The ALT Party B.I.G. Report!!!! And 'B.I.G' doesn't stand for "Best in Galaxy" this time, just "BIG!!" .:Some Pre-amble ramble!!:. Three Days to Zero Hour.. Sitting here, waiting for that first expectant crash on the keyboard, but inspiration hovers uneasily and stays just out of reach.. Well what can we talk about?? We are going to the Alternative Party in three days time, a gathering of a substantial part of the Atari scene that found itself out of luck with the other Easter coding parties.. There was Symposium, or as the German scene might say "Atari, nein, never heard of it, only got this PC with me for the multiplayer Quake, is gut, ya?!" The only decent competition used to come from Siliconvention, but this is where the Sili' is this year - ...Blank spot and two minute silence for Siliconvention '98... It is somewhat D E A D ! Which is where ALT comes in, never say die, we say, and this year, we are going further than ever before for computer related thrills in foreign climes.. This time around, the foreign climes happen to be owned by Finland, and might be a tad colder than normal, being a latitude closer to the Arctic circle than might be sensible.. A place where parental advice to wear warm clothes might not be as pointless as usual.. The Alternative Party or 'ALT' to its many friends is not just about the Atari scene, but also includes a whole bunch of other non-PC computers if things go to plan.. We've been told of a strong Finnish MSX scene, and it would be cool to see what else turns up there as well.. ZX81 Megademo anyone? For our part, we merry few, that is Leon (Mr Pink), Kev D (aka Sh3), Arnel, Felice and myself are going from the UK, and possibly Flinny too? That is a substantial part of the Symposium '96 visiting party, but without Taff and Mike Noyce, also Tat as a non-shower.. However, Kev D, a Fried Bits veteran, is a welcome addition to the group.. These five people are the umbrella for several different organisations, four members of the Maggie Team, two members of the Reservoir Gods, and the Overpaid Psygnosis Pixie-babes, or however the outfit Arnel represents chooses to style itself.. Release-wise out of these three, the most active party will be the Reservoir Gods, with some more GodlyNES games on the front burner, and one or two other productions such as 'Fractal Playground' on for an ALT release as well.. This is not to say that other UK people won't be there, as we face the prospect of a couple of new Senior Dads demos which Old Fart has kindly got ready in time, even if he isn't going to be there himself.. There is a very slim chance of a preview from Tat of his megamighty new 3D poly engine, but I wouldn't stake anyones life on that, Tat being solidly crunched by the demands of his coursework through to September.. Of the rest, I don't really know, apart from Dead Hackers Society who seem to have suffered a Diamond Edge inspired catastrophe to their hard drive, wiping out most of their source code just before the party!! Er, great.. Apart from those which I know about, we'll really have to take things 'on spec' to see what turns up (or not...) Right, signing off for tonight as I'm half-trying to watch something about artistic autopsies and carefully posed corpses (and bits of corpses!) in poses of violent death on Channel Four (we only watch the bonkers TV channels!!) They had Manchester Crematorium in the end credits! Hate to think what I missed earlier as I only caught the tail end of this!? It doesn't help me try to do this.. Still, back tomorrow.. Two Days to Zero Hour.. Mike James was on my lips a lot this evening, I had a chat with one of the shadowy figures behind the legendary Senior Dads crew, and although they are not coming to ALT, they are working like mad ginger-haired loons on a new production in time for the ALT.. You will all have heard of 'Monomental' by now, well, there's no harm in me telling you all about it here, and the fact that I will have an exclusive pre-party preview, shortly before packing up and taking off to ALT by tomorrow.. Read all about it here, but later!! Mike in his editors headgear has also asked us to do a (brief) report for the Network magazine, which I'm sure we'll oblige, depends what a tired brain can put together.. This is in addition to the Maggie report, and the one I've foolishly promised for Atari Computing.. Ah well... I've also been having some thoughts on the shape and style that the realtime report for this party ought to take.. I've read back over some past efforts by different people and have been considering the strengths and weaknesses of the genre.. There was the red-eyed blear-o-rama of a realtime written at the Bradford Coding Convention, and featured in issue 2 of 'HP Source' magazine.. A true classic, this had a strong centralising presence of the mysterious but strangely familiar 'Runrig', and a host of tales from tired coders who weren't afraid to write at four in the morning.. This conveyed the whole headachey harsh morning light side of the experience beautifully.. You are left wondering if the likes of 'Captain Fishy' have since grown up to become 'Chartered Accountant Fishy?' You like to hope not, but.. Then there was the Maggie 5th birthday party realtime article, which had a tantalising dollop of tension between certain participants, and enough wit and drama with several strong characters in a very small space, to lift it above the mundane 'greetz n' graffiti chat' affairs seen in dozens of other realtime articles.. Not forgetting the Symposium '96 affair, which was almost accidental in origin (thanks Tat!) But conveyed a lot of the ennui and boredom of waiting around in some truly godawful places, but with those golden moments when something really special happened shining through, (the 4k coding competition!) On reflection, my all-time favourite 'realtime' would have to be the constant diary kept by Rich Karsmakers of his 'big trip to the UK' back in the glory days of 'ST News'.. I think the notebook I've got might be able to cope with something similar? Let's see how it turns out, I'm not sure I'm quite going to equal the minute by minute dedication of Mr Karsmakers, but I hope this time we're not going to have large gaps that a record-straightening truck could be driven through, as was the case with some of our previous efforts! It is now six past midnight, so technically, we are now 'ONE DAY TO ZERO HOUR!' So I think it is time to go.. Final fact - It is Kev D's birthday now! - Happy birthday mate!! One Day to Zero Hour.. Anyone feel like they've heard this before? I could actually say 'Seven hours and sixteen minutes to Zero Hour', which happens to be 5am tomorrow, and perhaps I should be getting some sleep.. My rule on sleep the night before a big event is that it does not happen in time as your mind is in an excited whirl, and you only ever get to sleep too late for it to be any use, especially if you're getting up early the next day.. This started of course with the expectant wait the night before Xmas day when you were very young, but has expanded to fill in for all sorts of other occasions as we get older.. Talking of expectant waiting, I'm still waiting for Old Fart to do his stuff with 'Monomental'.. He mailed me earlier today through his mothers account(!) as the Glasgow University server was playing up.. Mike should be emailing Monomental directly to me, but I daresay that a whole host of last minute bugs are adding new and exciting marzipan layers of confusion to the proceedings.. Still, I can wait.. I also had the nicely strange experience of talking on the IRC to some of the people that had already arrived.. Arnel told me that they needed two flights to get there, possibly one extra for Kev's current hair colour which shocked Setok who had only seen it for the first time.. Still, if he'd been paying attention to various Maggie event reports since the Maggie 5th Birthday party onwards, he might have got some idea of what to expect! One other thing, I forgot to tell you that I located a Nintendo version of the classic Space epic game 'Elite' on Ian Bells 'Elite' homepage.. Leon initially refused to believe that such a game was possible on the NES, with hardware as far removed from the making of 3D games as is possible to make.. Still, it exists, and I'm taking it with me to ALT for Leon's perusal.. On a slightly related note, found a nice little cheat for the Archie version of that game, so I'm a self-satisfied fat slug of a Cobra pilot with pots of money and zillions of guns now, and I don't have to smear my face against the space station entrance for lack of a docking computer anymore either! I might be back in a bit once 'Monomental' turns up.. - Some time later, sort of after midnight.. 'Monomental gone bonkers shock horror exclusive!' Nads and rats cocks, it didn't make it.. For all I know it is stuck in transit somewhere on the Zetnet mail server, but it is really too late to go and look for it.. I'm taking the address where to get it from with me, so we'll have a look Friday.. Okay, time for beddie byes, and see you after this lot is over.. //End of Preamble Bit// Day One.. Otherwise known as - 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight - But I didn't!!' There is quite a bit of realtime stuff here.. This differed again from what came before, being mainly a personal journal with the odd (very odd) isolated paragraph donated by Felice.. Doing it in this fashion came quite close to the 'ST-News' journal style I was seeking to emulate.. Things got a bit more radical still later on, when I managed to bring the notebook to Finland, but forgot to bring it to the party, but more of that later.. For the computer specific 'zine shells, all real-time bits are in italics.. Night, a state neither awake or asleep, but somewhere annoyingly inbetween.. About 04.00hrs, give up this as a bad job, turn the light on, sort myself a hot caffeine shot, turn on the computer, and.... Episode 1, Day 1. 04.00 hrs and who's counting? Well I am! Sleep should be banned the night before an event like this, it sort of bans itself anyway. The story roughly goes as follows, you try to go to sleep, just as you are getting into the dreamland groove, a sharp knifelike surge of andrenaline kicks in to make sure you haven't forgotten to pack something, or..... Well bollocks to it, I'll stay awake then.. One fortunate result of this early morning activity is the belated retrieval of the new Senior Dads 'Monomental' demo, their first venture into the wonderful world of mono hi-res.. I'll let you all judge for yourself, but mention has to be made of the wonderful 'Smack your Bitch up' screen, and their unique interpretation of phong shading.. In a spirit of multiple redundancy, Mike sent a copy to Leon's Hotmail account, but Leon last checked that sometime before Bill Gates took it all over. Not a great idea perhaps. Well just about an hour to go before the official 'kick-off', let's mess around a bit more and think sleepy thoughts. - CiH 04.07 hrs. Phew-ee! This realtime journal stuff is great, really self-explanatory and all.. Well I got up, and on an impulse checked my email, and the reassuringly lengthy mail that downloaded was the keenly awaited 'Monomental' demo, enjoyed it thoroughly, with the sound off, and waited as the clock inexorably ticked around to 05.00hrs.. As well as 'Monomental', I am also taking along the odd Maggie issue or two, and a strange offcut of the Nintendo 8-bit console revolution, that NES ROM image of the famous space trade game 'Elite' for Mr Pink to have a dabble at! Getting dressed and final checks follow (Passport/money/tickets!), and at about 05.25, carry my bags to the car for the first stage of the journey to Felice's place.. I have the twenty or so miles of road to his house to myself, it is dark in a reluctantly appearing twilight sense.. Arrive.. 05.55hrs - The longest journey starts with but a single step, errm no, twenty mile drive to Felice's house! Felice is waiting with his bag packed for the shortly arriving taxi. In a reversal of roles from the Symposium trip, he has squashed everything he's taking into a single (very large) bag, whereas I have an extra bundle of stuff with me, because I'm looking forward to trying out my brand new sleeping bag that I purchased the day before.. The taxi turns up just a few scant minutes after I arrive, and in a model of drab efficiency, we are deposited at St Neots railway station.. Unfortunately, this place is as ghastly as ever, doubly so at six in the morning.. The same incontinent tramp who made our stay in the waiting room so pleasantly memorable the last time, has been back.. However, this gives me motivation to try a bit harder on the realtime.. 06.07hrs - The train is due at 6.25 - can't be a minute too early! St Neots Station Waiting Room Poem. Fuck this place is a hole, a ghastly toll with not a soul apart from us.... Ripley would be so proud of me! (Maybe not..) A collection of early morning travellers shiver at the platform end, and at the appointed hour, the train arrives.. Bundle on and find a seat that can accomodate both of us and bags.. 06.35hrs - As with the last time we used this train there are persons of an American persuasion in close proximity to us, these ones seem to go into crackly two-way radio mode from time to time.. - CiH Well finally made it onto the train, but apart from the people further up the carriage, it seems as though talk is not exactly cheap at the moment. Felice The train slowly fills up as we dot from station to station, then.. 07.10hrs - It is suddenly dark outside, where did the light go? Sounds wet outside as well, very wet! It was getting lighter, suddenly the process reversed itself and we were plunged back into darkness.. This rain had an interesting and longlasting sequel as it led to some of the worst flooding in central England this century which all happened whilst we were blissfully partygoing in Finland.. In CiH's original home-base of Northampton, someone (allegedly) forgot to press the crucial button or do something to activate the flood prevention scheme and parts of the town got flooded when the river overflowed! The train arrives at Finsbury Park, and the return tickets which cost a small fortune are good all the way to Heathrow.. We share an underground train carriage with a selection of people who would be bad- tempered if they were awake.. 8.30-ish - Arrive at Heathrow.. Find trolley, load our bags, and Felice bravely pushes against the flow of new arrivals who are leaving the airport. The realtime tells why.. 08.55hrs - We're at Heathrow, I'm waiting for breakfast.. The airport normally has two separate ramps for baggage trollies, one 'incoming', one better known as 'outgoing' - We wonder why they closed off one of these, leading to a trolly-based 'Death Race 2000' scenario as Felice dodged the outgoing passengers! Also, Heathrow seems to be mostly uphill, why? Still waiting for breakfast, but we've got the time to spare.. Underground journey was boring with dodgy characters eyeing up our bags.. 9.02 - Well, sitting here at Garfunkels restaurant. Despite the fact that it is still early, the airport isn't too jampacked. Train journey down was a bit long, especially the bit from Finsbury Park to Heathrow. Still, Chris has ordered (and is enjoying) the 'Full Monty' breakfast. Why am I not hungry? :-) Felice At Heathrow, we find where we should go, do the 'checking in thing', letting someone who needed to get urgently on an Istanbul bound flight through first.. A need for calories is sorted next as a midget Thai waitress takes my order, and whilst waiting for a large breakfast, I get the book out to write the bit that came just before this paragraph! Breakfast is demolished promptly, and we take the inexorable step of going to the departure area, the next laugh is to be had at the the security scanner there.. 09.40hrs - Through the security scanner.. I make the heartening discovery that I am non-ferrous - Felice should really have left his artificial leg at home though! The guards take sympathy and let him through.. Put it simply, Felice went 'Beep-beep-beep!' when he walked through, I didn't! We browse the duty-free shops, thinking virtuous non-purchasing thoughts, as we are going to Finland, a known expensive country, and we have to eke out the money we've got with us.. After changing the last of my UK money to Finnish marks, there isn't a lot else left to do apart from wait for our flight to be called.. Eventually, it is.. Going to the 'bit just before we get on the aircraft' (CiH Airport Tech-speak services) we have the most amazing bit of luck as a fellow- traveller, who kept quite a lot of company with us over the next few days, is sitting with an Atari IRC T-shirt on prominent display.. The owner turns out to be the IRC nick known as 'Q-Funk'.. We greet enthusiastically, he a bit less so, as he is (un)fresh from an overnight connecting flight from Canada.. Then the aluminium tube of the aircraft is opened, and we file in.. 10.05hrs - Now on the plane and no-one stopped us! We've just had the most extraordinary stroke of luck as we've run into Q-Funk replete with Atari IRC shirt, better still, he's been allocated a seat next to us.. Even better still, he might have some idea of what to do when we get to Helsinki. He's not too sure if his baggage has made it from the other connecting plane or not.. 10.10hrs - Our meeting up with Q-Funk was one of Arnel's wildest fantasies? Don't ask! Well it was a pretty good series of lucky breaks, Q-Funk makes it for the same connecting flight, and then gets a seat next to us, vast impersonal forces over which we have no control working in our favour for a change.. Some of those vast impersonal forces cocked up things a bit for Q-Funk though, we reveal all in about ten minutes from now! 10.12hrs - Still rooted to the spot, a spot of wet tarmac at Heathrow.. I've found the Finnair sickbag complete with Finnair logo, nice touch! Also a Finnair inflight magazine which is full of..... Finnish! 10.25hrs - I think something might be happening in a tick, I smell jet fuel... Hope this doesn't have a prophetic quality to it? (K-Booooom?) 10.26hrs - Engines start up.. 10.30hrs - Q-Funk relates his plane-dismantling tales, should we be on the same aircraft as him? (Hellp!) It is now raining horribly outside, will the Heathrow Air Traffic Control let us out to play? 10.35hrs - Ah, I think they mean it this time.... 10.40hrs - Pen & paper realtime beats the in-flight restrictions! If we'd been fancy pants and had a laptop, it would have to be switched off at this point.. 10.45hrs - Finnair captain bloke with a surprising Dutch English accent tells the assembled masses that it is Air Traffic Control pigging us about! 10.46hrs - We're moving - Backwards.. 10.48 - Well at least we're waiting in more comfortable surroundings than this time two years ago! - Felice 10.50hrs - Moving - Forwards.. Uneven tarmac, someone came in with a load of leftover stuff from a job they were doing on the nearby M4 Motorway.. This runway is the end result. 10.55hrs - Something came in over the top of us.. 11.05hrs - I really really think he means it this time... ll.08 - Pushed back in seat - OFF GROUND!! (Handwriting more uneven than normal!) The takeoff is more of an advertisement for roller-coaster thrill- seekers than for international travel, the dismal weather coming to the fore.. A loud bang is heard outside the aircraft, roughly where the starboard engine can be found, a tensely expectant hush falls on the passengers, the pilot wrestles us higher and higher through the cloud layer.. Q-Funk looks increasingly unhappy, but Maggie editor, made of harder stuff, writes on! 11.12hrs - Loud bang outside of the plane - lightning? Well we've got another engine to get back on if it isn't.. 11.13hrs - It is as lumpy as hell outside - I sense soiled sickbags coming along - Q-Funk not happy at all. 11.17hrs - Not the greatest of take-offs, like a roller coaster ride with added uncertainty - Not the fault of the bloke in front, but the shitty weather.. 11.20hrs - Steadier now, Q-Funk didn't need the Finnair woopsy bag after all! 11.25hrs - Swapped seats with Q-Funk, he can't handle the pressure of a window seat! Buggerall to see down there mind, like a sunlit bowl of milk. A cool cloud horizon though. 11.30hrs - Switch off brain and wait for food. We break out of the turbulence, Q-Funk stops making his worrying 'deep breath immediately prior to being sick' type noises, and we swap seats as soon as the seatbelt lights go off.. The flight settles into an orderly routine where we read everything in the seat pockets in front, understandable or not, and wait for other in-flight distractions to turn up.. They do soon after, the cabin staff don't hang around, and drinks (mine's a rum and coke!) turn up, then food very shortly after.. The food is probably supposed to be a hermetically sealed and tidily packaged representation of Finnish cuisine, a cold meat and salad based affair, with two nice touches, a minature bottle of wine (I should have got Felice to give me his as he didn't touch it!) and a lovely 'fruits of the forest' style rich dessert.. Maggie Editor makes a clean sweep of his plate, only just stopping short of eating the toothpick! 12.07hrs - Food has been, I picked at mine like a gannet! Nice mix of pate, cured turkey, salad stuff, an exquisite dessert, and a mind- boggling choice of liquids, two of them alcoholic ! (Hic!) Now things get a tiny bit strange as the clocks go forward.. 14.31hrs - Now set to Helsinki local time, this is two hours ahead of ours.. Helsinki time is also Cairo time according to Q-Funks personal organiser. 14,35hrs - The big news today? Errm not the peace talks in Northern Ireland, but George Michael caught in the lavvy doing a "Lewd Act" as the robotic voiced American police officer read out. We wonder what he was- (SNIP!) - Realtime Ed.. 14.50hrs - Some challenging looking landscapes down there, bits of water, shades of black and brown and ice patches? 15.10hrs - Starting descent, my ears are telling me - Planes beat coaches for sleep attempts anyday. At least catnapping is possible here.. Yes, I'd been sleeping on the job, or something like it, well-fed, reasonably comfortable, no sleep the night before, what else was one supposed to do? 15.25hrs - Descending through clouds - expect to see little Tom and Jerry angel figures to pop up out of them. 15.30hrs - Can see individual trees on the ground. Not so sure where we're going to end up? 15.35hrs - Wonder what Finnish farmers do in the winter - "Ho hum it's another 6 months off!"? 15.40hrs - Landing! Well what do Finnish farmers do in a winter that lasts for the majority of the year, there were noticeable ice and snow patches on the ground. The landing is a lot smoother than the departure, it is a nice day at Helsinki airport, hello blue sky, hello modern airport architecture! Disembarkation is a straightforward process, at least for Felice and I, the immigration and customs barely register a blip of interest, although they do play the 'many questions game' with Q-Funk, a non-EU national, we wonder if he is ever going to be allowed in but even that works out okay as the customs officer lives in the same street in Helsinki where the premises of Fishpool Creations are based! Luggage was fun.. Again, Felice and I have an easy time of it, but there is a worrying absence of Q-Funks bags.. 16.34hrs - Q-Funk made it here, but his bag didn't! It's 'in the system' and we are waiting for a possible sighting of it on a follow-up flight. Heathrow were really having an off-day, as they managed to blitz almost all the days connecting flight baggage out of sight! Q-Funks gear did turn up later, and it was delivered to Fishpool, so that story had a sort of happy ending at least.. We decide to leave the airport, having registered the 'bag problem' with the airport authorities, a bus awaits, we get on it.. The bus is going our way to Helsinki city centre, which is nice.. Writing this in Fishpool, the 'journal' part of the realtime journal thunders in, in a most informative fashion.. Well done to the bloke who wrote it (that was me!) 18.35hrs - To fill in over the last few hours. Q-Funk has not been reunited with his bag. He is ringing the airport (wringing necks?) right now about it. After some initial airport-based hesitation, we make our way to the city centre. The first part is straightforward, a handy bus to the centre. The second part, getting to Fishpool, a bit less so.. Attempts to find a phone by Q-Funk take an inordinate amount of time,it slowly dawns on us that the large number of Finnish people with mobile phones clamped to their ears is nothing to do with some sad poseur thing, but sheer necessity as there are no bloody payphones around! We meet with Timo (Partycle) and a brisk, and mostly uphill ten minute stroll to Fishpool, and here we finally are. Leon, Kev and Arnel are already here, and about to make the trip to Turku. Leon and Kev have both had their hair done by the same backstreet hairdresser. They leave, we are left here amidst the peaceful humming of CPU cooler fans trying to find the kettle.. Fishpool, Fishpool, so good they named it twice.. Fishpool Creations is an office on the fourth floor of a large building of anonymous enterprises, a couple of rooms and hallway with an untidy batchelor bathroom tacked on, stuffed full of extremely cool and expensive computer gear.. This is where a lot of the Finnish IRC'ers come to earn a living, although with party preparations going on, not a lot of work is being done right now.. One resource that is soon discovered by the visiting party is the permanent internet connection! Another resource, discovered by me, is the kettle, with nearby bags of Earl Grey tea.. Apart from Arnels smuggled PG Tips, this is almost the only decent cup of tea to be had for the whole six days stay! With the rest of them gone, Partycle keeps us company, and the conversation very slowly turns to ordering a pizza.. Q-Funk plans to stay overnight at the Fishpool site, to await his lost baggage, Felice and I are to proceed to a different location for an overnight stay.. 18.55hrs - We're moving on to Wiztom's place later on, and sorting out food from there.. Pah! Dull but informative! We head out into the uncertain night to the railway station to pick up a train.. We are staying at the home of a famous Aggression coder, Wiztom, and are to be collected in the morning to be taken to the party.. We are briefed carefully on where to get off the train, it is apparently ok to pay on the train, which we are wary about, as it is a concept known in UK railway circles as a 'Penalty Fare' (!) The conductress is very understanding over our mispronunciation of the station name 'Puistola' and we are off (again..) About this time, I realise that the blue notebook, from which all the realtime extracts you've seen so far have been taken, had been left behind at Fishpool.. Damn!! - I get around the problem in a way that no-one would have believed possible at the party itself! An otherwise routine journey is livened up by a pair of comedic drunks who get on a couple of stops before ours, with the train staff watching them nervously, they get off at the same stop as us, we march out of the station briskly, leaving them dancing on the icy platform, missing Wiztom who is waiting to collect us.. Wiztom finds us at the bottom of the station steps before any panic reaction sets in, and the search for food begins.. After a brisk stroll with bags and all, the first pizza place is in a locked up shopping precinct. Disappointment turns to inspiration as a nearby pub is able to supply food, and once we get these back to base, the pub-produced pizza turns out to be rather good! The pub looks like the sort of place where bar fights are part of the listed entertainment on Friday nights, so we don't linger.. Wiztom's parents place is a very warm and inviting house with lots of smooth polished timber floors.. With a sense of finally being able to relax at the end of this long day, we clean the pizza completely off the plate, and afterwards, go and watch Wiztom pack his ALT party bag, whilst Felice tracks down the internet once more, and I am extremely happy to do nothing whilst sitting in the most comfortable low reclining chair in the building, which is in Wiztom's room.. Eventually, thoughts turn to sleep, and we unload sleeping bags, but with the benefit of mattresses underneath.. It isn't too hard to get to sleep, and this night of rest, prior to a very unrestful party and after the botched attempts of the night before, comes in rather handy.. It is an early(ish) night as we have an 8am start for the journey to the party place at Turku.. Sleep... Day Two.. Reasonably early, you know, the sort of early that isn't too early, but early enough.. Breakfast chez Wiztom consists of some Finnish style breakfast rice cake creations, which already are flashing cholesterol warnings in a redly ominious fashion, and are not made any better by adding loads of butter to them.. Wiztom apologises for the absence of the really authentic 'egg butter' that is normally put on the cakes once they are warmed up in the microwave, Maggie editors arteries, already feeling under undue pressure from a generally dissolute lifestyle, sigh a mighty sigh of relief.. Felice joins us soon after, we await our lift to the party.. It is Lance, also an Aggression member, who arrives in his elderly Saab.. This contains Q-Funk, now reunited with his bag in a midnight taxi courier mercy dash from the airport.. The boot also contains rather a lot of gear.. Me, Wiztom and Felice look at the car, and the assembled bags, and we think "F*ck! This car's full already!" In a subconscious parody of Mr Pink's Siliconvention '97 super-stuffem Autobahn journey to Bremen, we manage it - just! With the boot pushed closed *really* tightly, some vicious compression routines in full use, and with five people, and the remaining bags on their laps, we set off. I am in a privileged position in the front seat, trying to keep Felice's very large bag from overwhelming the driver.. As we don't crash en-route, I judge that mission to be a success.. The two hour drive to Turku is barely relieved by a lot of scenery of a wooden 'tree-ey' persuasion, and a pit-stop halfway there at a service station comes as a welcome relief to us all.. Eventually, we arrive in Turku, and are hunting around for the party venue, Lance spotting several places which have a vague resemblance to it.. We find the Palatsi, and take a little bit longer finding the wherewithal to park nearby, and after a bit of unloading and carrying, we are in!! The entry fee is paid, and little plastic tags are supplied, mine clipped wisely to my belt, these are the non-tightening ones, so no- ones blood supply was cut off as far as I can tell.. We hurtle inside for what is to be our home for the next three days.. ~The Party~ It is the very early stages of the party, official 'doors-open' only just at Midday, although some have been there from before, that is Mr Pink, Sh3, and Arnel complete with Falcons and large overhanging Atari banner on one table, and an even larger Swedish contingent adjoining them.. Such notables as Evl, Baggio, Deez, and Daniel Hedberg of New Beat are to be found there.. In the alcove by the food counter, Aggression are unloading and establishing their niche, other tables remain unnocupied, although happily, that situation improves as the day wears on.. Mr Pink and the rest of the UK contingent disappear in the direction of lunch, this turning out to be some of those omniescent 'Hesburgers', I try out the food counter to see what it has to offer, which tends to be food at the cheap and cheerful end of the scale, which is fair enough.. This food counter has the supreme advantage over everything else, of being manned 24 hours a day! Which came in very handy later on! I am fidgeting over a lack of something to do and really missing the notebook, I go to the toilets, an uninspiring place, but find something else that might be useful.. After going away for a bit and thinking "Naah! Can't be done!" I go back in and grab a handful of paper hand- towels, not the most ideal writing material, but they did the trick! All at once, life finds meaning and purpose again, and the first major instalment of realtime journal text, written on yellow hand towels, and written at the party place appears! Hurrah! (Emergency Realtime Bogpaper Paper Page 1). 14.05hrs - A strange choice of media, recycled hand towels, but needs must, as a self-inflicted cock-up has separated me from the little blue book that houses the initial realtime ramblings up to yesterday evening.. This is still at Fishpool where I left it, it didn't make it to the party site in spite of me asking Partycle to bring it with him. I blame the late scurrying along to Wiztoms place, others might (rightly) say it is good old fashioned carelessness.. After a nights sleep at Wiztoms half-underground home, we rode in Lance's ancient Saab with a shitload of baggage. It was already full before we added our bodies and baggage to it - we got it all in - just, no .LZH needed after all.. A two hour drive to Turku got us to the party place, bags on laps, people on laps etc.. The party place - Palatsi - this is probably the most nightclubbish venue ever chosen for a computer party. The strains of Kraftwerk drip through the air as VCS Defender plays on the big screen. These are self-consciously the very early stages of the party.. Mr Pink and SH3, both with undebugged hair sit alongside, Arnels Falcon sits silent. A bit further along are the Swedish contingent, Evl, Deez, and New Beat showing some more 'Willies'! Elsewhere, a lone C64 sits, switched off, and under a big 'Aggression banner, a whole bunch of kit is slowly being unpacked.. There are a lot of bags to people, and a lot of tables still unoccupied, on the other hand, it is only two and a half hours since the party properly opened - Some like Mr Pink were here from the night before.. - Note 1 - The pizza is very cheap, but that is all that can be said for it.. - Note 2 - The bogs are a bit of a shitehole, which describes their function perfectly! - Note 3 - Sorry if this glob of text has suffered a bit of a wit drain, but I'm trying to catch up! - Note 4 - Prices in general here are more reasonable than I was led to expect.. Testing one two three, can we write on the other side of the paper, yes, but not very well, as the little bumps on the paper travel upwards and outwards.. Well we've now got a feel for how much text a side of handtowel can produce!! By now, Mr Pink, Sh3 and the rest are back, and we all get down to paying some attention to the developing party scene.. 14.25hrs - Mr Pink is looking at the 'Elite ROM image (Nintendo).. It looks like up to four Godlynes games are to be released here, including one excellent shoot-em-up with a rather large resemblance to 'Wings of Death' on the ST, or should that be the other way round? 14.30hrs - I'm assuming a grown (?) man writing on toilet paper isn't too weird a sight in a room full of generally strange events? Must remember not to wipe my hands on this afterwards.. 14.32hrs - A Screenful of 'Elite' as the NES ROM image is opened up.. 14.35hrs - But it probably won't work, not with Godlynes in its present form, this ROM uses a few tricks that the graphics display doesn't like.. According to Mr Pink, it could be made to work, but this would need a lot of emulator recoding.. Well, so much for 'Elite', Nintendo style! 14.40hrs - Sh3 is eating unhealthily healthy! - No to rabbit food! Only eat junk!! Among their many other undisputed talents, Hesburger also sold a line of salads or 'salaatti', a profoundly nervous and vegetarian Sh3 didn't have to starve whilst he was here after all! 14.42hrs - Mr Pink now showing his 'Fractal Playground', coming next, Mandelbrot School Bully! It also includes genuine fractally generated music! Which still hasn't been released yet! (27.4.98) Even more worthy material follows.. 14.59hrs - I've seen a demo of 'K', Exa's bunny-based kart racer, also 'the mighty 'Godscape' in its 'Able to display a HTML document but not do too much else as yet' glory.. 15.00hrs - Profound noises from Aggressions corner of the room, probably large underpants style PC game stuff.. 15.05hrs - Mr Pink goes out for a puff! (Cigarette, not George Michael!) 15.06hrs - Looking back, I wouldn't have been able to do too much in the realtime before the party as I was crashed out at Wiztom's place overnight, or else in a car clutching onto a big bag trying to stop it interfering with the driver.. A little note about our train journey to Wiztom's part of Helsinki, which featured a couple of comedy pissheads who got off at the same stop as us and were dancing on the platform.. (Emergency Realtime Bogpaper paper emulator page 2). 15.10hrs - Ahh, this is better with something to lean upon. It seems to have got even quieter with the disappearance of the Swedish crowd, at least Evl, who is sized like a Swedish crowd! There are a few new bodies around, but these seem to be doing little of consequence.. 15.15hrs - A Reservoir Gods 'ice' logo appears on a nearby screen - I'm sure I saw something identical etched into a frozen lake from the aircraft as we were coming in to land yesterday? Now more people are starting to set up, and the empty tables gradually un-empty, with several strange makes of computer in the offing, I feel it is time for a wander around.. 15.20hrs - I've been watching an Amiga precursor demo to 'Lost Blubb' by a crew called 'Spaceballs' - Other hardware in the building includes at least one SGI, a Hades, some Sun 'Sparcs, and in the not-quite-so- fuckoff kit category, Spectravideo computers (some kind of MSX mutation) and even a customised VIC 20?! 15.35hrs - Some activity in the Swedish sector with bits of a possible New Beat 4ktro and some other screens by DHS (stuff for the 4k megademo?) The New Beat stuff I've seen is of a very high standard.. I've also seen some of the latest 'Willies Adventures' levels such as an Arctic level with unhelpful penguins tripping up Willy, and a vampire/spooky themed level.. According to Daniel, there are still lots of graphics that need to be drawn for it.. Undercover issue 11 tinkles quietly in the background as the main sound system is on a huge silent ambient trip.. "Feel the quiet of Mr Bong!!" - Okay, what happens next? Well, how about a little light relief, in the form of a session of 'Frogger' on the big screen! 15,40hrs - Setok and Sh3 play Frogger, Arnel in the commentary box doing his 'Murray Walker' impression so looked forward to at these sort of parties! 15.45hrs - Mr Pink to see if he can do a multi-player 'GodlyFrog'!! The preceding sentence wins the prize for the most significant sentence of the party, 'Godlyfrog' became a serious game project very quickly, and eventually emerged with a new and very distinctive name.. Work on this game basically consumed the remaining productive hours of Reservoir Gods at the party, and not a few afterwards as well.. (Still 15.45hrs - Sorry I cut in there..) Releases known about at this stage.. New Reservoir Frogs demo, Senior Dads 'Monomental' demo, short 'Faketro' from the Dads as well, Up to four Godlynes games? Fractal Playground by the 'Gods, a 4ktro by New Beat? Dead Hackers Society?? Well we were only a bit off the mark, the Res.Gods release schedule underwent a whole lot of change with the Frogger game, New Beat unfortunately didn't finish anything in time, but Dead Hackers did manage a couple of releases.. A fair bit of stuff turned up immediately after the party, the time at the party usefully spent getting things to a nearly finished state at least.. 15.53hrs - Two player VCS Combat on the big screen, Mr Pink finds out all too horribly the meaning of 'friendly fire'! 16.10hrs - More people turning up, some with a really hairy selection of old kit, a ZX81 (with Memotech 16k anti-wobble RAM pack) a Sharp green screen machine of equally ancient vintage, another unknown make that looks a lot like a cash till.. I've also just seen a Vic 20 demo, not too shabby at all, no realtime rendering or texture-mapped 3D objects, but I suppose you can't have everything, not on a first attempt anyway.. The Cuddly Demo reset tune plays gently in the background, and not so gently in the foreground as well.. This turned out to be an early preview of the competition winning Vic 20 demo! 16.17hrs - Stormlord, the ST version plays. The VCS combat game sits neglected on the big screen waiting for someone to happen.. 16.26hrs - Arnel sits preparing a suitable background texture for his 'Celebrity Vomit' web page! 16.30hrs - A severely fucked soundchip tune with a load of keyclicks and playing way too fast, unless someone has moved into the parody 'Name that tune' business? The party routine is on us as people settle down, I wander a bit more as new signs of activity across the floor blink into life.. 17.05hrs - Every computer has to have at least one great demo, even the most obscure machines, and I've just seen the Spectravideo's effort. Not too bad at all, and even a stab at 3D voxel landscaping, albeit with a dodgy palette. Various plasmas play at lowish resolutions too.. 17.08hrs - We're not quite full yet, but there are more people now. Thankfully, no recorder playing Amiga people armed with smoke bombs! No recreation of 'Scenario '95 thankfully, but the Amiga contingent that arrived managed to be nuisance enough with the limited means to hand (Amigas and sound systems) as our 'into the night' account will surely tell! 17.13hrs - Sentry are in the building! Top Dutch blokesters for making the trip! 17.15hrs - They were expecting less cold and more springlike conditions.. Spring is here, but a lot closer to the Arctic circle than the Netherlands.. 17.30hrs - "Gotta be addicts!" Sentry's excuse for sloping off for a smoke.. 17.35hrs - "Got to be Leon!" - Mr Pink's excuse for doing the same! Out of a mainland European attendence of precisely nil up to now, the faces of Sentry are a welcome sight.. It is only a token colonisation by the Dutch of the party, as there are just two of them.. So for the first year since party year dot (1993) there are no Ren and Stimpy videos, or special showings of 'Bad Taste'.. In keeping with their cut- down presence, XTC has had his hair cut too.. It also turns out that the party is only a partial port of call as they are heading into the even colder north for the day on Saturday.. Brrr!! Mr Pink, Sh3, and Arnel disappear for their appointment with destiny, or Laser Quest as it is generally known around these parts.. I am left with the hands on the knobbly keyboard of Mr Pinks Falcon.. Deciding I look like a bit of a nonce sitting like that, I switch it on for a low key browse of the contents, release-wise.. About this time, some Swedish dudes drift over.. 18.05hrs - Deez has come over to say hi - Mr Pink, Sh3 and co have gone to be zapped in the Lazer Quest zone. I'm meanwhile having a scoot on Mr Pinks Falcon (with his permission of course!) It looks at this stage there is something from DHS and possibly New Beat for the party. 18.07hrs - Also Mr Pink has been 'inspired' by the VCS Frogger game to produce a multiplayer version, possibly with controllable cars too.. 18.11hrs - Evl comes over to visit, his hangover is slowly receding.. 18.50hrs - I've been playing on Mr Pinks computer, nothing too badly damaged, I kept the smoke emissions down to a minimum anyway! "We were abysmal!" - Mr Pink quote from the Lazer Quest.. 18.53hrs - Mr Pink is abysmally drinking coke! 18.54hrs - Mr Pink goes off for a post match cigarette, Sh3 wildly sprays deodorant everywhere, some of it gets under his arms.. (Emergency realtime Bollox Bogpaper Page 3) The Reservoir Gods were hammered badly in the Lazer Quest, Arnel survived to play another round or three.. Just then, something completely unexpected happened.. 19.03hrs - A very nice Amiga-esque MSX demo played. The local press in the form of a female Finnish journalist is making itself felt by trying to interview Mr Pink.. She doesn't know what she's let herself in for! 19.07hrs - Someone trying to take photos of us, he doesn't know what he's letting his camera in for, it is about 14 inches away from the empty coke bottles atm.. 19.10hrs - She's from the Turku Gazette, or whatever it's called, some unpronouceable Finnish name.. So that's okay then.. Mr Pink demos Maggie 25, showing them a taste of the real thing! 19.15hrs - Maybe things go too far as Mr Pink runs and tries to explain Godlynes - Female journalist now has slightly desperate air of trying to escape.. She does - barely.. 19.16hrs - Maschochistic photographer is back taking a close up of Mr Pinks face, cameras must be very cheap here.. Unlike most occasions where the press or media get involved and you never hear or see anything from it, the very next day saw Mr Pink and Sh3 beaming out of the last but one page of the Turku Herald, a paper that looked more 'broadsheet' and serious than a local paper is normally entitled to be.. The page has a big photo with Mr Pink determinedly drinking his coke, Sh3 sitting back doing couch potato impressions, and Felice in the background writing on an A4 pad.. What did he write on that pad? I've never seen it.. And why didn't he tell me he had access to decent paper whilst I was putting up with glorifed bogpaper!? And after all that excitement, a visit to the food counter was needed! 19.25hrs - Coffee and cake break! 19,27hrs - Dunking a Digestive biscuit in the coffee, wonder if it's an illegal practice to dunk around these parts? The food mix had changed slightly to include various sweet pastry confections.. The coffee was found to be very strong, which came in sort of handy later on.. 19.35hrs - A question for Mr Pink, 'How many cylinders does a 'frogger engine' have, what sort of car could you put it in?? 19.36hrs - Arnel finally returns, he came third in the Lazer Quest, which in a real-life war situation would add up to a good looking corpse! 19.40hrs - I spy three people at the food counter - A queue! 19.45hrs - I think I have definitely seen it all now, a Commodore Pet demo!! - Not too much to see, a static screen, scrolly text, quite a fast scrolly text which left a green phosphor 'motion blur' on the screen! - ZX81 Quake deathmatch anyone?? I get up again, I wander about a bit, and this is what I find.. The 'Commodore Pet demo' is running on a very slightly later offshoot of the Pet, and is a green screen of static 'wizard' graphics and a short scrolltext in the bottom.. Given a bit of effort, I suppose anything is possible.. I then stroll over to the Aggression niche to find Wiztom playing a massively souped-up 'Zaxxon' game.. This was running on his PC, one of the few machines to breach the 'No Intel above 286' rule.. A copy of 'The Edge' lurks in forbidden fashion in a corner, this takes a break from Sony-plugging and everyone else bashing to tell us all about the company that Wiztom works for, Housemarque, and the games they are producing.. The game that is playing is called 'The Reap', and it is kind of nice to see influences from previous Team 17 work in there.. 20.04hrs - Looking at Wiztoms current game, a giga-PC powered Zaxxon for the '90's called 'The Reap'.. I stood back and tried playing 'Spot the Stardust influence', and won against myself - several times.. 20.10hrs - Either Mr Pinks Frogger engine has come along massively, or he's given up and done a lovely running track instead, errm, that's actually Sh3 drawing the road!! 20.11hrs - Mr Pink reports a couple of people using the toilets to socialise 'out of party' as it were. It must be the equivalent of the kitchen at normal parties? What sort of "socialising" we ask - yet another of the many disquieting questions best left unanswered.. The toilets, these were awful, and looked like they had been used by over-energetic customers as they stood in various states of decrepitude.. Apart from one or two that really needn't be closely examined, at least they stayed clean throughout the party.. (Meanwhile, many miles in another reality, the rain fell and fell, the waters rose - "Enger-lund drowns like a pendulum do! Bobbies on jetskis two by two!") 20.23hrs - Mr Pink shows his cruel and devious side by giving Sh3 false information about the result of the Liverpool vs Man Utd match.. Sh3 thought that Liverpool were losing, they aren't, but are holding onto a draw instead.. I never knew that a static teletext screen could hold so much interest.. We'd better not tell Rupert Murdoch, or he'll turn it into 'pay per view' along with all the live action stuff! 20.31hrs - Leon has not taken up my suggestion of calling their game 'Frog-Off' and giving it an '18 certificate, or erroneously putting Quentin Tarantino in the credits.. The big screen comes back into things with something completely predictable.. 20.50hrs - We see Silicon Graphics propaganda on the big screen, some lovely demo-ey stuff to begin with.. But when the American talking heads appear on screen, it is time to carry on with what you were doing.. Silicon Graphics employ people who say 'process' and 'situation' a lot.. We are treated to some stunning mutations of the English language with the priceless "Process thing" spoken by someone gifted, but not linguistically... 20.55hrs - "Well, er, its a creature that tears people apart that moves like a big cat." So what.. Why not a creature that moves with the speed and grace of a meat and potato pie? Just for a change.. 20.58hrs - It's now interviewing someone onscreen who was exceedingly proud of the special effects work they did on the movie 'Anaconda' - Which got badly panned as I recall.. Must have done the interview before the film was released? 21.02hrs - Realtime saliva "The next generation of realism"!! (How about it, demo coders?) It was a truly horrible film, full of self-congratulatory boosterism and meaningless PR gibberish mixed up with the worst sort of tech-head drivel.. Ultimately, glossy and beautiful, but empty inside.. Arnel hijacks the video afterwards with the perfect antidote, 'Absolutely Fabulous' on the big screen.. Well done to that man! 21.30hrs- The UK gets its revenge on the ALT party - 'Ab Fab' on the big screen! Edie and Patsie do their stuff. "Stationary" supplies seem to have run out in the toilet, I might have to take things easy with these last couple of sheets.. Felice doesn't find Ab Fab funny as I remember? 21.53hrs - Some late arrivals, but do they play recorders? (Emergency Realtime Arsewipe episode 4). 22.00hrs - Someone else has got his MSX out for the lads, this is easily the most impressive of the 'historical' computers.. Mind you, the Falcon's getting pretty 'historical itself now (grin!) 22.05hrs - Frogger update - We have a moving up and down thing on the screen! (I think that's a "sprite" - Worried about how badly the realtime is going downhill Ed..). 22.15hrs - Stupid Question of the Party - "Is there a sleeping area?!" Maybe that was a question I should have stupidly asked someone, as there was a third floor to this building, which was out of normal access, and could only be reached in the lift(!) This place was out of earshot of most of the racket, and some people such as Felice and Arnel managed to get to sleep there on the Friday night.. After a completely sleepless (but very well documented in the realtime) night, I only found out about it on the Saturday morning! Meanwhile, Setok springs to wakefulness to organise a 'Classic Games Competition' - Frogger on the big projection screen is to be our reward! 22.16hrs - The classic games compo is now starting, can't see a thing - the lights have gone.. 22.45hrs - Classic games ruled for only a short time, Frogger was played.. I squeezed in a narrow 16-9 victory against Felice! Other people are playing now.. It even looks like someone else is doing their own party report - on a Commodore 64.. "Hello from Turku live on 64 FM!?" We play for a bit, the finalists get to have a go at 'Pong', the original 1970's television plug-in game, this is a bit later on.. 22.50hrs - Arnel is showing us his etchings (oo-eer!) 23.05hrs - Mr Pink was intently studying Frogger on the big screen during the competition.. As a result, he thinks he's got the car algorythm sussed, also the road has had to go from 8 to 10 lanes.. 23.11hrs - I've spotted something that can only be safely described as 'Pubic Domain' on a nearby C64, a two player game where the first player to "Do a George Michael" wins!! It involved a lot of repetitious joystick movements!! Well the less said the better, but it did seem to give the participants a lot of simple enjoyment, but might be lacking in long-term gameplay! Back in the world of things vaguely making sense, people get ready for the 'Pong' grand final.. 23.39hrs - Arnel is the new machine wired cyber Pong champion, the original is totally done in hardware and extremely fast. It doesn't exactly help if Sh3 insists on taking flash photos in the dark!! My suggestion for the grand final - head to head Protracker Breakout! 23.50hrs - Cool! Fresh supplies of 'stationery' have been delivered to the toilets, now we can go on into the night.. Day Three.. 00.00hrs - It's Saturday! Hip hooray etc.. Not sure if this coffee is 'kill or cure, probably both at the same moment.. 00.07hrs - First sightings of 'Frog-Off' and the cars go a bit too quickly.. If you were playing this, the winner would be the first one to get anything froglike to the top of the screen?! 00.12hrs - Arnel describing CAB in operation "Ooh I don't like *pure* white, let's dither it to a slightly off-white colour instead!" 00.14hrs - Boney M. on the sound system, same age as the Pong game you 70's retro chicks! 00.17hrs- Felice fresh from IRC comes with the amazing comedy story that the UK is colder than Finland, they've had snow there apparently.. 00.20hrs - Mr Pink demonstrates his intimate knowledge of car performances in Frogger, with a turbo-nutter "Nought to Sixty in 0.05 seconds XR3i, which still makes this game very hard.. 00.25hrs - Crashed - No, back again.. 00.35hrs - There might be a sleeping place upstairs? But did he find it, did he bollocks!! At this stage, everyone is still reasonably awake and productive, those people with competition entries as working away at them as the handing-in deadline is sometime on Saturday morning.. 00.46hrs - Arnel sits in a sweat waiting for the Tori Amos website to finish loading from his cache.. XTC of Sentry estimates that (Microsoft) Internet Explorer 4 works properly for 15 minutes maximum, which is less than the time needed to load in all of this site online! 00.52hrs - ASCII Graphics compo gone missing? 00.53hrs - Setok drops by, and suggests a networked version of Frogger might be a nice idea.. 01.17hrs - A hilarious sight of someone trying to play 'Pong' on its 'demo mode', where the ball slips through his fingers every time! Almost as good as playing with the power off.. Setok is still with us talking, next he tells us this little told tale of a past demo party.. 01.26hrs - Setok tells us all about his Fried Bits 3 'Mistaken identity story' where he kicked Martina of Lazer awake when he should have woken up someone else totally different! They had the same hair colour, an easy mistake to make I'm sure!! 01.35hrs - Power up and down like a pair of drawers owned by someone of dubious morals.. Good old power failures, the mainstay of any demo party, usually kicking in when you've got a computer-based realtime, and you've gone a long time without saving a big chunk of text.. We did quite well this time, with only the odd accidental failure very occasionally (Hi there Felice!) 01.55hrs - The Edge magazine had a staff writer with a rich ironic and self-depreciating sense of humour.. He got the sack!! 02.07hrs - The Finnish version of 'Countdown' goes something like this - "A consonant please Carol, and another consonant, err, and another (into infinity..) 02.15hrs - We, the Atari scene are the long stayers, all the rest have gone to bed.. We're here, the Swedes are here, some other odd bods around the hall, that's it! 02.24hrs - CD Player through big sound system starts ballsing up.. 02.24hrs - Article jumps. 02.24hrs - Article jumps.. Jumps.. 02.26hrs - CD Player bombs out leaving a big mess onscreen, if it had a screen.. Looking around to see several bodies on the floor trying to make the best of a bad job sleeping, or did the mad axebloke get them all? 02.28hrs - Sh3 invents letterboxes all on his own! Errm, 'He being of sound mind, blurble blurble bleeep!' perhaps? (Realtime Emerging Nations Bogpaper realtime part 5). 02.31hrs - We see 'Startrek, whatever the last one was called' on the big screen, you know, the one where they get shirty with the Borg! This is one of the even-numbered Startrek films, which means it's ok as the odd-numbered ones are all bobbins.. This has been retrofitted with Finnish subtitles.. 02.35hrs - The Borg are of course, Microsoft in 500 years time!! - Resistance is indeed useless!! 02.28hrs - And the Borg ship? That's the heatsink for the Pentiums Intel are doing in the 25th Century!! 02.40hrs - The even-numbered Startrek films also have all the best explosions!! 02.45hrs - Very early breakfast.. Enjoyment piles on enjoyment with the rich Shakepearean tones of a British actor trying to play a Frenchman driving a spaceship filling the room, and the food counter is still open.. 02.55hrs - XTC of Sentry semi-goes to sleep, whilst watching the film at the same time.. 03.12hrs - Collision detection now active in Frogger game.. 03.15hrs - It looks like Mr Pink is going to be famous in some places we didn't realise.. Some of the C64 guys got friendly with us, and it looks like he's going in their party report.. 03.20hrs - There is a bit of confusion over the demo compo entries.. We've no idea when to hand these in, and no-one has the bit of paper with the details on it.. We're putting in the new Senior Dads demos, and the Reservoir Frogs intro, there are a couple of other Falcon entries, one from Wildfire, and one from DHS, also something from the 'Alternative Spice Boys'? There are also several entries for the other machines, the MSX being the most strongly represented.. Probably, the strangest entry will be the 512byte intro from something that has a hex keypad and a single row LED display, and nothing else! I find a piece of paper with the demo competition entries written on it, and add our entries to the list.. As far as we can tell, the handing-in is sometime late Saturday morning.. We imagine that someone will be awake to hand them in.. After a hard nights work, Mr Pink and Sh3 decide to call it a day, and try to get to sleep, Mr Pink hiding under the table in his sleeping bag, and Sh3 grabbing a bundle of chairs together to make a very crude bed.. I am not motivated to join them at this point, and decide to look in on what the still-awake Swedes are doing instead.. 03.50hrs - Chatted with Evl for a while, they've done a 4k version of the 'Dream Dimension' Megademo, effect for effect.. There is not so much in the way of graphics, and zero sound.. Also New Beat are doing an intro too.. Also, Evl plans to release another 'Chippin' for Air' a bit later - Not as a competition entry though.. 03.55hrs - Mr Pink under the table.. I don't think sleep is a goer due to the racket from the Amiga people on an adjoining table, and the film soundtrack is reaching some sort of loud climax.. I'm not too bothered about sleep at this point in time.. This is almost certainly the most sleep unfriendly room in Turku tonight.. 04.10hrs - The film ends, racket reduces down to the Amiga people in the corner.. 04.30hrs - I had a poke around upstairs, which is loosely designated the 'sleeping area'.. There is no complete escape from the noise downstairs, but it is of a lesser intensity.. Shadowy figures have parked themselves in hidden corners with their sleeping gear.. It is the time of night when walking towards a full-length mirror is an extremely freaky thing to do as you get ready to fend off an attacking clone of yourself! Sh3 has in turn succumbed to the lure of lying on some chairs to try to get some sleep.. I know I ought to be trying as well, but it's all too much hassle..I'd rather let it come naturally as you can't really sleep if you don't want to - CiH - Night nearly morning... Well, this neat previous paragraph sums up the situation I was in.. The physical effort of 'going to bed' was more bothersome than the tiredness!! I decided to live with the tiredness.. As the following section of realtime text reveals, I didn't have a lot of choice anyway.. 04.35hrs - Someone shoot those Amiga People, but with a silenced gun! 04.40hrs - XTC of Sentry is still up, he's going north in an hour or so, and has to be awake to catch his train.. 04.45hrs - It's now as quiet as it's going to get, at least before the Axel-F soundchip mix kicked in.. 04.53hrs - I'm discussing Pizza/Cannabis recipes with XTC! 04.55hrs - Certain Amiga people, they know who they are, stand a very good chance of being killed before the end of this party!! 04.57hrs - I hope something blows up, something expensive!! 05.00hrs - We've hit on a new concept in travel - 'Club Sado- Maschochism Airlines' - "Your wishes are our commands!" 05.05hrs - Amiga people release a giant mechanical frog into the party? 05.20hrs - The Amiga noise hasn't started up suddenly for at least a minute, a whole minute without it, imagine that! 05.50hrs - Had a freshen up in the primitive sanitary facilities.. Rather smug as the owner of the only pair of cleaned teeth in the building.. I also found out the sink taps spray out at the same sort of pressure as a fire hose for the benefit of half-awake people - Currently waiting for my lap to dry out.. With no 'ALTernative' available, you had to trust that nothing nasty was waiting to be caught off the sinks.. It passed some time.. As for the vexed question of the volume level, well.... It all seemed to come from the same small group of people, an Amiga outfit that came as the 'cliched badly behaved Amiga crew stuck in a timewarp around 1990!' Apart from testing their sound system at inappropriate times, their other noteworthy contributions to the party were a 'joke' demo compo entry that lacked any sense of humour, and a 'Vote for Us' flyer with, shall we say, innovative graphics on it! After a tough fight with the Swedes, they also won the 'shittiest mess left to clear up after the party' award as well.. But just then, a familiar face pops up.. 05.55hrs - Q-Funk dropped by, he's still up too.. XTC is to depart at 6.15.. The catering staff have stayed up all night with us and deserve some sort of award for sheer dedication - The Finnish Cottage Cheese Challenge Cup or something.. 06.15hrs - XTC is leaving the building, but he'll be back on Sunday.. 06.20hrs - There is very little activity now, even the Amiga people seemed to have turned it down, which is not before time.. Now they have all buggered off, leaving the earache generator running, at a reduced volume, thankfully.. 06.25hrs - Going upstairs for a bit - I've found an office with some nice chairs.. Seeya later, insomnia fairies.. A further reconnaisance finds a likely spot to attempt sleep with a minimum effort.. It is some kind of office or information centre, with a couple of PC's running the Palatsi internet connection, and Q-Funk, jetlagged as ever, can be found browsing on there.. A bookcase stuffed with dozens of assorted 'youth advice' leaflets of a "Boyz, if you're going to do it up the bum with each other then wear a condom!" nature, all written by a Finnish Cholmondley-Warner type person lurks nearby.. A couple of informal beanbags are replete with sleeping bodies, some other chairs are occupied by people in varying states of consciousness.. Finally, a small couch awaits - empty!! The couch is somewhat shorter than I would like, but it suffices.. The lights are still on in here, but it is easy to shut it all out.. Getting to a state of 'sort of comfortable', the best that can be done under the circumstances, something like sleep but a cheap and tacky version of it, follows.. Q-Funks taps quietly into a computer nearby.. About an hour of this is all I can really stand, so I rise unsteadily to check on the still dead main hall.. 07.45hrs - Back again - found a couch which was about 4ft long.. I'm a bit longer than that, but I managed an hour of something? just don't make me have to open my eyes please! - The rest of the team are still firmly off the job - I'm thinking of breakfast part II. 07.59hrs - System timeout, waiting for coffee to initialise - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 ..................... Dead. 08.01hrs - You've all been Maggied! 08.23hrs - A surprising outcome to yesterdays visitation by the local press as certain photographic negatives were retrieved from the wreckage of assorted cameras and Mr Pink and Sh3 have their pictures in the morning edition of the Turku Herald or whatever it is called.. Must be a very slow news day there.. It must also be the only newspaper fitted with a black box flight recorder? 0898 686868 - Now come off it! That's not a proper time, it's a pretend premium rate phone number! Oi!! Leave it!! 08.37hrs - "But the drugs don't work?" - Better change your dealer then! The preceding fifty-two minutes worth of realtime showed the desperately tired state my brain was in.. Mr Pink often writes his program documentation when it is well past his bedtime for the same sort of reason.. That is, his brain works somewhat differently than when it is awake! In the same space of time, I visited the food counter again, and also had my first sighting of 'Atari Kainalossa Suomeen', as the headline so eloquently put it.. The on-duty organisers in the entrance hall had got this newspaper and were mildly excited by the attention ALT was getting, possibly expecting to have to beat off waves of unexpected new arrivals from the townspeople.. (We eventually got to take home photocopies of this reporting landmark..) Of the rest of the team, Mr Pink and Sh3 lie where I left them, Felice and Arnel have dropped out of sight completely, but there is a little activity on the Swedish table, so I go there for a while.. 09.15hrs - The HTML Maggie has been running on a Hades! Wonderful machine, instant loading and hyperspeed animated icons.. The whole thing looks lovely in hi-res truecolour too! The object of my visitation is a Hades TOS super-clone belonging to Tiitsu of Atari IRC fame.. Forethought had motivated me to bring along a copy of the HTML version of Maggie 25, in case there were higher specification computers to try it out on, and his Hades certainly fitted the bill! Maggie flew through loading in the pages, pictures and all.. As far as I could tell, he was impressed by what he saw.. The Hades is a great machine with a full set of contemporary GEM software, and a decent multi-tasking O/S and enhanced desktop, which is what this machine had.. I still tend to favour the 'games and demos in reasonable availability' which the Falcon has though.. A sizeable gap in the realtime text to 10.30am is accounted for by me trying to find another place to get some rest.. I find a spacious gallery immediately above the stage/screen area, where the lighting rig is controlled.. There is seating all around, and one or two bodies lie scattered on these.. I find a corner all to myself, and practice pretend sleeping again. This room is in near-darkness, which is great, and seems to be the entry point for blasts of chill air from the air- conditioning, which isn't so great, so after a while I fetch up back at the office where I almost slept before.. As the Internet connected PCs sit unattended, I occupy myself with a flick-through on the 'Web with the doubtful assistance of Internet Explorer 4, the Finnish edition! This is about as good as its English language counterpart, that is, not very, so after a little while, I don't bother.. Memory also serves Q- Funk as coming along to show me some out-takes from his own website, and some pictures from a photographer friend of his (now calm down, not those sort of pictures!!) Perhaps that might have been a little bit later in the morning? Eventually, I go back downstairs again.. 10.30hrs -Everyone is still dead in the immediate vicinity. I made the doubtless useful discovery that Microsoft Internet Explorer is bobbins in Finnish as well as English.. There are a few things happening nearby with at least one entry to the music competition gurgling throatily out of its monitor speakers.. Fact number, erm, not sure - The Princess Diana Tunnel Racer game has been pulled off the air.. At least it comes up blank on the Cruel Site of the Day listings.. 10.45hrs - Rest of the party now awake ... Apart from Arnel.. 10.46hrs - And the show-sponsored racket from the PA system starts up again.. 10.58hrs - Leon is sorted for coffee and cigs! 11.03hrs - And I'm sorted for removing facial fuzz, I'm a clean-shaven shagged out shower of shite now.. With more or less everyone back on the job, it is time to find someone to hand in our imported competition entries to.. In the meantime, we entertain ourselves with not-so-sneak previews of the Senior Dads 'Monomental' demo, and the Reservoir Frogs intros.. 11.14hrs - 'Monomental now running.. 11.17hrs - And now the Reservoir Frogs are going.. The next hour passes a little unclearly, a time where tiredness of the 'sitting upright, but just about to slam your head on the table when you wake suddenly' persuasion features strongly.. The competitions are loosely scheduled to start from noon onwards, in the meantime, the Reservoir Gods are once again bashing out on 'Frogger'.. 12.17hrs - My hour off is over, we're now waiting for the competitions to start.. The demo compo is well represented, the ASCII art competition has a few entries as well, but the soundchip music competition has only one, and that may have been cheating using a combination of Protracker and chipsound samples.. 12.22hrs - Sh3 does not like the cars he is drawing for Frogger, but at least his cars all have five-year anti-corrosion warranties on them, the originals won't have, as these were "built" in the 1970's! 12.33hrs - Mr Pink now has all the cars going in reverse! 12.40hrs- Arnel still isn't around, he's probably tunneled under the building to get away from the noise last night! 12.55hrs - There are now two frogs onscreen.. 12.57hrs - Looks like we're going shopping soon.. And we do, a small party of us go into town, but only as far as the nearest 'Hesburger' restaurant.. To assist us in making our stay more affordable, we have obtained some tokens which seem to suggest something along the lines of 'buy one, get one free', but don't actually really mean that.. There is a picture of an insane-looking counter assistant on the front of the token booklet, where she clearly has done her bit to support British beef - By eating it!! Sh3 hits the salad bar again, whereas Leon and myself consume something with a lot of mayonnaise, with fries and coke.. Felice sticks to the fries, and seems content with that.. Back out on the streets of Turku, it is very bright but cold, and we wander on a secondary mission to follow up on getting a copy of the newspaper with the fateful picture of Leon and Kev in it, but don't seem to find anywhere that sells newspapers? - Return to the party.. 13.43hrs - Visited the Hesburger, their products have a slightly 'home- cooked' feel compared with certain Mac-others.. We also found Turku to be a newsagent desert with not a paper shop anywhere near.. (The bogroll realtime goes thundering in to part 7!) 13.50hrs - Is something going to happen, competition-wise? 13.53hrs - Also, Arnel is still asleep? - "Here's a nice game of Frogger written today, oh, and you've missed the competitions - That's your lot for ALT mate!!" 14.12hrs - Sh3 wants a trainer mode for Frogger! This is SAD! 14.20hrs - Someone runs a 'Shoot the flying Windows screensaver game' on an MSX - Like Frogger, very simple, but deeply satisfying at the same time.. 14.25hrs - Vote sheets are handed out for the competitions.. It suggests that you write a poem about Spring on the back of it - Right! here's mine!! Once upon a time there was a spring who had a thing about some string! - by E.J.Arnel, aged 6 and three-quarters 14.59hrs - Competition? The big screen sputters into life, party organisers, headed by the horses mane haired figure of Setok rush around and try not to bump into each other, the ASCII competition is on us! 15.12hrs - At last!! 15.19hrs - The first two ASCII entries played, what where they? A prolonged wait for the next one.. 15.21hrs - Aggression's entry is top stuff! But Felice, the dozy twonk, forgot to video it!! 15.26hrs - The Aggression ASCII animation was nice, an ASCII version of one of their demos? The ASCII competition is a 'taster' for the demos that are to come later.. The first entry is over too quickly to even see it.. The second entry is an animation of sorts, but not really recognisable as such.. It is later explained as a battle sequence from the Startrek film we saw last night.. The third, and best entry in this category comes from Aggression, who unleash an ASCII animation of the opening sequence of their award winning STe mega-demo Brain Damage! With the quality gap between this and the other entries, people assume this is a competition organised for the benefit of Aggression, but no, we find out later that this was prepared overnight, with no special effort made on it beforehand.. Felice managed to miss videoing this bit, unfortunately.. Meanwhile, someone else was about to put in an overdue reappearance.. 15.30hrs - The mystery of where Arnel is deepens, he's been slacking off for far too long! 15.45hrs - Arnel emerges at last, blinking into the daylight, the little slacker! "Oh it's only 1 o'clock back home!" And what kind of an excuse is that?! 16.00hrs - To echo a complaint made on an earlier realtime article, the one written at Symposium '96, "Too bad we got no tea." (NoCrew) - Well no decent tea anyway.. All tea here is adulterated with pointless and frequently nasty tasting fruit and mint flavours.. What about the good old 'stand yer spoon in it' British cuppa.. I've really passed a medically safe threshold for caffeine poisoning with the amount of coffee I've drunk, and would like a change - Please! I don't fancy this spearmint chewing gum flavoured cuppa I've just purchased one tiny bit! 16.07hrs - Arnel reveals his stash of PG tips - Hurrah! Now I'm drinking the real stuff! Cries of "Rule Britannia" and "Good old Reggie Kray, he never hurt no-one who wasn't one of his own!" ring out in the hall.. The Great Finnish Tea Crisis came on the scene, but was resolved quickly.. After tasting, and discarding a cup of boiled up chewing gum (the most charitable description of this foul mess) Arnel helpfully pointed out his big box of proper teabags.. After a little effort, I persuade the counter staff to hand over a cup of hot water and make my own!! Delicious!! Tea rankings in decreasing order of palatability - 1. Arnels ALT cuppa - Lovely! 2. The Fishpool Earl Grey experience - Nice! 3. Wiztom's fruity breakfast drink - Fair enough.. 4. The Palatsi boiled up chewing gum brew - Urrgh! 16.25hrs- The sound compo is next, but it is short of several things, the right sort of leads from Setoks Falcon to the PA, the right sort of module player too. I'm not sure how useful an unregistered version of Megatracker with a strict upper limit on the size of tunes it can load might be (Hellp!) 16.45hrs - The music comp is soon now, the people have been asked to turn off their audio, but more sounds seem to blare out than ever? 16.47hrs - The first tune batters the speakers, walls start to cave inwards, and the main structural supports for the building all look rather scared! 16.53hrs - Another one down, more to go? 16.56hrs - This seems to be better.. 17.02hrs - I liked this last one, the best tune of the compo, a hesitant beginning and really cheesy ending - I loved it! The soundchip competition breezed through with several tunes of a loud and merciless quality.. The one that I liked enough to mention it in more detail in the realtime was 'number 5' on the vote sheet.. Ah well, the long wait for the main demo competition now.. 17.20hrs - The demo competition is at least another hour, will bogart off for a short while.. I head away from the main flow of the party to the first floor office cum makeshift internet cafe once again.. Very few people are in there now, the only other occupant is, in fact, Q-Funk who has given in to his jet-lag and is collapsed in one of the chairs.. I try out one of the beanbags, close eyes..... And feel ridiculously exposed lying sprawled over this thing.. Still, I'm sure the brief rest period did me well enough until I was finally able to get to bed properly in the early hours of next morning.. 18.06hrs - Back again.. Missed me?! 18.31hrs - Oh dear, it's the Silicon Bollocks film again - See yesterday evening for my comments on that one! 18.35hrs - Yes, exactly the same people, who love themselves.. 19.10hrs - We're still waiting for the demo compo, put back another hour.. 19.35hrs - Setok visited us, We found out the Aggression ASCII demo was only put together last night! 19.45hrs - Sh3 is eating healthily again! I warned him about doing that already! 19.46hrs - Cast my horrified gaze to Finnish 'Blind Date' on the big screen - No screeching BSE-struck Cilla Black, thankfully - Instead, some bloke with a curly 'Scouser' perm who looks a bit like Sam Tramiel! (Sheet 8 Warning! - Sheet 8 Warning!) 19.55hrs - Why is Tori Amos wearing a pair of gold-painted comedy breasts on the front cover of 'Q' magazine? 21.10hrs - We see Formula One Grand Prix, but no Murray Walker, the demo compos are soon, we hope? We've lost an hour!! 21.40hrs - They're testing the big screen, with Sono' - excellent choice.. 21.41hrs - Felice is intently studying the 'form' in a Finnish jazzmag! 21.45hrs - Onscreen now, the Aggressive party 128ktro 'Jurassic Remix', or is that just someone doing shadow dinosaur puppets on the big screen!? 21.50hrs - Just before the demo competition starts, I must apologise for the large gaps appearing lately in the realtime.. Firstly, not a lot has happened lately, I've also been stuck into a 'Dilbert' book which is very funny.. Finally, I'm very tired, having managed the grand total of less than two hours "sleep", or closed eyes whilst at the party.. Anyway, the excitement in the hall is starting to build as the demo competition draws near.. Thanks to the 'at the party' version of myself for setting the increasingly patchy record straight.. It was true, as we were all back at our table, and Mr Pink and Sh3 kept themselves busy by working endlessly on the same bit of 'Frogger', Arnel was using his computer for endlessly redrawing the same bit of website stuff, and I'd raided his 'Dilbert' guide to corporate survival to read in the midst of this inertia, a very funny book, especially so for being true to life! The tiredness was assuming a slightly 'out-of-body' quality to it as well.. However, on the stage, things are starting to happen.. Such big letters granny? - All the better to read them!! DEMO COMPO - 22.30hrs - Arnel is holding up the whole hall chatting! CiH is writing this in the dark! To set the scene, we move as near to the front of the hall as possible, I manage to secure a seat near the organisers and the centre of the screen, with table space to make notes.. The rest of the hall senses that the climax of the party is about to happen, and the hubbub diminishes, the lights go down, and I realise that I'm going to be note-taking in the dark! At this point, I switch off the pen and decide to lean back in my chair and enjoy the show!! The following notes were written immediately after.. It all started with the Senior Dads Faketro and 'Monomental' demos.. Most of the audience haven't experienced the uniqueness of a 'Dads' production before, but seem to enjoy the joke.. The Reservoir Frogs followed, and then DHS reworking their hit 'Dream Dimension' demo into 4k! A few things like textured graphics and music were lost, but it swept on with a silent majesty.. There was a very good 8-bit field, with several entries of ascending goodness - A couple of cool MSX demos were only topped by a brilliant series of screens on an unexpanded Vic 20 - yes, all 3.5k of it! This would get my vote for the top demo, for the sheer amount of guts in producing such effects on such a prehistoric machine.. Interestingly, the sole PC demo showed what a bobbins machine a basic Intel is, stripped of its sound and graphics cards, and go ever faster Pentium.. A couple of the Amiga entries grated a bit, they may well have been joke demos, but when have Amiga people ever been noted for a great sense of humour.. One was a "Old Skool rools 4ever" production, timewarped from 1990! Bringing up the rear was the Commodore Pet and the 6800 asssembly thing built c.1975, flashing LED's and all.. A great evenings entertainment with added amusement value when certain machines refused to play along at first.. The volume of the room is at maximum earache once more, so an early night is out of the question - Again! More detail? - yeth pleath mummy! The night kicks off with the two Senior Dads demos, the very short 'Fake' intro, and the rather more ambitious 'Monomental', which gave an admirable potted history of the early days of television, featuring lifelike caricatures of John Logie Baird, and the early 'Dr Who'! The UK attendees enjoy it most of all, but the audience is mostly new to this sort of thing, and even they got the joke! Reservoir Frogs and 'Atari Spice Boys' dusts off the last of the 'fake' demos, and the only 'serious' Atari entry, the 4k version of 'Dream Dimension' genuinely impresses the mainly pro-8-bit audience sufficiently to get it to the third place spot.. At least three or four MSX demos are shown next, the Spectravideo with chunky voxel landscaping and plasma, another MSX demo whose most notable features are a spinning chessboard, with another semi- transparent chessboard spinning over it, and even a texture-mapped cube! There was also a visually impressive outing from the 'Super-MSX', with almost photographic quality pictures on show, and exquisitely timed effects.. The best comes next, with the Vic 20 showing a jaw-busting series of screens.. This is strictly not quite a 'multipart' megademo, as each individual screen has to be loaded from tape and then run.. But the quality, including the soundchip music, is as good as anything else on show, including up to five(!) textured tunnels on the screen (or bloody good pretend texture tunnels anyway!) It is a case of winding down from there, with a very 'BASIC' (excuse the lousy pun) PC demo on a 10mhz 286 PC, and a distinctly Finnish joke demo, an 'IRC simulator' that had all the Finns in the audience rolling in the aisles, if there was space to roll that is, but losing a lot, no, losing everything in translation to the rest of us.. The Amiga demos are headed by something that I suppose was intended to be a pisstake of old style demos, but came across as being produced by a bunch of obnoxious knuckleheads, the middle demo was quite reasonable, the last Amiga entry returned to 'shite' form and wasn't shown until after the main screenings were over, by which time we didn't care much anymore.. Really bringing up the rear were the Commodore Pet and weird no-screen entries, both of these filmed running prior to the competition as neither machine had a TV output.. The competition over, the rest of the evening is given over to more organised entertainment as the classic Amiga 'Scoopex' demo plays on the big screen, and the volume of the sound system is chest-bursting!! Hey, this is high life!! ((C) Rich Davey, Maggie Party realtime 1995) - Vote sheets are scrutinised, and we all put our preferences on paper. Day Four.. 00.30hrs - It's Sunday Morning! That one crept up without us being aware! We're going back to Helsinki at 15,00hrs, so I'd better make the best of the final fourteen and a half hours at the Palatsi including using some of that time for sleep? 00.45hrs - Just collected a little 'souvenir' of the demo competition - a 'Zymosis' "Vote for Us" leaflet with interesting 'graphics'.. It is largely blank, so it may also become a continuation of the realtime text later, if no new hand-towels are forthcoming.. A little bit later, the attractiveness of 'going to bed' set against the 'can't be bothered' factor starts to weight more towards the 'going to bed' side of things.. At a suitable point, where the post- competition party action seems to have bogged down in a mess of overheated and broken down big screen projector, I set off with a decent resting place in mind.. Upstairs in the lift to the talismanic 'third floor', on arrival there, all around are darkened chilly and silent corridors with sleeping- bagged (and tagged?) corpses scattered widely around.. In the deathly silence, I feel like a walk-on extra in the 'End of the World Show', shortly after filming has finished for it, and trudge to a remote room away from the party noise.. There is only one other body there already, dead to the world.. I set up my sleeping equipment.. The next bit of realtime does rather well in explaining what happened next.. 02.00ish (Written later that morning..) The writer of this realtime text went to bed without warning, even to himself, leaving Setok and the others in a tangle of big screen projector cables.. I go up to the third floor in search of a less noise-drenched spot to rest.. (Setok thinks Maria Carey Sucks! - How he know??) (Also Windows NT is shite! - Which we ALL know!!) Anyway, I found a darkened room on the third floor, isolated bodies are scattered around and it is easy to find a spot on the floor and lay down.. The first problem is with the airbed, which is missing its plastic thing to stop the air escaping.. I inflate it anyway, leaving the air-pump in place so it only very slowly deflates.. So about 4.30am, I awake to find myself with a perfectly flat airbed! I shrug off the hard and cold floor, go back to sleep, and wake up again about 8.30am.. It is now about an hour later than that.. Breakfast! They also serve burgers here which are better than the Hesburger ones.. The only worrying thing is that they spend more time on putting the dressings and sauces on than cooking the thing! Still, no E-Coli as yet! The sleep must have done some good, as I source breakfast, and end up chatting to Setok and the recently returned XTC of Sentry who has joined us.. The end result of the conversation is a mass slag-off of Windows NT and singing of praises of its UNIX alternative.. The rest of our happy little party sleep on where they dropped.. 09.45hrs - Team status - Mr Pink/Sh3 - Unconscious, and Felice/Arnel out of the room? 09.55hrs - After going back to the food counter, just learned that the Palatsi were indulging in a very slight element of profiteering with their coke prices for the party, which have now dropped down a Mark or so to 'normal' levels now.. I won't hold it against them as they did a good job, and the prices were still reasonable compared to what they could have been.. The cheesy modfile hour starts about now.. 10.00hrs - I forgot to mention that XTC of Sentry returned from his trip "Oop North", or however they say it here.. It looks like some serious vote-counting from the demo compo is going on.. Sh3 blearily raises his head, looks around in a stunned fashion, and then puts it back on the table where he found it.. Crap nights of sleep all round then? Fact - Everyone we've been talking to reckons that Windows NT is bobbins, and in fact unuseable on a large scale! So I think ALT is having the desired effect! 10.05hrs - Sh3, he sees but he does not comprehend! The next hour passes off peacefully.. Mr Pink and Sh3 arise, having narrowly failed in their intention to see the whole night through, and immediately restart work on Frogger.. This has come on a lot from the last time I saw it late last night, and has a title screen, an almost fully realised game engine, and even a brand new name, which is.... Well, there is a bit in the realtime coming up that will reveal that! I also manage to get some quality machine time on Arnel's unused and dormant Falcon, which is hooked to Sh3's hard drive, and spend awhile browsing Sh3's music collection through a combination of Graoumf Tracker, and a very tiny set of earphones.. Eventually, something we're all waiting for comes to pass.. 11.12hrs -- The competition results are up now - Noteworthy ones - Aggression breezed the ASCII compo, the Vic 20 demo won the main demo compo, and DHS came third.. 11.15hrs - Frogger is now called 'Bugger'(!) It can now support six players!! 11.30hrs - One slightly scarey thing about last night, the MSX have Microsoft BASIC and O/S!! Less ALTernative than it might first seem!? Some more, more or less constructive faffing around follows, including showing XTC some of what he missed.. 12.35hrs - XTC is watching 'Monomental' for the first time.. 12.36hrs - Mr Pink pinched my last bit of paper.. Also, where has the Hesburger I ordered ages ago got to? 12.55hrs - The foods arrived! Chow down with Hesburgers, this was the last time I encountered this particular culinary delight.. 13.10hrs - The party is winding down, some people have cleared off already, others such as Dead Hackers Society are sleeping off a long night, others still are just staying out of the way, and do you blame them hey?! 13.15hrs - It looks like this part of the realtime report will come to an end fairly soon, as even this sad excuse for paper is in very short supply, ho hum, see what we can do next.. Also, Mr Pink is dishing out photocopies of the newspaper foolish enough to photograph him.. 13.24hrs - Who's pissing about with the lights? It's been decided that I'm in the early batch going back to Fishpool in Lance's car at 15.00.. 13.40hrs - We decided between us that the Amiga Workbench 1.3 'Hand holding disk' logo makes no sense at all.. The disk holder is left handed, which isn't problematic in itself, but the way the disk is held makes it all but impossible to put in the disk drive without fracturing several small bones in the wrist! 13.43hrs - Another power cut, I'm in the dark as always! About now, the formal entertainment programme makes a welcome return.. 13.45hrs - The Scoopex demo from last night re-appears.. 13.45hrs - A minor 'flood' on the table, spillage alert! 13,55hrs - A wave of short Amiga demos next on the big screen, this one looks like a techno demo produced on a Gameboy! - Now something that might be a ZX81 emulator running a joke animation.. The scene is of 'Knightrider' (David Hasslehof in pre-Baywatch days) being kidnapped by chunky pixel aliens! 14.02hrs - 'Desert Dreams' demo swarms on the screen - I'm very familiar with the music already as it's turned up in a thousand modfile collections on CD-ROM! 14.08hrs - As I'm travelling back to Fishpool, I can pick up the blue book! 14,10hrs - The 'Flipo' demo and some others might have had a debt of inspiration to this one (Desert Dreams Pt II), There are some parts which give a wet slap of deja-vu!? I've found another sheet of paper!! Sheet 10, look it's a *real* sheet of paper with a drawing of a willy on it, this piece of paper being part-owned by some recently departed (and hopefully deceased!) uncouth Amiga people.. However the scrabblings for other peoples leavings will soon be over as we're going back to Fishpool to retrieve the (unused since Thursday) blue notepad.. In this outpouring of the best of Amigadom, Setok makes an appeal for a copy of the Falcon version of the 'Grotesque' demo.. Happily one is found, and soon, this classic is blasting out of the speakers and the big screen, and it is really 'larger than life' when played as such! 14.26hrs - Is it me, or is the Grotesque demo 10x better on a big screen? 14.30hrs - Lance at the controls again, he's taking us back.. 14.31hrs - I've had to explain gently to Mr Pink that the ALT Party aren't ALT enough to do 'Bud the Chud' as a request demo!! 14.40hrs - Now we've got Aggression's 'Braindamage' on the big screen, I've somehow missed seeing the full version of it before, Great!! 14.45hrs - Arnel awakes! The slumbering pit-beast arises! He's a bit early today should have treated himself to a lie-in! 14.47hrs - It'll soon be time to go.. 14.50hrs - We've been looking carefully at the photos of Mr Pink in the paper, there is rather a lot of a certain soft drink in the shot, and we recall that the photographer did a lot of coke bottle shuffling around to get as many of them in the picture as possible.. So computer people all drink Coke constantly then? (Well alright, yes..) 15.02hrs - Waiting for the off.. About fifteen or so minutes before we depart, we get our bags together, and try to find where coats and things have got to.. In the first wave of returnees are Lance (driving), Arnel, Q-Funk, Felice and myself.. The Swedes are back and we say goodbye to them, as well as the rest of the party gang, it looks like the 8-bitters have gradually cleared off, so only the people that were there at the beginning, the organisers, the UK contingent, and the Swedes, are left now.. After a small amount of lifting and carrying to Lances car, we are ready to go.. This time, the load factor is not quite as insane, and we are merely travelling back with a bootful and five people, which is luxury travel compared with the journey up.. I'm in the front again, which is definitely luxury travel! We also note stray swirls of snowflakes in the air.. The journey back is uneventful, conversation declining as tiredness reappears, and I spend quite a bit of the couple or so hours of journey time with both eyes firmly closed.. Arrive back at Fishpool, the stray flurries at Turku have turned into a full-blown blizzard (well by our standards at least, sceptical Finnish readers!) Lance yells in his mobile phone for Partycle to open the doors, and roars off, leaving us huddled outside for a couple of minutes until we're let in.. The blue notebook is exactly where I left it.. 17.36hrs - Back at Fishpool now, hello birds, hello sky, hello UNIX servers, and hello blue notebook! 17.37hrs - It's snowing a bit hard outside, loads of snowy stuff underfoot as well, which might make things interesting later on.. What happened to the ALT auction which was on the timetable? When we left the party place, there were only a small number of people left, more or less those there at the start.. There was also the wreckage of a thousand empty coke cups and Hesburger cartons for someone to clear up.. Plus gobs of unconsumed bread and even the odd fresh vegetable that got smuggled in by mistake? 'Museum exhibitions that failed, episode 37' - The sad sight of the Dead Hackers "Kinder Eggshibition" on the DHS cheese toastie making table.. 18.17hrs - Arnel says "All my family come from Gloucestershire!" - Not a thing to boast about, as we all have to point out to him! 18.55hrs - Arnel now says he's tired! How!?! He's had more sleep than anyone there, possibly more hours then there were for the party! 19.00hrs - The journey back was a lot more comfortable, the car merely being heavily loaded rather than some obscure world record attempt to fill the interior completely.. We travelled back like normal people.. 19.01hrs - Q-Funk relates his lost luggage tale in a bit more detail.. It was not just his, Heathrow managed to lose the lot!! (This bit largely robbed from the first bit of realtime for Monday as it is overly scene-seting and narrative in nature, and will do nicely here instead!) Once arrived at Fishpool, there was little to do but to search out the kettle again, and enjoy the facilites whilst awaiting the return of Setok and the others.. This translated to getting down and using the limitless internet resources, Q-Funk diving onto IRC and staying there, myself getting on with a browser and very extensively checking out what the 'Cruel Site of the Day' had to offer (Thank you Mike James, for telling me about this wonderful place, thank you!) Outside, the snow just keeps on falling, a fair bit of time passes, and after a while, we decide to try our luck with the 'Pizza Taxi' pizza delivery service that advertises itself in Finnish Yellow Pages.. There is a fair wait until something foodlike turns up, anmd I am busy on the Titanic movie 'anti-website' admiring the doctored film poster graphics ("Ignore the script, just look at the pretty boat!") when both the pizzas, and Setok and the rest turn up at the same time.. The pizzas are large and very filling, which is what is required at this time, so we stuff ourselves, with the exception of Q-Funk, who puts some of his in the fridge for later.. Setok and the others unload the remaining kit into the hall, grab Arnel and disappear.. We learn that we are travelling to stay overnight as Wiztoms, like, real soon.. Er, great.. There isn't a problem with the choice of destination, but the fact that we've just eaten heavily and it is snowing heavily does not make for the journey there being a popular move.. In a spasm of quick thinking, we decide to leave the majority of our stuff at Fishpool, taking just enough to get us through our stay at Wiztom's place.. Q-Funk, Felice, and I stagger out into the night, to the station, and once again find the train.. We are getting good at this by now, so another journey to Puistola follows.. No alcoholically daft people this time, and we get off at our stop.. It is a still and snow-filled night, and quite pleasant in a carefree and childlike sort of way that I've not known for years, if you ignore the piecing easterly wind that is.. Wiztom's house looms up familiarily in the dark, we knock/ring and the man himself lets us in.. He is momentarily taken aback with our lack of sleeping bags, but manages to improvise something to sleep on.. Q-Funk grabs the one spare bed, Felice and I are floorward bound, but on something substantially more comfortable than at the ALT Party.. Nobody is in a frame of mind for hanging around, so we all go to bed.. Sleep creeps up on us quickly from behind and clubs us unconscious.. Day Five.. Sleep, the final frontier.. It is not a total unconsciousness experience, as at some point in the middle of the night, I am assailed by strange dreams about people at work, and awake with a massive thirst.. Gulping a huge amount of ice- cold water seems to do the trick and I am back out again.. At about 11.30am, all this lying around comes to an abrupt end as Wiztom roars in like a pantomime demon to get us all up in the (incorrect) belief that the shops were shortly to close for the Easter holiday, and we needed to get down there quickly to stock up on food for the day.. It is rather a lot to take in, so we just dumbly go along with what he is saying.. It turns out we have a whole couple of hours before having to really worry, but we are all out of bed by then, so we set off to the supermarket shortly after.. The snow outside has stopped, but is lying around, and lends a festive air to the morning.. We arrive in the centre of Puistola, and head for where most of the crowds are going.. The supermarket is a mixture of the teasingly familiar, and the rather strange.. We find there is no escape from the products of Uncle Bens, and that Newcastle Brown is on sale.. Even Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce can be had, for a price.. Felice and I settle for some hotdog style sausages and chips, and bread and cheese, whilst Q- Funk, juggling a Finnish phrasebook and dictionary to acclimatise himself for his month-long stay here, opts for a more virtuously vegetarian ALTernative.. We journey back with our purchases, Felice, takes the lateral thinking crown from its former champion Edward De Bono, by making the improbable correlation between marital/family breakdown in the UK, and the lack of availability of large pieces of frozen meat! Errm quite! We soon get back, and after dividing up the bill between the three of us, things start to calm down again, a lazy 'chill-out' day is in the offing.. It is just what we all need.. In addition to that, we learn that Setok and the others are turning up later and a sauna party will ensue! About now, the realtime comes back to life.. !!Quote of the Party!! Q-Funk quote - "I knew I shouldn't have slept with Partycle, he gave me some sort of disease.."(!?) Wiztom has wired his speakers back on - Eardrums lie splattered on the pavement.. Let's have a look! 13.40hrs- I've got my favourite chair back, the low recliner in Wiztoms room.. 13.45hrs - 'Charley Sez' drum n' bass remix on MP3.. No-one else in the house apart from us, fortunately.. 13.48hrs- Bass n' drum remix for a change!! 13.53hrs - Wiztom owns a pair of room-hogging Jamo D265's.. These need no special setting up, just point and blast away! 14.03hrs - Mixmaster Felice on the MP3 decks - Oh dear!! 14.04hrs - I liked the stuff Kurt Cobain did better after he splattered his brains out with a shotgun! Something of a musical interlude as Wiztom digs into his MP3 collection on his PC.. Others seek inspiration elsewhere.. 14.10hrs - Q-Funk on the piano.. He's trying to change gear on it, but nobody told him it's an automatic piano! 14.15hrs - Pink Floyd now 'Walling it up' - And did someone mention food? 14.21hrs - In an increasingly homogenised global mass culture, I've come to the conclusion it is the little things that tell one country apart from another.. Here in Finland, it is a question of ergonomics.. For instance, the light switches are all at waist height, and the toilets use a pull/push button on the top of the cistern.. There are other things, but these two stuck out as the most commonly encountered by us.. The light switches confused me mightily at Fishpool at first, until I learned the 'ground rules'.. Thoughts slowly get round to food, and preparing it.. The chips are a reasonable form of oven chip, the sausages have to heat up for a little while.. Q-Funk has a bit more to do with his food in the way of chopping up/mixing ingredients.. 14.50hrs - Setok advised us last night that the only natural hazards here were the wild mushrooms which might be poisonous, and the odd slippery pavement.. Well we got here okay, and those tempting looking roadside fungal growths remained uneaten after his good advice! Thanks mate! 15.10hrs - Food on the way now.. I found out that Finland has two nuclear power plants of Russian design.. Hellpp!! - But seriously, the really decrepit ones are in Estonia, and the wind blows this way.. Double Hellpp!! - CiH, soon to be glowing in the dark? 15.33hrs - Whilst we eat, Wiztom advises us there is an ostrich meat farm near here!? 15.55hrs - Q-Funk 2nd quote of the show - "No animals for me thank you!" 16.05hrs - Wiztom thinks gravity sucks (as he drops a fork on his foot!) Felice reveals that he managed to knock out the power at the ALT by tripping over the main cable.. Well done! The next time, there should be a 'maximum security Amiga corner' where we can throw things at them if they play up.. After lunch, we diverted ourselves by switching from MP3's, to playing with Wiztoms arcade game emulator.. At some stage, he is due to put a light under the sauna, but this seems to have been forgotten.. 16.55hrs - Q-Funk is writing in his little book! 17.20hrs - Q-Funk again.. "I left Quebec because the girls there suck! Not that I'm after grabbing any of you tonight!" Laugh, we almost did.. The little book Q-Funk was writing in was his own personal journal, his thoughts being put to paper in a private theraputic sort of capacity, and unlikely to become public domain.. Pity, it'd be nice to get some other views on the party.. About five-ish, Setok and the rest turn up, this takes us all by surprise, as at that moment Wiztom is lobbing heat-seeking missiles at something part slime-beast, and part-cyborg, which takes up nearly a whole screen, as opposed to applying fire to the sauna.. With Setok are Leon, Kev and Arnel, the clinking sound from various bags indicates several bottles of interesting liquids have come with them too, the faint coughing sounds outside indicate that Leon and Kev have given in to their nicotine habit once again.. They come in out of the cold shortly after, and we all collect in the anteroom/bedroom where we slept last night.. Drinks are produced, a prominent guest star being Arnel's big bottle of Southern Comfort.. Kev hits a big bottle of something and queries the lack of Woodpecker Cider! Much post-party dissecting chat ensues whilst we wait for the sauna to reach temperature.. Setok's very neat gadget, a Palm-Pilot is stuffed with thoughts about the party, which he passed to me to have a peek, and share with you all here now! 17.25hrs - Setok's Palm Pilot says.. "Things that could be done better" - More marketing - Take in vote sheets only once - Sleep more before party - Sleep more during party (Don't be silly - my note!) - Give everyone clear responsibilities - Make sure each organiser has one mobile phone between two - Play more Panasonic and Tori and other techno, and LOUD! 17.31hrs - Additional point from everyone - NO AMIGA OWNERS! 17.36hrs - Wiztom makes a mispronunciation - we hope - about some 'Salted peanuts'!? It's the Finnish accent that does it, and with a few drinks, we were stuck without a proper Innuendo to English dictionary! As it happens, small nibbly things are on the menu, and the others have brought big bags of snacks with them too.. At some point we realise there is a television down here, and it is flicked on for us to enjoy the indifferent quality late afternoon output.. Of note is some sort of locally produced hospital soap, where we catch a bunch of middle-aged drunks in the act of re-enacting an ALT Party reunion in the casualty department, or so we thought.. "That's us in twenty years time!" Kev gaped, horrified.. At this point, the temptation to join in is too much, so the UK contingent start 'dubbing' their own improvised 'dialogue'.. This works surprisingly well in a couple of places, but the Finnish audience, who are all too familiar with how bad the thing really is, grow noticeably restless, and start channel-hopping.. Cut to a Finnish weather forecast ("Snow, with further outbreaks of snow across the country later!") And then another soap with acting/production values as risible as the first, and a budget made up of whatever loose change the cast had in their pockets that afternoon.. You are able to identify the principal female character as a vicious nymphomaniac by the size of her nostrils, and the way she flared them at the camera.. There are frequent commercial breaks to saturate the airwaves, the two most memorable here, are the adverts for Lada, something not seen here, and a classic case of bad translation from Finnish to English, with an electronics retail group called 'IFI', pronounced "Iffy", which all British readers might well consider as good 'Fast Show' material.. Announcer - "IFI camera, work very good, never breaks!" (glances down) "Oh dear!" (Shakes camera furiously, ad goes 'off-air' hurriedly..) Before we realise time has passed, Wiztom returns with the news that the Sauna has reached optimum scorching temperature, and it is time to step inside.. Some aren't too happy with the idea.. 18.15hrs - Sh3 says he is 'Flinnying out' of the Sauna! Now, dear reader, I owe you all a tiny bit of explanation at this point.. The term 'Flinnying out' refers to events at the Aggressive Party II, and a very similar post-match sauna to this, where one Mr Flintham or 'Flinny' point-blankly refused to go in.. This time around, both Kev and Leon are taking the 'opt-out' Euro-Sauna clause, Kev backed up by drink.. The rest of us, motivated by a consideration that it won't be as bad as a visit to the dentist, and we really needed to get properly clean as the last bath we had was before we left the UK, opt to go in.. The first group of us get undressed and dive in, no fancy preliminaries.. The first thought, is indeed along the lines of 'God it's hot!', but not hot enough for Wiztom who thinks that 80 degrees Celcius is not really enough! We suggest that things start to boil and shrivel up at around the magic 100 degrees mark, Setok says that 120 degrees is bearable, if only for a few minutes at a time(!!) We are sweating nicely, and just then, someone throws some water on the exposed and nearly red-hot stones.. Great, we're breathing steam!! Sauna sang-froid has been perfected by Setok, but after a few minutes more, where I feel that my hair might want to melt, I leave and grab for the shower tap.. It is true that the cold aftershock is even more intense than the heat that came before..As the sensation decreases, I stop screaming.. We were fortunate that there wasn't enough snow outside to roll in (not to mention considerations of decency in a close-packed suburban neighbourhood..) The birch twigs were missing.. Nevertheless, I go back for seconds.. The realtime has a bit to say on the subject too.. 19.55hrs - SAUNA - Such an innocent word conveys emotions of terror to our two flinny-ites, Leon and Kev.. For the rest of the team, the experience is something like living on the inside of a giant kettle.. The temperature is in the region of 80 degrees C, and Wiztom, our sauna 'compere' adds to the amusement by throwing some water on the stove.. Breathing steam is a new sensation for me, to say the least! The after-shower is more devastating than the heat! Fortunately, birch twigs were left off the menu!! "Reservoir Gods are a sauna-free zone!" - Says Kev, as they fight off attempts to get them in there.. The sauna hall of shame stands at:- Flinny, Mr Pink, and Sh3! Once out of there, the party mood continued.. As Q-Funk seemed to be spending a fair bit of time with one of the other Finnish people in a sauna frenzy, the rest of us continue to hit the drinks.. Setok displays an almost fatherly concern, suggesting that we might be dehydrated after our time in the very hot place.. I choose vodka to replace the lost body fluids, which sort of defeats the object! When eventually, Wiztoms sister, and her friends take their turn, Kev finally changes his mind about going in the sauna, but too late! The sounds of feminine singing resonate faintly from inside, and it is decided that we're going into the centre of Helsinki to continue the party.. Setok and the others scurry in the direction of Fishpool, we follow, grabbing a train, which complained when we pinched its tender bits a little too hard whilst we were getting on it.. Arrive at Fishpool sometime fairly late, and do all the usual non-constructive things with their computers until time is teetering on the bring of 'rather late', when we head out into the snowfields of Helsinki en masse.. First stop is food related, or MacDonalds, which is sometimes considered a fair to middling substitute.. The sole counter assistant on graveyard shift duty springs awake with an alarmed expression, gives active consideration to locking the doors, but Setok and Arnel, flanked by the scarey looming vampiric presence of Partycle rush to the counter before she is ready.. We all order food, which turns up more or less quickly and eat.. Back out to find somewhere to drink, and Kev gleefully slathers through unwalked patches of virgin snow.. Kev suffers soggy canvas trainers after a short time of doing this? Arnel manages a feat of surrealist double-think that even left me gasping in admiration, as he compares the Helsinki pedestrian crossing signals with the sort of noises made by heart monitors.. They are very alike with the same insistent 'beep- beep' and long drawn out sound as if someone has flatlined back at the hospital solely to let us cross the road!! The search for beer takes us to the two Irish pubs in Helsinki, one of which is closed, the other, Molly Malones, is open - just.. We stagger inside out of the cold and biting east wind.. A round is bought, which just managed to miss me (Maggie editor not bitter, or lager, or even cider!!) They serve drinks in pint glasses here, and charge by the egg-cup it seems! Partycle quote "Turku is the arsehole of Finland!" A somewhat uncharitable view of the city that hosted ALT, but he clarifies that it has a mongrel Swedish population left from when the Swedes ran things.. A story at the party itself had one of the food counter people try to speak to Evl and the rest of the Swedish gang in their own language, but what comes out of his mouth is totally unlike the Swedish that Evl and co grew up with! Eventually, after various mutual incomprehension giggles, they end up speaking to each other in English! Kev draws 'Atari Teenage Riot' squiggles on unsuspecting freebie copies of the Helsinki version of 'Melody Maker'.. Day Six.. (Final day) Our stay at Molly's is cut short by the staff switching the lights on and off around us in a random fashion.. Kev and a couple of die-hards are to go off and find another place that will let them in, the four of us staying at Wiztom's (including Wiztom) go off to grab the last bus home.. The bus is considerate enough to drop us off right outside Wiztom's place, and we quickly go in and straight to bed for another nights rest.. "IFI Nuclear Reactor, very safe, very good!" (Sirens go off, people scatter..) "Oh Shit!!" (Runs out of studio screaming, ad goes 'off-air' hurriedly..) This time, we are left in peace, and wake up slowly according to taste.. I get up first somewhere between ten and eleven, and grab breakfast.. Update the little blue book with last nights events, then Wiztom joins us.. Felice, Q-Funk, and Wiztoms sister appear in no particular order, all have breakfast, Wiztoms sister and her friend seem to extend it seamlessly into lunch without any gap inbetween.. Wiztom busies himself playing 'spot the virus' on his sisters PC.. The problem seems to be a 'Windows 95 style FAT, which the virus killer isn't happy with, which makes it a virus killer of some notable taste and distinction then.. We are introduced to someone's pet rat, faintly luminous pink nose and all, and time meanders on in a gently ambling way until we collect ourselves sufficiently to get up to go back to Fishpool.. Waiting outside, the snow has melted back to where it was when we first came to these parts.. Bus, then underground train to Fishpool, pausing to look at a scale model of Helsinki in the 1600's (a dozen houses, a fish-gutting shed, and a small fluffy sheep called Geoff..) Going into the premises of Fishpool, Felice steps into a deceptively deep puddle, disappears underwater, and then slowly emerges climbing up the other side, spitting out excess water from the side of his mouth.. I opt to go round it.. Fishpool is full of people actually working for a change, but after grabbing a mugful of Earl Grey, Mr Pinks Falcon waits to be switched on.. I show Wiztom a fistful of Godlynes games, but 'Bugger', in its latest version awaits, and before too long, Mr Pink, Setok and the rest turn up again.. Soon, everything stops as massed 'Bugger' participation (I think I could have worded that a bit better?) takes over the office.. The frogs being separated from the green squishes in the road, the computer players come out way ahead of everyone, with Setok giving the best human player performance of the session.. It is time for Felice and I to leave, and around five o'clock, or 17.00hrs, we bid farewell, and make our way to the railway station for the last time.. Stagger down to the station with full set of bags, stagger right through the station to where the buses can be found.. Boggle at the vastness of the waiting area for these, and ask a friendly Finn where the bus for the airport can be found.. We find that we are virtually on the right track as it is.. The bus back is a little bit less direct than the Finnair one that brought us in, but we are back at the airport around 5.30pm.. The atmosphere is noticeably more laid-back than Heathrow, and checking in is a breeze.. The food angle is sorted next, then through into the departure lounge.. We explore the vast arena of duty-free shops but purchase nothing, I change my remaining Finnish money back to UK pounds, I am pleasantly surprised by the amount I get back, this significantly reduces when I pay Felice back for the overpriced railway tickets, the return portion of which, we will make use of in a few short hours.. Finally, I turn to the realtime for its last gasp.. 18.40hrs - At the airport again:- Time to close this off, we've twenty minutes before boarding the return flight home.. We left Wiztom, Setok and the rest playing 'Bugger', a name to conjure yup infinite possibilities, most of them not nice ones.. The rest is straightforward, and we should arrive home at 7.30ish, having recovered the two 'lost' hours en-route.. Not really a lot left to do now, apart from a few last minute thoughts.. Wiztom - Thanks for everything mate! And to Wiztoms family for putting up with us.. Setok, cool party, and I'm glad you enjoyed it as well.. Fishpool, probably the best place for a computer freak to work.. Q-Funk, hope it all works out for you.. Sauna, a cool experience, from a very hot point of view! Wiztom's vodka, if we could have just spent a little more time together (sniff!) Wiztom's comfy chair - great chair! Partycle, you're not a vampire, as the others seem to think? Amiga owners - nein danke! Rich, any thoughts yourself? Well a most enoyable time, much better than in Germany 2 yrs ago. lets hope that Setok and the others organise another 'Alternative party' soon!! - Felice Well that's your lot folks! - 18.50hrs- CiH signing off.. It is still not quite over, as there is a drift towards the flight to take us back.. We are let on, confronted by the first UK newspapers we've seen in days.. Once seated, I cop a look at Felice's copy of the Daily Express, and stare at the aerial photographs of flooded houses, and think "What the f*ck go on here eh?" - Think airborne thoughts, and a bit later than we thought, we speed into the stratosphere.. We are introduced to the food quickly on the return leg, this time, there is a fish-based component to the main meal, I scarcely miss a bite again.. The clocks go back at some stage, and the shadows lengthen as time drags on.. A crateload of cloud greets our arrival to the UK, and we very slowly drop through the cloud layer to catch glimpses of city lights below.. Faffing around in the Heathrow air traffic pattern keeps us in suspense for a time, but we are treated to a high-altitude tour of the city of London, Tower Bridge in lights etc, as we descend.. Heathrow at that time of night is like a turnstile gate into Hell, masses of confused travellers roar rampantly all over the place, we wander the huge distances over the airport, aiming for the glimmering lights and throbbing noises in the distance.. The baggage carousel spits out our bags with a fierce energy, and with a growing sensation of having caught somebody's cold, and a deep thirst, we grab them, and get the hell out of there.. The underground runs like a nagging toothache, stopping when it doesn't need to, and a cry of dismay greets the fact that our train home is the long end of an hour to wait for.. Kings Cross is dismally unfunny this late as well, a Burger King (decent-sized burger at last!) partially breaks the monotony.. We find our train, are taken aback by the newness of it, nervously double-check to see if it is really ours, and await the off.. The train is mercifully uncrowded at that time of night (11.30pm), and the journey home relatively comfortable.. About 12.30, maybe a little earlier, arrive at St Neots.. We notice for the first time, that it is very wet outside, and looks like it has rained nonstop since we left last Thursday.. Driving the last stretch home is a more eggshell-walking exercise than normal.. To start with, I have to negotiate the suicidal midnight idiot cyclists of St Neots, who rush out in front of you without lights, forcing you to stop suddenly.. Then on the way home there are several sinister black patches in the road, these are puddles, handily situated in sharp bends just where you have to put your brakes on, and there are warnings of floodwater posted about ominously all over the place.. This seems to have receded, fortunately, and I get home without any problems.. The first thing I do is to switch on the Falcon, and await the floods of uncollected email that have accumulated over the last few days, spend a bit of time reading them, smile at the slightly panic-stricken Mike James mails about Monomental, and finally, to bed.. Epilogue.. Back at work the next day, I find out all about the flood-related fun I've missed out on by going to ALT.. "Oh, and they closed all the roads, and they had to get boats to people in the town.." Bloody typical, save up all the interesting weather until I go away!! Some summing up.. ALT was totally unlike the last party that I went to, Symposium '96.. I know now that 'Symposium' was not the best possible introduction to foreign coding parties, although even that managed its high spots amidst all the junk that went on there.. ALT didn't really give us the next great breaking wave of Atari demos, and we are really looking hopefully at Interjam and other summer events to do this (as of time of writing).. There were some nice surprises, which are being reviewed elsewhere in here, with the Swedes making a large contribution, but not forgetting 'Monomental' of course.. ALT wasn't just about Atari, but living up to the ALTernative credentials, we saw a busy 8-bit demo scene, with a good showing by the MSX'ers, and that fabulous winning demo on a bog-standard Vic 20! The standard of entries were generally high, and certainly plentiful.. High spots - ALT was a friendly party, with a nice relaxed atmosphere.. There weren't a huge number of people there, maybe a hundred to one hundred and fifty, which was probably for the best.. Finland is a nice country, and the people at Fishpool and Wiztom were great hosts.. We had a much more relaxing post-party period than the ghastly coach journey back that we endured for Symposium, and the sauna was something new.. The party managed to be FUN, which is the whole point of the exercise, and I even think that Setok managed to avoid a nervous breakdown! Also, the food was reasonably priced, and available 24 hours a day, which is unprecedented! Generally it wasn't an expensive stay.. Low points - There were a few, these sort of things held more in common with other parties and universally recognised.. There was a distinct lack of sleep, and pronounced tiredness on the second day, which is sort of obligatory.. This was aided and abetted by certain attendees who didn't know when to stop.. Apart from certain exceptions already very well described in the main text, tea in Finland is generally awful.. At least Arnel was well prepared with supplies of essential PG tips!.. There was me leaving my brains with my notebook at Fishpool and having to write on toilet paper for the duration of the party.. It would have been nice to have had a few more Atari people there too, as it boiled down to us, the Swedes, a couple of Dutch people (whom I gather are turning up in full force for the Interjam), the party organisers who may be Atari people now to a lesser degree, Q-Funk, and that was it.. These low points were far outweighed by the good points to the party, and ALT was worth the effort.. If I was Mr Pink, I would probably have to say something like "ALT Party had da Funk!" As I'm not Mr Pink, I'm not going to say that! I am going to say this though.... ALT Party - Where do old computers go to die? - Errm, they don't! Some other accounts.. I'm not the only person to produce a record of his time at ALT.. This proved to be a very well documented party as there are several other reports about, at least a couple more written by Maggie Team people.. There is a brief 'dashed off in half an hour' report by myself for Network Magazine, there is a report for Atari Computing Magazine written by Felice (duck everyone!) In addition to this, there may be a report from Mr Pink if we're lucky.. There were several other journals and reports at the party itself.. As far as I could see, the real-time article written on a Linux terminal at the party itself was a non-starter, but I spotted at least one on a Commodore 64 being written, which was more of a 'journal in realtime' like my toilet paper effort, than a more traditional 'open house' affair where everyone contributes.. In addition to the acres of text-based enjoyment, there was also an unusually good photographic record, thanks to Deez and his digital camera, with a huge gallery of ALT pictures kept deep on the Dead Hackers server.. Extracts of some of these can be seen in the picture section of this report.. Even quite minor but memorable things such as the shape and constitution of a 'Hesburger' were recorded for posterity! This is probably the longest account of them all though! One final thing, I checked back over the Symposium '96 report, and this is virtually the same length, to within a kilobyte! - Spooky!! Choose Life, choose ALT! - (C) CiH - April/May 1998 e