Severe w00tage an Kudo’s (Nice Slide, Overtake and Cool Air combined !) to Darkman for his picture on ‘Drieduizend Leuven’. Nice one !
Links:
Darkman’s picture on Drieduizend Leuven
Darkman’s hideout
Project Gotham Racing II Kudo’s System
Gaming, General | FRaNKy | 
October 28, 2005 10:27 am | 
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As I’ve been thinking of posting something during the last days, but somehow never got to it this is a post will probably be a bit bigger then the usual ones.. Well, unless you count the Mindcandy 2 preview ;-)
The weekend started with a meeting with the guys from the office.. Mostly survival stuff in the woods and walking around, well.. not my piece of cake anyway so I kinda ended up in the local village around there and went for some shopping. Got some DVD’s with a nice addition to the collection surely being a collection DVD from The A-Team. Well after the obligatory food I got my ‘Company Umbrella’ (hey, at least I’ve got one in the car now) and drove off with Zavke to Gent. In the Vooruit there was another edition of the 80’s Hits Night and those are usually good fun. Good fun was quite an understatement actually as I remember we went home around 4 in the morning, for what would be come a short night.
Short night indeed for on Sunday we had some tickets for the Belcar races on the Zolder circuit. Together with the Belcar they had races planned in the Mini Series, Britcar and Legends Masters. Playing with Mini’s a lot in Project Gotham Racing 2 on Xbox Live I was looking forward to this one, and well I wasn’t disappointed in those races. Standing at one of the chicanes its really cool to see 5 Mini’s go side-by-side thru the corners. More boring were the Britcar’s. 10 cars in a 2 hour endurance race where the car in the lead lapped the one in second place after about 30 minutes of race.. Bah. More fun was in the Legends Masters… Basically a V8 engine with some wheels under it. Fun to see, probably great fun to drive as well. In the end I think we’ll end up at the Zolder circuit a bit more often in the future, really sad that the Britcar was so terribly boring to look at.
General, Music, Work | FRaNKy | October 26, 2005 5:57 pm | Comments (0)
The last week has been quite of a musical and joyful one. First of all, last Friday, there was the wedding of XXX/Haujobb with his now-misses Eva. The party was held in the city of cologne and it was pretty nifty. Beers on the steps of city hall, nice party room afterwards with a main hall and a chillout room. The chillout room kinda rocked… It was in this chillout room that I had the pleasure to watch a VJ set of some guys called ‘Pause 20’. Think 8 bit remixes and 8bit VJ visuals on plasma screens stuffed in a room with demosceners on kölsch, you get the idea ;-) The overload of joy reached a high level when the playlist was put online on the website so I can now listen to the music of the VJ/DJ set in my car.. I play it loud most of the time. Very loud. The CD contains some not so casual remixes of Last Ninja, Nigel Mansell’s racing, Marioland and Turrican… And they’re not the ordinary run-of-the-mill remixes but really nicely done with a semi professional touch. Then I spotted a new C64 based podcast made by Scout, a dutch C64 scener that produces music for a semi-living presumably, called ‘8 Bit Mayhem’. It contains the raw SID versions of little known, yet great C64 tunes.. Unmodified, Unremixed, etc.. The way they should sound on the breadbox. My CD collection in the car is growing then.. I’m very happy I’ve got this CD changer now so I can stuff more tunes in there. The latest Discobar Galaxy CD ‘Space Bar’ is still in there as well, so you can still expect some ranting about that CD as well ;-)
Links:
XXX’s wedding pictures on Slengpung
8 Bit Mayhem episode 1
Scout’s musical bits.
DemoScene, Music | FRaNKy | October 19, 2005 1:00 pm | Comments (0)
With the summer behind us the party season is dieing down as well, or can you call it some kind of hibernation during autumn? The bigger events such as Buenzli and Evoke have passed, this years Breakpoint is as far away as next years edition and the time everyone was looking forward to The Party hasn’t existed anymore since 1997. However there is no need to be in agony as the people of The Ultimate Meeting are gearing up their party. With the announcement of the new partyplace and date some weeks behind us they now have posted the full competition listings.
To continue the trend set at Breakpoint earlier this year there is some redesigning of the compos. Not only for the music competition (remember the ‘executable music compo’ but as wel for the demo competitions. There now is a split between High-End (32bit boxes such as PC’s PPC Amiga’s, N64, PS2, XBox etc) and Low-End (16bit Amiga, Atari’s, Sega Megadrive etc). Not to forget the roots of the scene there also is the oldskool category that holds all the 8bit gear such as C64’s, Sega Master Systems, Vic 20, Gameboy, Speccy and so on. If this diversification works as good as the Executable Music compo on Breakpoint we’ll be in for a treat !
This Executable Music compo is also present on TUM this year, as there is a Vector Graphics section, where all entries have to be delivered in a vectorized format (EPS or PDF). Add to that the remainder of GFX, SFX, Wild and the rest and the schedule looks pretty promising. Not too forget that the TUM competition rules usually give a look of what’s coming for next Breakpoint, so will we see a High-End / Low-End / Oldskool separation as well there ? Or will for instance PPC Amiga’s be included in the normal (non PPC) Amiga competition ? Find out in a couple of months when the Breakpoint crew announces their rules and features.
Links:
Tum 2005 Compo’s
DemoScene | FRaNKy | October 13, 2005 8:28 am | Comments (0)
Who’s Writing All This ?
Odruce me to intrallow myself :
Name : Peter Smets
Residence : Asse, Belgium
DOB : November, 1976
Stuff I Like : 8 bit computers, sci-fi movies, socializing, brewing cocktails
Car : Volkswagen Golf Plus
Cellphone : QTek 8020
Ringtune : Fame (1)
TV : Panasonic
DVD/HD Recorder : LG 4840
Turntable : JBSystems HQ10
AV Receiver : Panasonic SA-HE90
Mixing Panel : JBSystems Pro16X
Main PC : Dell Dimension 2400
Panel : Dell E171FPb
Mouse : Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical USB
Mousepad : Dell
Keyboard : IBM Clicker Manufacturing Date 23/05/89
Other PC’s : Commodore 64C
Diskdrives : 2 x 1541-II
Transfer Method : Retro Replay Ethernet, MMC64
Cartridge : Retro Replay with Retro Replay and Action Replay 6 ROM
Laptop : Dell Inspiron
Console : XBox
Switch : Netgear 5 port
Cable Router : Linksys WRT54G
Digital Camera : Nikon D70s, Nikon Coolpix L1
Refridgerator : Daewoo
Microwave : Whirlpool M504
Toothpaste : Signal Action Gel Plus
Best Captain : Picard
Best Trek : DS9
Best Star Wars : ESB
Best Villain : T1000
Best Cop : Robo
Best Engineering : ED-209
My resume
Employment history :
From May 1st 2005 untill present : FIT IT
From January 1st 2002 untill April 30th 2005 : DHL Aviation
From Juli 1st 1998 untill December 31 2001 : CIP-KMO (Unizo / SVMB)
Education :
Languages :
Uncategorized | FRaNKy | October 11, 2005 6:55 pm | Comments (0)
One of the new features I’ve got in my car is TMC, or Traffic Message Channel. What this does is listen to your selected radio station for traffic information that is sent out over the well-known RDS system and display the information for the driver or in my setup integrate the information into the currently calculated route programmed into your GPS system. As a result it can happen that while driving on the highway the GPS system receives traffic information of problems ahead and takes you off the highway for some b-roads. When you have passed the traffic jam you’re directed back onto the highway and can continue your journey.
So as this system sounds pretty sweet you should see the belgian implentation of it. As belgian is a federal state the traffic has been regionalized so as a result so has the origin of the TMC messages. For the northern (flemish) part of the country they are distributed by the flemish information centre (VVC - Vlaams Verkeers Centrum) and for the french speaking the south you have something called PEREX but I haven’t found an online representation of it online. Now there is the third region called Brussels… Well, the capital… Now as you would expect the country’s capital is covered by both systems as a lot of people (flemish and french speaking) can depend on it for a good flow of traffic. Well, you’re new to Belgium aren’t you ? Because the capital is not covered by either VVC or PEREX…. OK there is a plan to merge data and also incorporate the data from the traffic centre responsible for the capital but that doesn’t seem to have happened yet…
And even if the central database should be up and running, how the hell do you distribute the data ? The flemish data is sent over the air by Radio 2, and he french information is distributed by (probably) Radio 21. Now as you cannot listen to both stations at the same time, and its unlikely that the data for Brussels will be transmitted all over the country so what channel to turn to ? A solution would be automatic TMC scanning (a feature available on most receivers) but then you mis out on regular traffic as the entire FM band is scanned, so you’ll need a set with a double tuner setup. Adding to that it would have to be scanning continuously and not just stop at the first TMC enabled channel it finds, as you will actually only receive half the relevant information for the country.
So welcome to belgium.. Where even the traffic information is divided over the north and the south…
General | FRaNKy | 6:05 pm | Comments (0)
The time has come to bid some goodbyes.. Not to someone but to something, namely the Mazda 2 that I’ve been driving around with for a bit more then a month. For today is the day that the salesman from the garage called me with the joyfull message that the car had arrived…
The car can be described as follows : Volkswagen Golf Plus with a 1.9 TDI engine (yes, thats a diesel for the puritans amon you). Add some stuff such as an electronic aironciditioning, Blaupunkt stereo system with GPS and 5 cd changer underneath. Extra buttons and gizmo’s are available with heated external mirrors (that also fold inwards), automatic windscreen wipers and light sensor etc etc..
With the initial tests going ok the first feedback about the car should be quite positive… Admittingly there still is a few 100 of kilometers to do before it’s pretty ok to rip it all open without blowing up the engine but overall performance is right where it should be. The extra oomph comes from the GPS system obviously… I picked a light version without a fancy 7 inch LCD screen but just a basic model with the usual voice of SatNavWoman combined with basic indicators in the form of arrows that tell you where to go next.
In the end its 800km done, 149200 to go…
General, Work | FRaNKy | October 10, 2005 6:57 pm | Comments (0)
Sometimes you find strange things in your logs… About a week ago the university of Leuven held its annual ’student welcome’. On wednesday there was a movie and on thursday there would be a performance of Discobar Galaxie, famous in infamous in the same city… Now as this news was announced on various radio stations, people started to look on the internet for more information - and in todays modernized world the majority of the world will use the search website known as Google for this task. And the result during those days was pretty spectacular :-)
For one reason or the other, and entry on this site that dates back close to a year ended up ranking number one, even above the official Discobar Galaxie site in the rankings. The result was close to 250 hits on a single day only coming from that single search sentence. With the official site clearly below it I wonder why people always click on the top link, now not that I have something against that, but you just start wondering every now and then.
Strangely I also planned to go to that concert so I would have written about it anyway sooner or later but fate decided otherwise as I had to go and fix some stuff at a customer site late in the evening.. Work was finished around 23:00 but with about an hours drive in front of me towards Leuven at that moment I could maybe listen to 2 or 3 tracks before the end of the set. Perhaps this is then a good place to plug the new remix album from the ladd’s that is named ‘Space Bar’ (No, we’re not talking about ASCII value 32 here but more about a restaurant at the edge of the universe). I still have to give the album a couple of good listenings in the car after some initial sessions. If someone cares, I’ll post some comments ;-)
Music, Work | FRaNKy | October 9, 2005 7:00 am | Comments (0)
With the final version just over the horizon, the guys of MindCandy have released a preview version of the second volume in the series to the public. This second volume contains the best of the Amiga Demoscene and will have the same high quality treatment also seen in the first DVD that focused on the PC demoscene. Contrary to the PC demoscene this disc will not exist out of two parts, one with the overall history and another one with more recent material, but a single stretch of the all time best Amiga demos released from 1989 onwards.
The release is downloadable at Scene.org in a package of over 20 rar files out of which you can extract a DVD ISO Image. I’ve downloaded (obviously) the PAL version of the image but inhabitants of the new world should not be afraid, as an NTSC version is downloadable as well. I’ve not burned the DVD image to a disc but mounted it using DaemonTools.
At a first glance you get nothing but a grey screen when launching the disk, followed by a white one and then there’s the Kickstart 1.3 hand… Followed by the loading procedure of the workbench which drops you in what has to be one of the coolest DVD menu designs I have ever seen…. The entire DVD menu mimics the Workbench 1.3 user interface where the remote controls the mouse and you can browse thru the folders just like on a regular Amiga, even the sound is there as you constantly hear the “ticking” of your drive in the background. Now of course you are limited by DVD technology as the pointer is not freely movable all over the screen but you can get to open folders, open text documents and launch applications just as in a regular Workbench environment. Maybe something that could be added is that you are able to open features in the lower menus, as they are still visible, the same way as you can click back to the parent folder in your Workbench. Yet its obvious that this would complicate the menu layout tremendously so somehow its pretty obvious that this is lacking here, but I’m willing to be surprised by the menus in the final edition.
On to the demos… This preview disc features Love (Virtual Dreams / Fairlight), Perfect Circle (The Black Lotus), Groovy (Lemon), 9 Fingers (Spaceballs) and Closer (CNCD). As the appreciation of demos is pretty personal I won’t go into the review of the demos here but rather talk about how they are captured on the DVD. Well, they’re actually captured pretty close to perfection… With the older demos such as 9 fingers you needed your basic hardware you could find in that big box Commodore sold you, but for the later things you needed fancy stuff such as accelerator cards with fancy CPU’s on them such as an expensive 68040 or even a 68060 that you could trade in if you delivered a kidney for it. So even for me having seen many Amiga demos the ones requiring better hardware then what I had back then (and now, an A1200 030/50mhz) these demos have not looked better before. Soundwise you get the choice of the original Amiga stereo mix (4 channels, 2 left and 2 right) or a new 5.1 mix.. On the third audio track you’ll find commentaries. Now these commentaries are actually so-called ‘placeholders’ as the creators of this DemoDVD have sent themselves on a mission to record commentaries by the original creators of the demos - so you probably wont find them on the final release DVD. Yet these commentaries are extremely interesting on their own as they give a good insight on the technical features of the demo itself and you also get a peek behind the scenes of making the disc with a ton of stories and problems the capturers encountered during the production.
So are there any special features on this disc, as it’s only a preview version? Well, you get a preview of the special features… The disc contains a trailer of Demographics, a documentary made about one of the best Demoparties ever: Breakpoint 2003. Having visited Breakpoint since 2003 (and all Mekka/Symposiums before that) and being part of the organizing crew in 2005 this trailer threw me back in time: huge bonfires, ‘real party is outside’, ’saufen am brechpunkt’ and the many nice releases and fun we had over there. When looking at the trailer just this extra feature would make me want to get this DVD…
Of course you cannot completely judge a disc on its preview version but DAMN does this look nice… I would find it close to impossible if the Mindcandy folks would be able to screw up this release before it’s available somewhere later this year. Take into account the extremely high quality of the first edition this hardly can go wrong and this disc should be a required purchase for everyone with just the slightest interest in the demoscene.
Links:
DemoDVD.org
Mindcandy Volume 2 preview download at Scene.org (PAL)
Mindcandy Volume 2 preview download at Scene.org (NTSC)
DemoScene | FRaNKy | October 2, 2005 2:11 pm | Comments (0)
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