The Hugh Jampton Experience
Not a pretty article, but Foundation RISCWorld will buy this cheap crap...
Hello, good evening and welcome, well that's what David Frost used to say and he's done alright for himself, so it must work. I have to apologise for this column (you should be apologising for all of them -ED) but owing to the fact that I'm writing it at the last minute the usual high quality might drop a little (or a lot -ED). So why am I writing this at the last minute? Was there some important news story that might break at any moment, were there work commitments that prevented me from completing this latest magnum opus? Perhaps I was getting an increased budget?
Nah, I just couldn't be bothered.
But since I've has several e-mails chasing me up and I could do with the fifty quid that I get paid for writing this nonsense I decided that, in the interests of international finance I would go through the motions, and when I had finished knock up an article.
So lets start with our much maligned and generally unpopular caption competition...
The caption competition
In the last issue I published this:
Then, as per usual, I asked the members of The RISC OS Retirement Home for the Terminally Short of Patience (Prop D.Symes) to come up with a suitably amusing caption.
Well we had the usually underwhelming response. This does of course have one advantage, the fewer the number of entries the easier it is to pick a winner. So firstly lets have a look at the contenders...
William McNee
As you would imagine the judges needed extra time to carefully examine the entry before taking a vote for the winner. The voting was close, but William McNee scored a narrow victory over keeping the prize to ourselves. So William wins a specially design and printed, using a re-filled toner cartridge, luxury 80gsm APDL software voucher luxuriously printed on Viking economy copier paper. The voucher will be posted via 2nd class post using APDL's special "not enough stamps" policy. This ensures that only the winner receives the voucher, as William will have to go to the Post Office and pay the excess postage in order to receive the envelope. APDL have discovered that this method is cheaper than recorded delivery.
So can it possible to get an even bigger response with this, it should be plane sailing....
Send me your entries by the 14th of March and don't forget to read the following naughty small print...
The Small Print: The Foundation RISCWorld caption competition is open to all Foundation RISCWorld subscribers. The prize for each issue is a £10 software voucher. This voucher 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. Decisions are made at the discretion of the Foundation RISCWorld editorial staff and are final. If the voucher is not won then it can roll over to the next issue entirely at the discretion of APDL.
Hughes letters corner
In order to make my job of filing up this column easier Robin Barnard wrote half of it for me... again...
Hi Hugh,
I guess its a indication of how lazy you are that you saw fit to fill your article most recently with my caption suggestions, as the low taste threshold had already been well and truly established by yourself before I even became as subscriber.
So I guess that makes my contribution as bad as anything you've done? Is there a secret initiation ceremony I have to go through now or do I just get bracketed comments in anything I might type inserted by the editor...(no..damn!- ED)
Anyway that aside - I don't think I will enter the caption competition this time, several reasons in honesty 1)Lets give someone else a chance, 2)Art in this instance has proceeded life or events.. or in other words the obvious captions that come to mind are something that in honesty no-one will want to joke about for a while - that being the "fight" over RISC OS - I imagine that someone else will happily provide something along the lines of what I mean and they are welcome to if that's what they want! But not for me.
So If I am not entering this month, why send a blathering email anyway, surely a waste of both our times?
Well this time I was wondering if you had conveniently forgotten the poor service award - there was no mention of it last time around?
Or maybe it was a case of thinking - well there's quite a few obvious candidates this month...
Anyway I would like to nominate ADPL, for only offering a FRISCWORLD (is that right - ?) subscriber 10% on products when ordered the ye olde way, yes sure I guess that's the way it is over here in the RISC OS community, mail order, send me a cheque etc so ADPL are not the only ones and no doubt to make this more irrational the cost of dealing with mail order is probably higher then via the internet alone - so why have a discount at all? I mean in honesty if I get my voucher (for which thanks) I wont be using it unless I can use it on internet purchases which I very much doubt. * Sigh *
So I would like to nominate anyone who hasn't got with the times (like decades ago we are talking) and has not made all products / discounts available via the internet, yes even RISCOS Ltd, who I would like to buy RISC OS 6 from without having to send a fax - I assume this doesn't take into account how easy (or otherwise) it would be to send a fax from a RISC OS computer?!
Oh okay maybe I can find carrier pigeon and tie a brick and a cheque to it and send it Cardiff way? If its really a push money wise anyone can simply set up a eBay account to sell items and just link to this from their web site - I'm sure David Bradforth can offer his advise with that (so I am told).
There's some really great stuff out there which can only benefit the providers and the community as a whole from being made more easily available so it seems commons sense to me, which perhaps explains why i am quite so narrow minded and closed in my opinion that I refuse to do anything that isn't through a triple secure web site / PayPal.
Or maybe I'm just a fly in the ointment - hey well then nominate me for the poor service award then!
Thanks
Robin Barnard
Thanks for that, you've written well over half my article, and even better I get paid for it and you don't! To complete your secret initiation simply run into a lamppost 50 times shouting "Where's my copy of Qercus".
There haven't been any more "Hugh's customer service awards" simply because nobody has written in with any suggestions. I can't say I am surprised, look at the trouble I have even getting people to send in a one line caption. I think your comments about on-line ordering are a little unfair. Most RISC OS companies make ordering as difficult as possible deliberately. My making the process awkward and long winded they deliberately filter out those that might have made an impulse purchase and ensure that their products are only purchased by dedicated nutters, sorry, dedicated RISC OS enthusiasts. In particular the APDL software voucher should be consider to be, in the main, decorative, rather than functional. As it stands APDL get the benefit of being generous , by giving away a £10 voucher, without actually having to honour it. That's sound commercial thinking, ask any mobile phone seller.
Anyway before I say anything else I shouldn't lets get the pictures out of the way then I have my fifty quid.
Hugh's photo corner
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