---

The Hugh Jampton Experience

It's the column that's short, written by the wrong sort...

You will no doubt be truly ecstatic to learn that the Hugh Jampton column will be continuing throughout the whole next series of RISCWorld (don't say that, we want people to renew their subs, not cancel them - ED). In order to keep my column as fresh as a reduced price Sainsbury's chicken I shall be making a few changes and introducing some new sections, which probably won't last, but never mind. Anyway one thing that won't be changing is our ever unpopular caption competition...

The caption competition

Last issue I published this little beauty and asked you all to put your thinking heads on and come up with a suitable caption...

Well as you would expect I wasn't entirely disappointed. Fairly disappointed, yes, but after a couple of Thyroxin tablets I was as pleased as punch with the submissions...

John McCartney also added that "The effort of thinking these up is draining the life-force out of me, so I'll stop right he..". Well John, it was worth the effort as I have decided that he is this issue's winner. John has been a regular, and has also contributed a number of captions over the last few years, so I felt it was time his sterling efforts were recognised. So John receives a luxury (for a given value of luxury) APDL £10 software voucher. This can be used to purchase any product, from the APDL, ProAction or iSV Products software ranges, up to a value of £10. or can be used as part payment towards an item of greater value cost.

APDL will automatically send you the voucher, you could then bring it to to the Wakefield show and pick up an even bigger bargain, as you won't by paying the postage.

Anyway now we have established a winner, and also established a number of losers, lets crack on with this issues photo...

Hugh's Caption Competition

So, who can win themselves a £10 voucher by e-mailing me a caption for this?

Send me your entries by the 14th of May and don't forget to read the following small print...

The APDL voucher small print
The gift vouchers supplied by APDL as part of the RISCWorld competitions can be exchanged for any item up to the voucher value (normally £10) or used towards a purchase of more than £10. The voucher is only for use against iSV Products, APDL and ProAction software titles, further conditions may apply. Competition is only open to current RISCWorld subscribers, contact APDL for full details.

Hugh's Customer Service Award

Now a special new part of the column, where I reward the great and the good, or in reality the downright shameful, in the RISC OS market with a coveted Super High Involvement Transaction Environment customer service award. These awards are totally man made from fully natural organic ingredients.

So who is going to be a first winner? Why it's our old friends at www.castle-technology.co.uk. Castle are our deserved first ever winner, but why you ask? Well just take a visit to their website and try to get some information on something. For example you could try looking at www.castle-technology.co.uk/castle/ordering/monitors.html. Do you see any products? No. What you will see is a little error message saying that "[an error occurred whilst processing this directive]".

So what does this mean? Well as far as I can tell it means that when the time came to pay the yearly subscription for their shop system came up, they didn't bother. So, you might say, it's an oversight that could happen to anyone. You could well be right, except the system stopped working late last year and Castle still haven't bothered fixing it (despite complaints). So one of the "big" names in the RISC OS market can't tell you what it has available to buy, or even sell you anything (apart from an Iyonix and that's on a separate webs site). Now that's well deserving of an award don't you think?

I am now taking nominations for next issue's award, so if you have had a particularly bad experience with a RISC OS company please do let me know. I will name and shame them...

Hugh's photo corner

Right, lets get this over and then we can all go to bed. Not together you understand. Well unless you really want to...

Now that's what you call a helpful sign...

As indeed, if you are a burglar, is this one...

...and talking of nicking things...

Hmm, that looks tasty...

A new sticker design to attach to your PC (or your Iyonix -ED)...

Finally some good career advice for young girls...

If you have any complaints about this column then please use our dedicated support address (support@castle-technology.co.uk). We don't promise to be able to respond personally, but we do guarantee that all e-mails will be deleted from the server before being read..

Hugh Jampton