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The magazine 8000 Plus -- renamed PCW Plus in 1992 -- was dedicated to the Amstrad PCW series of computers. (In case you don't know them, they were wildly popular in Britain as cheap word-processors, using the bundled software "LocoScript" and the fossil operating system CP/M.) David Langford's columns for the magazine began with the first issue in 1986 and continued -- with gaps -- until the last, dated Christmas 1996. A certain desperation can sometimes be detected as our author tries to find something vaguely relevant to write about; fortunately the magazine reckoned that "being a writer/programmer/freelance" was relevant subject matter.... • In 1998 this column was revived for the small but enthusiastic successor magazine PCW Today, with instalments appearing here after a decent interval. The column for issue 16 was intended to be the last.
8000 Plus
1986
- October ... introduction, MS presentation
- November ... more on MS presentation
- December ... problems of PCW keyboard wear
1987
- January ... QWERTY and historical anomalies
- February ... transfer across RS-232 links
- March ... learning curve problems
- April ... why software costs so much
- May ... how to annoy software customers
- June ... answering letters received
- July ... some information on copyright
- August ... the downside of word processing
- September ... jargoniferous and acronymic horrors
- October ... sf and escape sequences
- November ... computer languages
- December ... being a publisher's reader
1988
- January ... futurology, telecommuting
- February ... awful computer plots in sf
- March ... Writers' & Artists' Yearbook criticized
- April ... PCW viruses?
- May ... VAT
- June ... fantasy sagas and computers
- July ... the difference between display and print-out
- August ... satirical software review
- September ... cod letters to editors
- October ... Amstrad spares problems and the PPC
- November ... financial organization for freelances
- December ... software protection: Misleading Cases pastiche
1989
- January ... Public Lending Right
- February ... whinges of a software company
- March ... style checkers
- April ... 100-year-old agony column
- May ... dubious statistics and sf's Nebula anthology
- June ... Raymond Chandler on the PCW 3" disk shortage
- July ... mathematical games in pubs
- August ... house style horrors
- September ... punctuation pedantry
- October ... writers' occupational diseases
- November ... the awful story of Ansible Information
- December ... contracts
1990
- January ... Ms Magnetic Media's advice column
- February ... miscellaneous technical bits
- March ... hidden costs of hardware etc
- April ... editors reveal pet hates
- May ... thoughts on software-induced panic
- June ... UFO follies
- [Unpublished] ... more grumps about the Amstrad PPC
- July ... software development: problems with special cases
- August ... the joy of remaindering
- September ... anthology of quotations
- October ... writers' workshops (Milford)
- November ... looking back over 50 issues
- December ... chasing debts through UK Small Claims court
1991
- January ... Hack's Quest
- February ... PCW CP/M vs IBM DOS
- March ... book indexes and their oddities
- April ... PCWs and laser printers
- May ... hymn of hate to BT Telecom Gold
- June ... on writing about "what you know"
- July ... more publishing horrors
- August ... selling software?
- September ... secrets of padding
- November ... on chain letters
1992
- January ... predictions for 1992
PCW Plus
- March ... my own tick-the-boxes rejection slip
- May ... sf and "prediction"
- July ... another sarcastic advice column
- September ... software madness: writing an IBM reader for CP/M disks
- November ... strategies for avoiding writing
1993
- January ... a peep into the future
- March ... how to write letters that win! With an appendix of authentic Striking Similes
- May ... where writers get their ideas
- July ... horrors of producing an sf convention newsletter
[At this point the column was cancelled for a while, as the doomed magazine continued to shrink.]
1994
- May ... Internet ravings
- July ... how to begin and end stories?
- September ... more Internet
- November ... calculating the date of Easter
1995
- January ... looking back from issue 100
- March ... highly unreliable account of the issue 100 party
- May ... the strange tale of anonymous letter-writing "Rachel Oliver"
- July ... rolling your own urban folklore
- September ... obsolete technologies
- November ... editing the Fantasy Encyclopedia
1996
- January ... the game of Life
- March ... worrying about Amstrad's announcement of the new PcW16
- May ... how to write like H.P. Lovecraft
- July ... a book reviewer's life
- September ... Baron Munchausen's PCW tall tales
- November ... more computer urban myths
- Xmas ... Thog and the joy of bad writing
PCW Today
1998
- [No Langford columns in the first seven issues of PCW Today]
- #8, Winter 1997/98 ... saying hello and remembering the old days
- #9, May-July 1998 ... grumbling again about LocoScript
- #10, August-October 1998 ... the subtler problems of word-processing
- #11, November 1998 - January 1999 ... dealing with tiny freelance earnings in dollars
1999
- #12, February-April 1999 ... the horrors of changing a worn PCW drive belt
2000
- #13, February 2000 ... more CP/M programming obsessiveness
- #14, October 2000 ... me and Ansible and Thog
2001
- #15, May 2001 ... subeditor horror stories
2002
- #16, February 2002 ... further decline of Ansible Information; wrestling with new Windows conversion problems and PcW16 document format
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