Alt Party 'V' --------------- The Lizard People strike back! 21.21hrs, Friday night.. A trio of geeks with modified Amstrad CPC's called 'Roland' attempt something on stage, melodious yet odd, which might give the East German secret police some suitable grounds for copyright infringement? On a big screen off to the side, the avant-garde experimental Finnish film-maker Mikka Fuckhaa is showing off his latest production, "Attack of the Killer fluorescing Disco Mushroom!" All is well in Alt-Party land ;-) We merry few Atarians sit altogether in a little huddle, exposed fully to the incoming musical gunfire, in a specially reserved spot next to the organisers enclosure upstairs. Felice and Baggio sit off to the left hand side, engrossed in anything apart from what is slowly dying on the stage... To the right, sometime Jagfest attendee Ian Smith does his particular thing with a Mac Powerbook. Lizard People reference in the subtitle? Well the design of the identity badges issued to paying partygoers bears more than a little resemblance to the schlocky-horror eighties sci-fi series 'V'. Aha some realtime applause (21.31hrs) tinged with more than a little relief. Meanwhile, I'm working on this party report, in a semi-realtime sense, on my very own Faclon '030! It is also very useful as a jukebox with a set of headphones, for locking out the more oppressive live acts from my ears ;-) (This is in fact the machine which was purchased as a spare for the CT60, but not needed. It is due to stay with Felice on our return to the UK, as his own Falcon is feeling a little bit unwell at the moment.) Okay, you'll want some back-story stuff, what happened today so far and all that, well hang on whilst I try to catch up... A:\earliertoday\begin\cih.prg 05.00? Wake up, splitting headache/bladder, insane thirst etc, deal with these promptly, then go back to bed and slowly realise that I'm not going to get any more sleep before the kick-off time of 06.30hrs. Get up around 06.15, and carry out the CiH boot-up morning routine. This has a specially custom written subroutine including a large cup of coffee to make sure I carry out the driving task that follows successfully. A larger than normal checklist dominates the proceedings immediately prior to 07.00. CiH processes are to be carried out off-site a lot further than usual, Helsinki in Finland, to be exact. This demands an extra-special effort of remembering stuff from the system operations team. 08.00 - Arrive at Felice's residence in the quietly anonymous townlet of St Neots. It looks like the driving thing went well, as I'm here in the normal number of pieces, namely one. Pause briefly whilst Felice finalises his packing, and take a moment to look at his tragically poorly Falcon. I try it for myself, but the magic healing fingers have been left at home today. The normal reassuring Atari Logo does not spring into life when the on/off switch is toggled, but it seems as if it tries and gets stuck? A more expert view than mine is needed, but now isn't the time, as we load up Felice's car for the first stage of our latest great Alt Party Adventure! On the road and it's shortly after 09.00. We nearly miss Stanstead Airport, but don't. Checking in, wealthing up at the Bureau de Change, security checks, and an airport-style expensive breakfast(*) all proceed smoothly. Felice almost gets hypnotised by the vast array of consumerism on display in the Stanstead main terminal, but he remembers that he has still got a flight to catch just in time! (*) Have you noticed that everything is plastic cutlery these days!? Must be the terrorists! But still, those plastic knives can do a hell of a lot of damage when they splinter off inside an airport issue sausage?) So it comes to pass, that the latest brave aviators to plough the Stanstead to Helsinki route, for a price less than that of mere buttons, are the aptly named 'Flying Finn'. These attempt to do a 'reverse-Buzz', namely very cheap flights, are from a Finnish perspective. We're not complaining... The aircraft is an older model, something with rear-mounted engines, which seems to make for a quieter than normal flight, and a livelier than normal takeoff. I think the pilot was a defrocked fighter jockey with such a steep angle of attack on his leaving the ground? The next couple of hours are passed topping up fluid levels, and with some heavy dozing, which seemed to work better than my last hour abed. Just over a couple of hours of this pleasantry sees us landing at Vantaa Airport once more. Their exit procedures are working very well today, as 17.00hrs sees us on a rather crowded and outdoorsey feeling bus service to the city centre. (Number 615 from memory.) Attempts to contact Q-Funk (Martin-Eric Racine), target no.1 for the Finnish Immigration authorities, prove successful and a meeting is arranged at the vast central railway station. There is more than one possible meeting place at this sizeable location, but we eventually discover each other in different places. Some quick directions to get us to Gloria, the well established and third year running party location are given. Q-Funk has other saunas with (terrified?) screaming women in them to enter, and we are left to it to get there ourselves. Gloria is not much more than a ten minute walk away, fortunate from the point of view of those carrying heavy bags! Even so, the minus 5 celcius evening temperature barely stifles the sweat flooding out. On arrival at Gloria, we carry out the formal party arrival rituals at the front desk, not yet including purchasing a T-shirt, I wasn't strong enough for that yet. We located our prime spot in the upstairs gallery in order to be blasted with the live music performances of the evening. (Post-Party retro note:- We were issued with some nice plastic identity badges, which cannibalised the 'V' sci-fi lizard cult series for the parties own use. The badges were well-designed and good looking, but rather crap in the execution, as they tended to fall apart very easily. Hasty "system patches" made from sellotape were brought in as a last minute fix.) We manage to set up our respective hardware quite quickly, Felice and others with lame laptops ;-) myself with a proper oldschool hardcore machine, and loaned SVGA screen (thanks Q-Funk). Barely have I had the time to check that a certain competition entry, 'donated' by a mysterious demo collective was running successfully, when a large and hairy party organiser by the name of 'Setok' blagged my Falcy from me. This was used in a variety of "interesting" photographic poses combined with the Alt party official female mascot 'Marycloud', as I discovered when a group of us headed out again to repair a pizza-related deficiency. There may even be copies of these posted on the net, take a look around now! Note to organisers, I would like some signed originals of these please! (Retro-add on note:- I got to see more of that very female person in just the right amount of detail (grin!) somewhat later on, at the afterparty sauna!) A very pleasant hour, with dinner in the middle of it followed as Wiztom joined with Baggio, Felice, and myself at a handily placed pizza restaurant. We have left in good time, as the first of the live acts, the "Helsinki computer orchestra" was attempting to summon the coastguard with an assortment of random squeaks and bleeps. (Clatter of imaginary helicopter rotorblades over the rooftops of Gloria - "This is coastguard response unit Victor Charlie nought-six, now you've got us here, what the fuck do you want?!") The return has seen the departure of that orchestra of chaos, and something like the trio of Amstrad CPC heavily disguised as Roland Synth fans that I mentioned, right at the start of this text! So it's 22.35hrs now, time to log off, take a look around... RUN B:\2nd_day\saturday.prg 01.20 - The party seemed to pick up a buzzing swarming vibe at around 23.00, with the culmination of one of the better live acts, an amusing guitar solo set, even if most of the amusement was in Finnish. (This was by a gentleman with the nick of BassCadet.) Then around midnight, most of these people disappeared again! It is abnormally quiet for a first night at Alt party, even sleep might be possible, but etiquette suggests that it is far too early for that sort of nonsense! I might add a few other early impressions of the party thus far. This fifth edition seems to be an 'Alt Party Reloaded Corporate'. This is evidenced at a very superficial level by the smart new Sun Java terminals in the entrance hall to fulfil the public internet needs. Not to mention the Epson big screen projector, and the involvement of a very well known Finnish mobile phone and hi-tech company beginning with the letter 'N' in one of the competitions. By the time Setok had finished thanking the corporate sponsors in his opening ceremony speech, he was well into his third cylinder of oxygen! Laptop dominance(*), with or without emulators, is well established. Last years trend is this years normality. There is still a large smattering of oldschool hardware, a fair number of Commodore hulks of different eras, at least a small amount of Ataridom, including the arrival of NerVe and his CT60 (Yaay!) Then there is my proud and lonely Falcon, sitting amid a nest of laptops. (*)Q-Funk comments: is this why this whole party is turning into a lap dance, with AltParty-branded rubbers being sold at the entrance? :P) But I've not seen anything really exceptional running on the oldschool hardware yet. Most of the Amigas seem to be here playing games in a nostalgic fit of remembrance. I wonder if Viznut the Vic 20 killer can adapt to the new dynamic demo requirement, which seems to my eyes to demand a more contemporary level of power? I've not seen any weird and out-there homebrew devkits for ancient consoles yet. Twilighte has made a welcome return with his Oric, but he is hassled with organisers duties, and the Oric scene in general seems to be suffering a loss of interest. His machine has been mostly switched off. Ah well, it's difficult to draw conclusions from looking at dimly lit monitors on the nocturnal Alt party scene. Let's see what daylight brings! Ian has left the building, he has an uncle living in Helsinki to go to, and I think Q-Funk may have left the building too. I've finished writing the .readme file for the competition entry, which is not so much a 'readme', but more a list of things not to do with the not-quite-finished party version, for the organisers benefit. Off again to have a quick look around, survey the devastation as it were... 02.00 - We have spotted our first drunk of the evening! He screams and lurches off into the organisers pit. He has a good voice, I think it once belonged to a girl!!? Felice has finished the century-long hunt for an IRC server that will accept him from the wireless LAN connection at Gloria. He logs on gratefully... *** MT-Felice has joined #altparty *** Topic is: Altparty V *** Topic set by Ravel's Bolero *** MT-Felice and loads of finnish people..... hi... Can you please STOP SPEAKING FINNISH! Looking elsewhere, #atariscne is a two-handed affair, Felice, Gokmase, and lots of lonely bots whose owners have gone to bed. 03.40hrs - The partyscene seems to be recovering a little bit of its old belligerence, someone has got hold of the soundsystem, a drunk lies face- down on one of the empty tables. Baggio and Partycle get ready to leave for the evening, erm morning. Q-Funk has already made his Canado-Finnish excuses and left for the night. I've set up my own airbed in a sort of enclosed space protected by cinema style seating, with Felice at the other end, I'm immune to attack from three of four directions, which 'aint so bad! I figure I can stab anyone who does get through these natural defences, with the pointy end of my Alt Party 'V' badge! (Comment from Felice: I wasn't the one who was snoring ! :) ) 05.00hrs - Last log entry before attempt at sleep. The drunks returned in force at around 04.00, and things pumped up for a while. Now the depressing effects of the alcohol consumed do their thing, and the buzz is lowering again. Not to mention the shouts, doors banging etc.. After a quick spin on #atariscne IRC where Pink, Keops and company rush around to fill the disgraceful gaps in the Pouet.net classic ST demo archive, it is time to go to bed, almost no-one sensible, is left, only the drunks, and those people who have to stay awake are left standing, lurching, or whatever... Night all, be back, probably in a couple of hours ;-) (Non-realtime add-on bit:- The third year of Alt Party at Gloria also saw the second year of an alcohol ban on the premises. Unfortunately, no-one thought to cut the legs off the drunks who responded by stocking up on their favourite liquid refreshments downtown, then came back roaring drunk a lot later on!) (There was also another innovation which had the effect of concentrating the louder people in a single space and all together. This was a specially designated smoking area in the left hand sided upper passage, which rapidly became the most crud-filled part of Gloria, and the source of the more interesting noturnal noises as well...) Insert coffee in drive a:\ reboot a:\saturday\cih.prg 10.10hrs - Oooh, not too bad! The space from 05.00 to now was mostly filled with sleeping attempts. I never really got fully unconscious, the closest was similar to the 'very relaxed' state assumed on the aircraft over. The drunkeness tended to come in bursts of activity, slowly mellowing down, then a fresh outbreak of drunken shouting, doors banging in the middle of the night etc. Anyway, the airbed was inflated to the right sort of comfortable, and the resting spot chosen wasn't too bad, as long as you weren't claustrophobic. The spaces between the rows of cinema seating turned out to be narrower than first thought, so it felt somewhat like sleeping in a opened coffin! I kept this up to around 09.00, finally getting up and sharing the bombed out bathroom facilities with a hungover crowd, then managing to motivate myself in the direction of the Macdonalds down the road, sampling the dubious delights of their breakfast menu. The MacMuffin looked somewhat like a Soylent Green special, or at least made from a factory culture of pig- tissue and powdered egg?! The coffee was just what was needed though. There is this animated parody thing called 'Starwreck' on the big screen. It is kind of cool in a very low budget way. "Full speed ahead Mr Fuckov!" Realtime note to myself:- Time I handed in the mysterious compo entry supplied by a demo collective with the name of a well-known sextoy, there's only an hour and a bit to the deadline. 10.50hrs - Done the compo entry handing in thing. Now we've just got to see if the disk in question survived being hurled to the floor (accidentally). Still, the main copy of the demo is on this very Faclon, so it's not as if that was the only one of its kind? Felice is limbering up for the poetry competition. I've not examined it too closely, but I'm sure the entry will be unforgettable! It also looks like that Viznut, the killer of countless innocent Vic 20's into impossible feats of screen wizardy at previous Alt Parties, will be riding again, yelling "Yeehaa!" (in Finnish), if the Altparty realtime report is correct, there may even be more than one entry (for different categories?) from him as well. Right now (11.05) seems to be the quietest time of all at the party thus far. Even the drunks have to sleep it off sometime? I've got another idea, do some pruning work on the STe version of 'HR.@.DsX.com' - Back later... ~ Space to be vaguely productive in! ~ 13.23hrs - The party vibe is still tremendously quiet, as evidenced by the gentle snoring from close by.... Not much else is happening, apart from a bunch of PeeCee demos showing on the big screen. The time between the last log entry and now has been usefully filled, pruning the STe version of a certain demo to work more quickly. This has been a major success, possibly too much so. But it looks like an 8mhz release is on the cards, as soon as Pink fixes the other problem with the audio part of the anim engine. It might have to be 8mhz and 2 megabytes though, as it didn't seem to test too well (as in 'not do anything') on a 1 meg (simulated) STe. Never mind, we're still to try it without GEM and autobooting, to save that last 32k! Back in a bit... 14.05hrs - The strange guest fake demo story gets more interesting. It runs without GEM with 1 meg, but dirt slow like it was before.. To run with GEM, it needs 2 meg, but the speed situation is transformed, given steroids, even with 8mhz. And yes, I've disabled anything that might help the VDI additionally. I think I'm going to leave any further investigation until I get back to a real STe, connected to a sensible screen. Backwards and emulated STe/Falcy running on a VGA screen doesn't give a correct perspective in my view. (Q-Funk comments: come to think of it, I could not be bothered with bringing any computer this year, nor with participating in any compo; too tired to haul the iMac over here and almost totally uninspired by the compos offered this year. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I've become too old for this sort of anarchy; perhaps Assembly has become a much safer heaven for me... come to think of it, this pattern repeats itself in other aspects of my life: Finland is considered by many Finns to be a lame, predictable but incredibly safe country. I guess my life thus has taken a similar turn; no wonder I'm in the process of settling down and doing the daddy thing...) 14.40hrs - There is a word that fits the lack of inspiration described above. We call it "lazy" (grin!) (Q-Funk adds: not quite. I was thinking of submiting some short tune or a gfx of some sort, but the only gfx compo this year is the monochrome gfx compo *YUCK!* and there is no music compo this year. Last year's Love Music compo would have been fun, if it had been offered again... Honnestly, the only compo I would have gladly participated in, having had the equipement, is the Silent Movie compo. I've had an idea in mind for a while, but lacking the equipment and not having found volunteer actors, I didn't get manage to get it done.) 15.14hrs - Realtime comic drawing compo is running, you have thirty minutes to pictorially depict "A day as a Stethoscope". Here's my script idea... "But Doctor, I'm sure you asked for the STETHOSCOPE and not the ANAL PROBE!" "Foolish underling, now it'll take all day to clean it up!" (Stethoscope thinks)- "Jeez, this has been the worst day of my life!" 15.30hrs - It's down on paper now.... In other news, I met the diminutive figure of Diamondie, who seems to be busy on a report of her own, so as I had stalled for inspiration, I decided to look in on hers. She is also involved in the 'Alt Magazine', which has an eclectic mixture of Finnish poetry and english coding tips. At this moment she is girding herself up for the poetry competition, which involves a live reading out on stage element, which is very brave of her. Come to think, also Felice is doing that too! 15.50hrs - Hot system admins on the screen, now 'Sceneboylove' and some other sites which indicate that the authors should get out more. On second thoughts, don't let them out on the street at all! It seems to indicate that the formal entertainment provision is suffering some sort of screen lag at the moment. (Retro add on:- Most of the competitions came off more or less as planned, but there was supposed to be a Scalectrix racing tournament, with real live cars, that didn't, when the Scalectrix set in question died just before the party.) Some shareware thing is now on screen, based on old 'Kickstart' styled motorcross/obstacle game. This one has some very languid and laid-back bike physics. Weird physics and rubber bikes rule! 17.00hrs - This lemon drink that I purchased is exceedingly weak! It is lemon-flavoured water. It is useful for substaining life, and the remnants will give a pleasant wash in case the main water supply goes down to Gloria overnight ;-) The people that made the animated 'Starwreck' feature arrive on stage. Unfortunately, the choice of language indicates that the cult factor is not going to go global just yet;-) - I think they are going to show a trailer, which will be good if it is subtitled... (Q-Funk's translation & summary: the whole point of why this goes on in Finnish is precisely because the guys feel that, even though Finns are big sci-fi fans, nobody has ever dared produce Finnish sci-fi. While this is a Star Trek & B5 parody, it is nonetheless a first step towards showing that Finns would be quite capable of contributing to the international sci-fi movie industry.) (It will still need to be dubbed/subtitled, unless there is a Finnish Borg retrofitting Finnish language service packs to us all!?) The afternoon has been quiet, apart from the good clean healthy rusharound for the various 'short' competitions. We're really waiting for the evening to kick off, with the main competitions taking place. 17.40hrs - NerVe returns, he had a very long lie-in indeed! We managed to see his mighty CT60 working, after he first reassembles the on/off switch. For maximum bonus points, he shows the reworked 'Ephidrenia' demo, complete with hi-res enhanced mode and all. I feel a quick time-travel escapade is in order, all the way back to the 2002 Mekka Symposium, to demand a rematch, and a better bigscreen projector! 17.50hrs - A quick overview of the text shows we are nearly at the crucial "worth bothering to continue" 20k mark. Let's do something to push it over! The next part of the evening will most likely go something like Food/miss out on general MIDI competition, and get back in time for the rest of the evening's fun massacre. Also so far, no indication that the organisers are looking at the demo entries. They will need to borrow this Falcon to get the full "benefit", and so far, no requests have been made. Still, as the main demo compo isn't scheduled until 01.00 tomorrow, and that is assuming there are absolutely no delays before. "Oh yeah right?" you might say, and you'll be spot on with that too. So I think it is safe to say that there is still plenty of time to go. Ok, save text now, see what we've got. Back laters. INSERT FOOD in a:\ run yumm.prg 19.40hrs - We just died and went to curry heaven! A food raiding party consisting of Baggio, Partycle, Felice and myself formed a hunting party in search of a hot Indian slaving over even hotter Indian food. (Captains Log Stardate Saturday evening - "Baggio, CiH, Partycle and Felice have set off for food unknown armed with a pick, shovel, and vague directions on how to get there - Have dug four graves...") We missed out on both the Midi compo, and also the softsynth compo, but ended up very well sated and stuffed instead. Indeed, only CiH has the greediness factor sufficient to cope with the larger than normal portions, with side-orders, that have been supplied to us. This was the same restaurant that briefly became famous for supplying Jeff Minter with a 'hot' vindaloo that could not even approach the Yak's ability to eat food that resembles the burning surface of the sun! However, they more than redeem themselves tonight with Mount Everest sized portions. Well worth running on little more than a Macdonalds Egg Macmuffin for the rest of the time preceeding. Now the two-colour graphics compo hangs heavy in the air with imminent arrival. 20.00hrs - Two colour compo 1st up, cool entry from Baggio ('Bouh!') 2nd up, Anarchist graffiti.. 3rd up, not sure, rocky hillside and raindrops? 4th up, Dolphin and raincloud, print style. 5th up, 'XTC legalised in Finland only minutes ago' (say no more!) 6th up, 'Turin', lots of greyshades and stippling. There's a bit of mirroring too, sort of kalidescopic effect. 7th up, 'Sad Creature', funny entry from ravel. 8th up, 'Really' Part-rendered, smart stipples, a possible prize winner. 9th up 'This Forest of love', red monochrome, probable winner! 10th up, Apt pupil, trumps the last entry! Almost photographic quality. 11th up, 'Is it true?' Another strange/funny one to finish with. Next compo is the basic demo compo, at 21.00. 21.00hrs (Nearly) I've spent a chunk of the last hour crashed out as a result of food/fatigue, perched uncomfortably in an alcove. It took a welcome repeat showing of the www.beyond.dk 'South Park goes to a demo party' to get me back awake again. Large numbers of people cram onto the table space immediately adjoining me, in order to set up for the Basic Demo competition. They are using a pump-up torch that generates about half a candlepower's worth of light to see what they are doing. Apart from the fact that the minute they use their hands to do something else, the torch stops working! Batteries are good for this sort of thing... We are informed this will take place in some randomly generated function of twenty minutes? We are told cheerfully that things aren't running to schedule, so no big surprises there. Taken from the big screen just now (21.10) 10 print "BASIC DEMO COMPETITION WILL BEGIN IN" 20 print int(rnd(1)*5); MINUTES" 30 goto 10 21.20hrs, Darkness and shackled bigscreen projector, is something going to happen real soon now? 21.25hrs, Yep! Eleven entries in all, the last two non PeeCee machines (Amiga and MSX). And a surprise at the front of the running order, with some Casio FP2001 out there. 21.58hrs, Basic demo mostly shown to plan. Anything non-PeeCee baffles the organisers, so the last three demos are chucked into limbo-land. One might suggest they try pre-recording stuff, instead of having the chaotic huddle of hardware where no-one is sure right up to the last minute whether it'll work or not? On the plus side, there were some goodies among the semi-fake stuff, culminating in a demo running on Excel spreadsheet(!) which included blocky plasma and tunnel style effects in full colour! One to remember to take with you to that next boring work meeting ("Never mind the end of quarter figures, here's a lovely tunnel instead!") Hang on, the Casio is ready to go... That was short and amusing, with 1900 bytes of memory, not a lot else possible really ;-) Now the MSX boots... Oooh, that's a nice one! Loads of colours, wonder if it was one of those 'Turbo-R' machines. Almost on a par with previous proper ASM-coded MSX stuffs, a welcome return for that system after a long time away! 22.10hrs, Struggling to connect the Amiga to the projector now.. At last! The amiga dudes who asked to borrow my monitor to check their machine worked on it are up, and their demo is Amigabasic, takes time to get going, but culminates in a series of nicely faked rotating lightmapped 3-D cubes. My vote's still gonna go to the Excel demo, now that really is Alternative! 22.40hrs - Silent movie compo to start shortly. Hopefully this will ruin (Wow good typo!) smoothly, with no video cable inspired culture clash. Okay, I'll give you some impressions when they're done... 23.35hrs - We didn't get away without a hardware bug. This one had a big Apple logo running through it. Midway through this competition, when the Powerbook kept spiking on cpu usuage, as soon as someone looked it it, time to reboot and start again. Nice to see that Bill Gates has some decent competition in the vital area of screw-ups at last! Well done Apple! As always, there were some good entries, witness a very lo-fi cartoon, a poignant and amazingly understated entry from Nosfe, and a supreme performance, by a supreme primal scream artist right at the end! (Nosfe again..) Time for the bar indeed! Live poetry recital next at 00.00hrs, or 24.00 as the organisers insist on calling it ;-) Felice is in that one, as in actually-reading-out-on-stage his own poem that he composed. Wish him luck! 23.55hrs - Soon I'll need some luck myself when this machine is pressed into action for the first public showing of "hilaryrosen@donkeysex.com Organisers just reshown the MSX basic demo, to its full length, and with the soundtrack included this time. It is an extended machine as I thought, but that second showing should pick up a few more votes for it. The running order for the poetry recital is posted, with Felice to go first! Nosfe is to bring up the rear, with fire in his heart! RUN C:\alt_3rdday\sunday.prg SUNDAY!! Felice is kicking off with an anti-RIAA protest...... 00.10hrs - He stumbles back to his seat with a sense of relief, also of a job well done :-) This felt like more of a speech than a poem, but a serviceable enough effort, and read out clearly too. The rest of the entries are in Finnish, I see an international/local split in the voting, with Felice as the main beneficiary ;-) 00.15hrs - Time to log off for a while, demo compo awaits.... ~~~Space for Demo Compo to go in ~~ 02.05hrs - A quick "BLOODY HELL!" for the fact that I survived the demo compo, and Mr Falcy behaved flawlessly with the bigscreen projector. The only organiser-shaped fly in this happy ointment comes with the fact that our entry got disqualified, apparently it wasn't dynamic. But we were expecting that anyway, and this 'slothful' non-dynamic demo also got the most laughs of the night ;-) - The weak joke at the end of the demo should have given the game away in the first place? Maybe if I had attempted a skilful screengrab forgery of the desktop, with an authentically long pause before picking up the "second" runthrough, I could have gotten away with it? ;-) There were seven entries in all, the best looking one was the 'Micery' demo on the Mac by the combined team of Fit/Bandwagon. To be honest, it was kind of hard to tell how some of the entries had changed or 'evolved' from one showing to the next. I think Nosfe's entry had some differences in the soundtrack? The visuals were too fucked to tell... There is also the question of 'evolve' over 'randomise', which I don't think a lot of the demos had answered that clearly? I would suggest to any Alt Party organisers reading this, that the 'Dynamic' rule should be best forgotten, it sounds neat in theory, but sitting through an entry that you can't get that inspired about in the first place again, to try to spot the (often small) differences from before, ain't the best use of our limited time and concentration span at this party! In short, I think that in the rush and keenness to embrace the 'dynamic' principle, a lot of the demos sort of forgot about entertaining people! A comment from Felice now ... Hmm, it's a bit of a pain, even when the entry itself is a fake that it should be disqualified, it's not a good state of affairs but things are still open to speculation at this moment at time. As Chris reported earlier on, I certainly did take part in the poetry- reading contest, it'll be interesting to see how I have got on against the might of our Diamondie, who, despite her small stature seems to be very talented. Pete Jackson (director of LOTR) started off with short films such as her other entry, maybe she'll follow in his footsteps with something arty in a few years ? Time will tell ...... but I think we'll hear something of Maija Haavisto before too long. Over and out .... 03.10hrs - Chilling out in a post-competition sense, plenty of music to soothe the long night on. Excerpts from Alt-TV are on the big screen. Trained by force of habit, we try to spot the slight differences between sequences of random screen noise ;-) Talking to Setok, the following become apparent. He expected more from the Dynamic demo competition than we got, some people had big plans for this, but nothing came from them. He still thinks that someday, something worthwhile could come from this concept. There is the possibility that Alt Party itself could be rested for a bit, maybe going away from an annual release date. It was kind of hard to follow the big success of Alt 4, with Jeff Minter as the sheepish guest of honour. This year was a paler imitation in all areas. A pause would refresh Alt, avoid slipping into a dull routine. 04.30hrs - It's another uncle-f**king late night, so time for bed! ~~~ Space for imperfect forms of sleep to take place ~~~ RUN D:\blearysundaymorning\cih.prg 10.25hrs - I'm up and doing the breakfast thing with the tasteless remnants of the food brought in yesterday. The last tempting item, the chocolate slab, got finished off during the final moments of the demo viewing last night. Just stale crisps, and the remains of the weak lemon drink then, plus the first coffee of the day, which is a consistency and taste of caffeine sludge. Which might just have a fighting chance of getting me more awake. Sleep definitely happened, it wasn't particularly high-quality, or prolonged, or even happening all in one go. One of the party organisers prowled around the lower part of the hall, 'interviewing' people on the edge of sleep, or death? I'm sure more than a few longstanding friendships were put to a severe test that night, with a threat of knuckle sandwiches issuing forth from the recumbent mattress occupants? "You want to kill me? but you're live on ALT-TV?" It was another live broadcast, that of the Gregorian chant hour, from Helsinki Cathedral, that summoned me awake sufficiently to start dealing with the world. A quick trip to the bathroom reveals that it has crashed and burned completely. Never a healthy looking place at the best of times, now completely unuseable. The quiet and hardly-used girls toilets stood in very well instead, and a slow stagger to search for the nearest coffee later, and I'm back here once more. Felice is still away with the sleep-fairies, and I don't think we're going to remotely manage Q-Funk's suggested preliminary exit time of 11.00 with the gear. Not there is too much to carry anyway. One of the things I half-remember from the earlier part of this morning, was a conversation with Wiztom which touched on the fact that Aggression, the demo crew, were celebrating their 15th birthday, and that a celebratory STe demo is in the works! It seems that graphics man of excellent repute Lance, has started coding! (STeem emulator, gawd bless them!) He has some nice screens already to show, which seems to be motivating the lazier members a bit more (Hello Wiztom!) So if this thing does come to pass, it is likely to be a joint or multi-handed effort, and out later in the year... 12.15 - Q-Funk has returned, a moby-cam photo competition is imminent. Time looms large to start packing the Falcy, in semi-darkness, and a hiatus to the realtime script. Back laters... END OF THE REALTIME! - But not of the party report as a whole! (18.1.04) Okay, so this is a lot later, and not at all realtime. I had planned to do some more realtime text-tapping when I was back at Q-Funk's place, but limited opportunity, inclination, and space to set up in, meant that I didn't. So anything else written from here on, is going to be in a past tense. One of the corporately sponsored competitions was the mobile phone camera picture competition. This was laid on by Nokia, generously providing the facilities, and also a prize for this, namely one of the top of the range mobile camera phones in question. Entrants to this, had a short time with one of these cameraphones to rush around Gloria and the surrounding wilderness, to take pictures of whatever they thought would win a prize. This one goes to a judging panel, rather than a vote, I am surprised to find myself part of that panel, but the bulk of the decision-making is left to still photography fan Q-Funk, and probably a good job too. In the meantime, I am distracted by another competition being outputted to the big screen. This is the Text Mode Demo Competition, organised by Finnish sceners tAAt, with the entries for this one gathered in earlier, and screened here at the Alt Party. This uses a hairy combination of PeeCee demo coding, and the ancient ANSI text mode, beloved of a thousand and one bulletin board logo's c.1991. Apart from the blockiness evident in using such a screen mode, the effects being shown bear every resemblance to contemporary demo stuff. It looks like there are more colours used, than for an old-style CGA/EGA PeeCee, and the level of sound support is 'improvised' in places. The overall standard is very high, and all the demos seem to run from within a smart 'shell' which details the ranking of each demo, counting back to the number #1 entry. In the end, a cool Amiga style oldschool demo, pips a more recognisable Newschool effort to the winning post... With all thoughts of going back to Q-Funk's place before the prizegiving now gone, we decide to repair a food-related deficiency at that purveyor of near-substitute foodlike substances called Madonalds. They do their thing rather smartly, and we return to Gloria, grab a vacant table upstairs, and pig out on the food-substitutes. Soon, the end of Alt Party V is near, only the prizegiving and closing ceremonies are left.... Here is the official results file, with comments added by myself at the end of each category, where it might hopefully help to explain things better. ALTERNATIVE PARTY V - Results Compo: Realtime Mobile Gaming 1) Rasak That one slid right past me... Compo: Realtime Mobile Photography 1) Hydro/Gluterol The event which was judged rather than voted on. There were quite a lot of cool entries for this one. Only one prize winner though! Compo: Two-colour Graphics 1) Is It True? by Ansichrist 85 2) Sad Creature by Ravel/Sleber Eid 84 3) Apt Pupil by DiamondDie/foobug^Numedia Cyclops 53 4) This Forest of Love by Nosfe 47 5) XTC Legalized in Finland Only Minutes Ago by Geel/Faktory 46 6) Bouh! by Baggio/Evulution 45 (*) 7) Really by Serialthriller/Moonhazard 38 8) Paeaestaekaeae minut pois kalliosta by Scoopr 36 9) Uncle-X:n iloksi by 333elite/ISO 27 10) Turin by Visy/Tukka 6 DISQUALIFIED: Sadedelfi by DiamonDienpikkusisko/Numedia Cyclops (reason: author not present at the party) Mun bestiksen penis by 18v jatkaeae jonka mutsi jne of Jumalauta (reason: wrong file format, should have been png) (*) Not such bad going from our Swedish hero. A few more votes would have put him in the prizes. Compo: Realtime Short Story 1) 6 by DiamonDie 43 2) 5 by Elfie 37 2) 2 by Nosfe 37 4) 4 by MegaMies 35 5) 1 by Sauli/JML 20 6) 3 by Molox 19 7) 7 by jobe 15 Compo: Elite Ship Building 1) Battle-damaged Viper by Depressio/Naemok 84 2) Shadow by Spiikki/Dekadence 60 3) Kukkia ja mehiläisiä by Tazze 30 4) Nosfe by Nosfe 30 5) Kirkkovenealus by Britelite/Dekadence 29 6) Afrikka by Ansichrist 28 7) Sidewinder by Ravel/Sleber Eid 26 8) j1g54w by DiamonDie/Foobug^Numedia Cyclops 25 9) Cobra MK-1 Backwards Edition by Scoopr 10 10) Cobra MkII (?) by Tuoppi/Sleber Eid 9 This was a cool competition. Most people contented themselves with colouring in advanced origami recreations of classic Elite spaceships, but the first prize winner was a decent attempt at model-making, including authentic battle damaged laser burning and scarring near the rear of the craft. Now if it could have been flown?! Compo: Sewing 1) Pupu by ISO 44 2) "Dragon" Lohikäärme by Elfie 41 3) Freedom Alt 2004 SEW by Entil / Fractal Kru 31 4) Sunflower by Spiikki/Dekadence 26 5) Alternative Pacman by DiamonDie/Numedia Cyclops 25 6) Squat the Planet by Nosfe 18 6) A Stupid Dog on a Surfboard by MegaMies 18 8) ? by Karvaisten örkkien kasvatusyhdistys 17 9) Growth by Stibe 16 10) Old School by Kristoffer Lawson 14 11) Kala-allas by Molox 12 11) "Die Rebels" by Tuoppi 12 13) How to Get AMIGA by DeLada 10 13) Porkkana by Maarit "Tazze" Klami 10 15) Bernhardilainen by Rasputina 8 15) Squiggly by Liberty 8 17) QBE by Scoopr 7 18) OM by Atte Joutsen 5 Yes, there was such a compo, and the idea blows my brain as well. Compo: General MIDI Music 1) Gone Laserdancing by Little Bitchard/MFX^Kwl 137 2) Blue Sparks by Pinza/Unique 90 3) We Operate by Jobe/Matt Current 76 4) BaBiBu by Paaris/Tukka 48 5) Sunny Games by Sauli 44 6) Rue Tama by Tonic 32 6) Mun Biiisi by Nunna/ISO 32 8) Hiippailua by Waffle 19 Missed this one, sorry, food was more important. Compo: Dynamic Demo 1) Juustomaariageneraattori by Exile Studios 194 (Windows) 2) Micery by Bandwagon & Fit 141 (Mac) 3) L'art_pretentiux by MFX 61 (Windows) 4) Noir by Mäyrä 32 (Windows) 5) Tukkage! by Visy/Tukka 17 (Vic-20) 6) TI-557 by Paaris/Tukka 12 (TI-86) DISQUALIFIED: Hilary Rozen by Donkeysex.com (Atari Falcon) (*) (reason: demo not dynamic) (*) That result wasn't unexpected, but we could have got around it, if we knew in advance the calibre of some of the other entries. (Falling far short of the competition rules by going for some lame randomisation, in my view!) Still, it got shown, and got the most laughs of the evening, which is what counted! The first place entry was some kind of cartoon with a random conversation in Finnish going on between two characters, apparently using incomplete fragments of sentences, and very funny for that part of the audience. The most impressive entry, technically, was the Mac-based 'Micery' demo, which seemed to be more of a simulation with packs of minature clockwork mice roaming around a maze, being chased by different kinds of bouncing balls. Third prize went to Nosfe, for something that was a little bit too messed up through the projector, which had problems handling heavy screenmode switching? The fourth place 'Noir' was a black and white photo slideshow, with a film noir soundtrack, both parts playing randomly. Tukkage, the other oldschool entry, was a fairly simple Vic 20 demo, which managed to randomise colours, and the TI-86 demo did something fairly dull with sine waves. Compo: Software Sound Synthesis 1) Glowing by ld0d 165 (Windows; c; executable size 20480 bytes) 2) Trollenscheisse by Viznut/pWp 140 (GNU/Linux, c & assembly, executable size 2100 bytes) 3) Llamazonia by Gasman 95 (GNU/Linux, perl; source size 1259 bytes) 4) Wavebuilder by Bass Cadet 65 (GNU/Linux, c; executable size 8231 bytes, patch file 2186 bytes) DISQUALIFIED: Jormation by Vesuri/da Jormas (AmigaOS, assembly; 7 executables, ~6370 bytes each) (reason: author not present at the party) Missed that one too, (See MIDI music compo). It was a really good curry though! Compo: Poetry Recital 1) Poetry Resist by ISO 69 2) Fire in Our Hearts by Nosfe 56 3) Elämä by Ravel 55 4) Poetry Recital by Abho 54 5) Ode to the RIAA by Felice/Maggie Team 50 6) Aamukuva by DiamonDie/foobug^Numedia Cyclops 43 7) SMS by Lobotomy 21 A closely packed top order there, only a handful of votes separating 2nd from 5th place, Felice was unlucky there! Felice was also the only english language entry, as far as I remember? Compo: Silent Movie 1) Vihannexia - Vegetables by MegaMies 125 2) Harmu 19,417 by Kameli 59 3) Paranoid by Numedia Cyclops 45 4) Agnosia Live by Agnosia 33 5) Virne voittaa Nosfen kompossa by Virne 30 6) The Last Best Hope by Ravel 25 7) Infinity^2 by Nosfe 22 8) Untitled by Stibe 20 9) Aropupu by ISO 19 10) Mun on niin paha olla by Perselintu! 17 11) Kohtalon tanssi by Tukka 13 One of the more memorable competitions, apart from the fact that all the entries blur together in a series of half-recalled impressions and images, so the war grave movie blends into the silent band playing a gig, closely followed by a couple of cartoon detectives blowing up a petrol station! Bass Cadet on piano, with his classic 'silent movie soundtrack' style, proved to be an effective accompaniment to these films. Compo: Realtime Comic-drawing 1) 11 by Ansichrist 51 2) 5 by Britelite/Dekadence 39 3) 1 by J. Pupu 26 4) 3 by DiamonDie 25 5) 7 by Nosfe 21 6) 6 by Jobe/MC 20 7) 16 by Spiikki 19 8) 13 by Modust/Exile 18 9) 10 by Gasman/Hooy Program 16 10) 4 by Uhef/Exile 14 11) 12 by Kanttu 11 12) 2 by cih (*) 10 12) 14 by Felor 10 14) 15 by Antti Mikkinen 9 14) 9 by Paaris/Tukka 9 16) 8 by Vizy/Tukka 3 (*) Yes I did have a go at that. Twelth place reflects the fact that from a thirty minute competition, I spent ten minutes on my entry! The funniest entry was a satire of 'Clippy', the Microsoft annoying desktop widget, given 'alternative' work as a stethoscope. A: You are feeling a funny pain in your left arm. B: You are about to die! C: Why don't you reboot windows.. D: Please buy this expensive health insurance! Or something like that, anyway, I hope it won. Compo: BASIC Demo 1) Excellence[tm] by Ananasmurska 90 (Excel) 2) Solutus by ISO 71 (QBasic) 3) Hikiliikkuja - Perspiratual Motion Machine by tAAt 2004 61 (GW-BASIC) 4) Sieni pakottaa by Nyyrikki 49 (MSX Basic 4 & X-Basic) 5) Threederles by Spiikki/Nalleperhe^DKD 40 (QuickBasic) 6) Oksennus 2 by Megamies/Gluterol 34 (QuickBasic) 7) One Last Time by Lucid 16 (AmigaBasic) 8) Sikakreisi by Pahamoka/Naemok 14 (QuickBasic) 9) Mutsiis kans by Visy/Tukka 12 (QBasic) 10) 288 Lines of QBasic Power! by RV-1991 11 (QBasic) 11) Weeden by Depili 4 (Casio FP-200) Cool! The Excel demo won! The overall standard of this compo was pretty good. Compo: World Domination 1) IRC-Galleria This was the obligatory Setok fit of self-indulgence competition. The general aim of this competition was to achieve 'World Domination', or a state as close as possible, and to have this process documented by the media. This could have meant anything, from Finnish demo collective advances world revolution agenda with excessively preachy manifesto, to finnish demo collective swallows and destroys Microsoft through cunning use of global capital etc... Compo: Most Obscure Computer 1) Bethvoid/Bleubtreu (Texas Instruments some model) Do you get the feeling that the original interest in older hardware is slipping away rather too quickly to be decent?! ------------------------ A:\ Run exit procedures -------------------------- The prize giving ceremony goes on for a while, with all the different competitions. The lucky (male) winners have the added bonus of being greeted by the lovely Alt Party mascot 'MaryCloud', and more of her later, yes yes, you've said that before! From there, dissolution is remarkably quick, and the end is near. it is at that point, that we get to meet some last minute people, in the form of a couple of UK'ers who we managed to miss seeing for the entire duration of the party up to now! These are a couple of Welsh females, with the look of a mother and daughter set-up. I didn't get enough information about the precise nature of their relationship to each other? They are connected with the inner workings of Llamasoft and the sheep cult surrounding Jeff "otherwise quite sane" Minter. We get on like the proverbial house-inferno, they mention something about a Llamasoftie camping trip that might well come about in the summer. With that news, Alt Partygoers are flying in all directions, and soon, it is our turn to leave the scene of the crime too. Q-Funk has managed to book a massively luxurious taxi-like minibus. A vehicle which can carry seven people and luggage in comfort has no problem with us three, and our slender baggage requirements, and pretty soon, we are at the new Q-Funklie GHQ, somewhere in the outer reaches of Helsinki. Whilst we have been running in a self-contained manner in the party environment, outside, some fresh falls of snow have been making life interesting, as we slather the last couple of yards back to Q-Funks apartment. We soon settle in, a large degree of tiredness takes over for the next couple of hours or so, as Martin's bed is so very comfortable, and he catches up with various domestic items and IRC'ing, and Felice makes various people reassuring phone calls to distant parts of the world. Thoughts eventually turn to getting an evening meal. This is within a short walking distance at the local Chinese restaurant, which is having a quiet post-Xmas Sunday. Whilst waiting for the three-course meal that we ordered, Q-Funk explains that the Chinese restaurant trade around these parts is very helpful, as they are the only places open on Xmas day! Fine if you can't be too bothered yourself. Whilst we are eating our meal, Q-Funk starts to worry about a French guy called 'Nystep' who turned up to Alt, who is staying at some seedy dive in the downtown part of Helsinki. Nystep latched onto Marty as a friendly French-speaking source of help, in an otherwise strange country. Nystep is experiencing hassles with the owners of said seedy dive, and having difficulties in drawing cash out of the hole in the wall ATM. (Both of these problems proved to be entirely solveable upon closer examination.) Anyway, there is a pre-planned pub crawl taking place from 20.00hrs on, in that same downtown area. So it is, we are headed there just a bit later on... The journey to downtown takes in quite a lot of public transport, both above ground, and the subway and also about half a mile's worth of sliding across snow-covered pavements. Setok is tantalisingly imprecise about where he and the other organisers have located themselve to, but a phone call later finds us in the right place. We gratefully enter the bar, and the bartender seems to be glad to see us, to the point of shouting greetings.... "Hey hey!" he shouts, we think, "Great, he knows us!", but his remarks are addressed to the two drunks nearby, who are busily twatting each other in the near corner. Well it was mainly one guy hitting the other, who seemed to be rolling rather well with the incoming punches. We conclude that it would perhaps be a bit premature to start ordering drinks at that moment?! The warring parties are disentangled and evicted, with a cheery "Fuck you!" issuing from the more insulted and aggressive party, and we are able to settle down for the rest of the evening, robbing the chairs that have just been forcibly cleared for our own use! Apart from Setok, several other organisers and their guests are present as well, including Baggio, Partycle, Wiztom, and several females seen in various places around the party. Q-Funk goes to talk to Nystep, to sort out his situation, even leaving the bar with him at some point, to sort out the hotel hassles. The rest of the evening passes very pleasantly, but we gradually become aware of another fuckwit starting to intrude on our enjoyment horizon. This is a middle-aged drunk, complete with a Saddam Hussein style untidy beard, whose idea of haute couture is to wear clothing with the beer company logo printed on it. He is not unpleasant at first, even speaking some drunkard French dialect to the unfortunate Nystep. He, without his prior consent, has been previously appointed this evening's "Loony magnet", thus freeing the rest of us from such drunken menaces! By the time people are starting to leave, it is almost the midnight hour, and this guy is offering to fight people in English. We don't get to witness the aftermath, but gather that a vigilant bar tender managed to sort out this person, and send him on his way too. Back across town, and a dash for a late bus home. Miss late bus, pass a few not unpleasant minutes waiting for the next one, and reflecting on the fun and games of the party thus far. We get back home soon after, and put an end to Sunday, a general collapse into various forms of sleeping equipment follows! READ B:\monday\big_sleep_in\dontwake.prg Ah, pleasant blackness, soft but unyielding. Well almost, as when it is just starting to get light, a dreamstorm across my cerebral cortex blasts me to a brief wakefulness. A quick bathroom pitstop helps greatly, and the next bout of sleep is a much more relaxing affair. Eventually, at some point very late in the morning, or early in the afternoon, we all manage to stir ourselves very reluctantly, eventually doing the getting up thing. I finally get to meet Q-Funks' new room-mate, who came with the new apartment. He is a big improvement on the mad drunk from the two previous Alt sleepovers. His only fault is to look something like a Finnish edition of Yahoo Serious! In the adjoining room, his very nice cutie blonde girlfriend can be seen playing something with a shooty- death mayhem theme on their PeeCee.. We are only able to rouse ourselves very slowly, in the post party aftermath. It is getting into the late afternoon period by the time we manage to drag ourselves off to town. We make sure that our after-party gear is taken with us, as we are planning to make our way straight there in the evening, without coming back to Martin's place. Outside, it has been snowing somewhat, not too heavily, but enough to provide something of fresh interest to walk on. A bus looms out of the grey and blizzardy conditions and we get on gratefully. Then a very lengthy episode of bus and local railway gets us to the residence of Q-Funk's current squeeze, whom we met briefly at the party. She is at work, but Martin catches up on his sanitary refreshment there, and that apartment is very comfortable, too much so, when we have to venture forth into the snowfields once more.. We go back into the city centre, this time on a search for pizza. This is duly found, in a neat bar-cafe not too far from Rax's, the domain of 'Eat until you explode'. Q-Funk is a regular there, and the bar person seems to know him well. What is given to us foodwise, is plenty to be going on with. Whilst we are contentedly pigging away, Nystep turns up, his hotel and monetary hassles solved, and he is seemingly pleased to see us. The next vital and necessary step, is to secure some inportant alcohol supplies for the after-party, and it is to the 'Alko' booze shoppe, that we adjourn to next. We spend an enjoyable fifteen or so minutes mulling the many choices over. Felice opts for a bottle of fine old red wine, I am caught in a dilemma over several different varieties of flavoured vodka, choosing a big bottle for public enjoyment, and a smaller bottle for my own abuse! We pay for our liquor, carefully averting the distainful gaze of the cashier, who no doubt has had state-sponsored training, with periodic refresher courses, in the art of looking down on people who choose intoxicating liquids for pleasure. Time is getting on by then, the appointed hour of sauna is near! Thence we goto the mighty After-party! A bus ride gets us to the spot where we came upon Jeff Minter and visiting party last year, and we head, bottles clinking, firstly to the place where the Reservoir Gods refused to bow down and worship the sauna after the third Alt Party. This turns out to be the wrong venue, so we head on over to the scene of last year's Yak-baptism of steam, which happens to be the right location for this year's shindig. RUN C:\afterprt.prg Now this afterparty left lots and lots of different impressions. It might take me a while to gather in all the juicy ones, so bear with me a bit. Anyway, I can tell you straight off, that we were there nice and early, before most other people had arrived. We donate our booze to the kitchen supplies, and start to discreetly crack open the odd bottle or two ourselves. Felice develops a taste for the vodka that I brought. Meanwhile, he has unpacked his laptop, having first remembered to bring it with him, and we are initially absorbed in browsing off the 'No Fragments' ST demo collection CDR, via the STeem emulator. Other people gradually start to arrive, the sauna is warming up, a big log fire crackles invitingly in the fireplace nearby. Another stout Atarian, Baggio, has opted to stay around for this afterparty, which was a good decision on his part. Setok turns up briefly, and disappears again for a time, the better to catch some more sleep, other recognisable faces, such as Twilighte, Partycle, and Wiztom all turn up before too long too. The expensive Epsom projector, which made the Alt Party bigscreen so viewable, is back with us again. The sponsors would no doubt be horrified to see it put to work in such a drunken and bohemian environment! There is a muchly varied menu of things shown on the big screen. A strange game by Finnish demo collective 'tAAt' seems to be very popular, which is a person- mashing game at the hands, or wheels of a big truck. You take turns to crash this person and truck into a wall, tweaking settings for position and angles of ramps, and even where to have this person sitting, inside, outside, or right in front of the truck! Damage points are built up, according to how catastrophic your "solution" is! Nobody we saw got into the really big points shown on the highscore, but we did have some amusing moments on the way, such as the run which catapaulted the player perfectly onto the top of the wall, or the crash which suceeded in lobbing them over the wall, but the camera panned around just in time to catch the last limb-twitch of the newly created corpse! Finnish sceners, criminally insane? Naah! Just "differently moralled"! There are lots of different PeeCee things. A wide selection of demo material over the course of the evening, fortunately without the Amiga gayscene material which blighted last year. We even have a little bit of a go ourselves, as Felice manages to hook up his laptop, with the No Fragments disk, and bash the population with a selection of the ST's greatest hits, he chooses oldschool stuff such as the evergreen Mindbomb, where as I opt for some newer smash hits, such as EIL 3 hit 'Darkness'. Of course, the still mighty 'Brain-Damage' got a choice spot, out of respect to the members of Aggression who attended the party. Wiztom delights in telling us which bits of that demo, were cunning coding cheats! And did we manage to get away without playing "H-Demo IV"? Of course not! It is made even better when we are able to point out one of the participants in that notorious video capture, namely Baggio, who tried to accentuate his lack of hair and growth of beard compared with back then, but without success! It may have been a couple of hours, or possibly even more in, by the time the sauna kicked off? The arrival of a still uncharacteristically quiet Nosfe changed the mood, as he was in there first. Soon, a stream of people were making their way to the changing rooms, for the latest instalment of naked steam powered action! This starts off in the usual manner, familiar to readers of past Alt Party reports. But after a while, certain format changes become apparent. A number of females conncted with the Alt Party have also turned up. This injection of the fairer sex includes the fragrant presence of the delicious Marycloud! It soon becomes apparent that these female members are not waiting for the creation of a segregated sauna area, as they strip off and join right in! Suddenly, those people not already committed to the Sauna, become more than usually interested! Without going into details, and looking like a bit of a pervert in the course of writing this report, I might take this opportunity to pass my compliments on to all the women who entered the sauna with us, on the night of that afterparty! You were all very nice indeed! Notwithstanding the interesting fact that a mixed sauna is not so common in Finland, most people take matters in their stride. A hotbox with added steam isn't the sort of place where you get too excited. However, others weren't so easy with the concept, as poor old Nystep managed to get a stiffy upon sighting the fair and unencumbered female flesh. (I'm not taking bets, but I've got a feeling it was MaryCloud 'wot triggered that reaction!?) When this was mentioned to her later, she took it as a compliment! The whole sauna thing goes on for quite a while, a lot longer even than at the previous after-parties. The action transfers to the smaller wood burning sauna. I was one of the first in there, whilst it was still getting to full temperature. It was a very nice sauna, especially when the steam was up. According to sauna expert Setok, a lot less harsh and easier to tolerate for longer periods than the big electric one. Some people went outside briefly, Nystep with the ladies rolling in the snow, possibly to reduce his groinal swelling?! I went outside for a while with Twilighte and others, which was a tolerable feeling, apart from everyone's feet getting very cold. The sauna action climaxes (ahem!) with a record of sorts being established for the most people in a confined space. This would be two women, and a dozen blokes in a space which would fit nine people comfortably! And I was in there, at one stage, sitting next to MaryCloud, who was the 'middle layer' of a lap-sitting 'sandwich!' She was clearly enjoying the situation, and the guy underneath had never suffocated more enjoyably! The whole sauna experience, naked chicks and all lasted a long time, I reckon past midnight. In between skinny-dipping sessions in steam, Marycloud was indulging in a series of make-up experiments on various people, who were prepared to put up with the minor inconvenience of her wrigging on them! Twilighte and Partycle were painted up to look like Rocky Horror Show extras. In the meantime, our old friend, and the refuge of the labouring classes, DRINK had not been forgotten. There was plenty of it brought into the party. I soon managed to finish off my own personal supplies, with the enthusiastic help of Felice, who turned into a little bit of a vodka fan that night! Then it was time to tuck into the substances that others had brought with them! Quite a bit later, some people fell off the pace. Twilighte was one such, as he crashed for a couple of hours near the end of the party. Some people resorted to a Playstation dance-mat game for crazed entertainment. The log fire roared on, the drink was gradually searched out and drunk. I seem to remember carrying out a search of the kitchen area with someone, possibly Wiztom, and carrying on a loud conversation like something out of the Viz Comic "Drunk Bakers" strip. "Looks like all the vodka's gone... Good stuff that is.." "Here, have a shot at this Pastis that Nystep brought, it's strong stuff on its own, but better with water, turns all milky..." "Mmmm, not sure about that one, tastes funny, like aniseed.." A bit later still and some people get an attack of the munchies. This entails eating anything to hand... There was a nice open fire, which some people were in danger of falling into, but there was no reindeer stew, or barbeque sausages organised. The snacks and crisps supplied had long gone by then. I do remember getting my hands on a small microwave pizza, which tasted fantastic in the booze-fuddled and hunger-sharpened conditions. Eventually, at around 06.00, the party is beginning to run down. Everything fun or useful has been done, and everything consumable has run dry. I am starting to feel more than a little sleepy myself. There is something of an en-masse departure for early buses, as the bleary-eyed crowd staggers into the new day.. Our bus takes us most of the way home. Not quite all, as we walk the last half a mile partway across the bridge back to the city centre, which was alarmingly described as 'two kilometres' by the Q of Funk. So either he is a very poor judge of distance, (See Altparty III report!) Or a particularly miraculous "beer taxi"(*) was operating that morning! (*) Definition time, ho hum, "Beer Taxi", the means whereby you somehow get home when you are very drunk, without being able to recall too much of the journey back! So about ten minutes of walking later, I recognise that I am back in Q-Fey's neighbourhood, and the cheer in my heart substains me the last hundred metres or so to my waiting bed and SLEEP! FIND D:\wake_up_dammit\tuesday.prg We struggled awake sometime around midday, maybe a bit later. There was a simple plan for our last day, which was to meet up with the remaining international visitors, at the premises of 'Molly Malones for one last session. It is late afternoon before we have pulled ourselves together properly, to be able to get away to town. Q-Funk's room-mate is very helpful with a big supply of fresh hot coffee on tap, but he has to leave as well. We meet with Twilighte in the rather congenial 'Pullman Cafe', which is on the top floor of the Central Railway Station. This has a limited but tasty menu, so we order food, and linger for a fair while there. We do get talking about various ALT party issues, and dishing out the gossip on some of the people at Alt. We also get to hear a bit more of the inside story of 'Alt- TV', and the people doing silly crazy things with it, early in the morning! (Hi Setok!) We get to Molly's first, order drinks, and find out that a lot of our first choices aren't actually available, for one reason or another, try again, and again, until we all have something we're reasonably happy with, then proceed to find a spot in the far corner that can accomodate us, and the rest when they turn up. Baggio, Partycle, Wiztom all arrive soon after. We spend a considerable dollop of time at Mollys, at least getting another drink or two there. Some kind of live music act is setting up on the small stage nearby, so most of the visiting party leaves, apparently going on to some snooker place. But Q-Funk, Felice and I stay where we are, as Q-Funk's girlfriend, and her best friend are coming to meet us at Molly's. The band start to play, and it turns out to be an undemanding rock outfit, playing cover versions of middle of the road stuff, at a not too harsh volume. Clearly the exposure to the many and varied live acts at Alt, has raised our game for musical endurance! We even get talking to some of the local females who are watching the band next to us. I end up chatting to a redheaded girl called Miha. (excuse spelling of the name?) She had been to the UK, and had gained some interestingly hairy work experience over there. She was good company, a good laugh even, and she revealed that she had just finished with her significant other, and was going out with some friends to cheer herself up. It seemed to be working... I get the feeling that I could have been onto a good thing if the situation had been slightly different? But then again, I could be kidding myself ;-) As the midnight hour approaches, Mollys is getting very crowded, awaiting the climax of the live music, but we bid farewell to our new friends, and start back home, as we have a bit of an early start for the flight home. RUN E:\oh_fuck_is_it_that_early\time_to_go_home\exit.prg Wednesday, 06.30hrs.. Wake up, stagger in darkness, lights go on, bathroom, get dressed, pack everything, crush last gasp of air from air mattress. Between the three of us, this final act is carried out awesomely quickly, to the point where we are ready to set off by 07.00. So we do.. There is not a lot more to add, we are well-served by the various buses going from Q-Funk's to the airport, the latter service being the luxurious direct shuttlebus connection. It is still very dark out, as we glimpse the rush hour traffic building up but going the other way into town. The flight back is a weary action-replay of the flight over, and all too soon, we are back in time-adjusted to GMT Britain. Stanstead proved to be easy to negotiate, and we reacquaint ourselves with Felice's car, driving on the correct side of the road, and so on. One little surprise was brought back with us, no, not Nosfe springing out from the aircraft undercarriage well screaming "Fire in your heart!" in Finnish, but an increasingly Suomi-style snowfall, which got more intense as the journey back to Felice's wore on. I pause for a short time at his place, in order to deposit the Alt-travelled Falcon with him, and take up my car keys for part II of the journey back. Now the snowfall is really looking serious, and by the time I get back to the Northampton traffic mix, I have more to fear from the stumbling idiots failing to cope with the wet and slippery conditions than I ever did in Helsinki. I do get home in one piece though, and gratefully collapse, before logging on to check out all the lovely spam that has silted up my mailbox while I've been away. Another Alt Adventure is over! PAUSE A:\rounding_up\summing-up\endbit.prg Okay, so what have we learned from our latest soujourn to Finland, this time around? This fifth edition was never going to be quite able to match up to last years Minterquake. This years guest, a Finnish geek turned MP was most notable for keeping his appearance brief and to the point, but then again, where were they ever going to get another guest of Mr Minter's calibre? The view in some quarters was, that perhaps some of the competitions were perhaps a bit too alternate? The main demo competition suffered from an interesting idea, which turned out to be not so great when people attempted to put it into practice. We also have to sadly note a certain number of missing people from this year's party. The big man Teque briefly arrived at the party, but wasn't seen by many people. Pahartik didn't make it at all, and also on the list of the missing, was Oric killer Dbug, who couldn't make it either. The party atmosphere felt a bit more self-contained and parochial in places this time around. There seems to be a confusion over wanting to attract more international visitors, but there was a feeling that Alt could equally turn inward into a very local event, with little to appeal to outsiders. There was a tendency for the organisers and their friends to be a little bit cliquey and self-indulgent in some ways. Is it possible we could all be running out of sharpness and excitement and stumbling into a well worn rut of routine now? Maybe we were feeling the acute lack of something Minteresque, to act as a sharp poke in the eye of complacency? A lot of the competition entries and general entertaiment was in the Finnish language, and much of it tended to run on in-jokes made for the benefit of a few select people. This is fair enough, as it was their party, to run as you wish, but it got a bit teeth-grating to be told that something like that is the "funniest" thing on this planet, when it isn't to your ears, which happened to me more than once! The 'oldschool' computer theme staged a brave rearguard action against an increasing marginalisation, aided and abetted by a certain Falcon '030, against the waves of relentless laptops. There was even a semi-respectable amount of entries from Amiga, MSX, and Vic 20 in the competitions this time around. With regard to the usual rowdy crowd, they were there as well, very much in a nocturnal sense. I thought of making some kind of simulation, computer wargaming Drunk Polski vs Suomi sceners! It would be too close to tell which would out-drink the other?! It was great to see many familiar people again. The usual suspects like Marty (Q-Funk), Setok, Partycle, Wiztom, and Ravel all came forward. Lobotomy, another of the organisers, and the evil arch-compo entry disqualifier, became better known to me this time. Of newer people, I got talking to Diamondie, sometime diskmag queen (writes for Hugi) and we met some new people such as Nystep and the welshies for the first time. There was also the welcome presence of fellow UK'ers like Ian 'Jagfest' Smith, and the return of Twilighte. He now seems to be more involved in the Alt-TV side of things, and attended last year's Assembly Party in the summer. Also Baggio made up for the rest of the Swedes not being there, by sticking around for the afterparty, a good move, even when H-demo IV was being played! I seem to remember that there was at least one other UK person there, an individual going under the nick of "Gasman", but we never got around to spotting him. The afterparty rocked! It gets better each year! No other words needed really... Well, just one more thing. I send out greetings to Marycloud, Osyn and the other females who joined in the sauna with us. You were all fantastically cool! (In a very steam-heated way!) On a personal note, it was great to get the second Dildo Fatwa production out of the door, and onto the big screen. Even if it didn't get anywhere in the competition, we did seem to wake up those parts of the audience sent comatose by some of the previous entries. Maybe some people capable of making proper demos on Atari might be more motivated to challenge at the next Alt Party? I also give a lot of thanks to Martin (Q-Funky person) for putting up with us as always. We hope that this year goes a lot better for you than this last one. Thanks again pal! To conclude, I ejoyed this Alt edition a hell of a lot, I'm looking forward to the next one, but I won't get too wound up if it is rested for a little while, and allowed to freshen up a bit. CiH, for Alive Mag, Jan '04