Extremely tired but back from The Ultimate Meeting, edition 2005. Short conclusion is that this party certainly rocked, even with being an organizer it was really cool and relatively chilled atmosphere. Fun started at midnight before the party as the hall was only accessible on the day that the party opened, so that left us about 12 hours to prepare everything… I set up some tables and chairs but then went to bed anyway, as the 500km drive really gets to you after a certain point in time.
For the Drifters the party certainly can be considered as a success as well. Our Amiga Intro ‘Little Star’ for the Low End competition placed first with a single point ahead of the second place, a very nice 4K intro. At the same time Decybel achieved third place in the executable music compo, also an extremely sweet achievement. And at the same time it showed that it really can be a bitch to record Amiga entries for the competition. The 4K intro had to be shown in an emulator as there was no 060 based machine available, and our own Drifters intro had such large color contrasts that it really look like shit, as the capturing hardware could not handle the interlaced PAL signal. Something that you can only fix with a hardware de-interlacer (expensive) or a high end beamer that will show images at 50hertz instead of the usual 60hertz used for PC Display (even more expensive). I already discussed this quickly with KB for BreakPoint and there we should have a 50hz capable beamer available – Nice…
Speaking of Breakpoint, the website and party theme was launched at Tum. The party’s theme will be “Rumble in the jungle†and the corresponding website (extremely nice design by Wayfinder by the way) was launched at the same time. I’ve spend a lot of time proofreading and bugchecking the site together with Ryg (website coder and main Breakpoint Compo Organizer) on the site so really happy to see it online.
Now its time to catch up on some sleep and get ready for the festivities that will introduce the new year, that will have 2006 as its number.
Links :
The Ultimate Meeting 2005
Little Star Intro at Pouet
Breakpoint 2006
Wayfinders hideout
KB’s hideout
Does it provide proof of ultimate boredom when posting on Christmas day ? Nah, not in my eyes – as there will be some days of inactivity ahead here with TUM coming up in 2 days. Heard from Clary that the Drifters intro is coming along just nicely so we’ll have a release even.. Sweet.
Also stay tuned for the Breakpoint 2006 intro that should be released at TUM in the PC Demo compo (or intro compo, no idea). When that’s released I can start on the C64 version of the intro together with Bitbreaker of Metalvotze who’s joining me in Breakpoints C64 organisation team this (well, next) year.
Links :
TUM 2005
Breakpoint
MetalVotze
After a good 5 months of silence, and some meetings with Darkman, I’ve switched on my Xbox again yesterday evening for some online racing in Project Gotham Racing 2 on Xbox Live.
With the coming of the holiday season and, more importantly, the arrival of Winter-Een-Mas during the last week of January the time had come to begin the warm-up sessions for the WeMas celebratory week with a huge ending a-la “Revenge Of The Sith†during the last weekend of that month.
In the buildup to 2006’s WeMas the official t-shirts have been released in pre-order (my order is already sent out ;) ) and the Xbox 360 faceplates and skins from CTRL-ALT-DEL look extremely sweet… I know what I’ll get my XBot360 (har :^p ) for its birthday.
So PGR2 online was it… Spent a good 3,5 hours online yesterday evening.. The “steering thumb†and “acceleration index finger†have returned and the track knowledge was still there as well. To my surprise a lot of people still actively play the game on Xbox Live a full 2 years after the games initial release, this says a lot about the overall playability of the game. After 2 full sessions of Cat & Mouse (I won the first one, w00t !) and the usual supercar races I set up a room with Darkman where we went thru all the usual favorite tracks in Florence, Edinburgh and Moscow. First in Mini Coopers, later in Audi S4’s and the usual stuff from the lower classes..
Maybe this will be what will be a downside in Project Gotham Racing 3 for me.. The lower (and slower) cars such as the Mini Cooper, Ford Focus, Honda CRX, Audi S4 are no longer there.. And those cars are the most fun to drive for me. Time will tell when I get my hands on a copy.. Current planning is somewhere at the end of January 2006 when the Christmas shopping rush is over. Maybe just in time for WeMas even.
Links :
Winter Een Mas
Winter Een Mas Shirts & Hoodies
CAD XBox 360 Skins
With the arrival of Apple’s iPod, the world’s dictionaries had to add a new word known as “Podcastingâ€. In plain English this just means that people mix up a listing of songs (mostly mp3s) and you can download the entire episode. Most of these downloads sound as a radio show.
So is this completely new ? Hell no. The first “podcasts†that come into memory are the episodes of Havok, the free internet radio. Havok is now defunct (for a long time, last post was in 2001) but you can still download the episodes from the archives and even read the transcripts there.
On to 2005 now, well – the end of it anyway as we’re almost thru with December, Darkman provided me with a link of Radio Free Polygon. Radio Free Polygon is the name of a radio program, focusing on electronic music, broadcasted on CKDU FM somewhere in Canada. With normal FM transmissions from Canada hard to transmit in Brussels the downloadable podcasts are welcome and useful.
Except of downloading the episodes the site also lists many direct downloads from netlabels around the world. One of the more interesting ones I’ve download stuff from are Bevlar Music from Sweden where I’ve enjoyed their “We Are Bevlar 2†compilation multiple times already (Bevlar A02) with the versions of “New Clicky†(Bevlar S20) being the favorite ones used as an excuse to crank up the volume. More downloads that I’ve enjoyed are from Stratagem, a Canadian netlabel, where I’ve been listening to their STMNET001 and 002 releases a couple of times – they actually make perfect background music when installing servers in a noisy serverroom…
Best of all, all the music from these netlabels is completely free to play and download. And it sounds as good as anything that is commercially available, that is if you like this kind of music.
Very sweet….
Links :
Havok, free net radio
Darkman’s hideout
Radio Free Polygon
Bevlar Music
Stratagem
Time to catch up on some reading. Now yes I do have books and stuff yet this is a catching up on the webcomics. Let’s start with a Belgian online comic called “Kleintje†(Little One), written and drawn by Kathleen – a 19 (according to the comics, now 20) year old student in journalism. I’ve discovered the site just yesterday evening when going thru the emails and comments on the laptop at the end of an entire evening of demo and website conference calls with the Drifters but this morning I read thru the entire archive. The style is just soooooooooooooooooooo cute (okay, that was a Pikachu moment there – sorry, won’t happen again) and the humor and sarcasm levels are way up there… Reminds me of the early days of Userfriendly before they went all Linux-Fanboy’ish. Keep up the good work and style Kathleen, and if you ever publish a book with the cartoons you have your first order ;-)
Second up was 3 weeks of CTRL-ALT-DEL. I was surprised by the new viewpoint angles that suddenly appeared in the XBot fighting scenes. XBot fighting ? Well, just go read the comic.. Start from comic “Just Checking†dated nov. 19 (2005 for you browsing the archive in a couple of years) and be surprised. I’ve just received the 2nd print book (see, told you I DO have paper books) from CTRL-ALT-DEL and although there seems to be a wee bit less extra content then the first one, it still reads better then watching all the comics on the CRT or LCD screen.
Other stuff to do is check out all the caboodle I got from my visit to the MediaMarkt in Hasselt over the weekend. Got a new digital camera (more on that in a few days), lots of CD’s and even more DVD’s (including Kraftwerk’s “Minimum Maximum†– yes people, the DVD is here – go get it !!!)
Links :
Kleintje (in dutch)
CTRL-ALT-DEL (Nov 19, 2005 comic)
Userfriendly
After many years I have re-entered the hall wich has now become “Het Depot†in my semi-hometown of Leuven. On request of Darkman, who was on photographic duty for the people of Drieduizend I attended a show by the Bollock Brothers.
At first the name Bollock Brothers did not ring any bells the five minutes yet after some searching on google and in the mp3 collection those bells became active in the tone of C# - so there I was at 20:00 in the evening in the cold. No Darkman in sight yet so off to café La Royale for a cappuccino (with steamed milk please), total cost €2,70. Add some time, an arriving Darkman and an entrance free of €13 and we’re in. As Darkman needs some assistance we team up with Manuel, also of Drieduizend and – to some other extend – I-Manuel.be fame.
Its been years since I’ve been in this hall.. Last time I can remember is when they used it as a TV studio and the show in particular that was being recorded at that time was a show of Gaston & Leo. Leo is dead for some years now, Gaston still does things but its just not as funny anymore. Now this has nothing to do with the Bollock Brothers so let’s just mention that I met 2Fast4U in the hall.. We usually meet a couple of times a year on events like this…
The support band, wich name at the moment I don’t remember – mental note to look on my entrance ticket and get the name from there later – (edit and thanks to Manuel : they were called ‘Implant’) played the exact kind of electronic music I liked.. Hard, slow, some effects left and right but very good.. Must try to follow them in the future.. Maybe an idea for a Breakpoint liveact as they would fit in just right but then its too soon to tell, and I’m not a member of the “Entertainment†team anyway. Did I mention I liked their music and style ? Great, because I did.
Main act now… The Bollock Brothers. At first instance you think you see Rod Stewart on stage but its just the main singer. A ‘lovely lady from London’ plays some sweet synths with bass, guitar and drum next to it. And the guys just loved it on stage getting the entire room involved more then once. Special moment when the entire room started to sing Nacht un Nebel’s “Beats Of Love†(a classic song in Belgian pop history) and the band covered it – it helps to know that the drummer of the Bollock Brothers used to be the drummer of Nacht un Nebel. Other kudo’s were thrown into the audience as Dirk of the Neon Judgement was in the room. Very cool to see people remember old friendships this way.
After the concert there was a trip into the town of Leuven. American bars, Cocktail bars and Irish pubs where on the menu. End of a very nice evening that will, looking at the schedule in Het Depot, will be repeated more then once.
Links :
Darkman’s hideout
Manuel’s hideout
Het Depot
Bollock Brothers
Nacht und Nebel
Neon Judgement (in dutch)
Drieduizend
Implant
After some days/weeks of debugging I think now would be a good time to give some shouts to Poti’s new page Demoparty.net that, altho it’s still an early start, provides an overview of demoscene parties of the future (and a wee bit of the past). With the nice inclusion of the Google Maps API and the result that goes with it you can enter your own location and then it shows how far the party is away from you etc.
Another nice feature is that the other visitors of the party can also register themselves and, on the same map, you can check out where they are coming from so there could be a carpooling possibility perhaps ?
To make it as single-signon as possible the site also accepts your Scene.org SceneID for a quick login. The thing still has it bugs but the Wiki is read and updated almost daily – so get ready for some stuff in progress here.
Links
Demoparty.net
Scene.org
When driving up for a parking spot in front of the building here, my car reached it’s 10.000th kilometer.. Not bad for 2 months of driving..
That’s 5000km a month, 1250km a week, 250km per working day.
At this rate the 150.000km limit where it’ll have to be replaced is 28 months away, or july/august 2008.
Task of the day : Change umpteen printer’s IP address on the interfaces and keep it all in working order for the users. To achieve this I’ve had a crash course linux and the result is that I’m typing
“ifconfig eth0:x 127.0.0.x netmask 255.255.255.0†until my fingers bleed, and don’t forget the editing of rinetd.conf and restarting the rinetd daemon after every change.
It works to forward ports 515 and 9100 (LPR and “HP Jetdirectâ€) so the printing system keeps on ticking.
Users happy, Linux skills improved, fingers bleeding, 300km on the road… A normal day at work.
DemoScene | FRaNKy | 
December 30, 2005 7:07 pm | 
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