Blogs Like Father, Like Son

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/02/26/like-father-like-son/

 

For me, it was nature. I lvoed comptuer games when I was younger, but the only real influence my parents had over me was buying our first PC. From then on my own instinct and want for knowledge took over.

Also, if you were staggering home at 11AM it must've been one helluva party ;-)

 

Never happened to me or anyone else I've ever met... Most people down where I live regard PCs as some sort of alien device, making me the alien geek for all those around...

Its a similar story with cars and pretty much everything else with electronics in them...

 

i was the same - my dad has been into PCs since almost the beginning, and i cant remember not ever having a PC to use. all the way from the first one i can remember (a 386 running Norton Commander/DOS, then a Tiny Pentium MMX and so on). although i wasnt much older than the boy in your story when i began to be the one explaining new stuff to my dad

 

I can't tear my kids of LittleBigPlanet (budding level designer at 7) and Mario to talk to them about their dinner let alone graphics tech. He did like it when I explained why there was a graphics card in the oven making a funny smell.

My dad was a musician and only one of us has gone down that route but we did game together sometimes. I used to try and convince my mum that games are an art form but she only ever really played Snake and Simon the Sorcerer.

 

Oh wow. I remember when my older brother picked me up to play 'this new game called counter-strike [1.1]'. Since then I've been an avid FPS gamer, which lead me to being a hardware junky.

 

Unfortunately, my dad is one of those people who likes to think they know about computers but actually knows nothing. I moan at him all the time for things like never putting line breaks in e-mails, having hundreds of icons on his desktop (of which he only ever uses a couple) or installing every bit of crap software that anyone recommends or sends him. I've given up.

What I did inherit from my father is the love of technology, especially new technology. I remember him bringing home such technological marvels in the 70's - like a pong game or one of the early Philips VCRs (which he could never get to work and ended up taking back). To this day, if it's shiny and new and electronic, I lust after it

 

sorry, couldnt resist

 

my Grandad Designed Radar in WW2 an has been a massive influence on me

 

Had my first contact when I was around 5 or 6 years old. My older brother got the interest from some friends and my parents decided to invest on that . My brother didn't quite pushed me into computers. Actually I think I was a real pain in the ass because I was always nagging my brother for computer time. For my mothers disgrace both her kids were destined to follow this career. As I got older this type of conversations were pretty natural.

 

My Dad was a massive computer fan. We had all sorts of olden age hardware. It was thanks to him that I first played Doom, Duke Nukem and all the other FPS's of the time. It's no wonder FPS became my genre of choice. He even modelled a Duke Nukem 3D level based on our house. Alien in the closet and all.

He also introduced me to such greats as Warcraft, Worms, Full Throttle, Civilisation, System Shock, and all the great games of the time.

he died when I was still only a kid, but his influences have definitely had an effect on me. I find it no coincidence that I love Starcraft (and am on the beta), nor do I find it less than obvious why I enjoy games like Bioshock, Battlefield and Half-Life. And damn, Worms never gets old. Does it?

 

My son at the age of 2 has an uncanny knack for pc games,
while im a pretty heavy gamer i have not once tried to get him to play anything, he just got on my chair 1 day and started randomly hitting buttons on the keyboard. After 5 minutes of me showing him what button does what he now plays monster truck nitro and can complete the first 10 or so levels by himself within the time limit.

Now i started noticing him taking an interest in what else i play, not wanting a go but happily sitting there watching, making the odd comment. Interest growing.

Its scary, as at that age i was expecting him to play with cars and toy blocks not wanting to sit around and watch me play EvE

 

??? My dad encourage me with hardware? You've got to be joking. When I replaced his case the other year I had to show him how to turn this PC on. It only had the power and reset buttons on he front.

 

I have to say my interest in gaming is most defiantly from my father. He use to buy the consoles and games for me (we probably him considering he was only in his early 20's at the time) i can remember completing super Mario bros and later on when i was older on a Atari ST playing but never completing Another world.

But my fascination for Pc comes from not having on when every one of my high school friends having one. saying that I'm turning my nice in to a pc geek and she is only 4

 

I just love the fact that you were staggering back from a party at 11am... well played sir. :-D

 

My dad certainly is responsible for getting me into gaming with the Spectrum and Atari 2600 but after that it was from friends going through the NES etc till I convinced my parents to buy a PC then it was all about Doom on many floppy disks I got little or no encouragement with computers and within a few weeks I was the one at 10 years old who everyone went to with tech problems and it's been that way for the last 16 years.

Building my own pc at 16 was the scariest and most satisfying moment of my life and I plan to pass that down to my budding little gamer but at 5 he just likes Ben 10 on the DS but he will learn. It's probably one of the few ways PC gaming will really go forward with the next generation of kids.

 

My parents bought an atari 2600 when I was...hmmm seven or eight, and then a commodore 16 when I was about 10 and a PC (Commodore PC-1) when I was 12.

My mother used it more than my dad though.

And yes, I still have all of said computers (not the ones after those though)

 

I've taken a really active interest in bringing my kids into any build I have going on. My lad has turned a really good hand to it and is consistantly bored in his ICT lessons in school as he probably knows more than his teacher. My daughter just tells me to get it working properly and if she walks in and I'm reading a copy of CustomPC mag or reading through an online review of a motherboard here on Bit-Tech, she just gives out the usual shout of "Mum! Dad's being a geek again!".

I mean "C'mon!" is that anything to be ashamed of?

 

First taste of computer was at 3 years old, my parents bought a Commodore 64, mainly for my older brother. Then we had an Amstrad 1512 (dual 5 1/4 floppy drives! Wow!) and a couple of 286s. My big bro introduced me to the Vax minicomputer at his university, let me help build a computer for the time, taught me some programming.

Now, he's worked for Telewest, IBM and the MoD, and I've worked for publishing firms, DHL and the NHS.

 

My whole household (dad, mum, brothers and sister) grew up gaming on the early home computers and consoles.

My dad would always bring home the latest machine along with games.

I taught myself some programming when I was 7