In the early evening of Monday the 24th January 1984 (co-incidentally the same week that the Apple Mac was launched), I proudly took ownership of my first proper personal computer, Acorn's finest BBC Computer Model B. A landmark event. Using my BBC in the loft of our family home, night after night I'd go on to teach myself BASIC and Pascal, write numerous programs, play ground-breaking games like Elite for hours on end, all of which utterly shaped me into the professional geek I am today.

In my high school computer lab, me and my best friend used our home brewed BBC expertise to hack-in and take control of other pupils computers and delight in abusing the teacher training tools to secretly join in the sessions of the class meat-heads and rugby team captains and other cool kids, and from the opposite end of the classroom we'd take control and remotely delete lines of code they'd just keyed in one finger at a time and replace them with obscenities or lewd remarks about the teacher. Oh, how we laughed. Quietly.

I recall my main programming project for that year was hand picked for me by the teacher who felt I deserved something more challenging than the usual 'Print your name three times on the screen' project fayre. I was handed a project to create an ATM cash machine simulation with full multiple bank account control, the ability to debit and credit accounts, secure PIN number access, statement printing, the whole nine yards. I think she thought it would teach me a lesson. Actually, it wasn't that hard and once I'd nailed the basic functions outlined in the spec, I then spent three times as long polishing up the simulation I'd written with a completely accurate simulated ATM interface rather than the basic I/O that was expected and acceptable in the project spec, I honed hyper-realistic green-screen graphics, bleepy keypresses the whole deal. Just to prove a point, to teach her a lesson.

I was thinking back the other day about how I got to where I am and concluded that the BBC Computer and the experience I gained from it had a major, major impact on me and, ultimately, shaped my future career and geek lifestyle.

Today I can clearly see my teenage self's innate flair for hobbyist software design and polished presentation still coming through loud and clear and influencing the applications my company builds today. Hopefully for the better, there's nothing that grates me more than an effective software application that blows it by not maximising its aesthetic design as well as its functional design.

The buzz I got twenty years ago came from the feeling of awe you got when you used one of those machines and that buzz is alive and well today and being fed by this blog, the Web, social networking, Pixar Studios computer animation, the ability to watch ripped episodes of Frasier and other favourite DVD's on my pocket computer, the same pocket computer that streams internet radio through my car stereo. All of it. Everything. It all began in earnest twenty years ago for this particular human node.

I loved that BBC Computer. Absolutely loved it.

* OK, yesterday was the 24th, so I missed a day.