User talk:Steve Williams

Welcome!

Hello, Steve Williams, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! .Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 06:49, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

wacci

Hi Steve, I see you've been working on the wacci article. First off, you're doing a fine job on it, but it isn't really up to scratch on wikipedias policies. At the moment it reads more like an advertisment than it does an article. If you need any help, I'd be happy to lend a hand. --Pauric 23:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanx 'n' Stuff

Hi Guys, big thanx for the kind words and the offers of help - I'm certainly grateful for ANY good advice and offers of help that might be available. Just to give you all an overview of what I am trying to do - because, at the moment, I know the article looks like we used to call a "puff-piece" (or self-inflating advert) - but I am trying to write a serious entry that chronicles the fortunes of a UK user-based 8-bit CPC computer magazine that (somehow) managed to not only continue for twenty years but (amazingly) for some 14 years after Amstrad discontinued the CPC range of computers that it was based around.

WACCI - had (and still has) some serious influence. Auntie John? Well, in 1985, John Kennedy was 16 years old when he wrote his first "Auntie John's Diary" in which he answered questions from "worried-reader". The first question was "Dear Auntie John, I am very worried about the high price of the three inch discs that the Amstrad CPC computer uses. Is there an alternative?" AJ wrote back "Dear worried-reader, have you ever thought about using Chocolate Digestive biscuits [cookies]. Unlike CF2 3" discs they are only able to be formatted on one side but they are much cheaper. Remember to insert them chocolate side up ONLY because the chocolate is actually the storage medium. I don't recommend you try this experiment on your own CPC for the first time AND if you hear a sort of crunchy-crunchy squidgey noise then I recommend that you run away very, very quickly..."

Don't believe that AJ never existed? Don't believe that we ever published it? Don't think that lots of parents wrote in and complained that WACCI should never have published such an article because young people would actually stick choccy cookies in their CPC disc drives? EMail our young lad at

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnroad/html/road04092003.asp)

and ask him yourself - if you are using a mobile running Windows then probably Auntie John (Kennedy) has had a part in it. Ask him about WACCI, McVitie choccy biscuits, shopping trolleys, Green, Norn Ireland but DON'T ask him about Joolz or university security cameras in the computer labs. Definitely DO NOT ask him to tell you the "worst joke my teacher ever told me" story...

Yup AJ is one of the more visible success stories that WACCI produced but there have been many others. The whole concept of WACCI was that it was designed to be a showcase for new talent, in a new media format, who went on to greater things. In addition, and somewhat paradoxically, WACCI started attracting experienced writers (such as BBC TV producers and rock musicians) who were playing with CPC or had bought one for their offspring.

So WACCI, "The UK's Only Serious CPC Magazine" does have its own place in history and does deserve a mention in Wikipedia.

I tried to start a "WACCI" entry in Wikipedia about six months (or so) ago. It was text only - quite a lot more serious and a lot less "self-puff" - but someone "upstairs" at Wikipedia deleted all my hard work. Intially I thought "well... " nahh you don't want to hear that sort of stuff but I was deeply discombobulated. Then (last week) I see that "The Colbert Report" merits a section in Wikipedia. Well there is nothing on "Colbert" or "The Daily" that we (collectively) weren't doing some twenty years before these people ever thought of it. WACCI was primarily a CPC-based computer magazine but that was only the start of it.

For example in Issue Four we had an article entitled "The Art Of Nicking Shopping Trolleys" written by Auntie John's friend "Green" (who later went on to become the Editor of Amiga Computer User) a parody of the BBC's "Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear" in which Green rated shopping trolley's by their "nickability" (easiest by far are Tesco's - car park security virtually zero) the "coolness" of their livery (Tesco's red and white theme is cetainly a classic but for me the racy green and white of Marks and Spencer speaks volumes) their "handling" (Tesco's whhels are the smallest and give the bumpiest ride - biggest wheels and smoothest ride goes to F.W,Woolworths) and their "capacity" to hold two or more drunken students. The Final award went to the Marks And Spencer trolley [this is from memory only] (You may have to shop around for this around for this baby (and it may only be wide enough to hold two drunken mates - perhaps another small one slung underneath) but the sleek design and colours, the adequate wheels and turning abilities mean that you will be able to speedily transport your comatosed friends deep into the countryside, leave them outside the local police station or slip them gently into the local canal without them ever waking up"

So yes, I am passionate about WACCI and YES this guts of this reply probably should be included as a section in the WACCI entry itself (and so should the images "attached" scripts IMHO) but I'm not sure how to do it.

I put up a minimal amount of stuff up this second time - just in case it gets wiped again - but I found out how to import images into Wikepedia. As hard as it is for a former freelance computer journalist to admit... I don't yet know how to edit this new media and how to make the pages as sexy as they used to be... Bahhh!!!

I will, though, upload all the WACCI cover images that I've got here on the computer. They were all (good and awful) mine and since WACCI finally (and officially) died last year I am releasing them into the public domain. They are, at the very least, bloody good examples of a what is now a forgotten artform called "cut and paste."

My hope for this WACCI entry is that it will act as a beacon for others who were also involved to contribute their memories, pictures and cross refences to "add and share" their WACCI experiences.

There are several other organisations with the title - WACCI. I want this entry to establish the originality of "Walker's Amstrad Computer Club International" founded back in 1985 and the wellspring of talent that it produced.

My heavens, this diatribe should definitley be included in the entry and not be lost here in the discussion page...

So, eventually (sigh), yes I need help and thank you for your kind words. I was the Editor of WACCI for five years out of its twenty year life, from 1988 to 1993 and I seriously think it needs to be mentioned.

Okay, so I'm supposed to sign out with four tildes - I'll give it a shot - but knowing my luck you'd be better replying to me at

stevenrobertwilliams@yahoo.com

Hehehe.... let's see if it works?

69.157.33.123 09:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well I don't know what that means... EMail me if 4x~ means nothing to you either!

I obviously need as much help as I can possibly get!!

Steve.

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