Editorial

It's the 26th July and I am frantically trying to finish SynTax so
that I can get it out this weekend. I'm determined that it isn't
going to slip to August. I've never been that far behind with it
before. As always it's down to pressure of work and deadlines.
Each month I tell myself I'll be more organised but something
always happens to make me lose a few days or longer. Well, as I
keep saying, better like this than being bored.

Those of you who get SynTax by post will have received a flyer this
issue, begging for reviews. Emailed copies have a short text file
instead.  Finding reviews has always been the hardest part of
putting the magazine together and I've always said that it's the
lack of them that will finally finish the magazine. Not yet tho!
In the early days, I had enough free time that I could put together
a considerable number myself, and in those days too, SynTax only
contained an average of 12. With an increase in readership came a
flood of reviews. It seemed like 75% of the readers wanted to see
their names in print so I increased the reviews to the maximum, 17,
each issue. Now everyone seems to have less time for playing and a
lot don't want to waste any of their valuable spare time writing
reviews - they want to get on to the next game and I don't blame
them! You've only got to look at this issue's list of 
contributors to see how things have changed. There are a lot 
fewer names this issue. I'm very grateful to those readers who 
send regular reviews, maybe as much as one a month. I do what 
I can, especially from demos, then fill up the space with 
information files and previews. But for next issue I only have 
four reviews. So I'm desperate for more.  Anything you send 
will be very gratefully received.

As you know, you get points for any contributions made to the
magazine and that increases your chance of winning the SynTax
Contributor of the Year Award. Last issue's winner, Peter Clark,
was very pleased with his mountain dragon, as were Carolyn and Alex
with their snow dragons. For those who would like to see what
Peter's prize looked like, there's a photo of it and its base in
the Screenshots section. All the awards were from the Tudor Mint
Land of the Dragon.

What else? I lost all the messages from my Inbox a few days ago.
This had happened before - most annoying. This time I went onto the
Google Newsgroups to see if I could find out why it happened.  It
turned out to be caused by a glitch when folders are compacted in
the background. This is enabled by default and if something happens
when they're compacting, the Inbox is emptied and all you have in
there is a 'Welcome' message from Microsoft. Evidently sometimes
the emails are collected in another hidden folder and you can
search for it. If it exists, you can sometimes recover the
contents. But mine was gone! I knew I had about 15 emails in there
and I tried to remember as many as possible but got stuck at about
10. So if you're waiting for a reply from me and I take longer than
usual, that may be the reason. Let me know if so.

One of the tutorials I had to do recently for PC Basics was on
playing backgammon online. I hadn't played for about 14 years, and
even then I wasn't that good at it though I enjoyed it. I started
by downloading a shareware version, then braved the online site.
It was great fun! No-one knows who you are and you're only
identified by your skill level and language. There's a limited chat
option with about 30 stock phrases so there's no chance of anyone
saying anything horrible or sarky if you do anything silly.  From
there I went to MSN's Zone gaming area and have now started playing
some ranked games. It's very addictive and I've won a few games but
lost more than I've won. I still find it rather intimidating.

I've bought a few games recently from Computer Exchange - Industry
Giant, Technomage and Dungeon Siege. No, I haven't tried any of
them yet. I've also had a brief look at Hotel Giant ... it isn't as
gripping so far as some of JoWood's other games but I'll persist at
least long enough to do a review for next issue.

I've sent for my Convention 2002 tickets ... how about you?
There's a booking form in this issue.

                           See you in September's issue 

                                                          Sue
                              - o -