I'm from the Emerald Isle and am really enjoying my Amiga at the moment. My first computer was a Spectrum ZX which the family used to play Jet Pac on - great fun. Then I got a Commodore 64 which I mostly played games on. When I wanted to upgrade, my mother made me complete all the programs in the back of the book that came with the C64 first I'm really glad she did that because even though it was mostly an exercise in typing (and frustration), it was my first introduction to the purpose for the keyboard!
It took me forever to complete those examples and in the end I got help from a cousin because I couldn't understand the more complicated ones, like the one which made a hot air balloon travel systematically across the screen. I was disgusted that none of the examples made use of the joystick!
Finally, in the nineties, I was allowed place an advert for my C64 and I sold it just days before Christmas. On Christmas day I came down to 'The Wild, The Wierd & The Wicked' A600 pack with titles like Deluxe Paint III, Pushover, Formula One Grand Prix etc. I also had Street Fighter II. I was so excited I was physically sick and I can actually feel the over-excited nausea now as I write this
The great thing was that I was a little older (mid-teens) and better able to understand the non-gaming stuff. I got probably no more than five Amiga magazines in my time but tried the applications like databases and graphics. I was amazed at how ready to go games were and how much complexity there was in setting up something simple, like following the example in Amiga Format for Imagine 3D. By the way - that turned out to be a faulty disk! The .adf I downloaded recently has exactly the same bug!! There could have been a career in 3D design there!
I lost interest in games because I don't like solitude and most of them made me twitchy in a way I didn't like (although Settlers was great and Lemmings). I went on to PC and eventually discovered Linux in college while studying software engineering. I was blown away by the visual beauty and coherent filesystem structure and command system. That was around 2002 and I've been running linux ever since - currently Ubuntu, as well as a Raspberry Pi, an Ubuntu phone and a Macbook Pro for professional graphics/print.
Maybe it was a mid-life crisis, but within the last few years I really started pining for certain tokens from my childhood. I started watching old cartoons and shows with my little girl, who was probably five at the time, like Super Ted, Captain Planet, ALF, Sledgehammer, Fraggle Rock. Then I started buying C64 cassette games off EBay (even though I still don't have a C64 anymore). Just the ones I had when I was a kid, which isn't many; Spy vs Spy, Silkworm, Gauntlet, Quartet... Then I went on to buying Amiga games I either had or wanted such as Cannon Fodder, Lemmings, Batman the Movie, Sensible Soccer. Then on my birthday, my wife and little girl presented me with an Amiga 1200. I was shaking like that overexcited kid again - breathing all shallow and putting it together at light speed. I'm glad noone was recording
The interest in games wore off quickly as I really need company to enjoy those. But the applications are great. It was a real uphill battle getting a really nice setup but I have a few people to thank for that, most notably Sir_Lucas for patiently teaching me how to set up a wifi card on the A1200. It must have been like teaching a three-year-old about astrophysics but he calmly met me at my level and I'm incredibly grateful to him. I've since learned that the Amiga can have modern day applications in certain scenarios and I want to promote those. I've made some videos which will be posted on www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigatoday at some stage. I also have a Stack Overflow style site for Amiga coming soon. I hope to spare people the headaches I had getting setup (it doesn't have to be a headache, but I'm cursed with the combination of impulsiveness and high standards from technology) as well as thank those who have helped me by encapsulating that knowledge into videos, posts etc.
My little girl likes playing Lotus I (she thinks the gear # is her position in the game so she always thinks she finishes 1st, 2nd or 3rd usually ) and I look forward to the day my wife asks if she can print something from Google Drive and I say, "sure, it's on the Amiga". (Hint, it's already possible).
Outside of Amiga, I've developed a love and appreciation for the natural world - plants and animals - and I've decided I want to eat less meat and be conscious about which industries I support when I spend my money etc. I'll write about that also from time-to-time.
Thanks and happy Amiga-ing!