Editorial

Oh beautiful Norway...
How I miss thee....

EDITORIAL

A moment of utmost seriousness has come.

If you take an issue of ST NEWS from volume 1 and read it, you
might not recognize it as ST NEWS. Nobody could have predicted
that this meagre 1ST Word plus document could grow to be the
quite successful world-wide magazine it is now.
I get letters every week from people that react to ST NEWS, and
those are the letters that kept me making it, for we didn't do it
purely for our own fun, but also (and mainly) for those that
enjoy reading it.
Now I always replied to those letters as well as I could,
considering the minimal amounts of spare time I have these days,
and I had to disappoint a lot of people lately, since my reply
contained something that is a small tragedy to say the least.

Everybody knows by now that Richard has found himself a job at
what must be the greatest ST software company today. All the
people that have been the true ST pioneers are there, and they
are creating the most state of the art software that anyone can
imagine.
So needless to say Richard didn't hesitate for a second when he
signed his contract and moved to Germany. He is now designing the
games of the future and travelling around the world to do the PR
for this company.
Now Richard is somebody that throws himself at whatever he does
and doesn't allow any time for other things.
What I am trying to say is that his time for ST NEWS has been
reduced to something barely enough to write an original
correspondence address.
Now ST NEWSis Richard and Stefan. Richard writes the great and
very lengthy articles/stories/reviews, and I do the programming,
the demos, the technical articles and the occasional absurd
story. Besides that, I do all the 'external' contacts, letter-
writing, software house contacts, mailings etc.
So what happens if one of us cannot possibly continue his work
for ST NEWS?

It has to be stopped.

Yes, we decided that we are going to stop ST NEWS.

Now Richard's work is not the only reason behind it (but it is a
major one). My work has gotten quite busy. I am in Amsterdam most
of the time and sleep there too and there ain't no ST there in
sight. Also, I have another project that I do at home. Yes, my
desk is now occupied by my old, faithful ST and an Olivetti PC,
with Turbo C V2.0 on it so I can develop a document-retrieval
system in my 'spare' time. The reason I accepted this is that it
pays quite generously and it is a quite freaky thing to program.
It is based around files with superfast searching, indexing and
sorting. I always wanted to program something like this and doing
it in C on a DOS machine makes it extra interesting. I admit it
is quite different from the hard-core 68000 hacking on the ST but
it is something else for a change.

So my time is also very limited and we could not possible
continue doing ST NEWS the way we used to. Now instead of making
meagre issues full of bugs, without demos and with hasted,
insubstantial articles we decided to end it all along.

Now we won't disappear totally from the ST scene of course. You
encounter a Digital Insanity demo now and then and you will find
Richard's name all over the Thalion products. Also, Richard will
continue writing whenever he feels like it and has the time, and
I might just gather all articles one day and create a sort of 'ST
NEWS remembrance' issue, which will be non-official and will be
send and spread through some of our closest friends.

Speaking about friends, ST NEWS has brought quite some people to
us and I would like to mention some people that really gave us
the feeling that ST NEWS was worth doing:

The Nutty Norwegians:
Ronny (The Divine Ynnor), Torbjørn (Lord HackBear) Frøystein
(The most absurd one of them all) and Gard (Our dear little
Gard). (Some more have to be added to this list (Oses mostly),
read the Norway articles!)

The four from Chorley:
Ash, Mel, Brain and Rachel. They are surely the most enthusiastic
(and most unusual) non-Norwegian letter-writers around!

The others: (just to mention a few)

Thomas Paulsen, Daniel Böringer, David Heiland and Ken Butler.
(I just took some letters from the 'still to handle' box on my
desk, there are a lot more people I like to mention!)

And of course the following people that have been with us for a
LONG time:

Math Claessens - for the dozens of adventure solutions
Lucas van den Berg - for the great 'walkthru' stories
Cees Jansen - for the Forth Course

I also must not forget the guys from TEX (Mad Max especially)
who have contributed generously with brilliant music and
articles.

And then there are all the foreign distributors, people that
have made ST NEWS international. They have copied dozens of
issues and sent them around their country. THANKS!

(I am sure I have forgot some more people....I'm sorry!! Thank
you!!!)

So this is the last issue?

Yes, it is.

I have been doing ST NEWS for about three years now and it only
has become better and better. Judging from the reactions I get
almost every day, people out there start appreciating ST NEWS
more and more. Great friends we have made during those years and
I feel extremely bad about letting them down. But we have no
other choice. We just have to stop. No matter how many people
plead us, we just cannot continue it and it griefs me, believe it
or not.

But before I get really sentimental and seek refuge in the dark
corners of society and become an alcoholic drug addict that has
been cast out by his family, roams the street dressed in rags,
steals radios from Peugeot 205 GTI's (Richard had his car radio
stolen recently) and eventually dies in the gutter, I will stop
and tell you a little more about this issue.

The main feature is of course the Norway article. It is huge, it
is enormous and it is gigantic. So big that it has its own menu
bar. Every day is fully covered in a real-time article that is
the biggest one ever written. Over 15 people (including a cat)
have contributed to it and it is GREAT.
There are also some brilliant game reviews written by Richard
plus all the regulars. All in all over 600Kb(!!) of articles,
which makes this issue the biggest one ever. Even more Kbs of
articles than issue 4.4.

Like always, this issue has been dedicated to somebody. This
time it is not a famous writer or musician, but our dear
distributor and great friend Ronny Hatlemark. During the Norway
Quest, he turned out to be one of the greater guys in this world
and the least we could do to thank him for his hospitality and
patience is dedicating this issue to him.
You should have been there. Ronny's room was constantly occupied
by at least four people and I believe the record is 14 people
including a cat, a rabbit and some dogs (His room is
approximately 4x3 metres large). Glasses were broken and
furniture was butchered. Constant LOUD music was being played,
his computer was abused by maniacs like Gard and myself and Coke
and crisps were all over the place. Every night, this continued
'till at least 1 am, and he had to get up at 5:45 every day to
deliver newspapers. Add to this that he also got a new
girlfriend and two Dutchies were there all the time, being very
intense (it was their vacation you know), eating, drinking and
burping along. I think it must have been some of the most tiring
days of his life, (he even had to do homework at some point!!!)
but he NEVER lost his cool, he NEVER had a nervous breakdown and
kicked the whole bunch out. He kept on being a nice guy, no
matter what happened. Both Richard and myself admire him for his
patience and his friendliness.
But before Ronny's ego explodes, let me just say:
"Thanks!!"

Well, I guess the end to this last editorial has come. Fare thee
well!!