So long CEEFAX

[Rum]

It has been going for 38 years and though I haven't looked at it in years I have a certain nostalgia for the thing. Now they are switching it off!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20032882

[klr]

The younger generation just wouldn't understand things like this.

[Clinton Huxley]

Sob. I used to love watching the cricket on ceefax.

[klr]

Sob. I used to love watching the cricket on ceefax.

Now if that doesn't baffle our Yankee cousins, nothing will.

[Clinton Huxley]

Sob. I used to love watching the cricket on ceefax.

Now if that doesn't baffle our Yankee cousins, nothing will.

As a nipper I would dream of CEEFAX headlines like "Huxley Run Blitz Puts Aussies To Sword"

It was the future once.

[Thinking Aloud]

I used to dial page 000 on the remote, wait about a minute, then get the most amazing page of broken characters and flashing half-formed text. The other trick was to dial up whichever page they were actually broadcasting on BBC1 for three hours in the morning and flick between the TV and Ceefax to compare character fonts.

Yup - today's generation is truly missing out. Farewell Ceefax.

[klr]

I used to dial page 000 on the remote, wait about a minute, then get the most amazing page of broken characters and flashing half-formed text. The other trick was to dial up whichever page they were actually broadcasting on BBC1 for three hours in the morning and flick between the TV and Ceefax to compare character fonts.

Yup - today's generation is truly missing out. Farewell Ceefax.

Truly, this is ancient geekdom. I approve.

[Thinking Aloud]

I used to dial page 000 on the remote, wait about a minute, then get the most amazing page of broken characters and flashing half-formed text. The other trick was to dial up whichever page they were actually broadcasting on BBC1 for three hours in the morning and flick between the TV and Ceefax to compare character fonts.

Yup - today's generation is truly missing out. Farewell Ceefax.

Truly, this is ancient geekdom. I approve.

I am honoured, sir.

[klr]

I used to dial page 000 on the remote, wait about a minute, then get the most amazing page of broken characters and flashing half-formed text. The other trick was to dial up whichever page they were actually broadcasting on BBC1 for three hours in the morning and flick between the TV and Ceefax to compare character fonts.

Yup - today's generation is truly missing out. Farewell Ceefax.

Truly, this is ancient geekdom. I approve.

I am honoured, sir.

At age 10 or so, I worked out how the Airfix product coding system worked. I was born to work with databases.

[Clinton Huxley]

A forgotten hero....

Video on the web... what's the big deal? Ceefax was there first, in the 1980s, when it experimented with some revolutionary coverage of the annual University Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford. A journalist decided to construct a page showing the route of the course using the graphics usually used for building the weather maps.
Two dots represented the boats and they were moved across the screen to track the crews once the race got under way. What is not recorded is how many people decided to watch this instead of the actual live race coverage on TV at the same time.

From here...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8260196.stm

[Bella Fortuna]

I used to dial page 000 on the remote, wait about a minute, then get the most amazing page of broken characters and flashing half-formed text. The other trick was to dial up whichever page they were actually broadcasting on BBC1 for three hours in the morning and flick between the TV and Ceefax to compare character fonts.

Yup - today's generation is truly missing out. Farewell Ceefax.

Truly, this is ancient geekdom. I approve.

I am honoured, sir.

At age 10 or so, I worked out how the Airfix product coding system worked. I was born to work with databases.

FREAKS.


Loveable, loveable freaks.

[Red Celt]

Sob. I used to love watching the cricket on ceefax.

How does your mind work? Cricket... the most boring "sport" ever invented... "watched" on Ceefax? It's like, take a trainspotter and make them even duller than they were before. Then take their trains away. And their notebook. But let them keep their pen.

[Clinton Huxley]

Sob. I used to love watching the cricket on ceefax.

How does your mind work? Cricket... the most boring "sport" ever invented... "watched" on Ceefax? It's like, take a trainspotter and make them even duller than they were before. Then take their trains away. And their notebook. But let them keep their pen.

Doesn't it sound divine? A close to the numinous as I've ever been...

[Clinton Huxley]

A comment on the BBC new website....


Ceefax is what the internet could be.
Ernest Hope Stephenson, UK

Well said, Ernest!

[Red Celt]

Sob. I used to love watching the cricket on ceefax.

How does your mind work? Cricket... the most boring "sport" ever invented... "watched" on Ceefax? It's like, take a trainspotter and make them even duller than they were before. Then take their trains away. And their notebook. But let them keep their pen.

Doesn't it sound divine? A close to the numinous as I've ever been...

When I relocated to Scotland, one of the motivating factors was the fact that my exposure to cricket would be reduced to nil. Sadly, that fact wasn't a fact, because some people in the BBC actually think that anybody in the rest of the UK gives a flying fuck about the England cricket team.

In all of my time in England, I think that I met 2 actual fans of cricket. Lots of people who were interested in football. Almost zero interested in cricket. Apart from Yorkshire, the whole of England is disinterested in it... apart from those who subscribe to the class system. Some self-assessed "middle class" people like cricket; those considered "working class" don't. But to the BBC, the first B in that corporation isn't short for "British", it's short for "Bloody English".

So everyone is Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are forced to endure regular updates about cricket. I'd like to see the BBC give regular updates on a similarly unloved Scottish sport. See how that plays out in the Home Counties when they are constantly told about the Scottish Curling Captain getting caught with a prostitute.

The message might finally sink in.