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Paul Smith's 2003 columns for Indie Magazine. January 2003. Paul Smith Minority Report Even though I’m a middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon with the usual number of working limbs, I’m a member of a minority in the UK. I’m male, making up less than 50% of the population. As a part of a very significant minority with money to spend, I don’t feel disenfranchised, but there are smaller groups out there, equally cashed-up and ready to blow their dough, who don’t get much of a look-in. I think the ECTS is back at Olympia this year, but wherever it ends up, no doubt it’ll still be resplendent with stands chock-full of big boys toys and semi-naked members of a majority hanging about the place, looking pretty. Pretty cheesed off by day three. In contrast, I was at Olympia in November for a different show, where the toys were for big girls and the shapely distractions were of a very different league- Semi-naked had lost its Semi. For those of you not familiar with Erotica, it’s billed as The World’s Biggest Erotic Festival and has stands filled with fetish-wear rather than software and BDSM furniture instead of the other sort of Play Station. In this alternative-lifestyle environment where retro-urban-gorilla street fashion fans met cyber-gothic pierced Ubër-freaks, I’m not sure who was the most surprised to bump into someone I knew; The chap from Pinnacle, me, or the young lady I was accompanying around the show on the end of a lead. It’s interesting that a market-leading firm such as Pinnacle should be at a ‘niche’ event like Erotica. As realists, they’ve accepted camcorders get used for more than births, Christmas parties and marriages. They also get used to record the hard work people have to put in before you can have a birth or a birthday to celebrate. Seemingly quiet suburban couples also want to edit footage of their orgies down to a manageable two hours. If a business like Pinnacle, which has a major presence in every High Street in the country has embraced a minority, that of the BDSM/fetish/erotic-movie making world, then shouldn’t your firm have equally open eyes? There’s a market out there for erotic software, we know, but what about a discrete web design service for people who work within the sex industry? Just don’t ask how they’re paying… And it’s not only leather clad Dominatrixs’ (Domanatrixi?) who make use of IT products. The Pink Pound is a term that’s come into use in the last couple of years to acknowledge the Gay community as a demographic group, and they can’t all have iMacs. Microsoft advertise in Bizarre, a magazine called ‘…an affront to civilisation’ by a government MP. Join them in standing out from the crowd and saying, “We don’t care if you’re a transgendered bisexual extravert with a penchant for skin-tight latex and horse crops, when you’re looking for a personal (services) computer, we want your business!” Although, for your marketing, you may want to work on the wording a little. Paul Smith is proud to say he has nothing against deviants (he’s even been ‘into’ independent computer retail) and welcomes job offers of legal work to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk. 491 words on the dark world I’ve immersed myself in, now that I have the time Dale. It’s good to have a hobby, isn't it? Regards, Paul Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. February 2003. Paul Smith The Oracle Speaks In a slightly less confessional column than last months, I’d like to draw your attention to this newfangled thing they’re calling the Super-Wide Inter-World High-Information Web-Net-Way. I’m not convinced it’ll ever be as popular as Ceefax, as the addresses you need to type in are a bit trickier to remember than ‘606’, but I think we should give it a fair chance before dismissing it as a gimmick. A while ago I wrote that I thought a ‘Web Site in a Box’ product would be a good idea, and low-and-behold, what did I see in WH Smith yesterday? It might be rather dully packaged, but this product is attractively priced at sub-£20 and includes an assortment of simple web design software tools, a clear handbook on how to use them to best effect, plus a so-called free URL and inclusive site hosting. I’ve not had a chance to inspect the software or magnify the small print, but you have to admit even if the software is average and the terms ’n’ conditions harsh, as a concept, it’s a winner. Most individuals, let-alone businesses, would be prepared to spend a bit/lot more than £20 for a web site, and most of these people are poking about in the Yellow Pages for inspiration at the moment. You don’t need to look at their Jags to know there’s money being made in this area by people who’re not even old enough to take their driving test yet, so what would the harm be in adding this service to your shops portfolio? A day-release for your most propeller-headed employee to a local college for a few months and minimal expense should produce a ‘net-savvy code-monkey who knows their Java from their JavaScript (oh yes, they’re quite different) and their Mouse-Overs from their Drop-Down-Menus. Once up to speed, you could offer a budget off-the-peg service, based on a small selection of basic 5-page web site templates, or a more expensive bespoke product to be built from scratch to the customer’s exact requirements. URL purchase and hosting isn’t the complicated affair it once was - I used the agro-free UK-based www.getdotted.com for my personal site. Of course many ISP’s give free space to subscribers but keep an eye on size and bandwidth restrictions or charges if you go this route - and there’s always repeat business to be had doing updates. Hopefully fresh business will also follow ‘this site created by Blah-Blah Ltd.’ links back to your own site, and it’d be a doddle to add Web Design to your existing newspaper advertising or other marketing materials. Please give it a go. I live to be proved right. Returning to Ceefax for a moment, like many youngsters from the remote Shetland isle I grew up on, I never had the opportunity to go to a proper school. Instead, I learnt to write by reading Ceefax pages. Sadly, we lived in a po@r re[eption ae£a, and I tHink my Eng(ish m#y h_ve $uffer/d as a rE:u1t. Paul Smith welcomes any and all I.T. job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk. 499 Web-Wise Words Dale. I hope they’re good for you. I’ll catch up on what’s new in the world of components for next months offering. Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. March 2003. Paul Smith Component cowboy Howdy (Business) Partners. This month I’d like to start with a roundup of PC build bits*. First off 8x AGP cards are now available, offering gamers the ultimate in polished pixel performance. Another recent innovation is Serial-ATA hard drives. Many boards have supported these for months, but at last the drives themselves are shipping. Also look out for 10k RPM IDE drives from WD. Essentially SCSI drives with a S-ATA interface, they’re available in SCSI capacities (36/73/etc.Gb) at about 70% of the SCSI price and they carry the same 5 year warrantee. On the subject of drive warrantees, even though IBM HDDs are no more, the Hitachi brand that took them over still features a full three years. Post-Christmas stock dumping has seen 48x24x48 speed CDRWs falling as low as £26 for an LG drive, which makes you speculate why anyone buys CD-ROM drives. A Toshiba DVD-R drive will set you back less than £130 and should be sub £100 by the end of the summer. At that price it’s an option you should be listing! The recent price drop on Intel CPUs sounds the death knell for 400Mhz FSB boards and chips, with the smart money moving up to the 533Mhz models. Advice spot. Given that visitors to your shop are dressed of the bracing weather outside, don’t over-heat your sales area. In a recent visit to a local indie I was driven back outside in moments by the hot, dry, airless atmosphere. While I usually like a warm welcome, I’m not a cacti. Never forgot a comfortable customer is a spending customer. Three wheels on my wagon. Before I abandoned myself to the rocky prairie of I.T, I worked in auto-parts retail. There are a lot of parallels between this industry and our own. The High Street is dominated by one name - in this case Halfords - and there’s a very well established network of independents, from the grotty tumbleweedy flea-blown to civilised smultiples. Now, these shops are facing a problem that also reflects on the IT business. As cars have become more complex, and users less enthusiastic about getting their hands dirty, the demand for service components has fallen. Add the fact that very few new cars come without a decent stereo or a beverage holder, and you can see why these shops are having to focus on the more outlandish after-market goodies, like Simpsons air fresheners, bucket seats, flashy alloys and those pointlessly illuminated windscreen washer jets. In the same way, the more systems that are sold with the add-on of a decent sized monitor, a printer, a scanner and a suite of business software, the less opportunities there are to sell these items at a later date. The thing to take from this is that you should make every effort to sell peripherals at the system-flogging stage, and be thankful you’ve not got a dozen dusty beaded-seat-covers out the back. *Prices correct as of 17/02/03 from a major UK distie. Thanks to Dan Reeves for his help. Paul ‘saddle-sore’ Smith (& Wesson) still seeks employment Nirvana. Please e-mail him at info@snapsandbytes.co.uk with your succulent offers. 501 words of wilderness wisdom Dale. Yeehaa! Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. April 2003. Paul Smith What's in a name? ‘Marathon’ invoked images of energy and endurance, whereas Snickers just sounds like an overly politically correct update of ‘Sniggers’. Heaven knows what the makers of Jif were thinking when someone suggested Cif might be a better brand, and I thought Veet is what Germans call feet. Thankfully some name changes make a bit more sense. Just ask Sellafield/Windscale. For another example, Roxio, the makers of Easy CD Creator, have leapt on this tour bus (formerly known as bandwagon) and have released their latest version (6) under the name of Easy CD & DVD Creator. Clearly, they have watched the sales figures of DVD+RW drives climbing like a builders estimate through an unfinished roof and have refined their product to reflect this trend. I'm never happier than when I've a new toy to play with, so I was excited by the new generation of tapeless video cameras that are now appearing. I'm not talking about those that use diddy DVDs, I mean the memory card type. With broadband exploding out of holes in the ground up and down the country, the demand for web sites that take advantage of these fatter data pipes is only going to expand. These video cameras are basically digital cameras where the features have been shoved towards the video clip and away from stills. They do away with things like a flash and multi-point focusing straight away, and add a microphone. Like jogless MP3 players, the solid-state nature of the recording method means that this is one video camera that would survive a roller-coaster ride or a white water rafting weekend. Take the new Mustek DV2000. A mere 68mm (less than 3" for the Imperialists amongst you) tall pocket-sized unit and yet it can record up to 2 hours of video onto a 512Mb SD/MMC media stick. It even has a 1.5" (Metricians, work this out for yourselves) TFT screen that folds against its side in a very camcorderesque way. It's a web-cam too, of course, via its supplied USB lead and the 1.3Mp CCD even means it should take worthwhile stills - up to 55 with the supplied 16Mb card. A self-timer, 2x digital zoom and 2.1Mp-interpolated mode completes a seriously handy package, and all to retail under £95. Interestingly many of these cameras have a capture size of 320 x 240 pixels, which equates very neatly with the 240 lines VHS format videotape stores its data on. I'm not saying they’re in anyway a tool to video material intended for the TV (although the Mustek does ship with TV leads) but they are perfect for making web-ready video clips. You can even edit the little AVI files it produces with any camcorder editing software from the likes of Pinnacle, to add titles, scene transitions and other effects. Who knows, you could be the next Roman Polanski. Just don't get caught. All trademarks are acknowledged as being the property of their respective owners, no matter how silly they sound. Paul Smith still seeks employment Nirvana. Please e-mail him at info@snapsandbytes.co.uk with your offers. 494 moving words Dale. Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. May 2003. Paul Smith Scrapheap Challenge The day I left school was a momentous one for me. Like others, I had pent up feelings of escape and a desire to meet a future beyond the gates. My joy was enhanced by winning the Christopher Trophy for Outstanding Academic Achievement, which is awarded yearly to the pupil who's scored the best results in their exams. I made the double when I also got the Dennis Trophy for Public Speaking. An award for talking and I went into telesales? Who’d have thought it? Looking back on those 'best days', it’s hard to believe I'm on the employment scrapheap, past my prime at 31. The cause of my woe is a job I applied for a couple of months ago when I saw an advert by one of my previous employers competitors. I'll not name them, as they might yet come crawling back to me on their bellies. Suffice to say it's a distributor you probably know. They wanted someone to do sales. I said to myself, "I can do sales". Their advert stated 'no sales experience necessary', and here I was, not just a veteran salesman, but also someone with many years of experience in the very independent PC retail marketplace they were trying to sell into! What a golden opportunity, for me as well as them. I sent them a polished CV and a covering letter that outlined my history and knowledge of their products, customers...etc. A couple of weeks later I e-mailed them to check that they'd received them, but was told they hadn't. So found my best paper and sent another. And then I waited. And waited some more. I sent another e-mail asking if the second letter had reached them, and if the position had already been filled. That was over a month ago. I'm still waiting for a response. It’s very disparaging. I can't imagine a better-equipped candidate for the job they advertised, and I don't even get a: 'Sadly we're unable to offer you an interview at this stage. Thanks for your interest in C- Oops, almost gave it away then - and we wish you good luck with your job search in the future'. Being unemployed is a nasty business at the best of times, and not having your efforts to find a job acknowledged is highly de-motivational. I had to cheer myself up by buying a Jaguar and flying to Milan, but that's another story. My challenge to you is this: If you advertise a position, have the common decency to reply to everyone who makes the effort to contact you about it. After all, you can better afford the stamp than the person writing to you can. What of my future? I'm going back to school. I'm starting an advanced course in web design in September, two evenings a week. An evening course because I'm an optimist. Paul Smith still seeks employment Nirvana. Please e-mail him at info@snapsandbytes.co.uk with your offers. 478 cross words Dale. I hope they leave you moved. Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. June 2003. Paul Smith Happy Days If you joined me last month, you’d have read a depressing column in which I bemoaned my lot as an unemployed I.T. guru. Shortly after I submitted it I discovered Paul Smith is an anagram of hit a slump, so I guess I should have seen it coming. This month I’m a far chirpier chappy, having landed my first professional web design job. I met a man while out walking in the woods (steady now) and got chatting about the art that’s dotted about in this particular corner of the Chiltern Hills. I mentioned I was doing a personal page on the sculptures and his ears visibly pricked up. It turned out he helps run the Chiltern Sculpture Trust (I know, I had no idea I moved in such cultured circles either) and within days he’d commissioned me to produce a site for them, cataloguing their past, present, temporary and permanent sculptures. You’ll find the digital fruits of my HTML loom at www.ChilternSculptureTrail.co.uk. Now I can afford to buy food again, I’ve the strength to turn my attention to the world of PC components. My spies tell me that Maxtor 30Gb 7.2krpm ATA-133 drives are changing hands for around £32, with four-times-larger 120Gb versions only twice the price. Speaking as someone who filled his 40Gb Samsung up in 4 months, I’d say the bigger drive is the one to look at. Speaking of bigger things, I’ve spent this week accepting every exclusive opportunity sent to me by e-mail, in a Dave Gorman style. I now have a sparkling clean septic tank as well as mains sewerage, eight university diplomas and a Russian bride called Olga, who fights with Svetlana, my other Russian bride. I’ve also got several part-time jobs that’ll make me a million working from home, a metric tonne of Viagra in the back bedroom, over a billion dollars worth of life insurance and a nine-foot long cock. Lucky me. Wish list: I’d like to see a Big Brother (as in the telly series, not Orwell’s powerful diatribe on the dehumanising nature of technocratic society. Damn, this culture thing is catching) add-on for the Sims. I’d like Nintendo to address their release schedule and get some software out that’ll keep GameCube on shops shelves, in the sense that you’ll want to stock it, rather than it not selling. Why can’t there be a proper daytime television programme about computers, where silver surfers can learn not to delete their system files because they look untidy and bored housewives can be seduced by the promise of Internet grocery shopping? I want Sony to produce a new iMac style integrated LCD monitor/PC, a real carbon-fibre GameBoy SP, and Spamers shot please. Now, for a man whose name is an anagram of a hump slit (now I know why people always call me a- leave it) that’s not too much to ask, is it? Paul Smith still seeks employment Nirvana. Please e-mail him at info@snapsandbytes.co.uk with your offers. 481 joyous words Dale. Be lucky. Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. July 2003. Paul Smith Selling fresh air Summer is here again, so which outdoors activity do you think is amongst the fastest growing sports in the UK? Whatever you're thinking, I bet it's not 'Geocaching'. This relatively new pastime sends folks, friends and families into the countryside on high-tech treasure hunts. Players use a GPS handset, PDA with plug-in gizmo or GPS-enabled mobile phone and a dozen satellites in Earth orbit to get within a few metres of the well-hidden prize. This is usually an ice cream tub stuffed with trinkets of one sort or another placed in undergrowth, but some simply link to another cache with a cryptic clue or more co-ordinates. Once in the right area, players have to find the treasure and make a note in the cache logbook of the date, their name, what they've taken and what they've left in return. They might even take a group photo with a single-use camera the collection might contain. Some cached items are called 'Travel Bugs' which get their location logged as they travel from site to site, around the country or even internationally. It's all very friendly and sociable, with lots of very active communities of 'cachers sharing tips and tales on the web. What a great thing in this day and age; a game that relies on trust and honesty. It reminds me of the tables of home produce with a tin to leave money in which might still appear in the village I grew up in. I digress. I do that if you let me. Where do you think people get the co-ordinates to search? The Internet of course! The most popular site is www.GeoCaching.com, where you can type in your postcode to discover the whereabouts of the nearest 'troves' to you. I learned of one less than a mile from my front door and using a hint from the site -as I don't have GPS equipment- I was able to claim a Men In Black™ kids toy deneuralizer (bizarrely it's just what I've always wanted) in exchange for two smelly candles, a rubbery HP key-ring and a helpful 'Things to do in Buckinghamshire' leaflet. It's nice to combine a good leg stretch with a competitive aim without having to resort to Golf. Yet the story of Geocaching doesn't end there. There's caching for the hardcore elite: Night-caching. Multi-caching. Speed-caching probably. Basic GPS handsets retail from as little as £99 and can naturally be used for a lot more than just Geocaching by walkers, cyclists or sailors. All of whom tend to use the 'net for routes and weather reports too. If you dabble or have dabbled in the murky world of mobile phones or other hand held toys, then perhaps you should think about promoting this new hobby by selling GPS equipment too. Surely, anything that gets people using their computer and then sends them out to do something healthy in the real world has to be a good thing. Paul Smith still seeks employment Nirvana. Please e-mail him at info@snapsandbytes.co.uk with your offers. 489 lung-filling, cobweb-blowing words Dale. Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. August 2003. Paul Smith I, Blagmeister They say there's no such thing as a free lunch. Well, as anyone who's ever faked a heart attack in Pizza Hut will tell you, they're wrong. I regard myself as something of an expert in the ancient art of the Blag. Be it a free Helicopter ride (June 03) or entrance to National Trust property (I went over the Ha-Ha in July) I like to think I can avoid having to reach into my pockets. Some people would call me tight. Many people have. I prefer to see myself as Alvin Hall's wet dream: someone who doesn't spend money on such unnecessary expenses as parking. This month's dramatic story of a drive-by blagging attempt involves the good people of Belkin, whose product range I'm sure you're familiar with. From a humble keyboard adaptor or USB hub to wireless LAN access points and UPS gear, there's not much in the world of I.T. connectivity that they don't do. I had a problem that only they(ish) could help me with. I'll explain: The other day I needed to use my laptop, in the middle of a wood, for four hours, without access to a generator. It's quicker and easier if I don't tell you why. The battery lasts about 90 minutes, and I can't afford two more, so it seemed I was up that creek we're all so familiar with. And I don't mean Jonathan. I poked about on the 'net for an answer and lo, I found what I was looking for on the site of a well-known retailer whose name is an anagram of WRC PLOD. They sell a product called AC Anywhere that plugs into a 12v cigar lighter (or an adaptor attached to a car battery in the middle of a wood) and gives you a standard 3-pin 240v output. You can draw 300 watts / 1.25 amps continuously, which is enough to run a telly, DVD player or just about anything which doesn't need to heat up to work. What a handy bit of kit! Recharge your camcorder battery while driving or take a proper sized telly and your PlayStation2 camping. Ooh, hello stereotypical sailor. Speaking of seamen, these are also good for boats fitted with 12-volt circuits. Obviously you can buy 12v TVs etc. but why go to the expense of owning such infrequently used items when this single adaptor lets you use your existing 240v equipment in the same environment? Buying one wouldn't be being tight; it'd be an astute financial decision. Personally, after an exchange of e-mails with Belkin I managed to blag mine, but I still maintain that at a mere £40-60 no home should be without one. It's a gadget that should be on your shelves! Sell! Sell! Sell! Finally, I've just learnt a way of making money from being such a tight-arse. I push coal up there and it comes out as diamonds. Paul Smith is still 'resting'. Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please. 483 scrimping, penny-pinching, frugal, thrifty words Dale. That'll be £30 please :-) Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. September 2003. Paul Smith Bug-gered to death I've said it before and I'll say it again, PCs are crap. By the time mine's finished booting I could have jumped in my Jag and been two miles down the road, still accelerating hard. My fridge won't be obsolete in another six months and I've never needed to defrag my lawnmower. Ever. I have a toasted sandwich maker that's more attractive to look at, a stereo that sounds better and a Hoover that makes a less annoying whirring noise. Like I say, utter crap. Recently, the intrinsic crapness of home computers has been thrown into sharp relief by virus attacks. I've checked, and my telly has never been rendered unusable because a deep-south gimp whose sister is also his mother has seen fit to organise ones and noughts into a sequence that upsets it. Instead, I have to rely on Channel 5 to make it unwatchable. Since 9-11, terrorism has become of passing interest to Americans, and I reckon the time has come for the instigators of these sorts of attacks to be punished as terrorists too. Their actions disrupt the transmission of vital information (as well as porn) worldwide and thus the global economy suffers as surly as if they'd left a suspicious package next to that nice Welshman, Dow Jones. It might just make them think twice before hitting the SEND button if they knew that it could result in being kept in a cage on Cuba, in an unflattering orange jumpsuit. Held for months without charge, or access to a computer and their sister/mother. Now, I'm quite lucky. I use/suffer from AOL so don't get beaten up by Outlook-specific e-mail viruses, but I have plenty of friends who've been on the receiving end of all sorts of Internet-borne nasties, and they're all even crosser about it than me! Anti-virus software is only as good as your last update, and even the manufactures can't respond fast enough to counter major threats. An aggressive virus could be on half the world's computers in a matter of hours, and I believe it's only a question of time before such an outbreak causes very serious damage. There are a lot of hospitals, airports and nuclear missile silos out there which rely on computers to ensure people continue sucking air in and blowing it out again. It seems likely that people have already died due to the effects of electronic viruses and I think it's inevitable that more, perhaps many more, will in the future. It isn't Football. It's not as serious as that, but it is now a matter of live and death. I can only hope that a digitally confused Boeing never mistakes my house for Heathrow. That's something else that's crap about PCs: I can turn my landing lights out any time I want to without getting a stern telling off when I switch them on again. Paul Smith is still 'resting'. Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please. 479 words Dale. I hope they get to you ok and haven't been corrupted by this BOLLOCK 'rude word' virus that's ARSING been attacking Word FELTCHING documents. Cheers TWAT Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. October 2003. Paul Smith Going back the hard way The clocks are going back this month, which means we can all hang up our shorts and pop away the flip-flops for another six months. For me the end of summer means dragging my camcorder out from under the bed and trying to do something with the footage I've shot of this year's holidays and other sunny seasonal shenanigans. I use Roxio (formerly MGI) Videowave5, which impresses with a very wide range of options including the ability to author DVDs, but naturally other packages are available. It's only operating systems and Internet browsers where there's no real choice. You can capture video from any digital (IEEE 1394 card required) or analogue (video capture or TV tuner card required) source and edit to your hearts content. You can also use movies shot with a digital camera. My new Fuji s5000 (my first eBay purchase) takes 30fps 320x240 AVI videos with sound, or it will do when it eventually turns up from Hong Kong. There are all the text/transition/image effects you could ask from the software and the resulting DV quality video can be put onto tape, output as a compressed file for Internet use or used to make a VCD (up to 80 minutes of VHS-like quality video on a 700Mb CD which will play on most home DVD players) or an actual DVD. Obviously DVD burners are now cheap enough for people who aren't planning to recap their capital expenditure through piracy to buy them. It's nice when someone invests in technology without it actually being an investment. Away from product placement, I'd like to talk about my favourite subject: Me. That is I'd like to talk about me, but I'm not allowed to. Instead, I'll tell you about the woman I saw trying to get into a local PC store the other day. Only a 5" step stood between her and computer shopping nirvana, but her wheelchair leaned dangerously over every time she tried to scale her personal Everest. I helped her in, of course, but I'd have thought the shop owner should be looking at ease-of-access for the less able into his or her store. Are your doors wide and your doorsteps small? I think your local council would be able to help if a bit of a ramp was in order. They have a public image to think about, almost as much as you do. Local press also seem to be enthusiastic supporters and reporters of efforts to make life easier for Stephen Hawking wannabes. Perhaps it's time to push the joystick on your PR machine forward and milk your altruistic efforts to make the wheeled welcome. With public liability insurance going the way it is, the last thing you want is the sound of a wheelchair going over backwards on your doorstep, followed by the noise of a mobile being dialled with the number for Claims Direct®. Paul Smith is still 'resting'. Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please. 481 words Dale. Don't read it, download it! Click here to return to this pages index bit. View my Indie archive columns from: 1999 : 2000 : 2001 : 2002

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