A brief introduction -------------------- Welcome to "Grandson of Wowbagger", a third-generation program which is probably the most tasteless and insulting little accessory you're likely ever to have other people - or yourself - stumble across. The accessory's full name is "The Automated Grandson of Wowbagger Still the Infinitely Prolonged", named after the rather infamous character featured in the first chapter of Douglas Adams' hilariously funny book "Life, the Universe and Everything". For those who don't know: After some problems involving something elastic and time travelling, Wowbagger became immortal. He thought this was rather nice, but as time progressed he got kinda fed up with everything. So he set out to insult every being in the entire universe, in alphabetic order. So there. This is automated version of this immortal being - or, rather, as this is already the sixth (and now most definitely the last and certainly the best) version of this particular accessory, the Grandson Of. Wowbagger himself, as well as any of his offspring, can now retire. Public Domain products ---------------------- The products mentioned in this bit, just like the product to which this documentation file belongs to, are freeware, i.e. you can copy them freely and you don't have to pay for using them unless you really feel you want to (which would be nice). - The Background Music Utility (BMU) Working on the ST can be tedious. Wouldn't it be nice if you had one of about 50 different pieces of nice music sedately running in the background, using the ST's built-in sound routines (which' capacity you should not underestimate)? Then this accessory is perfect for you. - Speedwriter II A somewhat older 'interactive animated correspondence' utility, including its GfA Basic 2.0 source. With this, it is possible to send remarkable letters that you can see being typed as you look, including all cursor movements. Just a nice titbit. - Handy A tiny accessory that allows you to do three things: Access the file selector (handy when using one like "UIS III"), Specify date & time, and freeze the system until a password is entered. A source is included so that you can easily adapt the password, and then compile it again (using GfA Basic 3.x). - Name Creator Although this program will only appeal to those into reading and writing fantasy fiction, this utility will be useful to those who generally need to think up fantasy names in the category of dwarves, elves, etc. Using a database of existing parts of names (taken from Donaldson, Tolkien, Weis/Hickman, McCaffrey and Herbert, among others), you will be amazed at the quality of the many thousands of different names this program can come up with. Creating anagrams is also possible - though doing this with large names will use LOTS of memory. This program is being used professionally by a games company for their role playing games. Word parts can be added, a history can be kept, etc... The Wowbagger Manual -------------------- Simply copy the WOWBAGGR.ACC file into the root directory of your boot drive. In case you do not have a hard disk, this will be A, and in case you DO have a harddisk this will most likely be C. After booting your system, the Grandson of Wowbagger will lie lurking in the background, invisible to the world. Until it hits, that is. This accessory is slightly 'illegal' (in the definition Atari gives to the word, that is) - it does not occupy a desk accessory slot in the 'Desk' pull-down menu. This represents no problems. It even works together with the "Chameleon" accessory loader. Even though "Grandson of Wowbagger" occupies no accessory slot, this does not mean you can suddenly have more than six accessories installed! This limit still remains (at least with non-"MultiTOS" Operating Systems). AT ALL TIMES you should make sure the WOWBAGGR.CNF is in the same directory as the actual program. When using it as an accessory, make sure that the configuration file is in the root directory, even when the accessory is somewhere else (like in a "C:\ACCS\" folder). Before you use it as an accessory for the first time, always check if the settings are to your liking. CONFIGURATION MODE "WOWBAGGR.ACC" can be renamed to "WOWBAGGR.PRG". If you execute the program then, with the configuration file in the same directory, you will enter the built-in editor, which can edit the relevant accessory parameters which are the following: INSULT INTERVAL IN MINUTES AND SECONDS (1 to 60 minutes) Sets the intervals at which curses will be flung on the screen and/or printer, with an accuracy of 1 second. OUTPUT TO PRINTER/SCREEN/BOTH Determines whether curses should appear on a printer (if connected), screen, or both. NUMBER OF INSULTS PER ACTIVATION (1-5) Specifies the amount of curses that will be put on the screen in one fell swoop. CURSE RATING (U, PGA or XXX) Internally the words have been rated somewhat. "U" (Universal) is pretty harmless but insulting nonetheless. "PGA" (Parental Guidance Advised) is already pretty raunchy and "XXX" (Triple X Rated) contains all the words after which your parents told you to wash your mouth (or even more drastic things). These include blatantly sexist and counter-religious words, and a lot worse. LANGUAGE (English or Dutch) There are many more English than Dutch curses, but it might be fun to see a few Dutch curses. To Dutch people (or people from Belgium, or even South Africa) they might actually prove useful. It should be noted that only the actual curse mode will be fully in Dutch when selected. Configuration mode is always in English. By default, screen and printer output are enabled (if no printer is connected or on-line this will be no problem) and the insult time is set to five minutes (quantity is set to 5). Default curse rating is "U" and default language is English. You can imagine what fun it would be to put the accessory on someone's boot disk/partition with a high time limit and printer output only. He will never notice it until he has turned on his printer and is, for example, printing out something. "Grandson of Wowbagger" can interrupt any GEM application as well as any printing going on at the moment, and will spill the insult (for example in the middle printing an official document...limitless loadsa hard-core fun!) without mercy. When entering configuration mode, the "SAVE" button will be default. Once you have saved your settings, the "EXIT" button will be default. At all times you can alternatively press [UNDO] to exit or [HELP] for the "About" dialog. Once the parameters have been edited, all you need to do is rename the file to something ending in ".ACC" and make sure the configuration file ("WOWBAGGR.CNF") in the same directory. It should be noted that this configuration file is NOT compatible with that of earlier versions of the program. IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY Should you ever yourself be surprised by a sudden appearance of swearing words on your monitor (whether because you accidentally left it on yourself or because some evil person put it on your boot partition), there is a way out. Simply leave the curse screen whilst keeping the [ALTERNATE] key pressed. No further insults will appear on screen and/or printer - at least not until you boot again. PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING There are some really nasty insults possible with this program - as a matter of fact, of all the literally millions and millions of possible insults only a couple are somewhat mild in one way or another. So nobody under 18 should use it, unless they have really liberal parents. I have included some really gross words, so beware! Don't write to me and say I haven't warned you. If it comforts you to know that I was pissed out of my skull during the creation of this program: I was berzerkedly drunk when I created most of it. Also see the note at the very end of the manual. Oh yeah. Nearly forgot. A total of 2,056,732,555,440 (that's over 2 TRILLION!!) curses are possible. Even if you install the accessory's parameters to 5 curses to be displayed at the smallest interval - one minute - it will take you well over 775,000 years of non-stop computing to see them all (given that no insults appear twice, which is quite unlikely not to happen). That's quite a long time. THE THEORY Well, there isn't much to say really. Basically it has a couple of long lists of words. One contains only adverbs (very, grossly, insubordinately, etc.), another one only adjectives (big, small, putrid) which is followed by nouns (git, twat, horse). Some nouns (I believe they're called non-count nouns or mass nouns) can have something like "load of" in front of them - so there's also a list of words along that line (bag full of, toilet full of). This latter category also has an extra adjective added (say, "bag full of RANCID milk"). And that, basically, is all there is to it. It is based on an original idea by Stefan Posthuma and Dave Bloemendaal, but "Wowbagger" is much more naughty and doesn't limit things to Dutch. OTHER VERSIONS Quite an enormous while ago, somewhere in 1989 methinks, I made the first version of "Wowbagger" for the disk magazine "ST NEWS". It has been spread reasonably effectively. The difference with the later versions was that the number of insults per activation could not be changed and that about 1.5 BILLION swearing words could be generated with it. In this version I used the second part of a swearing word (the adjective) twice. So you would get "very RANCID PUTRID sissy" or something like that. As of the second version, the middle bit was only used once. This reduced the amount of curses possible, but on the other hand I had added about twice as many words so the fun was more than doubled. And, of course, You could press "Help" while a curse was on screen to get some credits. This second version was called "Version Integrale" and was done on July 14th 1991. The third version was called "Son of Wowbagger" and was basically a revamp of the second version. The editor was now built in (an external program did it before), the accessory was now compressed, and quite a lot of words had been added again. It was released on February 24th 1993. A slight rehash, the Final Son, was done on March 17th 1993 (it could create about 30 million additional swearing words). The version number was then 3.01. The fifth version, at the time proclaimed to be the FINAL version (3.5) was released on May 25th 1993. It had yet another enormous amount of words added, totalling to a possible half a billion different curses. I genuinely intended it to be the final version, but... Now, finally, we have reached the sixth version (version 4.2). Nothing about it is proclaimed to be final, though chances are substantially bigger that it might very well be. Of course a lot of words have been added, but more things have changed. For starters it now uses a GEM-compatible interface (courtesy of Gregor Duchalski's "FlyDials") and has some added switches ("English/Dutch" and "U/PGA/XXX" curse filth ratings). Between the "x full of" and the noun there is now an adjective too. The boot problem present up to and including the fifth version was also fixed, and it is now even compatible with "MultiTOS" as well as "Geneva". I'd like to use these last enhancements as the reason behind actually making this sixth version in the first place. It's not as if I was actually having fun or anything. LITERATURE Well, I am actually slightly proud to say that none of the words used are fictitious - even though many may very much seem so. I used a standard dictionary, a special "Superior People Dictionary" by Peter Bowler, and the help of some song lyrics as well as, in the earliest version, the invaluable assistance of Tim and Dave of The Lost Boys. The gross words are either off Dave or off Carcass' "Symphonies of Sickness" CD lyrics. The third version also incorporated a lot of new words from various dictionaries (most notably amongst which is "Slang and Euphemisms" by Richard Spears) as well as quite a lot of words heard on the BBC series "Red Dwarf". Further versions had more "Red Dwarf" bits added, primarily. The Dutch part of version 4.2 was based on the original program written in 1987 by Stefan Posthuma and Dave Bloemendaal with strange word assistance by Jordy. A lot of Dutch words have afterwards been added, inspired by Eric Schreurs' "Joop Klepzeiker" and "Geharrebar". The Address ----------- I can be reached at the following address. There, I would like to receive possible donations too (given the fact that this particular accessory guarentees at least 775,000 years of entertainment, I should think that's worth something)! Richard Karsmakers P.O. Box 67 NL-3500 AB Utrecht The Netherlands Email: r.c.karsmakers@stud.let.ruu.nl PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ADDRESS IN THE PROGRAM IS NO LONGER VALID! It should be noted that the email address may not be valid after the summer of 1996. The program on this disk and its manual are copyright 1994 by Richard Karsmakers. However, you may copy them as much as you want as long as the package remains complete (i.e. program + document file + other associated files). Death to The Men With Suits! By the way, I was quite sober when I made the program. I think this kind of thing should be possible in this day and age. If not for anything else, I made this program to make a statement. I just wish to have you know that. Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 14th 1994