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A letter I received from The Designers Republic after creating a font inspired by their work. They chose to order a cease and desist, rather than fostering creativity. > Matt Sephton created an original font called Block Out–a techno font that can still be found here. He had used Fontographer. It was, as he put it, influenced by the tDR font in the Wipeout series of games. He placed a free truetype font on his web site, but was confronted with a threatening letter from tDR and was forced to take down the free .ttf font from his site. They claimed their font 6x6 (even though Matt’s is based on a 7x7 grid) was what he was trying to sell. Another instance of corporate bullying. —Luc Devroye, from luc.devroye.org/fonts-72415.html My font was drawn completely from scratch using Fontographer 4.1, so I find it perplexing that glyphs I had created straight from my own imagination were the same as those in the apparently identical font. I offered my font as a free download on my website, under the concept of Shareware which encouraged others to also share the font for free, and if anybody felt like sending a donation they could do. As you might expect, this is a bit of a hippy thing to do and nobody ever donated anything! And I never did hear from the Head of the Department of Computer Science. > An archived copy of the font can be found on this CD-ROM from 2007.

After moving to Windows PC from Atari ST I discovered Visual Basic and my mind was blown by the possibilities of laying out a graphical user interface using the mouse and adding code to make it do stuff. I jumped in and made a whole bunch of Windows software, including some world-first features like hot-corners to invoke the screen saver and being able to quickly select favourite folders whilst in the file selector of any application. I also made fun stuff like screensavers and videogames, as well as more utilitarian software “apps”. In addition, I played around with a really cool and very fast interpreted language called Euphoria!—whose claim to fame was that it had a reference-counting garbage collector—and I’m surprised to read that it is still around over 30 years later! Archived web page: gingerbeardman.com/archive/tektonix/ - Tektonix Menu 2 — DOS launcher, 1995 - Light! — trailing-beam screen saver, 1996 - MsgBoxer — Visual Basic MsgBox code generator, 1996 - Messages — notes for other users of the same PC, 1996 - Ghost — hide and show windows, 1996 - Day — alarms and reminders, 1996 - Stars! — starfield screen saver, 1997 - WINotes — sticky desktop notes, 1998 - Wobble! — jelly screen saver, 1998 - SaveAble! — hot corners for the screen saver, 1998 - Quick Paths — favourite folders in any file selector, 1998

I’m a big fan of the 1981 arcade game QIX. Back in 2003 tracked down the author of the game, Randy Pfeiffer, who had moved on from the video game industry to run his own business creating CAD software for model railway enthusiasts. I asked him some questions about the game and he was gracious enough to answer, albeit a little puzzled why anybody would want to know! I’ll outline a few facts here: - The game is credited to the programmer, Randy, and his wife, Sandy - Randy created the bad-guy, or QIX movement as a simple programming demo - Sandy suggested making a game out of it, “sort of like video-game etch-a-sketch” - Their eureka moment came in the jacuzzi with a bottle of vintage champagne - Being a pretty successful silicon valley programmer, he did so for Taito America - QIX was one of only a few games made by the US division of Taito - The game was named after his car licence/number plate at the time: “JUS4QIX”, which was pronounced “Just For Kicks” In all the time since the game was made in 1981, he said to me that I was the first person outside of Taito to ever contact him about the game. The first person in over 20 years!? This was a shock to me, but perhaps I’m living in a dream world thinking such a classic video game should get more attention? Sometimes the game is more famous than the creator, Tetris being the best example of that. After finding out this information I added it in various places, such as in the MAME notes for the game. This interview is the original source of “JUS4QIX” and the other facts about QIX.

I just had my tonsils removed and whilst recovering at home I decided to try to figure out how I could use larger CF cards in my Becker Traffic Pro 7949 car audio and navigation system, a close relative to the Becker Cascade. The unit came with maps on a 2GB card which is barely big enough for the maps, leaving not much room for MP3 files. Later map distributions increased the size of the card to 4GB as the map quality increased, but still not much room remaining for music. ## Let’s go bigger I bought a new CF card of the same type (SanDisk), opting for a SanDisk Ultra 8GB, and copied the files and volume name over. It didn’t work. Next, I cloned the smaller card onto the larger card and that worked! Then I expanded the size of the partition and it stopped working. What’s going on? ## Partition Magic At the time I had a ThinkPad laptop with a built in CF reader. This allowed me to look at the card contents at a device/block level rather than the filesystem level. I noticed that there was the usual space after the main partition, and low and behold what did I see at the start of that “unused” space? Some magic text! HARMANBECKER BECKER V4 I even figured out the magic text for Ferrari branded units with the assistance of a helpful owner. HARMANBECKER FERRARI V4 The version number would be increased in step with any updates to the system software. By partitioning a SanDisk card and giving it the same file contents, volume name, and this magic text made the upgrade work. For a while I sold these modified cards on eBay for a nice little markup and it kept me in video games for a while. Good times!

I’ve recently come back to this game in an attempt to complete it 100%, picking up my 10 year old save game. It’s a great game, though the sensitivity of the controls can be unforgiving at times. But it’s definitely worth persevering with. Think of it like a modern day Stunt Car Racer and you’ll be fine – laying off the accelerator is just as important as keeping the pedal to the metal. Straddling the narrow line between flat-out arcade racer and flat-tyre simulation, Vanishing Point offered a wealth of cars, locations and driving modes that still stand up today. Time Trial, Single Races and Tournaments as well as a novel Stunt Mode in which you had to throw the cars around various non-race challenges with pinpoint precision. The recent Trials HD on the 360 brings back a lot of memories of Stunt Mode for me, except Vanishing Point had more cones, balloons and chequered flags. Multi-player modes were Head-to-Head split-screen for two, and Knock-out, League and Winner-Stays-On for up to eight player sessions. The game also took advantage of the Dreamcast’s online function and allowed you to send Challenge Times back and forth with your mates. Sitting somewhere between Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer the range of cars available was broad but also quite unique. As well as fast cars like the Shelby Cobra and Dodgy Viper, the game also featured alternative choices like the world famous Mini, VW camper van and even some American muscle cars. You had to start with just two default cars and unlock the rest through your own driving skill. The game wasn’t afraid to do things its own way. All of this was dressed up in high resolution 60fps graphics that made it’s contemporaries look positively old school. It’s a crying shame Clockwork Games didn’t survive long enough to make a sequel. Perhaps it exists in the same alternate dimension where the Dreamcast is still selling millions? Yes, I’d like to go there. The thorn in the game’s side was it’s overly sensitive default controls, which caused many gamers to not even give the game a chance. But those that did would find a truly complete and supremely rewarding driving game. Update: I finally completed the game in May 2015. Woop! ## Links - Watch the game on YouTube.com - Find out more at mobygames.com - View images of all the cars at IGCD.net