Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/0022-3.564/dmg-3140/news.txt/st_news.asc

Text File | 1989-04-05 | 20KB | 372 lines

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*                        ~ THE STEN INTERVIEWS ~                         *
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     This is  a series of articles in  which  we'll be   interviewing some
of the  enthusiasts  who've contributed to the ST  scene   over the years.
We're  hoping to make it as  wide-ranging as possible but, to start  with,
we'll  be  concentrating on the  authors of  well-known  P.D and shareware
programmes and talking to the P.D libraries  who've  supported the ST from
the very beginning.

     In  the  hot seat for this issue are  Richard Karsmakers  and  Stefan
Posthuma of ST News.   For those of you who've never heard of it (shame!),
ST  News is quite simply the *best* disczine available for  the  ST.  It's
written in English,  and  first appeared in  the Netherlands in July  '86.
The  first issue was a 34K text file designed to be loaded into 1st  Word,
and  was aimed mainly at hackers and crackers.  By the time that issue  #3
appeared,  Richard and Stefan  had decided that the zine should be  'legal
and above-board' and,  gradually over the next few years,  it aquired  its
much-loved  format  of  technical  and  programming  articles,   adventure
solutions,   virus  news,  lists  of  forthcoming  software,  and  serious
applications reviews.

       Various writers came and went in it,  but the core of the zine  was
always Richard and Stefan's  particular brand of eccentricity and joie  de
vivre.   They'd tell you what heavy metal bands they were into  (hmmm...),
and  who they were in love with,  and each new issue was like  seeing  old
friends again.   At the risk of sounding sentimental, Dave and myself have
always  rather hero worshipped Richard and Stefan,  and getting in contact
with them is one of the best things that's happened to us on the ST.  STEN
and  ST News (along with Inside Info in Australia) now have  a  reciprocal
arrangement  whereby each of us is free to use any articles  or  editorial
from the other's zine.

       ST News is distributed free of charge in most  European  countries,
and  is  available  from  any of the main  P.D  libraries  in  the  United
Kingdom.


                                 ~~~~~~~~
                                 ~ DATA ~
                                 ~~~~~~~~

STEN:  How old are you?
R: I'm 24.
S: I'm 25 - a quarter of a century.


STEN:  Where do you live?
R: I live in the centre of the Netherlands, which is a city called
Utrecht. It's got a good record store ("White Noise") and a CD Rental,
and the centre is real neat. My kind of town.
S: In a flat in Oss, The Netherlands.


STEN:  What computer/s did you use before the ST?
R: Only a Commodore 64, but I say this with pride and youthful sentiments
gathering in my voice. Everything started on it, really. I still got
one, for old times' sake.
S: Everything started with a VIC-20, after which I progressed to the
Commodore 64. It was a bit like the first time - I learned everything
on the thing.


STEN:  What's your current ST set-up?
R: A MEGA ST2 expanded to 4 Meg with "AT Speed" and a 44 Mb TT harddisk
built in. I also have an external Megafile 60 harddisk, a mono monitor
and a color one (Grundig PM015 RGB, in 1987 surely the best and cheapest
color monitor). I am quite decadent, which means I also have a mouse master
and a monitor master. Oh, and I shouldn't forget my printer, which is
a Citizen Swift 9. I like this sort of questions. They give me legit
reasons to brag about all I have. I would like to round off with mentioning
my Joystick, which is WITHOUT THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT the best kind you
can get. It's 7 years old and it's been used A LOT. It's the "The Arcade"
joystick (with microswitches) by Suzo. It's got huge layers of sweat
residue on it that I should actually pry off with a concrete drill but
I haven't quite gotten round to that.
S: I've got the ST user's dream, i.e. a color-and monochrome monitor,
a MEGA ST2 (with German keyboard, just like Richard), a lovely little
mouse, a Star LQ80 multi-font printer, an external 3.5" drive, a Megafile
30 and, of course a "The Arcade" joystick. That thing got me through
"Revenge of the Mutant Camels" and "Llamatron" - it's the best you can
get.


STEN:  What do you mainly use it for?
R: For word processing and constantly upgrading and improving "The Ultimate
Virus Killer" (which is available at the ridiculously low price of a tenner
at Douglas Communications, P.O. Box 199, Stockport, Cheshire SK2 6HW, Tel.
061-456-9587). The word processing bit mainly consists of work for ST News,
University and the occasional bit of novel writing. Of course I also play
games (i.e. games by Llamasoft or the Bitmaps, or games that have to do
with "Lemmings").
S: To spill forth literary drivel to friends and ST News readers around
the world. Also the odd programming that takes place in somewhat later
hours (when I had a bit to drink).


STEN:  What other interests do you have outside of computing?
R: Music, and especially everything except MTV, country & western and reggae.
I play the odd chord on my guitar, but I mostly have to resort to only
listening or trying to play the bass lines along with archetypal hardrock. I
am quite sure the neighbours love it (or perhaps not).
Last but not least, another interest of mine is trying to keep my girlfriend
happy.
S: Music, films, novels, humans with particular habits and external
oddities that classify them as females.


STEN:  What music do you listen to?
R: My fave bands are Metallica, Queensrÿche, Yngwie Malmsteen, Jason
Becker, Joe Satriani, Fates Warning, Faith no More, Fields of the
Nephilim and Deep Purple/Rainbow, though I also like Vangelis, Rush, Iron
Maiden and Jean Michel Jarre. At the moment I'm seriously digging Paul
Gilbert's "Tribute to Jimi Hendrix", which might well become the instrumental
sensation of 1992. It's bluesy, like Hendrix. Great.
S: Metallica, Fields of the Nephilim, The Cure, Jean Michel Jarre,
Sisters of Mercy, and a lot more.


STEN:  What's your ultimate ambition?
R: To become a famous writer of novels. It's very difficult to do something
that hasn't been done before, though.
S: To be able to fall without hitting the ground.


                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        ~ THE INTERVIEW ~
                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


STEN:   Obviously,  the  first  question to be asked is how  did  you  and
Stefan  come  to start the zine in '86?   Had you seen a need for  it,  or
did it grow out of something that you were already doing?
R: In "Moving Pictures", Terry Pratchett describes a theory which gets
down to ideas seeping in and out of the universe through black holes. Maybe
starting ST News was something like that, I don't know. I wanted to get lots
of contacts in the scene, people with whom to swap software and all. Stefan
joined after a couple of months and it went nicely.


STEN:   Was  it  a new idea,  or was there anything like it on  any  other
machine?
R: It was started as something I thought was original. It just seemed a
logical thing to do, really. Someone told me later that there was already
a disk mag on the Apple II before ST News started, so the idea must have
seeped into someone else's mind as well.


STEN:  Who else was involved in the first few issues?
R: Nobody. I tried to get fellow ACC member Frank Lemmen (now ex-ACC) to
do things but that didn't happen right away.


STEN:  ST News 2.5  was the first issue where you included human  interest
snippets about your own lives - was there any reason for this?   Could  it
have been the joy of meeting the famous Willeke?   (Now there's a  leading
question...)
R: Again, it seemed logical to do. I wanted to have everybody know about it.
I am a bit of an oral exhibitionist, and it turned out to be appealing to
read as well (so people told me). Well, that's two flies in one blow, isn't
it? I never stopped with it. Willeke, indeed, was one source of loads of
inspiration. She's now married with a chap called Henk. Miranda (i.e. my
girlfriend) and myself regularly visit them, and they visit us.


STEN:  How would you describe the mix of articles in the early issues?
R: Lousy. Nobody knew nothing and nobody had anything. We had to do
articles like "Hitchhiker's Guide to the BIOS" because otherwise there
was no chance of being interesting. I personally find ST News getting
interesting around the time when non-computer-related things dropped in.
I am not only talking about human interest here, but also the odd novel
bit and the real-time articles. I think the best issue ever with regard
to variety of contents will be Volume 7 Issue 2 (the forthcoming one).


STEN:  Issue  2.1  was  the first to  have pull-down menus in a  GEM  shell
(written in GFA Basic v1.0).  Were you happy with it?
R: Reasonably. I am quite a lousy programmer so it was damn slow and was
basically just a "F.A.S.T.E.R." clone without a picture. Only when Stefan
started re-coding bits it became better. When he took over, in Volume 3
Issue 3, the user interface became damn near what it should have been all
along. Afterwards, it was just improved and optimised, and only in Volume 7
Issue 1 did he do something new again, i.e. the cascading pull-down menus.
I think we're no way close to the horniest user interface (I think of
"Maggie" here), but we're stable and user-friendly.


STEN:  It  was about  this time that demo-writing articles first began  to
appear  in the zine;  had the two of you always been in contact with  demo
writers, or was this something that came about through compiling it?
R: Stefan was a demo coder, though at that time not as good as he is now (after
all he is now a member of the Lost Boys!). He wrote the occasional article
about coding. Later I got in touch with TEX who allowed us to do the first
REAL programming series they had written, "The Wizards" (somewhere in
Volume 3). At the moment "Maggie" is more demo-oriented than we ever were,
and we're shifting to the 'literary' side of things.


STEN:  By the second volume  the zine was being distributed in 7 countries
-  were you getting much feedback from your readers?   You both must  have
been  rushed  off your feet by this stage - how did you find the  time  to
continue the zine?
R: Feedback varied from one to four or five letters a week, so that was all
pretty moderate. Only really enthusiastic people reacted, so those were
exactly the stimuli we needed. Until Volume 4 Issue 4, we both had loads
of time (though Stefan, being a working man, had less than me). Continuing
the mag was no problem of time - instead, we needed software to review
and inspiration in general.


STEN:  Many  of  ST  News'  technical articles from this  time  were  real
ground-breakers.  Did you contact the authors and suggest the articles, or
was it the other way around?
R: I really don't know which articles you're referring to. I guess, however,
that most of these ground-breakers were an idea of the authors. "The Wizards"
was published earlier in a German magazine. The Crimson Column was Lucas'
idea. As a matter of fact, the only article that jumps to mind where I
actually gave the idea to the author was in the case of Axe of Superior
writing an article on packers in Volume 6 Issue 2.


STEN:  Volume 3  had more and more personal articles and references in it.
How did your readers react to this;  did they like it, or did most of them
want only techie articles?   One of the many things that we like about  ST
News  is the personal side of it,  but how did people react to it  at  the
time?
R: People thought it was great. It urged them to write long personal letters
to us and that's what we really like reading (and replying to). In Volume 7
Issue 1 I did an ST News poll, and people turned out to like the "Did You
Know that" and human interest most - as well as, peculiarly, the whole thing
around the best drink in the universe, Plantiac.


STEN:  And then, of course, there was issue 5.1, the *Final Issue*.  I can
still  remember the 'end of an era' feeling that I had when I  read  it...
Why did you decide to stop compiling the zine, and why did you restart it?
R: We wanted to stop because Stefan was getting more absorbed in his work
outside working hours, and I had moved to work for Thalion in Germany which
absorbed all MY time. Even as we went dead, however, we both already knew
we would restart soon afterwards. We just wanted people to know that all
they may expect from now on is an occasional issue when we feel like it.
Actually, more people have reacted since we've become undead than ever
before.


STEN:  Do you have any plans for ST News in the future?
R: From the programming side of things, nothing much will happen. Perhaps
TT compatibility or something. Our forthcoming issue will also be able
to display a maximum of one picture per text file. From the writing side
of things, we have a lot lined up. We want to concentrate a lot more on
the non-computer side of things, even though we will still do quite a lot
of reviews and tricks articles.
We will go on until the ST has died and its users begin to lose enthusiasm.
That ought to take another lustrum at the least.


STEN:  One  thing  that  you've  mentioned  in  the  zine  is  about  your
international distributors drying up - do you think this is symptomatic of
a decline in the popularity of the ST, or is it just that you're hitting a
run of bad luck there?
R: Many people like things initially but lose interest later on. That's
probably when our distributors dried up - when they felt it wasn't
interesting any more or when they just wanted the fun instead of the
bit of obligation. I don't really care. People can always write to us
when they want issues, provided they include return postage in the form
of International Reply Coupons.


STEN:  We  know that after you finished your studies you went to work  for
Thalion  in Germany,  but what are Stefan  and yourself doing these  days?
Are you enjoying it?
R: Actually I quit my Biology studies when I worked for Thalion. Only after
Thalion did I start studying English at University, last September, which
I like a hell of a lot. I still haven't got any degrees, and I should remain
degree-less at least until 1995.
Stefan is, just like he always seems to have been, a computer programmer
at a company called SPCC in Oss. He works with fancy workstations with
loads of colours and fast processors, but he also has to do stuff on Unix
machines which is probably the less interesting side of his work.


STEN:  How's the  German ST scene these days?   The English experience has
been that fewer and fewer serious programmes are appearing for the ST, and
those that are are coming from Germany,  and even France,  so we're *very*
interested in how things are going there.
R: Serious programs are quite fashionable in Germany. They are all GEM-
compatible and work on TT and whatnot. I heard GfA closed down, which is
a very bad thing to have happened. The Amiga is gaining in the field of
games, though. In Holland it's not much better. Actually, the only decent
thing to come from Holland, if I may say so, is ST News.


STEN:  We  don't hear much in England about the ST scene in countries like
Spain, Italy, Scandanavia, etc. Is the ST a fringe machine there, or is it
thriving?
R: I am no authority on those countries, but I guess 'fringe machine' comes
close. The ST users that exist, however, are worth 1000 Amiga owners each!
It's a shame that software manufacturers and Atari themselves don't see this.


STEN:  In what ways has the ST scene changed since '86?  Do you think that
there's less enthusiasm around these days?
R: It has become less abundant, most notably in the games department.
Enthusiasm, peculiarly enough, has only grown. In the last year or two
I got to know some people who are simply nearly dying from over-enthusiasm
and that may eventually keep the ST interesting for quite a couple of
years to come.


STEN:   What  do you think of the  current P.D and  shareware  scene?   In
England  it  seems to have lost some of its early idealism,  and  to  have
become  more  commercial.   How do you think it compares  with  the  early
days?
R: I seldom use PD/shareware software. Of course I read other disk magazines
and I use some excellent German and US tools ("Formdoit", "Superboot",
"Templemon"). I register to all shareware I use, which is a thing everybody
should do as some shareware stuff is the best you can get. I would like
to mention separately the Llamasoft shareware games which are the best
things to happen to computers in aeons! People who do not register those
are tasteless criminals. I would even register for an initiative like that
if the games sucked, but the good thing is that they are excellent!
The PD scene seems to have gone commercial a LOT in Britian. Every second
ST users seems to run a PD library, and it's the same in Germany. The
bad thing is that they try to get their catalogues as big as possible,
totally failing to filter out all the garbage that gives PD a bad name.


STEN:  In  what  ways would you like to see the ST and  personal  computer
scene develop?   I know that you've said that your ideal computer would be
a  Next,  but do you really think this is the way forward?   Do you  think
that  Atari  have finally blown it and will be out of the running  in  the
future?  (Hmm, a lot of questions there...)
R: In my dreams, all Intel-based MS-DOS machines disappear. Although the
486 mega-VGA thingies are affordable and great, what it gets down to is
architecture of the early eighties. The NeXT IS a way forward. If
Intel would go broke and Steve Jobs would get a basic NeXT system out
for under 1000 quid on the same day, I would celebrate that day into
eternity. Atari has not blown it, although they could do better in the
marketing department. Maybe the "Jaguar" and "Falcon" will revive things.
They already have the Lynx and the ST/TT, which are excellent. It's a
shame that IBM and, in the games field, Sega and Nintendo, have loads
more dosh.


STEN:  Are you  planning to continue with your virus killer?   I know that
you  had  a  bad experience with your English  distributor  of  the  Virus
Destruction Utility, but will this affect any future plans for it?
R: Yes, most certainly. The bad experience, I want to add, was basically
an 1800 pound royalty check not being paid which came down hard. Now
I've got a decent distributor again and the program has never increased
in quality as much as it has the last half year. I will support it at
least as long as I will do ST News. As a matter of fact, I'm close to
rounding off negotiations about an "Ultimate Virus Killer Book" (spook!).


STEN:   We  can't think of any more questions here,  so it's time to  wrap
this  up.   We'd like to thank yourself and Stefan  for all  the  pleasure
and  inspiration that you've given us through ST News,  and hope that  all
your  future plans develop in *exactly* the ways that you'd want them  to.
All the best, and thanks for sparing the time for this interview.



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