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THE DIGITISER FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE

6/9/2019

9 Comments

 
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It's Friday! And you're right to note that there hasn't been much going on round these "parts" recently, but that's okay, I keep telling myself. I'm trying not to feel guilty about it.

I had a holiday, you see. I went to Mallorca, or Majorca, or whatever it's called. As if to teach us a powerful lesson, my wife got stung off a jellyfish and I was bitten by an ostrich. Don't worry - they don't have any teeth.

At least... they didn't by the time I'd finished with them!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"OMG! Mr Biffo's talking about punching out an ostrich's teeth." 


Jokes on you, pal: I didn't punch anything.

I threw a brick at it.

Letters?


If you'd like to apear here, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone, or you've got a picture of a bin you wish to share, please send your filthy emails to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com​​​​​​​​​​
VALVE
I wonder if Valve will ever learn to count to 3. They seem to prove that they cant count to 3 with Left 4 Dead 2 and Half Life 2 but no actual Left 4 Dead 3 or Half Life 3.

Perhaps if someone were kind enough to forward them some maths courses that they could do they may eventually learn about the number 3 and then be able to get both Left 4 Dead 3 and Half Life 3 under development.

It is 2019 going on 2020 and Valve isn't doing itself any favors by ignoring the upcomming next gen now is it? Either they can not count numbers or that they may never heard of the number 3.

On a serious note all joking aside do you even think we will ever see a third Half Life or Left 4 Dead 3 or are we all doomed to these last gen titles for ever?
gamertag (gaz be rotten)
Gaz, your letters are always well written, thoughtful, and require virtually no sub-editing to correct weak punctuation, grammar, and spelling. This makes a blessed change from most of the scarcely-literate emails we receive, which require of us the time-consuming task of manually correcting all the lower-case singular nominative pronouns to capitals. 

However, one of the letters you had on here a few weeks back also appeared on Metro's Gamecentral literally word-for-word, and while I appreciate you wanting to cast your net wide in order to get published, you'd have stood a better chance of getting away with it if you changed every third word to "poo".
OLD ORLEANS
There is a house in New Orleans. Just the one mind...!!!
Jon Clay, Taunton, Somerset
Let's try and salvage something from this tweet-level "letter" with a reveal:
REVEAL:
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TITLE
Hello!

I hope you both had a lovely holiday full of relaxation and nice food. You deserve so much joy and I sincerely hope the holiday was full of it.

Have you heard of the TV show 'Proving Ground'? It was a 2011 American show that tested stuff from pop culture like video games, comic books etc in real life - for example, they did real life Mario Kart. There was a hiatus during airing as one of the hosts died in a horrible car crash. The concept itself seemed quite Digitiser The Show-esque! 

Anyway, welcome back to the Real World Of Not-Holiday, I hope you have an easy return to reality.

Love,
Chai (@teacupsofchai)
The holiday was nice, though I remained a bit stressed for most of it. I've learned that I need a pre-holiday holiday from now on so that I'm unwound sufficiently in order to enjoy the actual holiday.

I have not heard of this show you mention, though looking it up I see it was co-hosted by former Jackass star Ryan Dunn. Whose death we referenced in a recent Digi video. So, yes... possibly more Digi-esque than you could ever have dreamed! 
AY-UP
Dear The Digitiser 2000 Letters Page,

Recently I haven't had much motivation to write one of my special stories, but thanks to Artificial Intelligence I can now write them with even less effort than I put in originally.

For example, feeding the line "Once upon a time there was a very good boy called Mr Biffo" to the talktotransformer.com site yielded the following:

Once upon a time there was a very good boy called Mr Biffo. He had a friend called Mr Brown. Mr Brown had the most charming way of introducing himself in the most ungrateful and sarcastic way. He would come up behind him to talk to him, when Mr Biffo was talking to his boys or friends. He would ask him a question and in answer to it Mr Biffo would try to out-do himself and he was very clever. He was quite popular. All the other boys at school were interested in Mr Biffo and he would tell them about himself, which was amusing for them when they said they hadn't heard anything about Mr Biffo. They were all talking about him. They all knew who he was. But that is the only time Mr Biffo ever came up to the boys. I remember him coming up to them in the schoolyard.

I promise the AI chose the name Mr Brown itself and I haven't cheated here, I have attached a screenshot for verification.  
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This got me thinking so I did another one:

Once upon a time there was a very good boy called Mr Biffo who had a very good friend called Mr Brown, who often appeared in surprising places.

One day some children came to the house and were playing the game of 'Biffa the Brown', which was, well, something really stupid and, I won't say, really ridiculous. But they were laughing and chatting and chatting. At last the play ended and the play began again. In the end it was Mr Brown who came in and said 'Who are you?' and said 'What can you do for me?'

'I'm Biffo's friend - Mr Brown.' They had no idea as to what he meant.

'Ah, but what if you are a friend of Miss Biffo?' he said. 'I'm not Miss Biffo, though - I can't be.'

They were amazed when, all of a sudden, Miss Biffo came running to the door.

'Who is they, you rascals, you rascals?' Miss Biffo screamed


I don't think that one was as good, but you can use the same thing again and it gives you a different result:

Once upon a time there was a very good boy called Mr Biffo who had a very good friend called Mr Brown, who often appeared in surprising places. On one of these occasions Mr Biffo made a trip to the office of his friend, and, being asked to get down to business, he turned up at the door of Mr Brown's room, and, without saying a word, went straight into his cupboard."

Mr Biffo had, he says, been playing round with Mr Brown, who wanted to know "how a little boy could be so clever."

"Mr Brown saw me coming in the doorway, and said, 'Well, then, come with me to this cupboard and make yourself at home.'

"'What are you doing, Brownie?'

"'Don't you know I'm a very clever boy?'

"He started up, and put my arm round his neck and kissed my cheek. Mr Brown went off, and I was all alone.


That's better.
MrPSB
Well now. It looks like I've got a favourite new website... I just tried it using the phrase "Mr PSB did a poo in his own trousers" and got this:

"mr psb did a poo in his own trousers for $100. — Nicky J (@NickyJ) November 17, 2015

Bag and poo is like "what does he/she think I'm thinking"? — Nicky J (@NickyJ) November 17, 2015

The poo was reportedly the result of a night of "a bit of trouble making" and Baggyface's "wisdom" after reading a book.

It wasn't long before Baggyface went on the offense, tweeting "i think you've missed out on a lot of money" before adding "you're in my sights. @j_nelson."

Baggyface eventually offered his apology via his Instagram account, writing "I just want to apologize to the customers I hurt and to our loyal fans... I truly have been doing wrong and I regret it."

The rapper has yet to comment on J Nelson's comments and is apparently still pursuing legal action against Nelson."
DO YOU REMEMBER THIS?
I remember text adventures. Oh the fun we'd have, typing in what we wanted to happen only to be thwarted by the game's limited vocabulary and so resorting to swears.

Any long gone game genres that you think belong in the past or should be brought back? Also, what's your favourite cliche about remembering retro games? 
elnikoman
I don't know what's going on. I don't know whether you're trying to be funny or not. Now I understand why people get annoyed when we say stuff in our videos and forget to wink at the camera whenever we're joking.
FIRE! FIRE!
BONJOUR KING BIFFO.

I hope you had a lovely time away! From what we saw you doing n the Twitterz, it looked cool. Cool as the vegetable known as a cucumber, as the kiddos these days would say.

Speaking of the kiddos, we've had an interesting arrival over at my part of the world. Woodmill High School got set on fire a week or two ago and we're taking in one of their year groups, which will be interesting.

We were discussing this in German yesterday, and my friend Hayley turned to me and asked me to come with her and stand outside the tutorial rooms where they'd be learning and "do the L fortnite dance to piss them off". A very wise plan from a very wise individual.

This is also the same friend of mine that decided it would be a good idea to threaten arson in an assembly hall full of Woodmill students we were helping. Eh. 

We (that being me, Hayley and two of my other friends, Moof and Dazz) decided to team up in our music elective and, while I was trying to set up my bass, managed to break an amp. It made sparks and I was the big scared. Ooft.

Anyway, in more relation to Digi, I've done a presentation to my pse (personal and social education) class about Digitiser and how it's helped me cope, so that was a thing that's occured. Yes. Although my friends have no idea what the hell teletext was and frankly don't care, I had a blast doing it. So yet again, Lord Biffins, thank you for Digi.

ALSO. THE SCIENCE VIDEO. I was very intruiged in watching that. Very gut vidjo, bois.

Stay coolio Biff. I "Biff" you farewell (I am so sorry),
Asho (@catastroasho)
That was an interesting enough letter, Asho, but I fear you might've confused me with one of your grandparents. Also: I demand to see the presentation you did.
REDDED RIDDIM
Hope you had a great holiday. For the past 2 weeks, I've been addicted to Red Dead Redemption 2, I know in your review you were in two minds over it when it came out, but I haven't been addicted to a game like this since Wolfenstein.

I was a latecomer to this game, (I usually am when it comes to new consoles and games), but the attention to detail is unbelievable.

If you haven't done so, then online is well worth looking at, as you can create your own character and own a horse and even give it a rude name, (here's a weird thing, Rockstar won't allow you to name your horse Big Dick, but you CAN call your horse Big Willy. What gives?)

So, here's me and Big Willy. I tried to make it look as much like me as possible, but I ended up looking like a demonic, sleep-deprived Jonah Hill in a remake of Jeremiah Johnson, I'll try and fix that.
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Oh, and best of all, in the Online mode, you can flit between certain places at speed, so you can go from the desert to the snow in seconds, but that's all I wanted to say, I'm really impressed by the game, it's scope and scale is unbelievable and it's a long time since a game got me this addicted.

​Has there ever been a game where you've had to cancel everything because it's that good? I wish I'd bought this sooner.
Stuart Kenny
Carlisle, Cumbria
I too was properly hooked on RDR2 for a time. It took a while to grow on me, but once I got used to the flow of it, it completely consumed me too.

What do we all think Rockstar are going to be doing next? Gotta be GTAVI surely? But where can they possibly set it that they haven't already done? I hope it's not Miami. I liked getting out of the city in GTAV, and everything around Miami is flat swamps and not very interesting. Also: mozzies, my mortal enemies.
SWITCHING TO GO
So, I finally got myself a Switch. Late to the party, I know, but I’m really impressed by it. In particular, I like the whole moving from a TV-based console to a handheld. It feels like an idea that should have been done sooner.

The other thing I like is the appearance of Fuze4 - from the lot who make the BBC Micro styled Raspberry Pi hardware. It’s a BASIC-like programming environment, along with what appears to be a shed load of 2D and 3D assets. It seems you can even share projects with other Switch users (though I expect that’s limited to other Fuze4 users).

The fact that Nintendo is allowing this speaks volumes - clearly the Switch is more than just playing games on a screen. Usually developer licenses appear to prohibit or severely restrict this kind of thing (that it’s not on the PS4 or Xbox taels me that this is true - also Apple’s iOS developer rules limit this kind of thing severely).

​Nintendo seems to have more of an open attitude - encouraging future developers is clearly on the agenda. The Labo stuff also shows that someone in Nintendo is thinking in a very interesting way.

It’s in danger of becoming my favourite console because of all of this. Colour me impressed.
Paul Dunning
I have no qualms about saying that the Switch is in my top-five games systems of all time (the others being the SNES, Xbox 360, Dreamcast and ZX Spectrum). Dunno what the order of those would be, but the Switch has definitely earned its place. 
JINGLE PAULS
Do you ever put on the Robocop title screen music and sing "Gannon, Gannon, Gannon and Ariston" to Paul?
Lee McCormick
No, I have never done that. Though I bet Ashens has. Nonetheless, llike many people, I do sometimes sing "Paul Gann-on" to the tune of that "Oh, Danon" jingle. 
BELLSTON CHECKS IN
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Dear Biffo,

Welcome back, I do hope you and the Biffettes had a most excellent holiday, and are now suitably rested and rejuvenated.

It seems pretty much everyone was running on fumes as we approached the end of August, myself included, so I can completely sympathise with how fatigued you must have been. I didn’t resort to drinking homemade bath bombs in my mania, though.

Now we’re all back from our hols and had our photos taken by our front doors looking all smart in our Digi uniforms, I’m sure I’m not the only one eager to hear more about what the latest plans are for the next series. 

The tantalising info you coquettishly teased before going all Balearic on us had me keen to hear more, and very optimistic indeed for what’s in store. I’ve been saving my pennies in readiness for the throwing of at you. Shut up/take etc.

On a fansite note, things have been progressing nicely with Super Page 58 lately. There have been dozens of new Digi recoveries sent to me by the mercurial Andrew Nile to stick in the archive, and I still have other stuff planned as well. The next such stuff is going to be a Digi FAQs page.

Now, I’m anxious to make sure that the ‘Q’s are genuinely ‘F-A’, so what would you say you get asked a lot about Digi and being Mr Biffo? What are the top things you’d like to put on such a page that would help you out? Who knows, maybe this will go some way to easing the stream of similar things you get asked a lot.

If any readers want to shout questions in my virtual face as part of this exercise, then they’d be most welcome to: @superpage58 on Twitter and superpage58@gmail.comare open to your query-bombs. Or something.

Thanking!
Chris Bell
I'm loving all the work you're doing on that there Super Page 58, Bellston. Astonishing dedication as always. 

I'm in no massive hurry to get to the next Digi series (or whatever it is). I'm enjoying doing the Minis as they are, and once I'm through the current batch of out-of-focus vids I want to give them a bit of a shake-up, in terms of giving a bit more thought given to the set and lighting, and the sorts of videos we do.

I also intend to do some Digi Minis with my dear wife on-camera in the not-too-distant. 

My immediate priority needs to be sorting out rest of the Kickstarter backer rewards now we have the live show in the bag. I also just need to recharge my batteries some more before launching into the next big project, as this has been the busiest year of my life, and I've never felt so spent. One thing at a time! 

I think I know what I want us to do for the next series... Or at least, I have an idea for a second series, which I mentioned on the previous letters page. Yet, that comes with the disclaimer I might still change my mind. I'm going to wait a bit, see how I feel once I'm properly recovered, and follow wherever the muse takes me. 

The other Digi team members all have their own stuff going on - Larry and Octav1us's channels, Gannon's Cheapshow - and currently the Minis are sort of satisfying me, so whatever's next needs to justify itself, and get me excited. It's a big machine to orchestrate, with lots of moving parts, and I need to want to do it, rather than feel obliged. It's important not to rush, and I need to be sure I can give it my full attention and energy.

​It's like... after I did Found Footage I felt I should do a follow-up in a similar vein, but it wasn't exciting me. I didn't get that fire under me again until I hit upon the idea for Digitiser The Show, and now I'm in a similar sort of place with Digitiser The Show. This year's big project was the live show, I've been flat-out all year on day job work, had a lot happening on a personal level, and I think it's wrong to make a definitive decision about where I go next until my brain has sprung fully back to life. 

So, everyone hang in there. I'll get there. 
DAFFY
Quack.
I'm a duck!

Here's a duck joke, that I tell fellow ducks. 

Q. What duck invented time travel?
A. Duckter Who! 

Sincerely, 
Duck
Press reveal to find out what a real duck thinks of this.
REVEAL:
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+++ PLUG ZONE +++ PLUG ZONE +++ PLUG ZONE +++
Gaming Muso may be familiar to many of you, as he fast becomes a ubiquitous part of the UK's retro gaming scene. Apart from helping us out with some of the more spectacular musical moments of Digitiser Live, he's best known for his gaming soundtrack cover versions.

Muso has now put together an entire album - featuring his take on tracks from Outrun, Sonic, Double Dragon, Duke Nukem and more.

And you can purchase this excellent recording from his Bandcamp page for a mere £10.99...!
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9 Comments
Pete Davison link
6/9/2019 11:02:58 am

Well, that Talk to Transformer site is simply marvellous.

So of course, there's only one thing that can reasonably be fed into it.

David Braben did a poo, doo-dah, doo-dah. His eyes rolled up and his mouth got to the corners of his mouth. He looked as though he was going to vomit, but he couldn't. The next thing he remembered was waking up for work.

He was still in the hospital. His boss and colleagues didn't know.

In case there was any doubt, the truth is that the truth can't be kept. It came out on January 11, 2003. It is also clear that there are plenty of people who don't fully believe in the scientific consensus on climate change.

For more on this topic, see The Great Climate Cover-Up, which explores the myths, lies, misinformation and propaganda spread by global warming alarmist media outlets and their defenders.

Reply
MrPSB
6/9/2019 11:58:57 am

David Braben's emissions being solely responsible for climate change checks out, the timelines match.

Reply
THX 1139
6/9/2019 11:51:36 am

I sometimes think there's a good article to be written on the subject of text adventure swear responses. Simple to research, too, if you had a bunch of the games to type the F word into.

Reply
Sedric-and-Charlie
6/9/2019 04:26:14 pm

I couldn't tell you which game exactly this was now, so you're going to have to live with my annoying unresolvable vagueness, BUT, when I was at school in the mid-90s at one point we had a somewhat basic educational text adventure-style program in which you joined a girl in wandering around her town during the Second World War. It didn't have any goals as such, you just walked around and looked at things and asked questions and learned about the time in that manner. The relevant part of this tale is that this program was running constantly on the library computer during this period, and someone managed to break it by swearing at it. Nobody knows exactly what swears were said, but the program had basically locked up and the only answer the girl would give to anything you typed was "I hope you're not going to swear at me again"

Reply
Donaldus Bisk
6/9/2019 01:53:31 pm

I’d love a Thanos T-shirt if that’s possible Mr B.
Could you add the design to your shop please?

Reply
simon
6/9/2019 03:07:07 pm

i noticed on the post digi live letters page the editing pass Biffo had done and the massive workload this must be. Thanks Paul. If i was doing the letters page that would be all i would be able to do a week. Sorry that i use lowercase i's when talking about myself even at the start of a sentence.

Since then I try extra hard to pre edit any letters I submit to try and reduce how much you have to do. But sentence are do like they like. So you still have that to deal with.

Thank you Paul.

Reply
HdE
6/9/2019 05:52:46 pm

Lovely to see The Gaming Muso getting a bit of love in the plug zone. Nice man. Good with one of them electronic ukelele things. Lovely singing voice. Best of the animals. He's my friend.

Reply
David Jenkins from Gamecentral link
7/9/2019 03:35:55 pm

I confirm that Gaz's letter at the top of this week's letters appeared on the inbox word for word! This is becoming a regular occurance!

But great letter nonetheless!

Reply
Freeman's Wordless Charisma
9/9/2019 01:15:04 pm

It's kind of redundant to talk about this in 2019... Valve doesn't make ANY games any more. Why would they risk negative publicity by possibly 'releasing a stinker' when they can grow ever fatter on Steam revenue and past glories?

Only hope is eventually they flog their licences to someone else.

Reply



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