Now, hopefully at long last and a vast financial layout by moi (well �3.50p for 4 of the same pictures taken in one of those little photo booths in our local post office where the other 3 were taken, but I wasn't robbing the post office, that act is planned for one Monday morning), anyway, as per usual I digress....Read on.
With the screenshots of our Crypt lads (Ian Fyvie, Ray Hawkins, Craig Daines, Francis Loch, Ian Urie and Steve Evans and uncle Tom Cobbly and all) being bought to you via a picture of the above lads all together on one page as though they were on the pages of a police criminals list (they are really) for various reason's all the pictures never showed me, but I suppose that was due to the fact of me being so ugly that I never wanted to scare the kiddies....
So, with the inclusion of a new Eyetech Mustek 600CP scanner package which I bought a little while ago I was recently able to get my photo taken then slap the picture into my scanner and here's the result. Yes, scary I know, that was one of the reason's why I had to go into our local post office first in order to check out that there were no children around. Ok, so they've seen Freddie Kruger in The Nightmare on Elm Street films, and they may have seen the recently shown on telly film called "The Excorcist", but believe you me, seeing Dr. Jekyll like this is enough to even make our beloved Dungeon Master hide in a convent. Yes, I did say "Convent", not a monastery, well it's a pretty well known fact with the lads of the earlier Crypt days that the Dungeon Master has been caught in either very compromising places or compromising positions.
Well, about 2 years ago he was caught in a farmers barn in the company of about 6 sheep, no, not a company of wolves, but sheep, and you know, till this day we never know why he was there, unless he was trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Anyway, again I digress for the true story at hand......ME.
Being one of the founder members of the earlier diskmag versions of The Crypt along with Dungeon Master and a couple of other folks I have like Ray seen our mag change from a mere 20 or so disk posted event and to what it's become now, a worldwide webmag, and although in the earlier days we could write and say almost anything we wanted to say, even bad language and the like, those days were great in one sense of the word, but circulation was very small. Now, in the somewhat censored version, swearing is an a minimum, but the best part is that circulation is on a par that we in The Crypt have never know before, so I as one of the founders of our mag want to say to all of you who take the time to read it on the web "THANKS A MILLION FOR TAKING THE TIME", without you we wouldn't be there.
Anyway, enough of this "Namby Pamby" stuff. Here's a bit about me, I did a very similar this called "My Profile" in our early days with The Crypt, but we were only a disk-based mag then, so I dare say that all the new readers abroad never got to read my article, so here goes.....
I won't bore you with the unimportant details about how I was born in a stable with animals on Christmas Eve and how three wise men and three shepherds came to see how I was keeping, that's all in the past. I won't even tell you about me dad, GOD - That's another story huh!
So, who am I, why am I here, where did I come from and where do I come from now, and where should I go now? Well, we normally start at the beginning, so seeing as though I'm telling the story I'll jump to the end bit first. So where should I go now? Well suggestions have been many, ranging from the impossible and going to the sheer insane ones, and even going to the physical impossible ones, of which I've tried most, but the person who suggested that I crawl up my own anus and whistle dixie should know by now that I'm not very good a whistling, so that suggestion is out of the question.
The suggestion about me going far away of which I've actually forgot the actual wording sounds good to me even though I did know my parents??
Anyway, with all this verbal diarrhoea being said, I reckon that it's about time I got on with the job at hand....don't you, right, here goes.....
Apart from the normal 60's kids education like borstal, approved school, detention centres, muggins, arson, manslaughter, etc., I led a pretty normal lifestyle in my adolescent years (I'm only kidding about the approved schools DC etc ok) my parents were in the Iron & Steel business, my mum used to iron and my dad used to steel, ok, it'll get better I hope as my story goes on.
Some years ago my dad took up photography, but lost all his equipment when the local police raided our home one night and took some piccies of what my dad said were landscape photos. But I found one which the police had missed, yes, it was of a landscape, but it a big black woman with massive boobs laying naked in a field with about 4 men with her, enough said.
Times and money got so hard a few years ago that mum had to take in washing, but she was later released after all the missing washing was reunited with it's relevant owners....
I was about 10 years old, I was so annoyed at the milkman leaving all the bottles of milk on peoples doorsteps which might have resulted in people falling over the bottles, causing them to break and do harm to themselves, so I decided to take all the milk and bottles home, but I was let off with a caution.
Anyway, I was about 28 years old, and until then I hadn't used any computers at all, I had a mate at that time who lived over in Redditch, I was married to my first wife Helen, but I won't say much about her. Anyway, my mate John had a new wife called Penny (his 2nd marriage), eventually one Saturday John & Penny came over to my house in Warwick, cutting a long story short, over the next few weeks John & Penny visited Helen and myself most weekends, eventually John & Penny suggested that Helen, me and our two kiddies Steven Jnr. and Kerryann went over to stay at John & Penny's house in Redditch one weekend, so we did.
So one Saturday John came over in his car to pick us 4 up to take over to his house, we got to Redditch about half an hour later, we had some lunch, my two kids were left to play outside in the garden with John & Penny's two kids, which allowed Penny & Helen to have a good old chinwag. John suggested that him and me went fishing to a little private lake up the road from him, so we did, and caught quite a few tench & carp, we packed up about 6-8 hours later, put the fish back and went home to John's place.
The rest of the weekend was ok, but being away from home was a nice change, I still prefer my own home comforts, John's place was a bit of a shithole anyway. After John, me & the two woman had finished talking we all decided to go back home to Warwick on the following Thursday, instead on the Sunday night, I wasn't working at the time, I wasn't even a self-employed Painter & Decorator, and our two kids weren't quite old enough to start school yet, so we stayed at John & Penny's place a few more days (yawn).
Monday eventually came and John suggested that we all go down to a community centre near where they lived and which was used by unemployed people like us as a day centre and a nursery type thing for kiddies, apparently John's mate "Ec" (which is supposedly pronounced like "Heck" without the "H") would be there with is ZX Spectrum, "ZX Spectrum" what's one of those mate" I replied, "A Computer you prat" John replied, "God, boring or what" I replied.
Anyway, we got to the centre, met most of the people there, I played a few games of snooker of which I won most because at that time in my life I was a lazy sod so I spent most of my dole money on playing snooker in our local town of Leamington Spa main snooker hall, I soon became a bit of a legend in the centre for beating most of the so-called top players, I was good, they were crap, end of story, Monday afternoon was to partly change my future thought about computers, and would soon have me hooked line and sinker as they say.
John introduced me to "Ec" and his ZX Spectrum 48k computer, which at first I found almost as exciting as being hit in the testicles with a football, which as you'd know if it has or had ever happened to any of you isn't that exciting, very painful yes, exciting "NO".
Anyway, John and myself stood by "Ec" and watched him play a classic old speccy games called "Bombjack", and I was surprised to find that within a few minutes of watching this little character running & jumping around the various screens collecting bombs while trying to avoid the various aliens I was started to get very interested, so after an hour or so of watching how "Ec" pressed certain keys to move this little character I decided that I wanted to have a go, eventually I did, I was killed almost straight away, but I had got the "Computer bug", I wanted my own computer.
We stayed at this centre for a couple more hours and then went back to John and Penny's place for some food, later that night, John took me along the road a few houses to where his mate Ian and his missus Lynda lived, Ian introduced me to his customized ZX81 which had 1Mb of standard memory, and a 16k RAMpack upgrade memory module fitted to it. We played a couple of ZX81 games which were total crap, well compared to "Ec's" 48k Spectrum. Ian let me type in a game (which was in computer jargon such as GOTO, GOSUB and IF L=10 etc) out of a ZX81k computer book, the game was supposedly a card game, 8 hours later of typing the game code had been all typed in, I moved the ZX81 a bit, and cause a crash resulting in all my work being lost to what Ian said was then called "RAMPack Wobble", so I typed all the code again, then this time managed to save the code to a cassette tape.
Upon loading the saved game code the tape got tangled up in the cassette motor, thus destroying all my hard work yet again, so I stood firm by my commitment to learn to use computers and typed all the code into the ZX81 yet again for the third time, hurray, no crash, no tape tangle, but a crap game came up, so all my time was utterly wasted, and it was then that I decided to stay well and truly clear of ALL ZX81's for ever, but I still wanted a 48k Spectrum computer.
Thursday morning came and Helen, me & our kids went back to our own house in Warwick, the weekend came and I popped over to Leamington to see my aunty in order that she might lend me enough money to get my own 48k Spectrum computer and extra bits. Anyway, she did, so a day later I had my very own Speccy, well, as we all know only to well computers change like the weather, well, not so much in those days as they do nowadays, anyway, a few months of having the 48k Speccy with a totally crappy rubber keyboard Sir Clive Sinclair bought out the first- ever proper hard QWERTY keyboard out and a new speccy all parcelled up in a nice new computer called the Spectrum 48k+.
I wanted one, so I saved up madly and bought one. Bloody hell Alan Sugar bought out Sinclair and thus a new dawn of computers were soon to hit the streets, a new Spectrum 128k was soon out, followed a short time later by the Spectrum +2 which was a 128k Speccy (powerful or what) with a cassette recorder housed in the same case as the speccy allowing the user to safe date to cassette tape, or to play games from tape, ok, but very slow.
Oh no, a few months later saw the release of yet Sugar's 3rd new speccy in the shape of the Spectrum +3, yet again it was a 128K based speccy, but as with the 128, +2 and now the +3 you could either use the computer in 128k mode or soft reset it to the original 48k hardware, which allowed for older software to run on the beast, and the part of the +3 was the inclusion of a 3" floppy drive unit, so now all our data could be save to floppy disk, but at about �3 per disk at first, they were too expensive to be able to buy loads at a time, but the prices per disk dropped a bit as time went on.
As time went on Speccy stuff seemed to dry up a bit, contacts were few and far between, so I changed over to another computer format, I went onto an Amstrad 48k computer, then Amstrad bought out a 128k RAM upgraded that fitted to the back of the computer via one of it's many ports, a chip also had to be replaced with another on the actual motherboard, eventually a proper full 128k Amstrad was bought out and called something like a "6128", so I bought one of those, it was during my Amstrad 48k/6128 days that Ray and myself found each other due to one of my other Amstrad contacts called Matthew Glover I think, MG was as they say "A Bit of a Spanner", thick in other words, and believe you me, he was thick.
For those of us who have had dealings with another miggy user called Gary Emery who I thought was an utter prat, MG made GE looking brilliant, but that's another story.
Ray and I got very matey, and from day one we both seemed to get on more like brothers than computer contacts, as with us both, you get what you see so to speak, no in-between stuff, if you treat us both decently, then we'll do the same to you, but treat us badly, well, need I say more....
After some time on the Amstrad Ray told me during a phonecall that he was going over to the Amiga, a week or so later during another phonecall to him he had changed over systems, during the following months I also went over to the Amiga but then we spent the next few months we took turns in going from an Amiga 500, 500+ and A600, well, I stayed clear of the A600, I did and still think that model was a bloody joke, during all this time it was Ray who seemed to get the better upgrades faster than me, but then, ha, I beat him once by getting my bog standard A1200 before him I think, did I Ray, it's been such a long time, I forget????.
Once we were both on the A1200 platform, our rivalry still went on, he was way ahead on me getting his first decent Amiga monitor, I ended up using a TV with scart connector for ages, it was only a few months ago I was able to afford to buy a half-decent monitor in the shape of a 14" Philips CM8833-II, of which I've still got....
During our Amstrad days Ray was the editor of an Amstrad- based newsletter called "Amscircle", I joined up and we've been mates ever since, which up till now is getting on for 10 years, a long time to know a contact who has since for many years turned out to be one of my best over computer mates, but one of which who I've never met face to face, but hope to do one day, just so he can dip in his holey pocket and but me a pint of Southern Comfort....(snigger).
After some time on the Amiga Ray wanted us to create an Amiga diskmag which I decided to call "Bits 'n' bytes", ok, so not a very original name, it was a WB-only mag because we both knew very little about the miggy and it's capabilities, since then, Rays miggy knowledge has grown to about a ratio of 10-1 against my knowledge, as far as Amiga software knowledge goes, Ray has (metaphorically speaking) left me behind with my Amstrad 6128, anyway, Bits 'n' Bytes ran for a while, but do to lack of commitment by the other lads, we decided to give up, a few months later during a phone call in a public phonebox on a road across a public playing field from my home in Rugby, Ray asked if I'd be interested in starting up another diskmag of which he hadn't thought of a name yet.
At first there would be Ray who'd call himself "Dungeon Master" as he was a sort of boss/leader, Ray's Son Justin would be in the mag and call himself "Dr. Blood", Ray's wife Wendy would also be in and would call herself "Nymph", I was stuck for a name, various names were suggested, but not printable nowadays, it took an outsider to suggest that with my surname of "Hyde" why don't I call myself "Dr. Jekyll", another of our Amiga contacts called Ian Dawney was now in the mag and due to him being a big tall ginger-haired lad, he'd decided to call himself "Ginger Ninja", and so with Ray deciding on a name of our mag as "The Crypt" he asked all of us for our approval, we agreed, and so "The Crypt" was born.....
And as they say, the rest is history ... Catch U L8ter folks