It pains me to write this but it is all over, Amiga News Central is gone for good.
I had hoped to continue in the new weekly format (and work had started on the latest update and the further relaunching of ANC) before I had a reality check. I could have continued, half heartedly with a poor news service but I don't want to cheapen what Amiga News Central once represented and more importantly waste your time.
I feel I owe you the reasons behind what has just happened, they are reasons not excuses. Basically I thought I could continue with the weekly format, thus taking off the workload and pressure from a daily operation but unfortunately all it did was create many times more pressure towards the deadline. I underestimated what the future would hold for me, work and study wise. I could have continued on for a few more weeks albeit in a crippled form but that would just have been an excercise in futility, I'm a firm believer of being open, direct and upfront.
The new year promises to be challenging and at times very difficult. My future is at stake and I would have been kidding myself and wasting a lot of money if I continued with Amiga News Central and not centred all my energies onto my future.
I realise I have let a lot of people down and in some cases broken commitments I had previously agreed to. But as I said they are reasons not excuses and I wont hide from your criticisms. After the death and resurrection of Amiga News Central I think it would be fair to say I have lost a lot of credibility. My sole intention in all this was to help forward the Amiga. Helping in my own little way meant a lot to me personally and some of your emails really touched and flattered me, so much so that I deluded myself into believing I could continue. To all those who have loyally stuck by Amiga News Central, I sincerely thank you for providing me with many moments of joy and happiness. And to those who I have been personally involved with through Amiga News Central, again thankyou for your support and my deepest apologies for letting you down.
The rest of Amiga Central will continue on. The Amiga's future is uncharacteristically bright and I will always be around, if only as an interested observer to one day witness it's revival.
In my final words I will leave you with a passage from Harlan Ellison which has often been duplicated since it's appearance on the Deathbed Vigil but I feel they summarise every Amigan's feelings about the Amiga:
"Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover.
But once having tasted the lips of excellence,
once having given oneself to its perfection,
how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the
remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled
lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable,
the just okay and not one stroke better."
-Harlan Ellison
Thanks for the memories and long live the Amiga!
Kind Regards,
Paul Morabito
Webmaster, AmigaCentral.