EDITORIAL - MY FIRST TIME
Here I am, being a little reluctant while writing the first
Editorial I ever wrote in my short and computer-infested life.
Now taking over ST NEWS should be taken very seriously. So no
crap about courses for Nursery Nurses involving post-natal
abortion for the physically handicapped or Creative Suicide and
Do-It-Yourself Euthanasia for Senior Citizens (just quoting Tom
Sharpe, a very funny and cynic writers I recently discovered) As
I was saying, taking over ST NEWS should be taken seriously, and
I intend to do so. I will do my utmost best to maintain the high
standards set by the founder of ST NEWS and overall Brain behind
all this, Richard Karsmakers. Without him, none of this would
have happened, and I would probably be sitting in the exact spot
I am sitting now, but this time programming some obscure and
Digitally Insane program. I still remember the Early Days, when I
was still a rookie ST-user, dragging floppy-disks with monochrome
demos around and programming in ST-BASIC (yech!, my stomach made
a funny movement when my brains instructed my fingers to type in
something utterly revolting). One fine day I stumbled across a
floppy disk with a fairly-sized (approx. 16K) 1ST-word document
on it. It was a very obscure document, filled with announcements
for cracked software, and enourmous pieces of ST-INTERN copied
into it. But it had something special (don't ask me to explain
this), and after reading it, I became enthousiastic, and wrote a
letter to Richard. He wrote back, and this was the start of a
great friendship and cooperation. I met him at the HCC-days,
still working on a funny little GfA-BASIC program (my first
effords in this wonderful language) called The ArtiST. I wrote
lotsa articles for ST NEWS which gradually developed itself into
a full-blown wordwide magazine. My programming skills on the ST
grew, and so did my participation in ST NEWS programming. Richard
created the main program in GfA, and I did the hard-core machine
code for the pageview, the scroll, the crunch and the decrunch
routine. Also, more people started adding clever stuff to ST
NEWS, like the guys from STRIKE-a-LIGHT. They did the wonderful
vertical menubar and the menubar on the bottom of the screen as
found in several ST NEWS issues. They also programmed the
routines (in machine code) to decrunch and view (both color and
monochrome) the picture that can be found in every ST NEWS issue.
Also, the ST-world most popular music programmer, Jochen from TEX
added some athmosphere to ST NEWS by means of great tunes.
If you add all this, plus the numerous articles entered by people
like Math Claessens (the White Adventure Wizard who lives on his
wive's cakes), Crimson with his Amazing Stories and Frank Lemmen
with his unique views on several things, you get an outstanding
product which is entirely based on the enthousiasm of the people
who create it.
I think this is why ST NEWS became such a success. We never had
the pressure of things like 'sales' or 'profit' on our backs.
ST NEWS has never been - and never will be, not as long as I am
the editor - commercial. (The one guilder fee in Holland is meant
to cover the costs involved in creating ST NEWS, not to make any
profit).
I know I can count on your support and enthousiasm for the
upcoming issues of ST NEWS. (That's why you should start writing
articles right now! It is not so hard, and having your article
published is great!)
Phew! That wasn't so hard. I think I like writing editorials. All
this writing has inspired me, and thoughts of a super-duper
pageview routine drift into my mind and are already starting to
take a solid shape in the form of fragments of GfA-BASIC and
assembler. I am going to save this document and enter Development
Mode! Better get some beer, crisps, hip-hop records and lock my
door...Here I go!!!
Sincerely,
Stefan Posthuma
Fresh and Inspired (by the greatest girl ever, Evelien) editor of
ST NEWS.
�
Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.