This was going to be a pretty dry fluff piece about the gaming events going on in my home city, something I'd pop in to between renewing my travel pass and getting some new shoelaces.  Then something slightly surreal happened to me.
 
I've just spent around an hour in the company of one of the men partly responsible for getting me into computers in the first place.  And I didn't recognise him.
 

And so farewell to another part of RISC OS; as noted in our forum, longtime RISC OS news and articles website Drobe has closed... or, rather, entered "archive mode". (Note to all other websites: please do this, rather than just disappear, taking your content with you.)
 
A full announcement is to follow, but it's been clear for a while now that the time to run the website just hasn't been there. Many thanks to Chris Williams, original founder Peter Price, and everyone else involved in Drobe over the years; for all the occasional controversy, Drobe did a fantastic job at covering RISC OS online, comprehensively and intelligently. And that's a harder and more time-consuming job than it looks.
 
UPDATE @ 22:40: And here is that announcement. Whilst the main news and articles service is ceasing, the plan is to build the site up as a RISC OS resource site; anybody interested in helping with this is encouraged to get in contact. User webspace will also continue, and a new message board is planned. Any future updates to the site will be announced on their new Twitter feed.
 

Here's the plan: take an old Mac mini, blow the dust off it, and repurpose it as a media centre. In particular, I wanted it to:

• Watch and record Freeview channels
• Watch shows on BBC iPlayer
• Play downloaded videos

Here's how I got on.
 

Anyone reading this will have seen it by now, but just in case you gave up hope (but, erm, kept coming back to us for updates), Drobe has - after a few sparks of life recently - now relaunched.
 
There has been some criticism of the new design; visually, I think it looks great, but then I've always enjoyed websites that are clean and simple and uncluttered. My biggest complaints with the old design were that the masthead looked too busy, and there wasn't enough white space; both of these issues have now been addressed. (Although can we have the logo back in colour? Pretty please?)
 

Gareth Moore wrote in to let us know that, as foretold in the forums, the "Brits Who Made the Modern World" series is a big rip-off of the book "The Backroom Boys". No, wait, that wasn't it.
 
The final episode airs on August 22nd at 7:30pm on Five. Go on, guess what it's about.
 
  12 comments in the forums

Yeah, that whole "updating a website" thing. We're quite shit at it, aren't we?
 
We do have some good stuff coming up, though. In the meantime, if you've not seen it, I recommend watching Hyperland - a 1990 Douglas Adams documentary. To say much more would spoil it, but it's fascinating stuff, especially considering when it was made.
 
Pity about the snipe at Filthy, Rich & Catflap at the start, mind you. (Indeed, the snipes at telly are pretty misjudged as a whole.) It's utterly wonderful, and I recommend you buy the DVD if you haven't seen it. At £6.99, what is there to lose? Well, apart from £6.99, of course.
 

Each week we hold up a mirror to the people of RISC OS and reflect the current topics of debate.
 
In this, the third exciting installment:

• Demo versions of software
• BBC iPlayer protests won't aid RISC OS
• Another user says goodbye

 

I've been excited about the Helvetica movie ever since I read about it on NoiseToSignal last August. According to the blurb, "Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives."
 
It finally premiered on the 13th at SXSW and, judging from the reviews, it seems it's everything I hoped for...

Thanks to Hustwit's clean lines of narrative and intellectually playful style, we get a great look at the universality of Helvetica as a typeface and how, after it was unveiled in 1957 and hailed as a miracle of modernism, it became the unofficial font of official activities. Hustwit's camera noses through a variety of urban landscapes and shows you just how omnipresent Helvetica is -- traffic signs, logos, official notices, storefronts.
 
At its best, Helvetica makes us actually look at the world around us, and actually think about how the medium is the message, how much art is in the things our eyes gloss over every day.
 
One of the most intellectually exciting, stimulating, warm-hearted and best-made independent documentaries I've seen in a long time, Helvetica turns 26 letters into a whole new perspective on the world.
 
Cinematical

This is not really a movie about a typeface. Helvetica is just a character in this wonderfully-made film, which just might be the best history of graphic design we've ever seen ... Designer or not, you will never, ever see the world the same again.
 
MediaBistro

Hopefully the UK screenings will be announced soon. I need to see this film.