4th Alt Party Musings and Ramblings.. (*Partially* Realtime) by your raving reporter, CiH ! Or as the bulk of this is being done on an Archimedes A3010, maybe it should be !CiH (Bit of an in-joke for Acorn fans there!) 12.35hrs on the (pauses to check for date) 10th January 2003. This is the fourth in the long-running series of Alternative Parties. Was it really as long ago as Easter 1998 that we first came to Finland to sample this very different party landscape? Well yes it was, and at least a couple of times after Setok swore that he'd never do another one of these again, we are back for another dose of the same old sleepless demo-laden punishment! So, swooping back to the present day, we are a little way past the official doors-opening time, the arrivals are trickling in, but these include some very high profile tricklers. How about Jeff 'Yak' Minter for example? Yes, the hairy one is here, and set up a couple of tables away from us. He has been impressing the small amounts of gathered multitudes with screengrabs of Flossie the sheep on his mobile picturephone thing. Sample conversation with Jeff Minter: Jeff:- "Here's a picture of Flossie, I really love that sheep!" Me:- "Personally, I'm more of a girlfriend person myself!" Jeff:- "Flossie IS my girlfriend!" Not to mention Jeff's love of what he calls "beast secretions"! Jeff again, "If I had a cow, I'd suck it!" (Thank you Jeff, the RSPCA inspector is in the post!) I think he is talking about milk, put it another way, I HOPE he is talking about milk!?! Scoop: the origin of the unfamous goatse obsession that regularly plagues Slashdot seems to have its roots in the land of Llamas. OHO! (Q- Funk) Anyway, this thing is running late, as we really kicked off yesterday, so for a little while, sit back and relax whilst I go back in time.. DOING THE YESTERDAY THING:... Thursday the 9th of Jan. A journey of two halves, begins somewhere in sunny Birmingham, as we dodge under the tape barrier to get to the airport parking portakabin office structure. A nice lady on the front desk takes an age to input our details onto their ancient rusty grid of a PeeCee, and takes Felice's Kar Keys off him. Then we are whisked quite a way back the way we came to the airport itself. Birmingham airport has a slightly unsettling central Asian feel to it, with flight departures posted for destinations such as Islamabad, not to mention the middle-eastern looking family groups waving off their younger family members to destinations unknown? (Goodbye Hassim, take as many of the unbelievers with you as you can, and we'll see you in Paradise!)??? We pause at the security check-in and boggle at the huge selection of dangerous scissors and nailfiles displayed in a glass case. Taking pride of place is a Sikh ceremonial dagger. In the words of one of the security guys "He thought he was getting on his flight, but didn't actually get very far!" Our first stage flight to Amsterdam is uneventful, on a KLM UK Fokker 100. (That IS its real name, so stop sniggering!) We land at a bleak and snowy Schiphol airport. Several miles of amused contemplation of walkways later, we link up with our fellow traveller for the second part of the journey, a Russki-hatted John Hayward (Asteroid). He has failed his audition for the successor organisation to the KGB, so he has decided to come with us to the Alt Party instead. Some more time passes amiably in the Schiphol locale, and we board a KLM Boeing for the Helsinki leg of the journey. This goes down smoothly too, and we arrive at Vantaa Airport, a shade after 10.30pm, local time, more or less on time. Getting off the plane, we make phone contact with the bearded one, otherwise known as Q-Funk. But it is when we get to the baggage carousel, that things start to get a little bit less smooth. Felice's bags, and my stuff turn up nicely, but a certain lumpiness to the proceedings starts to be felt with the non- appearance of Asteroid's big pack. A long while later, we proceed to the information desk, where acres of unclaimed stuff resides. Success! John's big pack has made its way over on an earlier flight, and is sitting there silently screaming "Claim me!" So we do... Meteorological add-on note: (We had our first full-on encounter with the legendarily cold Finnish winter climate when we left the airport. There had been a certain amount of hype and warnings, pre-party, to dress appropriately, ie. as closely to an eskimo as possible. Temperatures of more than minus twenty centigrade were expected. So when we first met the cold air, the warnings did pay off, as it gripped us like a giant freezing thing. Pissing in the snow was ruled out, unless you wanted to produce instantaneous greeny coloured popsickles. We did get used to this, and the weather slowly got "warmer" over the following days, or not quite so freezing, but we got more snow instead. Ah well..) We find Q-Funk, and the little fellow traveller from Tampere, Pahartik. He wishes to stop for a cake break, being the only person not to have eaten this evening. This we do, and he takes a good old while. It is getting late by the time we go and look for a taxi. This proved to be more interesting than it ought to have been as well. There is a firm called, imaginatively, 'Airport Taxis', who will take you anywhere in the Helsinki locale for a fixed rate, the cheapness depending on the number of people using the vehicle. Pahartik opts to make his own way back to Q-Funk's place. This usefully reduces the cost for us, but triggers some kind of emotional or monetary brain spasm in our temperamental taxi driver who skids to the edge of the snow-covered road threatening to throw us out in Finnish if we don't stop talking about it! Q-Funk says something that seems to calm him, and the journey resumes in a somewhat subdued manner. We make it home without further incident, hardly daring to ask if he was really joking or not, until we get well away from that car. Q-Funk, hoping to make some trouble for the driver concerned, splatters the Airport Taxis website with something which was a small novel in size, in the general tone of "Your driver, was he an asshole or what?" Sequel note:- This did receive a reply, which was apologetic in the extreme, I wonder if it did make trouble for the driver concerned? A swift uphill trot later, and we are back in Q-Funks apartment. A cheery sober Marc, the manic midnight drunk fondly remembered from last year, greets us. He is surrounded by several beer bottles and a Microsoftie instant messenger box. He remembers us from last year, which is pretty good going for him, and we tell him that he was the highlight of last year's visit, which I think he appreciated? There is a generous amount of floorspace cleared in Q-Funk's room for mattresses and sleeping bags, so after some time spent online, we set up sleeping space to gratefully crash out, which we did around 02.00hrs on the friday morning. Back to the Present - Friday 10th Jan 2003! Anyway, we got up in good time and reasonable order, and made our way over here with the help of a more mentally stable taxi firm. So right now, I am sitting in one of the upper galleries of Gloria, having switched over this realtime to Felice's swanky Compaq laptop. Asteroid is seated next to me, playing the Archie version of Lemmings. Felice has got Twilighte in his deadly grip, his hypnotising voice flows over the unsuspecting victim, Twilighte sways and starts to fall, Felice pounces for the kill! Well there's not a lot else going on right now. The Swedes, headed up by Baggio have arrived too, and have set up on the opposite balcony. Some Amstrad CPC 6128 sits silent and unloved on the table next to us, and some other dudes with various bits of C64 gear have just arrived. Downstairs, the tables are still mostly unnoccupied and silent. If the official propaganda is to be believed, this state of peace and tranquility will not last very long, with 100 more people expected than for the same time last year. Anyway, I've got as far as I can, so let's sign off and hand this over to someone else for now.... 15:24 Asteroid here, marvelling at Richs chrome trimmed Compaq laptop, which is rather pleasent to use. Had a fairly straight forward trip up here, had to hang around 6 hours in Amsterdam Schiphol airport to catch my next plane. Managed to meet up with Chris and Rich after spending long hours on the airport lounge watching endless looped kids tv programs on a large plasma monitor that is intending to keep travellers kids happy. Anyway back at the familiar Gloria venue again now, just seen some of the remains of Helsinki University's Cray Super computer which some of the Finnish guys saved from being cruelly trashed from the IT centre when it was deemed no longer in service, the boards have these expensive looking tiny chips and large chunky tubing which is presumably is for moving cold gas around the system. The Acorn A3010 seem to survive its journey through to the snowy north stashed in the overhead bin of the plane with me slightly worrying if I would get hassle from the customs people, but no probs whatsoever :) Getting here was a breeze apart from the forementioned stroppy taxi driver who was threatning to stop and leave us at the side of a frozen main road. 15.55 CiH back, damn, it's quiet! There are a few cool people here already, I've been spending time with DBug, catching up with his post-STNICCC back catalogue of Oricness. Nice work matey! Well with that, and the other people such as Twilighte helping, there seems to be a nice little (active!) Oric scene building up. They are presenting an entry for this party, and yes, I've seen this as well. This is recode of a slightly older, buggy as hell party version from last year. At last, serious competition for the Vic 20! Now if only there can be some other groups splitting off from the main centre of Oric activity, maybe a little bit of a scene feud?? Competition at least! Of other possible entries, there is no real news yet, just some disconnected rumours. Well, we really need some more people to get some proper rumours going!! I also had an interesting chat with Jeff Minter, when is that man ever dull? He is under a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for something 'big' he is doing for a current mainstream console under the Llamasoft label. One helpful clue he was prepared to divulge, it's not going to be for the X-Box ;-) However, we will know all about it in a couple of weeks after the party, long before this lot gets out on the streets. Asteroid is showing some scholarly looking Finnish dudes who have never seen computers do scenish demo-y things, doing just that on his Archie. Not too shabby for a machine that barely made it through the customs of three European countries, disguised as a home made bomb. (One of these guys revealed himself to be some kind of social scientist. The inevitable question "Why?" was directed at me, so I said it was in defiance of Bill Gates, who would dearly love to pass a law against people doing things with computers, for fun, and in their own time!) Someone got 'Revenge of the Mutant Camels' running on one of the presentation screens as a tribute to our distinguished hairy guest of honour. Disparaging comments about the graphics quality follow from said hairy person, the game is described as the "Attack on two fat guys in a pantomime camel costume."(!) Back laters. Now it is 11.00hrs, on Saturday the 11th Jan 2003. Now this is what I call a lot laters! Shortly after the last bit of realtime was done, Felice discovered something called an "internet hub" Since that time, my access to this realtime has been rather limited, as in not at all. Felice's multi-hour marathan connected to the net only ended briefly when it was pointed out that the party organisers didn't run a bowel-emptying service in situ at the computer tables, and he would jolly well have to go to the toilet all by himself! The other thing which tended to work against any in-depth text interaction was the fact that the lights were switched off, and it was too damn dark to work, like now in fact. But one must carry on as best they can. At this present time, Tempest 3000, the Nuon years is running on the bigscreen which I'm sure Jeff is happy about, if he is awake. Volume PUMPED UP! He will be now! Doing the Yesterday thing, part 2:.. First thing, in a confusing reverse chronological order thing, I pulled off a major miracle, as in, I-managed-to-sleep-on-the-first- night-of-an-AltParty!(*) I also managed this in the main hall, whilst Tempest 3000 was in full blast. Earplugs rule! I only crashed for about 3-4 hours, with some added horizontal inertia time of around another couple of hours, but the point is, I did it! (*)The sheer miraculousness of this deceptively simple action, cannot be understated! Feel free to read all previous party reports by myself to understand why! As for the rest of yesterday, lots happened, some of it crudely stashed away in temporary memory bins awaiting later retrieval. I saw a few odd 'Alt' machines, although Alt 4 seems to be the year that the PeeCee Laptop rules. Grudammint, I'm typing on one right now! On the ancient console front, there is an Intellivision devkit running a very sprite-filled demo for that machine. I also spotted one Vectrex, but so far, only the one :( - There is the usual sprinkling of Amiga and C64 hardware, and dare I say, even the occasional Atari, mostly belonging to people I know already, but with at least one lone ST running in the Byterapers corner. There was a big drawdown in the numbers of machines like the MSX, and the Arctic Computer Museum, with its collection of extremely obscure models, stayed away completely. In the end, there were just enough 'Alt' machines to make it worthwhile. A special mention goes to one brave individual who has built the ultimate 'Mad Scientist Peecee', which divides itself uneasily between a standard PeeCee case, and the chassis of an old style globe shaped vacuum cleaner. At least the computing experience would be cleaner than normal for a party environment? The other 'special' mention goes out to the unknown builder of a replica Cobra Mk3, which any Elite-playing fool will know well. It was built of some transparent material, and illuminated from inside, casting a ghostly glow over the Oric Zone, where it was placed. If it had some kind of radio controlled flying ability, say vector thrust mini-rockets, then it would have been the perfect outdoor aerial combat geek-toy! Demo rumours, let's get these over with.. There are not too many at the minute, I've already had a good long look at the Oric contender, 'Barbitoric', which is excellent. I gather that Viznut is doing another Vic 20 entry, and there's a little bit of talk about some PeeCee stuff, of a suitably 'alt' nature? Apart from that, I dunno really. I don't think there is going to be anything Atari related, as Wiztom is working on the same shadebob routine that he was showing last year on his STe, and Baggio's evening on his Falcon was mainly memorable for some major mouse related hassles. So if something Fuji- powered does make an appearance, it would be a major surprise. We did get a fair spread of competitions from the Invite intro competition, which included the ugliest demo ever seen (hint to aspiring demo designers, don't use red/black and no other colours!) This was followed by the 'rejected/banned demos' section, consisting of entries which didn't make the grade at past coding parties, being kicked awake from their coffins, and rewarmed here. These could be divided into a number of categories. Such as the 'Clearly too crap even by the standards of that time'. Then there's the 'Runs waaay too fast on a modern PeeCee to make sense anymore'. We are scarcely able to avoid the 'Demo written as a clear personal insult to the party organisers or their friends'! There was also another production with too much red in it, and several which fucked VGA screen modes when running, or cleverly gave the impression that they were about to do so?? The rejects included some wild compo entries, which picked up a lot in quality with a UK production from a team called the 'Milk Gods', which probed fearlessly into issues such as 'milk pornography'. This started Jeff Minter up again, who complained about the lack of cows. The judges of the Assembly Party, perhaps liking their humour a little less obscure, stupidly kicked this one. I found it a somewhat side- hurting experience. This lot clattered to a stop sometime around half four this morning, which we decided that the hard floor surface should be renamed "bed". (Apart from us wussers-out, who remembered to bring inflatable mattresses!) Party numbers digression:- I chatted with Setok late last night, and the official log entry indicates that the numbers attending have passed all previous records, with around two hundred and fifteen people on the books as of late last night. This of course does not take into account that there are more unregistered people roaming the building, and leaving small piles of drink-smelling vomit where they lie in their sleeping bags. So the real total could be closer to the three hundred discussed on the Slashdot.org press release yesterday? In the meantime, Setok was wandering the building with a nervous tic, asking people at random if they had registered yet. I got talking to various people, a Yugoslavian dude whom me and Twilighte chatted to, had mixed memories about his countries recent past. He concluded that parts of the experience, such as the protests against the Milosevic regime, with the general feeling of all standing together, were some of the best times that he had?! I also had a chat with Ravel, as he topped up with loads of (prescription?) drugs in the toilets this morning, who fondly(?) remembered my 2 Alt obscure music compo entry. He regretted the fact that there was not going to be another this year. Never mind, maybe next time! Weather note:- Cold, a bit snowy, bearable until the wind gets up, then it's goodbye ears lips and noses! Rich and John are awake, but they'll have to wait until I've doubled on the length of this text from yesterday, har har! Okay, I might wrap up for now from here, same time again tomorrow?!!? It's... 14.55hrs, and it's still Saturday, and it's still dark in here! Felice has kindly stood down from his IRC marathon to let me have another go on this sluggishly updated realtime dairy (damn those Gods of Milk for that last typo!) Since the last time, it has been pleasantly quiet, and my demo hunger from the third Alt Party has been satiated by plentiful showings of much excellent archive Vic 20 material. It seems that Viznut is no longer the only Vic coding kid on the block anymore, and there is a nicely burgeoning little scene out there! Some of the demos really rip the piss in hardcore terms from the basic 3.5k machine. This is leading one person, I think it was Twilighte, to give us the quote of the party so far. "Hey, not bad for an ST demo!" (Followed by general gurgles of amazement when it was revealed the "ST" was in fact a Vic 20 ;-) The current entry state from the organisers tent, there are up to seventeen demo entries for tonights competition, with several different platforms covered. There is no more word if any of these belong to "our" platform, or even any more detail on what they are yet? I fear at least some of these may turn out to be the weak MSX- based single command line 'joke' demos that infested the competitions from 2 ALT onwards? The organisers have regrouped into the central upper gallery, and have taken to communicating with the party solely via the means of a Vic 20 command line. Ok, save this lot and let someone else have a go. So it is now 17.19hrs, And Felice is downstairs making "Hello mum!" gestures at the camera crew presently interviewing Jeff Minter. Good, as it gives me the chance to have a go at this again. Maybe someone should break it gently to him that his mother does not live in Helsinki ;-) The news, there is not a lot, but I've had some interesting off the record chat with a certain Swedish person, about up and coming productions for another coding party with an Easter and easterly tint, but no more to be said here!! Latest Jeff Minter quote (in Welsh) "I want a sheep in my bed!" This sounds exactly like the english version, as funnily enough, I know no Welsh! It is time for some food shortly, and it looks like a Captain Scott trip as Q-Funk probably has a nice little bistro in mind on the other side of the country ;-) I might be back later, depends how this trip goes, feel free to send out a properly equipped mountain rescue search party, whoever chances by this last realtime log entry, if we're not back in here by 20.00hrs! 22.46hrs, and we made it back! And we got back with all limbs intact! Mind you, with Q-Funk as expedition leader, of course you're going to get the little minor fuck- up, or fuckette, as bad luck clings to that man like a dirty shroud. This time, we saw an awful lot of restaurant foyers and snowfields before we finally got to eat. The Helsinki restaurant trade sighting our not-so-little party of eight, and deciding to make a suspiciously quick recovery from the slack post-Xmas trading period claiming to be fully booked up, thank you very much and all! Eventually, kudos flew to a Malaysian eaterie just a block away from Gloria. With grateful thanks expressed here for feeding us guys! (The Satay chicken may have provided the spiciness that Jeff missed out on?) Asteroid amused us briefly with some snowdrift leaping and stumbling antics on the way home, thanks for the sadistic enjoyment mate! News in here, and now, Twilighte has started work on that most worthwhile of projects for the Oric, a conversion of 'Revenge of the Mutant Camels', with Jeff Minter's official blessing! Indeed, his munificence extended to a request to the Llamsoftie philes out there for rips of the original sprites from the C64 game being responded to within 20 minutes! Anyway, he's out there right now, coding away in a lonely corridor. Twenty four hour game anyone? And who mentioned 'Bugger'!? .:Stand by earplugs!:. We've had the (regrettable?) live music as made by the voices of the artistes only. These were mostly done for comic effect and worked well that way. Coming to an Alt Party next year, Sammi Arsenholeen and his armpit farting noises orchestra!?! We also witnessed the rather better photographic competition, apart from one which continued the theme from the live music a bit (hem!) We are currently typing in semi darkness, illuminated by this dazzlingly bright screen, so I am trusting my fingers to do the work korrectly hear! Then after that, the main demo competition, sometime around midnight, with the lovely Oric, and who knows what else by then? Whilst we're waiting for the next in-party happening, here's a BIG UP TO EARX! for releasing his three years worked on Falcon demo. I've got something to look forward to going home for, switch on my CT2 Falcy, crank it up into high detail mode, and enjoy. Just a shame there's scarcely any Falcy's here, it's the one item of hardware we didn't bring with us. (If it needs an FPU, it won't even run on Baggio's machine, as the socket for that is bolloxed!) All for now, I'm just going to fit in some Web potato behavior for a couple of mins, then hand this back to Felice. It's now SUNDAY!!! (The ?? of Jan..) It is also 01.20hrs, and we are awaiting the kick off for the final demo compo. We have been entertained by a selection of monochrome movie entries, ranging from the extremely entertaining, through to the slightly, erm, disturbing. One which was titled 'ALT Invite 2023' confirmed what I suspected about 'Scene love'!? I'm sure I can sneak in some snide cheap comment about Amiga owners, but right now, I can't give a stuff. We love the sound of silence. I'll get back a bit later, erm, a lot later on how the demo compo went. I've got high hopes for the Oric, just depends if it gets trashed by biased local voting patterns in favour of the Vic. See you (a lot) later kids! (***********) A lot lot later... Right, it's Sunday evening, just fifteen minutes shy of 20 hundred hours, I'm back at the Apartment of the Q-Funking one, showered, refreshed, awaiting imminent pizza delivery, and trying to adjust to the very slight peculiarities thrown up by this scandinavian styled keyboard. Lot's to do, starting with last nights/this mornings demo competitions, so here goes... Before this got going, there was a nice little speech from Jeff Minter, heavily ad-libbed from the effects of alcohol. His thoughts are entirely in tune with the gathered demo sceners, disliking the corporate nature of the current software entertainment industry, and being lifted and inspired by coming to the Alt Party to find that there are still people like him, active and doing stuff for the sheer hell of it! He hinted heavily at the new top secret Llamasoft project, and ended up playing a "message" from his 'girlfriend' on his voicemail. (Space for much Bleating here!) .:DEMO COMPO FIRST IMPRESSIONZZz. There were a lot of entries, around twenty-five in all. And there was only the single daft MSX BASIC 'megademo' intro. Making quite a big impression on the first half of the demo compo, were the entries running on modern species of Wintel boxes. These had been allowed in under the "Hey well we're all ALTernative in some way anyway" Amnesty of 1998. The PeeCee demos tended to live up to their 'Alternative' label quite well. In some cases, ugliness was the new beauty, which was the same situation with a lot of the entries in the previous sections. Just when the competition started to get into a single format rut, the hardware requirements started to change tentatively. This brought on some new eye-rolling problems, as a Linux box refused to talk to the projector, or the other way around. Nightmare recollections of the horribly delayed SiliVenture 2000 demo competitions lurked. The problems continued with the next few entries, with a Nokia Java demo refusing to play along also. Then quelle bloody major surprise, as an entry for a largely non-appearing species of computer at this party, the Atari ST, is due up next! This did take us by surprise, although I suspected something was happening in one of the far alcoves, where an ST was more or less permanently switched on, some of the time with a screen of code showing on it. But the curse claims this one as well. According to the organisers viewpoint, the crew didn't help themselves by not supplying any sort of monitor cable. This demo gets disqualified, and remains unshown. It also remains unknown if it is to be released anyway, but according to Setok, the Atari scene aren't missing out too much whilst it's in it's present state if it isn't ;-) The air of barely supressed panic eases with an Amiga 1200 entry that condescends to run properly, then we are into the keenly awaited 'oldschool' final section. DBug's Oric demo is shown on the big screen, and the applause that greets it partly consists of relief! At the same time, the kid from en France has made a big impression on local hearts and minds, will Viznut be able to beat dis!? (Later on note:- Among other things in 'Barbitoric', we got to see multiple spinning 3D ducks, and the Oric version of bumpmapping!) And rather inevitably, Viznut does, with another unexpanded Vic 20 Lo-Fi multimedia masterpiece! The main component of this demo is the slick storytelling, but Viznut manages to break at least one new boundary with a kewl software speech synth for the basic Vic. Storyline = Oppressed people build warrior robot, who kills evil emperor, Robot then kills them off to take over the world! The speech synth comes out like it is singing a rousing death anthem "HAI-I-I-L ROBOT WAR- R-RIOR!" With the final entry in the sequence, another Vic 20 demo with the inspiring message "This demo is no good, give Viznut your vote", it is no major effort to predict where the winners spot is going to be going. After the 'missing' entries are tidied up and shown, the competition ends. the Nokia demo turns out to be a neat little Java demo which looks rather cute. The other highlight of the competition is a Perl/Ascii demo which manages to simulate a lot of demo effects entirely in text mode! This has been produced by some people rather close to the organisers. Teque and a group of other food monsters raid a nocturnally open (to 5am!) Macdonalds. I force myself not to follow them over, instead concentrating on doing the 'bed thing' once more. After all the delays, half-starts and mis-showings, it is a shade under 05.00 hours, by the time the competitions finish, which is damn late, or early. With that great invention, ear plugs, (on the ear not resting on the pillow!) sleep is quite easy to resume, apart from one ear-splitting "musical" interval at around 08.00, I manage quite happily for a good while. Around 09.30 - 10.00hrs. The restfulness is only broken by Pahartik waking me up to say that Q- Funk, the quitter of midnight parties, is on his way back to the scene of the crime. We are to get up and get packed asap, the plan being to repatriate our stuff back to his place this side of the prize-giving ceremony. This would be before the after-party rush to leave Gloria, and the consumption of scarce taxi resources that would take place. It also turns out we are to have the run of Q-Funk's apartment whilst QF is on the other side of the Baltic. Paavo is to be left with a spare key. I manage to find some time before the exodus to vote on the competition entries that I understood and half-remembered, using a dedicated voting terminal and a personal login ID number given out when I first paid to register. When our taxi firm (still mentally stable, thanks) gets us back. We wave cheery greetings at a heavily sleep-deprived drunky Mark. He's alright and he even remembers us from last year (How!?) So that's okay then. We dump our gear, there is a small hike to a shopping precinct half a mile distant, to pick up a travel card for the Helsinki public transport system. And then we make our way back on a bright sunny afternoon, taking us via a belated breakfast Macdonalds stop. This gets us to just before the prize giving ceremony is due to start, or about three quarters of an hour before it actually does ;-) It is easy to eat my Macdonalds customised bumper fat bastard selection in total darkness, including the ice cream. Grud knows, most of the realtime bit of this text was typed in the same way. We adjourn downstairs, and the prize-giving eventually starts. The prizes tend to fall into the 'having a laugh' category. In amongst the more sincere prize material, such as Infogrammes/Atari sponsored T-shirts and stuff, were bottles of clearasil for the younger more teenage winners, technical manuals for a decommissioned Cray computer, and even a couple of Cray circuit boards going to the first and second prize winners of the main demo competition. A Cray circuit board, is of course not on the modest scale of current PeeCee motherboards. Each of these magnificent beasts would go to make up one sixteenth part of a fully grown Cray Supercomputer. Each board having eight separate processing elements on it. Two of these boards laid end to end would make up a good if somewhat hard bed for a fairly tall person to lie on. The cost of excess baggage in Dbug's case would add up to a lot of Euro's. In the end, natural justice was served, as Dbug's top-rated Oric demo, which gained the respect of the tough Finnish audience, came second, but the inevitable winner, was Viznut's robotic odessey. Dbug sensibly left his Cray board behind, but the last I heard, Setok was finding out how much it would cost to post the thing onwards to Dbug's address in France! The party breaks up fairly briskly after that, and an hour later, the main hall of Gloria is practically empty apart from the odd Wiztom packing his gear up in a leisurely manner. Q-Funk disappears, bidding us farewell, and setting off for the ferry port with a couple of the Estonian guys. Eventually, it is our turn, and we set off with Pahartik in the direction of 'home' (in its temporary format of Q-Funk's loaned place.) Some strolling around Helsinki centre later, including admiring the contents of one or two off-licences, and a bus home, sees us back and starting to catch up on some of the restfulness that has been missing from the past few days. The rest of the evening consists of much needed sanitary making-good (shower, not sauna, which we are awaiting Monday's after-party for!) A timely delivery of Pizza from the omnipresent 'Pizza Taxi', who did the job so nicely the last time, and a fair bit of IRC'ing and web-surfing from the extended network that we have set up. Apart from Q-Funk's debian box, discussed last year, he has also gained an iMac, and it isn't too hard to add Felice's laptop, and reinstall the HP workstation, so we all get to have a computer each, which is feckin' brilliant. After managing to totally confuse Mr Pink on Atariscene IRC, about the nature of the missing and disqualified ST demo entry, tiredness catches up with us, as if it has been given the loan of a really expensive and fast sportscar, and we are crashing floorward sometime before midnight. Sleep, and no half-assed early interventions from Marc, thanks very much, also no earplugs needed, which is even better, and more floorspace, since Q- Funk's departure has freed up his bed for someone to borrow. So it is, we sleep for a good old while into Monday, before we even take a vague interest in its existence. .:Monday, the first half:. Yawny yawn, stir awake, trip to bathroom, pass by Mark's room and notice that he is still awake after all this time, back to bed... Around 11 or 12 hundred hours, we start to take more of an interest in the immediate surroundings, slowly get up, and resume web browsing. We also decide how to fill some of the time before the after-party starts this evening. A suggestion from yesterday evening that we travel to Pahartik's home town of Tampere, a couple of hours train journey away, is regretfully scrubbed on the grounds of there being too little time to spare. (And we all know from the Mekka Symposium 2002 report of the perils of rushing around with too little time to spare!) Instead, Pahartik has an alternative suggestion for a day out, which is to go to the harbour in Helsinki centre, and take a boat trip out to an island some way out in the harbour called Suomenlinna, (Sveaborg in Swedish) which contains some old fortifications, lots of other touristy places of interest, and the odd eaterie or two, where we should be able to pick up something to occupy our stomachs, which are throwing up the odd growling noise or two now. This is fine in theory, but as usual, the practice turns out to be a bit more complex than that. The first part of this expedition is straightforward enough, a bus trip, followed by a ferry ride (which is part of the public transport system and usefully covered by our travel card). This is on a bright and sunlit, if very cold afternoon. The ferry trip is a pleasant novelty, as we are sitting inside warm and dry as it scrunches its way through the iced-up harbour channel past the berthed cross-Baltic ferries. As there are no visible signs of lifeboats, a disaster of a titanic nature is briefly feared, but we realise that the channel is kept in a fluid, if not exactly ice-free state, by the daily activities of proper ice-breaking vessels. If this did not take place, then we would probably be able to walk clear across to the island! As it is, the navigable channel is narrow, and when we are clear of the harbour, the ice just a few yards away, looks solid enough to walk on. With big stepping-stone slabs of ice that you could jump on from the boat to get to it? But such speculation is shoved to the back of my mind, as the boat approaches the island. We disembark into a landscape of infinite coldness, and some old style wooden houses which make me think that this place could be used as a Siberian style theme park. Pahartik only came here as a youngster, in the summer, and barely remembers his time here. But a handy tourist map shows where we are, and where the main attractions are, and even which ones are open at this time of the year, with one of the languages most usefully being English. So we strike out hopefully in the direction of a cafe called "Chaplins". It is on the other side of the islet, about half a mile or so away. We duck into a windswept snow-blasted tunnel, up and down paths, dodging the occasional tractor and envying the driver in his heated cabin, the smug bastard! For it is cold, and getting colder, our guide seemingly ready to go on forever, but we are mindful the last time we ate, was in the bit of this article that described the Pizza Taxi! We do get to Chaplins, but a big disappointment breaks, as they have just closed for the final lunchtime sitting about ten minutes before we got there! An attempt to find an alternative food venue takes us further away from the sanctuary of the landing stage, and the indoor warmth of the return trip ferry. Worringly, the number of people in view soon declines to zero. We end up on the edge of some of the fortifications, ancient cannon still in position, and all covered in a fine layer of snow. Pahartik zooms off in an advance scouting role, leaving the rest of us to admire the many different forms and colours of ice. The sun has gone down by now, and evening is heavy with imminent arrival. Truly this is fantastic film set country, if you wanted to depict the twin themes of 'cold' and 'desolation'. I also get the feeling that this is the sort of place that you put unwanted things out to die in, which could include us if Pahartik does not get back very quickly! A black waving dot is sighted, which resolves into the familiar small, behatted and headphone wearing form of Pahartik. He has found nothing else is open here, so our best option is to get the boat back to the city centre, and find something to eat there. It is with some relief that we go back, other humanoid shapes start to appear, and another ten or so brisk minutes walk later, we are safely back at the pier and away from the frozen arse-end of beyond, and even better, the ferry is waiting for us! There is still some current military interest in this location, as a bunch of army conscripts in full battledress disembark from the boat we are catching. Maybe they brush up on their arctic survival skills here? The boat going back is rather more full than the boat coming out, and we let the waves of warmth wash enjoyably over us! When we discussed our afternoon adventure in the frozen wastes of Suomenlinna at the afterparty sauna, the others commented that it was a very nice place. In the summer... Back in Helsinki centre, Pahartik's alternative mealtime suggestion is a good one. This is namely the same small and peculiar Indian eaterie, which shares premises with an opticians, and has seating room for about six to eight people that we visited last year. We order a load of stuff, with naan bread, and it goes down with a crash, Asteroid in particular trying to eat the patterns off his, and everybody elses plate. Now refreshed, fully loaded, and stuffed like a fat person, we head back for the bus home, trolling around in the centre on a Moomin-shop hunt for Asteroid's benefit, and stopping to pick up some stuff for the after-party on the way back. Once back at the apartment, we have to IRC the location of the after-party out of people, and decide on the best method of getting there. A moment of wobbly trepidation arises when we find out that it is near to the location of last year's after-party, and the epic hike that went with it. Thankfully, Pahartik opts for a more sensible means of travel, as it is entirely possible to get there with the correct combination of buses. This is not *totally* straightforward in itself. The first bus takes us to the shopping centre about half a mile up the road. The place where we change buses seems to be hard to find, and we end up retracing the part of last years Q-Funkathon where there is no pavement, and we are walking on the road. But before things degenerate, we do find a compatible bus stop five minutes later, and gratefully collapse and wait... Ten short minutes later, it turns up, and another ten minutes after, we are dropped off at the terminus. The immediate environment looks immensely familiar from last year as well, but to avoid the buggering about looking for the exact location, we persuade Asteroid to overcome his fear of high international phone charges, and ring Partycle the trainee vampire for someone to come and collect us. We are promised a response in five minutes, but don't anticipate that it is travelling on the bus behind us. We firstly spot the familiar features of Wiztom, and then the bus also disgorges Partycle, Twilighte, and for full bonus points, Mr Yak-a-licious himself! We figure that they know where the after-party is, and happily tag along with them. There is the small matter of dodging the snow ploughs, which are operating in full pavement terrorist mode, not just clearing the roads of excess white powder, but edging their massive scoops onto the pavements as well. Silly foreign people like us scramble out of the way, into deeper snow, but the Finns stand their ground, and the snowploughs grumble to a reluctant stop, mere centimetres away from pedestrian feet. The snowplough drivers, carefully trained to ignore the cries of "Ki-i-ill! Kill them all!" going around inside their heads, let us pass. The sauna venue is further down in the woods than last year's place, quite close to the nearby lake, or was that the Baltic shore? Arrival at the After-party reveals a scene where tables and chairs, and a big screen projector are gathered. Setok is presently away, gathering supplies, so we donate our offerings to the cavernous fridge, and Setok soon returns with plenty of beer for the after-party adherents. Jeff has been very hospitable too, donating a large quantity of vodka to the proceedings too (hic!) At this early stage of the after-party, the big screen is devoted to multiple playing sessions of Jeff's latest Llamasoft opus, 'Gridrunner ++'. This is proving to be a very popular draw. it feels like a superior shareware game, with lots of sweary speech samples, and with all the Minteresque splattery pixel trademarks so fondly remembered from Tempests 2K and 3K to hand too. This is alternated with showings of a number of demos on the big screen. The machine connected up is a PeeCee, and it is taking an interest in running a number of classic mid-nineties DOS productions. One of the first up is a demo locked into my long term memory as an all-time kick-ass classic, the Future Crew produced 'Second Reality' demo. My first thought after seeing it again, was that it hadn't aged well at all, being chock-full of cheesy old effects, lumpy 3-D, and generally kicked by several Falcon demos produced since. Still, I remember a time before I realised that the Cuddly demos had such things as ripped Amiga textscrolly fonts. There were several other more or less good DOS PeeCee demos, and then the projector switched to a Linux theme, for a reshowing of the third place Alt 4 demo competition entry based on swirly effects done entirely in text mode. The action switches to Felice who has his Compaq laptop with him, and several Falcon demos, no, not running on an emulator of Felice's secret design made from HTML commands, but instead, in movie form, and we get to see old friends such as 'Sono', Cycedelic Knockout, and the ever popular 'Lost Blubb'. Any lingering memory that Jeff Minter still has about the mental well-being of the Atari scene community, is rudely blasted aside by Felice's rendition of the 'H-Demo IV', this time on an emulated ST (STeem). I think he was quietly impressed? All this is going on, and not even a sniff of a wet towel from the sauna changing room yet. It is getting on for 10.30, when the first of our two sauna's is ready. Yes, we have a choice of two sauna's, a large communal electrically heated one, which could seat the entire after-party contingent, followed by a smaller wood-burner, which was still getting there in temperature terms. This is Jeff and Twilighte's first time in one of these, and they nervously strip off, Jeff predicting that he would have to be very drunk to jump into the lake afterwards. It is thus, that I get to see bits of Jeff that only Flossie the sheep has access to! Not that I was looking too closely mind... With cries of "Sheepies" being uttered from Mr Minter, he is quickly dragged inside the sauna, and the door is slammed shut... The first sauna is roomy, indeed, we are rattling around inside it, and the experience is remarkable for being, well, unremarkable to this sauna hardened after-party fanatic. However, the experience ratchets up in interest, when we shift over to the wood-powered heating box. In here, the temperature is much higher, and the atmosphere very congenial and closely packed. The temperature is sent even higher with the creation of a lot of steam, which even has some of the Finns gasping! Apart from diving under a cold shower, some of us find ourselves outside, in the cold, in the dark, and naked. With the cumulative effect of several vodka and Dr Peppers taking effect, this seemed like a sensible and fun thing to do at the time! Nobody is drunk enough to go into the lake, although one intrepid individual did try rolling in the snow. I decide it would be a fun thing to throw snow over a naked and unsuspecting Jeff Minter, so obtaining one of the lesser known utterings from the Great Yak ("Aaaggh, you bastard!") Eventually, after Jeff has topped up on nocturnal nakedness and nicotine, we head back inside. Right, Let's call this one Tuesday now.. (14th of January) At some stage, Felice's laptop is reclaimed for a burst of realtime activity that sums up the spirit of these times very well! Here it is! John H. kicking off, I think he's had a bit of alcopops, the naughty fellow. Still, he battles on gamely trying to make some sense of the evenings events. asteroid here its 0.07 hours or something like that its the after event party its been good, and this evening has been great fun. Jeff Minter has had his first sauna and seems to have enjoyed it. Actually myself, despite doing this last year, this has been one the of weirdest and most interesting days of my life, had been sampling some of the local vodka and some of this unusual Finnish cranbury/vodka drink which I feel a little pissed, and going for not one but two saunas, which is quite interesting when you are cramped into a small pine kiosk with 7 Finnish guys, when you go out for a shower theres an exit door which coincidently leads to a path which leads in a straight line to the nearby lake so sauna occupants can, if in the mood, can taking a running jump of a few yards straight into the lake, in a Scandinavian macho style, taking a really extremely extreme case, an exit into the immensely cold water for the ultimately refreshingly cold experience. despite the amount of alcohol consumed here, no one yet has wanted to try this yet. This is from me, I think I realised that I was more than a little under the influence, so I didn't try too hard. 00.20 CiH on the keyzzzz. I am pretty drunk, having tried various combinations of vodka, minty stuff, beer, sauna, raoming around outside throwing snow at people, sitting stark bolluk naked with Jeff Minter in the sauna, and more dR Peppers with Vodka. I'll write some stuff about monday when I'm fit and able, which isn't right now!! Damn, this voka is 80n proof, this might explain a lot of this evening!!! CiH, in Nostrovia mode!! And this extract is from Mr Hairy himself!! mooie! is this thing having a sane keyboard? I have been having to deal with maad Euro keyboards the last few days... is nice to be baack on a UK machine! and now I know about this thing called "sauna"... the Finnish are maad but in a very cool way... seen much insanity here and much creativity... is very cool... is an ijnspiration.. Much fun... I feel much inspired to go home ande code the bejeezus out of that Thing that I cannot mention yet... but for now it is vodka and mad creativity and lots of naked people!:) Having a blinding laugh here... but missing my compiler... and my sheepie! Flossie, Goat bless 'er ;). And... everybody buy Edge magazine on Jan 24th ;-).... :-D :-D Llamasoft is BAAAAAACK!!!! Did I really manage to do that, this late on?? It's 02.17hrs on Tuesday Morning. CiH back, we are going home today, can't think how... Ohhh Goddd, drunk too much, send for a beer taxi! Many Amiga demos on the big screen, and talk of sausages being barbequed over an open fire thing. See you tomorrow, or the day after, or when time and fingers permit! Aaaagh! There is more alcohol, there are more demos, as we switch to Amiga on the bigscreen, with a never ending procession of A1200 classics. A couple of these coming (all meanings of the word operative!) from a very gay Amiga crew indeed. People start to get up and dance to the more hyper-kinetic productions, especially Pahartik, who has been taking something else with his Dr Peppers, maybe it was some of the minty alcoholic substance that he had brought with him? Jeff spots a kindred spirit in Pahartik, suggesting that he spend some time down on the farm if Paavo ever comes to the UK. More alcohol is drunk.. There is reindeer stew, with mashed swedes. Reindeer meat tastes, well, different, can't explain how, but we were all hungry by then, and it got eaten. In amongst all this enjoyable but non-productive activity, Felice has been tapping away on his laptop, running 1st Word inside the STeem environment, putting on his "Atari head" to write a party report for the Chosneck disk magazine. A sensible avoidance of alcohol is implicated! A bit later still, I become aware of the existence of an open fire, I remember this, because I assisted in a search for wood before the booze claimed the brain cells that help me to walk. Felice is enlisted in a sausage roasting crew, and I get to taste the end result, which is blackened and split, but still strangely tepid in the middle. It is now very late, and I would totally agree with John H. in his last bit of realtime about the after-party being one of the most weird and interesting days of his life. We reluctantly decide to drag ourselves away sometime after 04.00hrs, first booking a taxi. A lot of drunken farewells later, and we clamber back to the top of the road to find our taxi waiting. I think we got home sometime before 05.00hrs, but not by much. Mark is still awake, and he greets us with the news that he has been awake for two days now. However, I think I had the edge on him in general drunkeness this time around! Bedtime, for a few scant hours before we have to depart the land of sauna, and crawl back to the UK.. Pahartik is the first to go, I don't think he even went to bed in the first place. He generously decides to wake *me* up, out of a choice of three people, at 08.00hrs, saying a quick farewell, and pushing the phone number for the taxi firm and the spare key into my hand. The others rouse themselves just long enough for a hearfelt goodbye, then back to sleep. Around 11.00hrs, we start to get up, slowly. A lack of enthusiasm translates into our slow and hesitant packing and clearing up. My toothbrush becomes a casualty of war, as it slips inside the radiator grille in the bathroom. I have a momentary panic, when I try to recall where I placed my glasses in the drunken collapse earlier this morning, but these turn up, so no harm done. A final session of net-bashing, including an email to Nicky to tell her I will be home very late, the last in a heavy correspondence exchange that went on over the duration of the party. (I still didn't get off lightly though when I got back, she said "When I said don't phone me, I meant the exact opposite."(!)) Eventually, around 13.00hrs, we depart the residence of Q-Funk and Marky Mark for the last time, Mark looking like his missing sleep is about to catch up with him in a big way! And there is another shock waiting outside, as temperatures have risen to 'just' a few degrees below zero, but there is a lot more snow out there, and more being added every minute. The ten minutes waiting for the taxi to turn up adds quite a bit of snow to us as well, and we have to kick and stomp as much off us as possible, to avoid bringing it with us to the airport. Conditions on the journey back to Vantaa are nicely blizzard-like, and our taxi driver struggles with iced up windscreen wipers, and delicately edges past a genteel and carefully posed motorway several vehicle pile-up. Further proof that even the snow-hardy Finns aren't totally immune from ice-bound human error, comes in the disheartening shape of another taxi that veered off the motorway, and into a ditch in the central reservation! This was about a couple of minutes driving away from the airport. I hope he didn't have to pay full fare for that one! Anyway, we do get back to the airport safely, gratefully gather our baggage inside the warm and relaxed terminal building, and play the old airport game of waiting around. This takes several forms. Waiting with food, waiting for the KLM check-in desk to open. Then there is waiting to get to our flight, with a little bit of essential airport shopping carried out. There is also some waiting to do once we are on the aircraft, as it cannot fly very well with the ice and snowy gunk accumulated on it, and necessitating a visit from the de-icing crew. It is gathering darkness when we eventually take off, around half an hour late. This is not a big issue, as it merely cuts down the waiting around at Schiphol airport. At Schiphol, we soon have to say goodbye to Asteroid, and now we are two again, Felice and I. More shopping, casual browsing, and waiting around follows, then onto our final leg flight, a reverse-run to Birmingham on a half-empty KLM Fokker 100. Birmingham is cleared by us in a record time, the only moment of excitement came from the armed police, all body armour and Heckler and Koch sub-machine guns, that took to following us around in the terminal building. The retrieval of Felice's automotive box on wheels proves to be awesomely quick too, and I am back in Northampton sometime around 22.30. Dropping my bag on the bed, I pause for an end-party moment of remembrance, by loading up Earx's new demo 'Delta', for which he sent a personalised copy through the post for me. What a nice bloke! And that is the end of the tale of the fourth Alt Party. To sum up, conclude etc.. Fourth Alt Party, well what else can I say? Bigger, longer, faster, louder! Also drunker, when you take the after-party into account. Also better prepared, and better rested than any of the previous three. I'll throw in colder, as this was the first time that we experienced a full- on Finnish winter. This was also the first Alt Party where we heard the cries of "Sheepies!" echoing around the place, courtesy of the very special guest of honour, Jeff Minter. I always had this impression of Jeff Minter as an extremely cool and down- to-earth guy. I was pleased to find that the reality matched the public relations, after spending some time in his company. He was especially a terrifically good sport at the after-party, which was his first time as a 'sauna virgin'. Nice one hairy, and I hope future Llamasoft enterprises go to plan for you! The party itself was bigger than any of the previous escapades, the final total of attending bodies getting near the three hundred mark. It looks like that Alt Party is no longer going to be a small and obscure party, and it looks increasingly likely, that this will more or less an annual event? I don't think this is going to be the last one of these! The live entertainment component of the party grows apace. There seemed to be more of this than ever, especially on the first night, but at the same time, the computer-based entertainment grew to keep up with it. There were more competitions, and entries, and more demo's than before, especially now that Wintel boxes have been allowed in. There didn't seem to be quite so much retro-computing around, although the organisers controlled everything very well from a Vic 20, and the two most stunning demo competition entries still came from machines dating back to the early 8-bit era. I think we are missing the MSX scene, although the emergent Vic 20 scene seemed to be well on the way to filling that gap! On a personal note things that sucked slightly last year hardly figured at all. I managed to sleep at the party, even on that 'difficult' first night, for one thing. Things like pointlessly wandering around, getting lost, and getting delayed were avoided successfully. Also, the after-party managed to be the best one yet. We came away reluctantly at around 04.30hrs, but I think certain people didn't actually stop until they were dragged back to the airport and deported from the country!? On another personal note, we thank Martin 'Q-Funk' Racine for the loan of his apartment whilst he was away, for the final couple of days that we were in town. I could go on all night, but just to finish up, I think that Alt Party still rules, and I'm sure we'll be back for the next time! CiH, for Alive! Mag, Jan '03