Bluejam

Didn’t Levy and Martin say they were unavailable all of July for a court case???

Hey peeps, my other half has suddenly got into photography again. She’s got a Canon EOS 1200d with the standard lens but wants to get a decent lens to zoom in for nature photos and all that stuff. as you can tell by the above I don’t have a clue about such things. eBay brings up lenses but they appear to be 3rd party ones like ‘Jintu’ which seem cheap (probably for a reason). what do I need to look out for? Is a canon lens refurb the way to go? Ta!

Fake Jan put this on twitter

Ha ha, that Christine woman posted on the RCL public discussion a mad rant about all those people moaning about the delays a few days ago. And as I say above, Indiegogo don’t have a London office.

Beautiful

And on the Indiegogo campaign page!

Apparently emailed to backers

So, Lee has posted this on World Of Spectrum. Sorry for the length fnar RETRO COMPUTER CLAIMS OF SABOTAGE BY CREATIVE SPECTRUM In April 2016, I was requested by RCL to aid in recovering their website, due to the previous directors leaving and taking the websites down. RCL had been using another company to recover the websites and were failing to do so. It was late evening and they wanted the sites back up ASAP - the other site being Every Child can Code. That evening myself and two others restored a working version of the sites, and RCL were invoiced £1000 for the work. This work continued into the early hours. RCL were unhappy with the site which had cost them (according to RCL) £10,000 and was a wordpress site with a free to use - and unmodified - theme. I was unaware of the amount they had paid, and when asked what my quote would have been gave a figure far, far less. Shortly following the recovery, I received a DVD with the websites on. However, there was no database included, which would have explained why the previous company were unable to recover the sites. I was then asked to quote for a new build of the sites, whilst charging a less than standard rate to host the older versions. So, in September 2016, a quote was sent for £2000 plus yearly hosting. The final payment for this was received in November 2016. Following this, I was then asked to quote for Every Child Can Code, and the work commenced in December 2016, at a similar cost. The two sites were to work in tandem, and all content supplied by RCL. No content for ECCC was ever supplied, and the site stalled after code completion. Also in December 2016, I was asked for further work on the main site. This was to create an ecommerce package to pre-sell the Vega+. Whilst the site was done, I refused to make the ecommerce pages live without assurance that the backers were receiving units. I also invoiced extra to populate the site with content as RCL hadn't started to add anything. I was repeatedly assured that the units were ready (and 6,000 had been made ready to ship), and it was just a case of adding the firmware. At that stage, whilst Suzanne Martin had complained constantly about Janko taking money and doing nothing, I was also assured that David was stepping in to force him to complete the work. I also received my first threat from RCL that I would be sued if the shop wasn't made live given that there were units ready to ship once the firmware was installed. The shop went live in February 2017 - and to my knowledge took around £4,500 in sales before I shut the sites down in September 2017. Section 8 of the CS contract states that:- "Electronic Commerce Laws. The Client agrees that the Client is solely responsible for complying with any laws, taxes, and tariffs applicable in any way to the Web Design Project or any other services contemplated herein, and will hold harmless, protect, and defend Creative Spectrum and its subcontractors from any claim, suit, penalty, tax, fine, penalty, or tariff arising from the Client's exercise of Internet electronic commerce and/or any failure to comply with any such laws, taxes, and tariffs." At no point did RCL raise any issues with the work, or continued work on the website, there was a lot more added to the sites than were made live - for example there was a Vega users club whereby users register and enter the serial number for their product and could win prizes, etc. I needed an list of known serial numbers to verify accounts - never provided. So, that work had ended or stalled due to lack of content, and as far as I was concerned my work was done. However, Suzanne Martin, during a heated telephone exchange, insisted that RCL owns all software written by Creative Spectrum (and developed by myself over a period of 10yrs), and demanded a full copy of all the source code. I of course refused, despite several threats of court action. I also pointed RCL to the relevant sections of the contract stating that all software belongs to Creative Spectrum:- "Ownership The website/software code is owned entirely by Creative Spectrum and resides on our servers for increased security." Following that, it was clear from Suzanne that Janko had no intention of completing the software, so I agreed to act as consultant to work through the issues. This involved amongst other things, unit testing, sourcing firmware, games testing, etc.. All of my advice and work there was ignored - but again, no complaints. It was also known to RCL that my invoices were for 1/3 of my normal charges. *However* it also seems now that someone else was also invoicing RCL for the remaining 2/3 of my costs. I have no knowledge of what this other person did. In September 2017, I was increasingly concerned with comments Suzanne was making regarding the project - she had spent most of the previous year on her personal vendettas, and had to be constantly reigned in to focus on the project. This had become an almost impossible task, so a make or break meeting was arranged to persuade me that the V2 was indeed ready to go "in two weeks" as promised to me. At this meeting, I was shown a 3D printed case. The reasoning behind the V2 was a slight problem with V1 - if you drop it, the screen falls out. Whilst the V2 does look more like Ricks design, it was hardly convincing that delivery would commence in 2 weeks. In addition, I was informed that the guys I had in place for the firmware wouldn't be used, and a friend of Suzannes was going to write a custom emulator in those 2 weeks. I pointed out the impossibility of that happening and was told "software is easy - it's just shifting bits of code". Let it sink in there that this is from the MD of a tech company. So, I was left in two minds as to whether to keep pushing to get the console out, or leave. The decision was made when Suzanne contacted me approximately 2 weeks later insisting that I don't use social media. It was clear she had done something again to wind the trolls up, and totally fed up with them goading each other and dragging me into it, I told her I would no longer support the project. This was around the same time my children were being targeted. This wasn't the first threat I had towards my children - a year before, Nick Humphries (YSRNRY) had threatened to make my kids homeless. I terminated the call when she started screaming at me. She immediately contacted my partner and insisted that I was one of the trolls targeting RCL, and there would be consequences to me ditching them. She insisted that my partner talk me into changing my mind - which she refused to do. She was contacted again the following day with the same threats. RCL at that point refused to pay outstanding invoices - claiming now that they paid consultancy in advance... something which no company to my knowledge (or experience) have ever done! I pointed out to them that any payments not received result in withdrawal of all services and termination of any contracts. They continued to refuse payment, so after a period of around 30 days, all services were terminated. What followed was several attempts by RCL to hack the software to remove their account restrictions. In December 2017, I received an automated email from the RCL contact form - this email confirms when you have contacted them, along with your message. The email said "go fuck yourself suzanne, you are fucked now and not up the arse by david" which was an indication to me that they were once again attempting to hack the software. At the same time, I was also contacted by Action Fraud as Suzanne had made a complaint that I had stolen their software and shut down their business. He had spent 2 days investigating prior to contacting me (and I suspect from the content of the call, he had also been in contact with CID investigating Paul Andrews). He was promptly sent copies of contracts, quotes for additional work, screenshots and other supporting evidence. He apologised for wasting my time, and stated that if they attempted anything else to contact him directly as he wasn't happy at wasting two days on Suzanne. Since then, RCL have made a series of bizzare statements, on social media and to the press insisting I was fired, I have sabotaged their business, I have been paid by Paul Andrews, and many more. They have also stated that they aren't paying outstanding debts because they were never happy with the work, and they now have nothing to show for the websites. The outstanding debts aren't for websites - they are unpaid consultancy fees.

oh look who’s piped up

He appears to be playing the original ZXvega plus, not the V2. Strange how he’s piped up on the last day the Zxvega was going to be delivered though

Man who is heavily linked with the Gemini PDA (also a project funded by Indiegogo by one of those responsible for the Vega) posts this on twitter. He is being suitably torn a new one..

Oh, Happy Vega Plus day everyone (c) @SeanR

I think the biggest problem with all this is apathy. There’s a lot of people on various Spectrum Facebook groups who use the old “its only 100 odd quid, can’t be arsed” school of thought forgetting it’s over £500k. RCL are currently deleting loads of comments from their official Facebook page leaving it an incoherent mess (more than normal). The lack of any pictures seems to be of no concern to some. One twat on there is comparing it’s importance minor to “civilian casualties in Syria”. WTF. the 2 main Speccy Facebook groups (Spectrum for Everyone and Spectrum Forever) each have their fair share of RCL defenders and/or just don’t give a shit. I mean, one of them has Fogarty and Martin as members, they should have been kicked out ages ago just for being arseholes. meh, should it just be swept under the carpet and forgotten about?

From what I’ve seen, there isn’t that much of an improvement to emulation. Certainly not enough to ‘upgrade’. The usual suspects like God of War on PPSSPP are unplayable and N64 is still not that great (although I find Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 perfectly playable on an overclocked Pi3)