** 1 page feature / 689 words **

Mark Wherry, unleashed, unreliable, unreadable, un... err, I thought this wasn't going to be edited Joe?

Three years ago I sat down, probably in this very chair, at this very desk - I won't apologise for being sentimental and nostalgic - and wrote some old nonsense about MiNT on my then 2Mb STe.  Now, in what seems like no time at all, after progressing through various toys including a Falcon and arriving at a G3 Mac, inflicting many more articles upon Atari Computing, it's the end.

My story

So what was my story? You know, the one that everyone tells about how they got into this crazy Atari scene in the first place. How it ruined their life and how through the help of Atarians Anonymous they were able to kick the habit - whoops, wrong column!

My interests have always been in music, computers and a combination of the two known as music technology. I was originally a proud Amiga 500 owner, but one day a friend showed me Notator running on an Atari. It blew me away! Here was an amazing sequencer, incredible score editing and printing, and so much more - I had to have one.

The one regret I have is that I grew out of Notator when newer things came along, as I really loved using that package so much. Being the sort of person that is never satisfied, I got Logic when it came out, which was also incredible but I found the scoring to never quite hit the mark (though the new version 4 is excellent!) Then came the Falcon, Cubase Audio, FDI and more - again, incredible technology.

It seemed like a good idea...

I enjoy programming on the Atari and I like coming up with ideas, but as many will testify - finishing them is another matter! So what lies on my hard disk unfinished?

** MAGICLND.GIF here **
MagiC Land, a neat Repton/Boulderdash clone; perhaps I should do this for the MagiC Game competition?

** PAM.GIF here **
PAM, the Port Activity monitor that Mike Kerslake wanted.

** LIMITER.GIF here **
Limiter, an off-line DSP limiter.

** CD_LOGO.GIF here **
Exclusive Releases!
** CNTRLBAR.GIF here **
Control Bar - now this one is useful, finished but until now never set free; you add files to it by simply dragging - when you click a bar it talks to your desktop.

** STRUMMER.GIF here **
Strummer, a guitar simulation, again finished but never released - add the fingering then click and drag the guitar for real-time strumming via MIDI!


GEMTrade

I couldn't really not mention GEMTrade in this space, but rather than shamelessly plugging it, alright - I'll be honest, as well as shamelessly plugging it, I'd like to thank all those users who have registered and supported the project.  As most people now know, a tri-lingual version is in the pipeline supporting English, German and French, and this will be possible thanks to the tremendous work of Didier Briel. I'd like to take the opportunity to publicly say a big thank you to him! I suppose I should thank Joe Connor too - he has put much work into the project - the only doubt here being that it was his fault I got into this in the first place!

Oh yes...

I really am going to update my web pages... No, really... I know they haven't been updated for a year!
 http://www.cix.co.uk/~mark_wherry/ 

Farewells

As music technology lured me to the Atari, it also tempted me away from the machine I defended so long. When Cubase VST came out it changed everything, both in the industry and for me.

And now to ACC'99, which surely highlights why we do all this: meeting up with friends who have been made through the Atari scene. So thanks to Joe, Mike and Al for making all this possible and putting up with me - I hope we keep in contact. I'd also like to remember Brian who sent me his now infamous label runs for the renegadeCD and outwitted me more than once on CIX!

So thanks for reading, do come and say hello at the show - but for now I'm off to buy a G4, a PowerBook, an iMac and an iBook...

Mark Wherry
mark@ataricomputing.com