аЯрЁБс>ўџ ўџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџ§џџџўџџџўџџџ   !"#$ўџџџўџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџRoot Entryџџџџџџџџ РF`#4БRЬМ%€WordDocumentџџџџџџџџ CCompObjџџџџџџџџџџџџ^џџџџџџџџџџџџўџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџme sequence of events three days later. I recovered and felt more or less well enough to go and see a friend in Surbiton - it would have been London Hobbymeet night as well. However the issue of me getting a job cropped up in a family discussion on the night before I was due to go. This is a tricky one. I've not been doing a lot since I left Oxford - I've applied for all of four jobs; two led to interviews and rejections, one didn't get as far as an interview; one never replied though I rung them as directed - and, frankly, I've been enjoying doing nothing far too much. Well, not enjoying doing nothing - doing nothing brings about a sense of, er, nothingness that, er, nothing can match - but my folks have been looking after me very nicely and it's nice not to have to worry about anything. My day has been defined around two points; one in the morning, when the post arrives; one at 6pm when I can check my e-mail cheaply. The rest of the time has either been lying in bed, feeling unsuited to anything more productive, or wasting time fiddling with my new computer. What a lovely new toy. In fact, I got undressed and didn't get dressed again for a week, after coming home that Wednesday ten days ago having signed on (and I wasn't meant to come home then, but to go to the train station next to the dole office and to travel to Surbiton), until last Wednesday. Last Wednesday saw me pull another all-nighter in an attempt to get my body clock sorted out, which worked, and since then (I write on the night of Sunday 28th) I have even started getting to sleep and getting up at sensible times. It's a start. However, frankly, most of the time at the moment I can only see the bad side of what there is to be up and about the place for and would rather not be bothered. It's not that I can't be bothered to... (insert verb of your choice here), I just can't be bothered full stop. I don't feel suicidal, but I'd rather not be alive. Writing this is another small step forward - my lack of botheredness has affected my desire to write a subzine as much as anything else - but the downsides of everything loom large at the moment; all the possible "what might go wrong"s with every action I'm contemplating look like "what will go wrong"s. And I'm normally an optimist! My thoughts about getting a job at the moment: 1) There are basic, simple jobs involved with the production of TV game shows that I could do better than anyone else in the country, because I care more about game shows than (almost, presumably) anyone else. 2) Working in TV and in the media in general has a lot of pitfalls and will lead to long periods of misery, unemployment and job-hunting just with the natural short runs of most TV shows. 3) I've been in contact with three TV game-show-producing TV firms to date; one of them seemed to like me very much and wanted me to get in contact with them once I finished at Oxford, one of them seemed to like me a lot but haven't specifically talked about me working with them, and one of them were very polite but, I think, dismissed me out of hand once I turned up six or seven minutes late for a half-hour interview. (Not a clever trick.) 4) This is good evidence that I am probably what game show firms are looking for - or, at least, an interesting candidate and worthy of consideration. However, since leaving Oxford, I haven't felt like trying to make contact with any, through an essential lack of self-esteem and, probably, fear of them saying no. 5) I don't know what other job I want. I can see the bad, dull, dead-end and frustrating sides of every other job that's available, and don't want to go through the hassle of applications and interviews - and the end result of getting a job doesn't look like that much of an advantage over what I'm doing at the moment. I have a vague feeling that it's got to be something to do with games, though, and it'll be dreadfully dull if it isn't. 6) I'm not sure what I have to offer as a unique selling point to any firm who isn't involved with game shows or at least games. I can't give a strong answer to "WhмЅe#Р  j7CJ4,Bl,BlBB B Њv(BьB˜BTюBv MS Sans Serif Symbol0Courier NewTimes New Roman Symbol Arial0Courier New /----G-A-M-E-S---I-N---This time, no, really, honest, they are /| ESI GGAMESINT NGGAMESINTE |\ /-------------/ | ESINT GAMESINTE GGAMESINTES | \-------------\ | Volume No.: 1 | ES ES SIN SIN |Chris M DICKSON| | Issue No.: pe | ES INT INT |42 Arlington Rd| | Deadline date | SI STIN NTE including NTE | Middlesbrough | | for GIT no. 9 | IN IN TES train TES | T S 5 7 R E | | as for OMR 24 | TE NG EST EST | (01642)821929 | \-------------\ | STING ME TESTINGG ES STI GA | /-------------/ \| ING ES ESTINGGA SI TIN AM |/ \- E-mail to chris@dickson.demon.co.uk -/ Here's the second part of GIT 8. Ahem, sorry about that. In recent times I had taken to sending in GIT very close to the print deadline, a week after the games deadline, and because I produced it so close to that deadline, I had taken to printing it and sending it to Mark in two parts, so that if the second part got lost in the post, there would be at least some GIT for you to read. Anyway, last time I sent five pages of GIT to Mark very early (about a week after the OMR with GIT 7) and wrote three others. Then all ten of the plagues descended on me at once. This is going to be a whinge, can't you just smell it? Whinge mode well and truly engaged. Skip it freely. My body clock is a strange beast and ever since I went to Oxford stranger than ever before, probably because I put it through all sorts of things that human body clocks are not meant to endure. Since I finished there and came home things have been no better. So on about the Wednesday (? days and nights all roll into one...) after the OMR deadline, having got up at 6pm one day, I decided to stay up all night to sort it out - oh, and to get GIT written as well. It was going fairly well until after watching the late-night American Football when I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to empty my guts. I made it to the bathroom, at least, if not the bath, and emptied freely, then cleaned up afterwards (the slippers went through the washing machine - but I haven't felt like wearing them since). Fair enough, we all need a good hurl from time to time. Unfortunately my body decided to get rid of all the gunk inside me from both ends and so I was affected at more or less the same time by a bad attack of dire-rear. (I know it's not meant to be spelt like that, but it should be.) I changed my underpants and celebrated by having a nice cold cup of water to get the taste out of my mouth - no good, even plain water wouldn't stay in. I'll gloss over the gory details. For the next twelve hours or so I was confined to bed, with a towel in place as a nappy (ouch, I don't like admitting that) and a raging thirst. Taking liquids in wasn't a problem, but after I'd drunk them then even slightly sharp body movements would bring 'em back up. Not a lot of fun. A couple of troubled sleeps later I woke up with a horrid headache and Dad rang the doc. We had rang too late to get a house call organised and Dad reluctantly took me down town to the surgery. The doctor had a good prod round and inserted some implement up my rear end without explicit prior warning - a curious, face-screwing-up sensation. He prescribed gut motility pills and 24 hours on water only. Most of these 24 hours were spent in sleep and depression; I hadn't realised how important flavour was to me. (I could only last a few hours before wanting lemonade and fruit juice badly enough to directly countermand the doc.) The next day and a half or so were spent in bed, too pained to read, write or do anything useful; Dad sent off the last three pages of GIT 8 to Mark with a dictated covering whinge and I bemoaned my head and leg aches. Oddly, my legs had decided they wanted to levitate and rotate around my knees backwards. Not terribly pleasant, either. (Gruesome whinge number one over. Whinge number two follows...) The 24 hours passed, but I didn't get my appetite back for a while afterwards. Dad, who had helped me so much throughout my illness, got exactly the say would any firm want to employ me?". So, at the moment, I'm not interested in getting a job. This is, not too surprisingly, a source of concern to my loving parents who worry about me, want to see the best for me etc. etc. and have consequently been on my back all my life to work hard for my exams / work hard at Oxford / get a job and so on. All very sound and helpful advice - indeed, it'd be a worse situation if they didn't care about me and weren't giving me this encouragement! - but it's not what I want to hear. On top of this, my parents want me to learn to drive, which is all very well and useful, but I don't really feel like making the effort to do so, for much the same reasons (and the fact that the instructor who took me for two lessons three years ago was a cantankerous, moaning, perfectionist, irritiating, too-fast-teaching old Welshman during the lessons, and not especially personable outside of them), and a couple of other private little worries as well. The obvious answer is that I need a kick up the pants, but, again, that's not what I want to hear, and I don't respond well to kicks up the pants. They don't inspire me to greater heights, they drive me to misery and to hiding in bed from the world. I hope this isn't a case for a harder kick. So that's pretty much explained why I've been out of contact, out of touch and out of the cycle recently. Mark's nice long deadline is very convenient this time; I've got another month before GIT 9 is due, and a whole lot can happen in a month. I hope GIT 9 will be a lot happier than GIT 8.5397 (for this is such). A month is also easily enough time to allow you to get orders in, and so I hope to go ahead with the GIT 9 deadlines as planned, please. Probably, oh, fifty or so hours out of the last week I've been fiddling with my new toy - this nice powerful new computer of mine here. It runs Windows 95, which I had only briefly dabbled with in the past, so I've been getting to learn its eccentricities. Having a modem and Internet access as well gives the dabbler within me an endless stream of delights waiting to be discovered (including some tunes - or as Dad would put it, new versions of "The Computer Tune" - which I really like) and new games to fiddle around with. You would not believe the number of shareware versions of Tetris that I've got, none of which are as good as my favourite one back on the old Amiga. Don't ever let anyone tell you the Amiga wasn't a brilliant machine for games. Getting games to work on an Amiga is dead easy compared to on a PC. My sound card seems not to work under MS-DOS at all, even after following the manuals to the letter and boot disks are not the solution they would appear at first to be. Almost recommended to even slight computer game fans is the Entertainment Online service. For Ѓ5.95 a month (or, under the current offer, Ѓ6 for your first six months - offer won't last forever and no refunds are available) you get free access to a library of old, but commercial full-price, games that you can download and play for free, a stash of exclusive on-line games,a chat facility and a whole lot more. The games you can download aren't end-of-the-line no-hopers, either - Xenon 2 and Speedball 2 were big hits and very highly respected five years ago, Wizkid, a unique game with all the Sensible Software hallmarks of clever design and gameplay that still stands up today, and Pinball Fantasies, the second in the Digital Illusions series of pinball simulations featuring smooth graphics, fairly realistic physics and four very neatly-designed tables to play on. The catch is that you can only play each one for thirty days before it expires, but it's a rare game that keeps your interest and attention for over a month. Wizball and Pinball Fantasies, despite their age, are fun and interesting games, and I feel confident that I'll get six games each with well over a pound's worth of play over the next six months. The reason the recommendation isn't complete is that the whole system has been ridden with problems throughout. After downloading the hefty 5+ MB starter software it wouldn't decompress first time (conflict with files left in an obscure temporary directory, though their customer support which informed me of such is first class); the Web site kept causing Internet Explorer to crash (its recent redesign sorted this out), and I can't get sound to work on Wizkid or Pinball Fantasies. The Amiga Pinball Fantasies music and sound were excellent, and as anyone who's at all a fan of pinball (surely there'll be more of you than just me, Dave Percik and Phil Hannay?) will agree, sound is a big part of the pinball experience. It's still a good game without - just not a great game. I shall have to be boringly sensible and advise you to take a good look at www.e-on.co.uk and make up your own mind as to whether you would find the service worth the money, but I'd suggest you actively consider it while it's cheap. …†де$%tuˆ‰ŠФХЭк*demzДЕPQœžŸ ЁЂЃзћїѓяычуплзвЮЪЦСНЙЕАЌЈЄŸ›—“‹‡ƒ{wsokgc]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a U]a ]a ]a ]a U]a ]a ]a ]a U]a ]a ]a ]a V]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a &зийC D E t z эѓ&'(ghi\]^цчшщъыІЇЈd e f  !ћїђэшфплзгЯЪЦТОЙДЏЋЇЃŸ›—“‹‡ƒ{wsokgc]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a V]a V]a V]a ]a ]a ]a ]^a ]a ]a ]a ]a V]a ]a V]a V]a V]a ]a ]a % !Ё!Ђ!Z#[#\#%$&$'$ќ(§(ў(џ(У*Ф*Х*Ц*І.Ї.Ј.Ў.s3t3u3u6z6Ь6к6i7j7ћїѓяычуплзгЯЫЧУПЛЗГЎЊІЂž™•Œˆ]a ]a U]a ]a V]a ]a ]a ]a ]a V]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a  †е%uХeЕQЂиD 'h]чъЇe Ё!њѕ№ыцсмзвЭШУОЙДЏЊЅ ›–‘Œ‡№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№Ё![#&$§(ў(Ф*Х*Ї.t3j7њѕ№ыцсмзв№№№№№№№№№ j7 j7J4џџџџџџџџ?K@ёџNormala "A@ђџЁ"Default Paragraph Fontаџ@ўџ џџџџ РFMicrosoft Word 6.0 Document MSWordDocє9Вq