Editors Corner
Aaron Timbrells own bit of the magazine.
So with volume 1 safely nailed up in its box we move on to volume 2. We have a number of changes intended for this year, including more regular columns. New authors keep approaching us at quite a rate of knots, indeed over the last week three different people have rung up asking if they can write for RISC World. One of these is defecting from Acorn User, and judging by our subscription figures he isn't the only one. And when I say our subscription figures are climbing I don't mean that we have pinned them higher up on the noticeboard!
Editing RISC World is really quite a lot of fun, except when articles don't turn up on time. Which in the main is my fault, at last I am getting the hang of magazine publishing deadlines. I think I am also getting the hang of what our readers want to see, but if I am not then please do let me know. We now get many times the feedback we got when I took over, but more is always welcome.
One thing that readers have complained about was the killing off of the puzzle. Indeed we had more complaints than we had submissions when the puzzle was running (7 entries and 10 complaints). Which must mean that people were filling it in but not sending it off. So if you don't respond we don't know. So this month we have a competition page, where you can win some great new software. I suggest that crossword addicts head over to CrossWord of the day for their regular word solving fun.
Editors Rant of the month
This month I have been mostly swearing at people. So which people have I been swearing at? Well let me explain. As some of you may know not only do I edit RISC World and run iSV Products, I also run a web design company called 3QD. We do work for a few local companies. One of our larger customers is an on-line estate agency. The people behind the company know what they are doing, I know what I am doing, but the people who host the site haven't got a clue. Unfortunately the owners of the company had already registered the domain name with a hosting company and paid up front for a year before we got involved.
The site itself is quite complex, although not all that complicated. However to make things work nicely we needed to install a couple of commercial dlls (Dynamicaly Linked Libararies) on the NT Server. These bits of code are not some quick lash up but are full commercial products which the customer would pay for. However the system admin team at the hosting company have told us that they will not support any server running any software other than their own. Well, ok, fine, so how do we do what we want to do? Well...er....you can't. Well why not? The customer made it clear what they wanted when they arranged the hosting, they made it clear to me what the site was supposed to do, although they do have a habit of changing their minds. Now we are stuck in the middle and I am getting very very annoyed, as is the customer. So I am sitting here waiting for a call from the hosting company which have promised to call me back with a solution to the current problem. Which interestingly enough is that the software they do supply and support ..er...doesn't work.
If you are going to get a site hosted I suggest you don't use a company called NetBenefit, at least not if you want me to design it.
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that when you want to print an article on your printer it will have the light yellow background. However most web browsers allow you to turn off the background images when printing. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISC World pages then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell