback. I think it’s the most important thing. And lots of people are very passionate about CRT displays, but they’re not going to be around forever. And nobody’s making new ones now. And they are a big part of what the original scenes, these different machines that we were using back then were designed with those in mind with the way that they display their images. It’s so important.
Neale 33:04
Absolutely. I’ve got, I’ve got as I’ve mentioned my SNES, I’ve got a HDMI connection that goes into, obviously, a flat screen TV. It doesn’t look the same. It just-
Lee 33:12
Big pixels.
Neale 33:14
Yeah, yeah, yeah, who wants big pixels?
Lee 33:16
You don’t want to see all those pixels. You want to see a nice, blurry, elazed line. So yeah, display. So I want someone to make me a display that is more sympathetic to, say, a ZX Spectrum display than the current ones.
Lee 33:33
But saying that, the displays that we were using, Pac-Man, were so awful.
Neale 33:37
And dangerous as well, they they hold a lot of charge, don’t they?
Lee 33:39
CRT charge is something that actually, absolutely terrifies me. And I’ve stopped myself for four years. I didn’t buy any CRTs because of two reasons. One, they’re huge and take up so much room. And the other is they terrify me. And I am now shopping around for a high-voltage probe because I’ve got over there is a Commodore PET. And then there’s a Philips 88332 there. And just over here behind me, you can just see down in that corner, is a Mac Classic 2. So they’re kind of sneaking their way into my workshop and I’m not sure what to do about it. But yeah, I’m not particularly nostalgic about CRTs. They are, in certain situations like vector displays, especially, I’d love to be able to reproduce. Right, so what I want Ignys to make me is a roll-up stick on screen that I can put up on a wall that is gonna give me a perfect vector display. So with the persistence and everything. So I can play Star Wars and Tempest on my wall with a stick on display. Can you do that for me?
Neale 34:51
And we just have a limited, what’s the second one, dare I ask?
Lee 34:54
Oh yeah, the second one is, right, so, because as we approach our dosage and before I do lose the control of the saliva in my mouth and start drifting into everything, I’m finding that things like handheld gaming consoles that screens are too small and the controls are uncomfortable. I get tired looking down. My poor old neck muscles can’t hold this massive brain up for too long at a time when I’m looking down at a screen. I want something that’s made for me when I’m in my old people’s home that I can hold with in comfort and like a nice big screen, Bluetooth to my hearing aid and be able to play all of the games from my youth whilst people feed me Horlicks through a tube. Or VR.
Neale 35:48
VR, excellent. Okay, well, that’s kind of VR, isn’t it? But we will, I’m sure we can work on that for you. Not a problem. I wanted to touch on this earlier, so I’m gonna loop back around to it. We were talking about product design and like the robustness people were sort of
Neale 36:06
people are worried about sort of damaging like old tech and that kind of stuff, old tech generally. Seems like buying an old car, if you think about it, I had a Capri at one point and it was basically an engine, it was a gearbox, it was rear axle, some wheels and a very rusty chassis but you know it was very easy to work on. I learned a lot about mechanics and how to sort of I had to as a baptism of fire. Um product design these days it’s quite difficult you can’t really take an iPhone apart, it’s very difficult to take an Xbox and do that to repair. Do you think manufacturers have a responsibility to make devices and electronic products easy to repair? I know why they don’t, but do you think they should?
Lee 36:48
Uh yeah I’m kind of a little bit on the fence on this one because I know there’s uh you know the big ‘right to repair’ movement and I do agree with um with that and in spirit but like you say there are very good reasons that manufacturers do these things and we wouldn’t have the products at the prices that we get them without those manufacturing processes. Um so this you know that I think it’s a way of looking at it that you you’re not necessarily going to get the the best answer that you want because it’s not a perfect world. Um but I think that we always look at these things you know, from this point in time and in 10 years, in 20 years time, in 30 years time when your iPhone 17 is you know the thing that people are nostalgic about there are going to be different methods to doing these things, we’re going to have a whole different set of tools. Um I mean the the stuff that I’ve got here now I’m with this I’ve got oscilloscopes and I’ve got hot air stations and you know all of these amazing tools here they didn’t have those 40 years ago, you know. I mean they had various things that were like them but not to this not in hobbyists these were the things that you had in specialist workshops um so hobbyists in 30 years I shudder to think what they’re going to have available to them, you know, the chip fabrication and being able to you know create a CRT from scratch maybe but who knows. This 3D printing is gonna is gonna be. Can you imagine?
Neale 38:18
Already has revolutionized yeah yeah yeah no it’s it’s it’s I hadn’t thought about that I mean there’s the education piece around there as well I think because you know you started five years ago you didn’t have the electronics background, you’re not an engineer, you just sort of got stuck and have a go there’s a simplicity about retro you know retro boards and how they’re all put together. Um in the future yes you’re absolutely right they could have you know be able to manufacture chips and and all sorts of stuff but they’re still going to have to be able to program aren’t they or maybe that’s where AI comes into it they’re going to need to know the the theory behind it.
Lee 38:55
It’s definitely where AI is going to come into it I think um it’s uh it’s something that’s already you know you can already see it now and it’s you know I use AI for research purposes um for different projects and because I might I have these huge gaps in my knowledge it just gives me a little bit of a leg up and and it’s it’s um it’s just another tool in your armory really, isn’t it? Um, of creative side you know the um yeah, the what do you call it, the um that’s the creative side of AI, the generative, sorry, the generative side of AI.
Neale 39:31
Yes, like image creation and content creation and that kind of thing.
Lee 39:35
We had fun with when it all started bursting onto the scene. It’s now a bit of a hot topic and people kind of avoid it a little bit. And if you’re seen to be using that in, say, a thumbnail, you can quickly get yourself cast out from the community. But yeah, the research side of AI. Is something that is great now. And again, what’s that going to be like in, you know, I mean, it’s growing so fast now in 10 years time? Will you be able to reprogram an iPhone in 10 years time from pretty much scratch? Like plug it into a computer and say, all right, I need to rebuild this whole operating system. Here are some blank ROMs in this chip. Go ahead. Will it be able to do it? That’s a good question.
Neale 40:24
I read an interesting article about where AI is at the minute. And I think it was from Gartner and it’s sort of like on the investment adoption production line. It’s sort of like the hype generally goes along like this and then it’ll dip and then it’ll sort of fall out of favour. And then actually you sort of get hyped up about the possibilities. And then the realization is a little bit disappointing. But then people sort of get really stuck in. And that’s when the innovation comes through and that’s when it finds its feet and then it takes off. So I think it’s got a really early trajectory. I think it’s going to be there’s a lot of hype around it. As you’re saying, there’s a bit of backlash. People don’t like the fake music. They don’t like the fake images. It’ll probably ditch. But I think you’re right. It’s going to find its feet as it takes off and the models get more accurate. And yeah, it’s going to be interesting.
Lee 41:09
The genies out of the bottle and it’s you can’t fight this kind of progress. I think the most important thing is people need to concentrate on energy supplies, to make sure that we’re not feeding AI instead of ourselves. You know, if we can do that and make sure that is a fair playing field against the robot masters in the future, then I’m all right with it.
Neale 41:33
I, for one, welcome our AI overlords. I don’t know about you, Lee. That’s fine. You mentioned fear. Why in the community? Why why do you think people are fearful? I mean, don’t name names, obviously. But what was that was that come from?
Lee 41:45
The whole ‘this is taking our jobs and this is this is going to ruin it, ruin our creative outlets’, you know, artists and things, which is, you know, a very valid criticism of AI. But I see it like big advances. I mean, it’s probably a simplistic way of looking at it. I’m not sure how right this is. But I see it as big like a big, big advance in other fields. So when there are big advances with tools that change things or if you go back to like the printing press and, you know, everybody was smashing up the printing presses because they didn’t like that happening because it was going to take their jobs. And then the information ages.
Neale 42:26
Yeah, no, I always like to say that I’m not a Luddite, but I bloody hate looms.
Lee 42:30
I like that.
Neale 42:30
Same thing. What’s what’s what’s coming up next for you, Lee? What’s in the pipeline? What’s coming up in next few months?
Lee 42:35
You know, the next thing is on the I don’t know when this podcast is going out, but on the 15th and 16th of November, I’m going to be at the retro festival in Cambridge at the the Museum of Computing History, which is I’ve been to that for the last couple of years. And this is the other thing, actually, I’m really, really super passionate about in this hobby is meeting up with people in different events and things. We we did Retro Fest in May this year, and I’ve done some other events as well. And it is the best thing that has come from this. Never mind getting all this cool stuff and having great tools and, and, you know, a YouTube channel, the best thing is actually going to an event and people coming up to you and saying, ‘Oh, I really am passionate about this thing’ and and having a conversation with them, you know, complete stranger recognises you because, you know, you’re that guy on YouTube. But they can start a conversation because they recognise you. And that’s fantastic. I get to talk to so many different people that are so passionate about so many different things and so many nice things happen because of that, that I look forward to it every single time it happens. So, yeah, two weeks time, I’m going to be in Cambridge and I’m going to be knee-deep in nerds.
Neale 43:51
Knee-deep in nerds – what a great line to end on! I think just just to sum up, I think what we’ve hit the nail on the head for this is community is really important, getting stuck in is really important, not being afraid, being your authentic self and following your passion. That right?
Lee 44:07
Yeah. Or be really good at writing a script.
Neale 44:09
Or get AI to do it.
Lee 44:11
And get AI to do it, yeah.
Neale 44:14
Lee, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Lee 44:17
Thanks, Neale.
Neale 44:18
See you soon. Bye.