Spent yesterday finalising and preparing the last of my Amiga games, so now, all 20 games plus SCM4 will be available. My colour-cycle editor, Cyced, is missing and probably lost forever (though Derek Hall may, just possibly, have a copy). I'll release them one per day or so. The virtual hard drive installation of Blade and Burnout took a while to work out. Also, some of my games were listed by Mark Sheeky, some by Scorpius, so I've set them all to both, and generally tested each for the best compatibility with Amiga Forever, keeping the disc drive sounds as these add an important loading indicator.
After that, we headed out almost immediately to Macclesfield and the launch of Joy Winkler's book Morgan in a venue called The Button Warehouse. The room was bare and cold, with hard metal seats, wood tables, and eternal incense smoke - myrrh. Myrrh: the scent of pain and misery. The place was so church-like that I felt instantly cold and bloodless and transported unhappily to my youth. No tea. The drinks were iced, which added to the austerity. Scented smoke, to most people, is perhaps a pleasant background addition, but to me it burns like a gas attack. Burning smoke indoors is essentially artificial pollution, and probably carcinogenic. My childhood was spent in rooms so thick with tobacco smoke that I can't breathe even a hint of smoke without discomfort. We arrived almost an hour early.
The evening became progressively better, however and discomforts were forgotten when Joy started to speak. Everyone there was lovely, and Joy is always a pleasure to hear. Her book, Morgan, was 15 years in the writing.
I arrived home late and slept badly. I dreamt of a pile of Victorians keen to kill King Kong with some sort of train of cars, in particular two iron-clad tank-like vehicles with slow firing projectiles like giant iron pencils. The shots didn't kill Kong, but angered him. He tried to bite the tank-like vehicle at the front (they werer shaped more like train carriages). It's slow firing gun was pointed right into his mouth and it confidently prepared to fire and blast Kong's brains all over the place, but the shots hit the ape's teeth, causing him pain and angering him further. The general assured us that the 'tank' at the back could still kill him, but I wasn't so sure. I awoke in great stomach pain.
My Amiga years, 1992 to 2002 were my least happy. I don't like to revisit them. Reminiscence and nostalgia are evil traps. I am keen to complete my archiving and create new things.
