Video Gaming 1979-1989 at the NCCD

The National Centre for Craft & Design is hosting an event to celebrate the golden age of video games, "Revolution in the Bedroom, War in the Playground: Video Gaming 1979-1989". The exhibition runs from 19th October to 5th January in the main gallery.

The exhibition focuses on bedroom programmers, 8-bit games design and magazine cover art with classic games running on several computers. If you're in the Sleaford area, it's definitely worth a visit.

Detail from Simon Patterson's 15 metre chalkboard circuit diagram

Cover artwork by Oliver Frey

Silicon Dreams & The Vintage Computer Festival

This weekend the biggest event in the U.K.'s retro computing calendar will be hosted at the Snibston Discovery Museum in Leicestershire. The Vintage Computer Festival follows 2010's highly successful event with most of the main exhibitors returning. Some of the highlights include:

• Raspberry Jam - a hands-on workshop for the Raspberry Pi single board computer organised by the Centre for Computing History.
• The Amiga is well represented at the show with demonstrations of MorphOS 3.2 and the latest AmigaOne X1000.
• 15+ exhibitors will be displaying a wide range of historic / unusual computers including RISC OS running on the Raspberry Pi.
• Look out for the Spectranet ethernet board in action. Tweet direct from a ZX Spectrum complete with nixie tube tweetometer!

The event runs from 5th - 7th July. Tickets are £15 for the day, or £20 for the weekend. We'll be there when the gates open at 10am. Is anyone else planning to attend?

The Vintage Computer Festival, Bletchley Park

The computing highlight of June will be the Vintage Computer Festival at The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park.  Held on 19-20 June, the event is the first of it's kind in the U.K.  Tickets can be purchased for £8.50 online or £10.00 on the door.

The National Museum of Computing's website has the full list of exhibitors, lectures and events. Some of the highlights include:

• The launch of the new Amiga X1000 boasting a dual-core 1.8GHz PowerISA CPU, 2GB memory and Xena 500MHz SDS co-processor
• 20+ exhibitors demonstrating a variety of historic computers
• Lectures by a number of key figures in computing history, including Sophie Wilson, one of the designers of Acorn Computers and ARM processors
• Retro gaming competition

I'll be there when the gates open at 10:30am on Saturday. Are you planning to attend?