Howard Jones

[You are missing a picture of me, by not having graphic support.]

When I am not in front of a keyboard or scanner, I like to read (mostly on the train), walk (mostly to and from the train, although longer is nice), and juggle (not on the train at all). I also listen to a lot of different music, and try to play my guitar when I get some time. I am a fan of cartoons of the 'old style' - old Warners, and the new Warners/Amblin ones, anything with a twist or an attitude. Down with He-man, and triple-framed animation! I'm also currently, very slowly, trying to learn Japanese (I'm still working on my kana).

A current project is The Today Page. Watch for a neat new travel-related web thingy coming soon. I also have a page on GeoCities, mainly to see what it is like.

Just in case (there seem to be some people who think that maybe he is now a programmer): I am not a musician!. Here is a home page for some other guy called Howard Jones, or you can click below to let WebCrawler find who you really wanted...

Here are a few links to things I have written that might be useful to others:

And a page of references to other pages I have found useful for various projects. Unless you are walking two steps behind or in front of me, I doubt these will will be universally interesting! :-)

These are a few of my favourite things:

Musical Things

Norman Whitfield and Barratt Strong
Are here to make right everything that's wrong
Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too
Are here to make it all okay with you
 Levi Stubbs' Tears - Billy Bragg

(not necessarily representative - just what's near my desk)

TV and Movie Things

Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth *and* fresher breath.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"

Literary Things

Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.
-Ng Security Industries Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit #B-782 (Fido)

  • Snow Crash, Interface and The Diamond Age
  • Design of Everyday Things
  • Kurt Vonnegut
  • Robert B Parker
  • Sara Paretsky (I got one on a whim when the bookshop didn't have any Robert Parker, but it was worth it!)
  • Elmore Leonard
  • Phillip K Dick
  • Iain Banks/Iain M Banks
  • American Psycho darkly, darkly humourous, and very nasty.
  • H.P.Lovercraft Cyclopean Geometries, Unnameable Things, Places That Men Ought Not See. Magic!
  • Dilbert
  • Akbar and Jeff (Yo There)

Net Things

"Who would have thought that so much fun could come out of one small insulated wire?"
- Homer J Simpson

People (not Things)

Gaming Things

  • Paradroid/Paradroid 90 The original was a classic, and the 90 'remix' just builds on it - all the playability of the original, plus some shiny graphics, and a new shoot-em-up mode without the Transfer Game. I want to see Paradroid 96 for PSX!
  • Mr Do! When it was in the arcades, I couldn't play it (or at least, I couldn't afford to get good at it), but when I got the C64 version, from Datasoft, I played it to death. Now I want to buy an arcade one - there's 50 quid waiting for one if you have it!
  • XPilot It's a pity no-ones ever made a PC version of this - it's a beautiful game that is pretty limited in it's audience by running under X. You can play it in a million different ways - local networked, across the Internet, team, one on one, against the computer (not so great), and with many possible powerups and the ability to make your own maps. Pretty much everything everyone thinks is cool about Doom etc now actually. For a pale imitation on your PC, without installing linux, you might want to try SubSpace, but you'll have to imagine the other 60%, like gravity, particle systems, head-up radar, homing nukes, and lovely swooping bits.
  • Assault Rigs From some of the same people as Wipeout, (and also including Dominic Robinson, who was responsible with Andrew Braybrook for Paradroid 90 too), a mixture of Sentinel, Battlezone, Tron (the movie) and Tower of Babel. Great puzzles, great graphics, best PSX game I've bought so far this year.
  • Madden 96 The yardstick by which all american footy sims are judged - it's getting a bit ungainly now though. Madden 93 is a lot better for a quick up and down the field. NFL GameDay flows a bit better but doesn't seem to play as well (I haven't had it long though).
  • Worms Multiplayer nastiness with worms. It looks a bit like Lemmings, and plays a bit like 2-player Lemmings (which has to be one of the most vicious games I've ever played), but the basic game is the old 'castles either side of a hill' format with lots more weapons and mobile castles!.
  • Pinball sims Psycho Pinball on Megadrive, Starball on ST, True Pinball on Playstation (from the Pinball Fantasies guys). I'm looking forward to Tilt! on PS when it eventually arrives.

Computer Things

  • WWW Implementing
  • 68000 Assembly
  • Unix
  • Perl
  • Windows Programming (reduced mostly to VB and Access - yuk)

Other Things

  • My shiny new Bauer skates - not that I can skate
  • Coke (This website is powered by Coca Cola - our 3 seater office averages around 50 cans a week of the Real Thing)
  • Juggling
  • Sherbert Dip-dabs
  • Aniseed balls
  • Guitar plunking (not quite the same as playing)
  • Perfect Pizza Peking Duck Deep Pan. Whoever thought this one up needs a knighthood. 0181 541 41 41 - deliver in most of the UK, AFAIK)
  • It wasn't a particularly favourite thing at the time but My Old School was pretty good, upon reflection, even if I did end up pointed Physics-ward as a result.
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Last modified: Wednesday, 19 April 2000
He-man is probably a trademark of someone, eh? Come to that, so are most of the other Shows mentioned above.
Howard Jones (hjones@vossnet.co.uk)