17/06/1999

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John Chandler is the Amiga Suite101 guru.

What's your Amiga background, John?

Well, I joined the Amiga club back in 1990 with an A500 which I still own and occasionally use. It took me about three years to save up for, but it was worth the wait. I actually had a coverdisk collection before getting the machine! :-)
I bought an A4000/030 in '94 with some inherited money and that's the machine I use right now for pretty much everything. It's still using the original 25 MHz procesor, but it's crammed with memory, CV64/3D, CD-ROM drive, Zip drive - the works.

What do you do outside of the miggy?

At the moment I'm a web developer specialising in electronic publishing and web conferencing. I'm a major Perl fiend :-)
I'm actually starting a new job in July doing software development as it happens, that's really where I want to be. Not Amiga stuff I'm afraid, but my new employers are very keen on non-Wintel environments, so I'll see what I can do... I regret not having released anything for the Amiga yet, maybe when I get some spare time and inspiration.
I like to paint and look at Art (I hold a degree in Computing/History of Art believe it or not!), love reading/watching most science fiction, and lead a semi-hermitic lifestyle in the Buckinghamshire countryside. I'm also a Fortean - I'm fascinated by UFOs, the paranormal and the very weird in general. But I'm neither a hardened skeptic nor a gullible believer.

MetalJoe....there's a reason for that name somewhere....

One of those school nicknames, and a fairly long story... you've been warned ;-) Back at school I was one of the 'weird kids' who listened to heavy metal... since Def Leppard was about the only 'Metal' band people knew some people used to call me Joe (after the lead singer). I can't stand Def Leppard, but they didn't understand that. Bolt Metal on to the beginning and voila! I've no idea why but it stuck... back in my student days I even used it for three years on IRC when I haunted #england as a chanop.

Tell us about your home site...

MetalJoe's Dungeon
and here as well
Full of poorly updated science fiction and paranormal stuff, plus the US mirror of some heavily updated Amiga pages I run. It went online back in 1996, originally from a 600k Oxford Brookes University UNIX account, and I've been working on it on-and-off ever since. I keep meaning to move it to my Wirenet account, but I've only moved the Amiga pages so far.

What is Suite101

It's aimed at helping people find useful pages on the web - a "best of web guide" I think is the official strapline. Anyone can become an editor of a topic of their choice, and they go out and find interesting web pages and write short, regular articles. You get a small amount each month to cover "Internet costs", varying on whether you write monthly, fortnighly or weekly - though we (the editors) do it for the fun. I get $15 at the current exchange rate, which fuels my chocolate habit.

How did you get the gig at Suite 101?

They approached me shortly after the WoA 98 announcement about QNX. They'd heard about this "great new thing called Amiga" and wanted someone who knew about it to write an article - they saw my column on my Amiga pages and invited me to join. A handful of the other editors have come out of the closet and admitted they are actually users or ex-Amiga users - but they hadn't realised it was still going, so it was nice to provide some re-education.

What themes have you covered, and what's your hit-rate like?

The themes are pretty much randomly inspired as I tend to leave it to the last moment. I've covered the post-Commodore history in 1000 words, getting an Amiga onto the Internet, a terrible buyer's guide which I'm very embarrassed about, the new Amigas, using an Amiga with the Palm Pilot, the Video Toaster (which was the article that really got people interested in the editorial), and an article on open sourcing AmigaOS which led to quite a few e-mails.
Hit rates are doing nicely - I'm at about 1000-1200 per day when an article first goes out and it tends to stabilise around 100-200 per day after a week or two. I don't know how that compares to other Suite101 editorials, but I think it's above the Linux, Mac and Windows ones nowadays, which is very satisfying. I have Czech Amiga News to thank for being one of the first to really promote it - thanks guys!

What do you think of the future of the Amiga...products/market/competition etc...

I'm one of the fools who have been optimistic no matter what. :-) I confess that at the end of last year I was really quite worried, which prompted me to join KOSH. But I'm pleased to say I believe the Amiga has a very great future ahead of it - and about time too!
Jim Collas' arrival has really lifted everything out of the darkness - it's a do or die situation for every non-Wintel platform, not just for the Amiga, but the timing is right and the package looks excellent. I've had the money for a new Amiga carefully tucked away in my savings account for the last two years, so I plan to be the first in the queue for an Amiga NG!

Is there anything you know about the future of Amiga that you can't tell us?

Nothing from officialdom, I'm as much in the dark as everyone really. Sorry! Maybe I need to apply for press status, or perhaps sign an NDA with Amiga?

Do you think we're crazy for sticking with an outdated system?

As I said to someone in an e-mail earlier today, the crazy people come up with the best ideas. Hmm.. maybe that's not a useful quote here...
I don't feel crazy for sticking with Amiga. I wouldn't say it's outdated, it still does what I need it to and more efficiently than anything else out there in my opinion. It's down to the individual to decide if they're crazy or not.

Describe your perfect computing environment.

Erk! That's a tough one. Something robust and flexible, something that doesn't hinder creativity or restrict me. I'm lazy, so I like to be able to get up-and-running quickly with minimum fuss, but I'm also a tinkerer - I like to fiddle with things, try things out and restore everything when I've made a mess. I like to know there's more than one way of doing something - but I can do it my way. Does that make sense or am I waffling?

Are you going to be coming to WoA '99?

Hopefully, though it's no fun going on my own (awwwww - everyone I know personally seems to own Macs or consoles). I dragged my dad along last year, to show him life outside the mainframe world, but I don't think he'll want to go again. If I do I'll try and wear my homemade Amiga Pages T-Shirt (made with Amiga, I might add!) so people can recognise me. Or I might make a Suite101 one instead...

Seeing's this is an internet orientated issue (Clubbed magazine, that is web-surfers), what's your view of the Amiga and it's internet capabilities, compared to all other platforms.

Some people will probably disagree with me, and that's fine, but I don't really see the Amiga as any less capable an Internet box as any other platform.
Sure, we suffer from lack of 'official' support and lack of proprietary software, but we have great software of our own. I've never had any problems with using the Amiga for Internet access, in fact I prefer software like AWeb-II over the giants like Netscape and IE - and support is growing, which is good.

What are your favourite internet programs? What do you think of STRicq and YAM?

I must confess I haven't used StrICQ or YAM (I can hear a hushed silence now!), they both look great though - I'm not really keen on ICQ, I must confess. YAM does look tempting though.
AWeb-II is my favourite - it's a great browser, very stable, very fast and customisable. I use the Netconnect 2 software, as it came bundled with my PACE 56k modem, which is pretty good even though I've lapsed on applying the updates. Microdot is my e-mailer and newsgroup reader of choice, despite a few niggles.
Erm... AmFTP is good too, and I did have Apache webserver installed once for testing some CGI code for work. The Amiga port of Apache doesn't get a lot of credit, which is a shame - I hope Amiga pick up on it and help promote it more.

Any favourite internet hints and tips you can give us?

I'm not sure I have any, though I tend to browse with images off and with several windows on the go - saves on phone bills, and you can zip through pages pretty quickly. I use AWeb's cache a lot too so I can grab pages and read offline.
I'd recommend AltaVista as a good search engine, and advise you to avoid IRC unless you have free Internet access - I was on it permanently for three years :-)

So, when are you going to do an article on SEAL? :)

Erm.. :-) I'm sure that can be arranged for the future. July is probably going to be about UAE, and I'll have to cover WoA '99 for August... is September fine for an interview? I've never interviewed someone before, but then I haven't been interviewed either until today. First time for everything :-)

Thanks John :)

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