Title: Editorial

It's Sunday night. The compiler is happily running in the background and all seems right in the world. The phone rings and all hell breaks loose. I'm not talking about the latest science fiction blockbuster here either. A friend's computer has gone belly up and the world's most fantastic article has vanished without trace.

Now, if this had happened a couple of weeks earlier, the problem would not be so significant. However, with less than a week until the editorial deadline, it poses a problem. Now, I could just run a previous article or ring a friend to see if they can knock something together, but that would be unfair - I mean, how often does someone phone you up to say "Hey, can you bash out 2000+ words for the end of the week for me and make it good?" or I could write something myself - which in itself is problematic as I only have a finite amount of time to do unimportant things like actually living.

I suppose this really is the problem with any form of publication which is reliant on submissions from the readership rather than having an established team of writers. Looking back on the issues I've edited, quite a number of articles are from non-ACCU members. Yep, you read that right. I'm calling in favours from various mailing lists and friends in order to give ACCU members a damned fine read every other month. However, there are only so many favours and times you can ask for submissions and they are starting to dry up - rapidly.

This edition has been the hardest so far in getting quality articles. It may be that you have never written for a magazine before and you find it daunting. Don't worry - I don't bite and offer friendly advice on whipping submitted material into shape. It may be that you don't have anything interesting to say. I find that hard to believe given the diversity of members and the range of experience there is. We have company directors to students to freelance programmers to people who are interested but don't really know that much.

What I would love to see are four "strands"

Other than (4), I can't recall ever seeing the other three in C Vu. There must be project managers out there, and those who understand defensive programming techniques or even someone who can deliver a basic set of tutorials on a language.

In a recent conversation with a couple of prominent academics in UK universities, I asked them what they thought of both C Vu and Overload. I was amazed when they replied with a shrug of the shoulder as they had never heard of either the ACCU or its publications. Luckily, I had a couple of copies as PDF files and they read them over. Other than a few niggles, they did comment that there was a lack of anything they could use in techniques, libraries or for those coming into universities where the student had never used a language before. Sure, they looked good, but it wasn't something they could sell.

As a responsible editor (and someone who wants C Vu and Overload to be as widely read as possible), it is important that these criticisms are addressed - but to do that requires a team effort. If you're happy to keep things the way they are where we are writing for us, then fair enough. If though you want to see the magazines more widely read, then you know what you have to do.

Come on folks - I know you're out there. I can hear you breathe!!!!

You've probably noticed that over the past couple of editions, I've been giving space to up and coming conferences.

One I didn't mention was the annual DNSCon meeting. As the name suggests, the conference was primarily concerned with network and software security, but also covered other interesting aspects, such as developments in surveillance techniques. From my point of view, the talks on how to use a buffer overrun to compromise a remote machine (demonstrated on a Win2000 laptop running VMWare with both Linux and BSD box all on the same machine!) and the use of fluorescent lights to bug rooms were of the greatest interest.

It was a somewhat strange conference which lasted one day in Blackpool. Due to very poor weather, the "fling an AOL CD" competition and prize sandcastle competition was cancelled as was the "most radioactive sandcastle" competition (the conference was in Blackpool and was won last time by very dubious means!).

One aspect which did puzzle me though. As you are possibly aware, it is possible to read what is on a PC's monitor by differences in magnetic patterns. Nothing new in that. What was good though was that a piece was presented on the problems of monitoring a TFT monitor. Given the amount of electromagnetic radiation of the correct wavelength given off, it is damned near impossible to see what is on one of those screens. It can be done (it was revealed outside of the conference and over a number of pints that a UK security body had demonstrated it live), but how? I thought at 4am of the day of the conference I had it, but though very bleary eyes, spotted the mistake in my maths. Oh well, it only took me 4 hours worth of sleep!

On a sadder note (in one respect), it was announced that this would be the final conference at Blackpool - mainly as it is a pain to get to and that the 2006 conference would be in central Manchester around Christmas. Yay!

You may remember a few editions back that I was complaining that programming was no longer simple and that for us to get anything now requires large manuals, a compiler and lots of time to debug. I then later just about retracted it in a small piece which answered a number of points from the ACCU general list. Well, I'm resurrecting the subject again. Why? Because of a Z80 cross compiler and an AVI of a BBC programme called "Commercial Breaks" (broadcast in 1984).

The TV programme was a strange piece of TV history as while filming, the Liverpool based software company Imagine went under and the camera crew was there. Other than a historical point of view, it's not that significant. What was important was that there was a 17 year old who had been programming for about a year on a Spectrum and over 7 weeks had developed a multi-level game called Pud Pud. This was a high resolution game, with sound (well, burps), colour an addictive level of play - all of which was in Z80 machine code.

How many people, in the space of a year, can not only learn machine code and then in 7 week create a big selling game? Alright, the processor was an 8 bit Z80 and there was no time frame given for the number of hours spent in front of a TV set learning, but given the age of the chap, I'd guess at 3 hours a night and 6 of a weekend (12 hours in total). Okay, you can cover a fair amount in 3 hours a night, especially with a simple 8 bit processor. I'm sure though that you'll all accept the achievement was considerable. What has this got to do with Z88DK?

Z88DK is a Z80 cross compiler which allows you to target just about any Z80 based machine (from a ZX81 to a TI89 calculator to even embedded Z80 based systems). Source code is easy to read and understand - take the following for example:

#include <graphics.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
struct window mine;
/* Window structure */
int main()
{
  int j,i;
    clg();
/* Draw a series of
 * concentric circles in the
 * centre of the screen
 * these go off the screen
 * but don't generate an
 * error - very cool! */
    for (i=90 ; i!=0; i--)
    {
      circle(128,96,i,1);
      if (i < 25 ) i--;
    }
    draw(0,0,255,63);
    /* Draw a diamond - weak,
     * but it demonstrates
     * relative drawing! */
    plot(200,32);
    drawr(10,10);
    drawr(10,-10);
    drawr(-10,-10);
    drawr(-10,10);
}

It's almost BASIC! Compilation is a case of running zcc followed by a flag for the target machine. Very simple and very effective. Perhaps it's a good way to go to start people learning to program again. Sure, it's not as simple as having a built in interpreter, but it's a start.

Anyway, that's enough for this issue. As always, your views and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to contact me.