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--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Table Of Contents
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
     Opening:
        Message From the Editor
     Features:
        Party Report -- Asm '03
        Party Report -- Pilgrimage '03
        Organizing a US Demo Party
     Reviews:
        Music:
           In Tune -- Assembly and Pilgrimage Winners
           On The Sideline -- "My Sweet Atlas" by Kaneel
           The Lineup -- Monthly Music Listings
        Demo:
           Screen Lit Vertigo --
              "Legomania", "I Feel Like a Computer", "Schism", and "Ciasson"
     Opinion / Commentary:
        A New Perspective For A Tiny Scene
        Coplan's Eyes -- A Snob of What?
     Link List: Get Somewhere in the Scene
     Closing: Staff and Contact Information


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Message From the Editor
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Welcome to this month's Static Line.  Apologies for the slightly late
  posting; we wanted to bring you party reports of Assembly and Pilgrimage,
  which meant extending the deadline a bit.  We have a great issue this
  month folks.. no really, it's going to be great.

  What a month!  In this issue we have party reports for both parties, and
  reviews for some of the winning demos and songs.  We also have some
  insightful commentary from Phoenix about the scene in the USA, and from
  Legalize about what goes on behind the scene when organizing a party.  We
  finally catch up on the Lineup with one last double-month issue, and
  Coplan wrote a commentary about platform elitism.

  Without further ado, enjoy this issue.

                 --Ben Collver


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Party Report
    Assembly '03
  By:  Seven
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Because the flight to Helsinki leaves early in the morning, I had two
  options: get up in the middle of the night, and hurry like mad to get the
  train to the airport, check in the luggage, and board the plane or (the
  option I took): leave the evening before, sleep in the airport and take my
  sweet time to board the plane.  As a result I'm already suffering from a
  lack of sleep before the party even has started, cause I slept only a few
  hours on the cold hard airport floor.  Let's hope I can catch up in the
  plane :)

  -=- Thursday 7 August -=-
  The plane flight went without a hitch, especially since I slept most of
  the time.  Within minutes I had found a taxi that could drive me to
  Hartwall Arena, the huge hockey stadium in which Assembly takes place.  I
  arrived at noon, right when the doors should open, but that was delayed a
  bit.  Scanning the crowd for familiar faces, I notice Newt and
  Dubwood/Razor1911 with a couple of Cryogenic guys.  When the doors finally
  open, the queue moves very very slowly to the entrance where you've to
  open all your bags so the security people can confiscate all your alcohol,
  drugs, weapons.  After a final pat-down I'm deemed not a terrorist
  (Whahahaa! Little do they know ;) ) and I proceed to the ticket booth.
  The friendly lady finds my reservation right away, I pay the entrance fee
  and get tagged with the prestigious red "vip-ticket" wristband which
  allows me into the holy oldskool area.

  Having arrived there, I notice there's no place marked on my ticket, so
  it's back to the infodesk to find out where I should sit.  The problem: I
  seem to have bought an oldskool entry ticket, but that does not include a
  computer place! I must have missed a check box on the reservation form :(
  While I curse myself, they call up Abyss to know if there are any places
  left I could take, and while the oldskool area is completely booked, there
  are some places left in the main hall close to the oldskool entrance.  I
  gladly take one of those, relieved I can still use my laptop and walk
  around in the oldskool hall.  To further ease the pain, I grab the awesome
  free Asm03 poster, and my preordered Asm02 compilation DVD.

  After installing my stuff, I find out what's wrong with my camera (wrongly
  formatted CF card, easily fixed) and take a peek at the DVD.  Wheee! My
  party report from last year is on it! I feel like a child who got a "well
  done!" from the teacher :)

  16:22:
  I've been looking around for people I know, but there aren't many yet.
  The oldskool area is still largely empty, and Boozembly is deserted.  In
  the meantime, I've been snapping away with my now-functioning camera,
  making souvenirs of the party place, its weird inhabitants and their
  sometimes wacky computers.

  16:57:
  Just like last year, there is a relay of the demoscene radio Nectarine at
  the party place.  The main sound system is playing it at the moment, time
  to request some good songs :)

  17:50:
  I've been watching some old C64 demos with Beyond Force, a really oldskool
  group.  When I mentioned the C64 version of "Second Reality" by Smash
  Design, they said it proves that "Second Reality" on PC was actually a
  lousy demo because it can be done equally well on a C64 :) I then made the
  mistake of mentioning the long fractal zoom from "Crystal Dreams II",
  thinking nothing like that could be done on a C64 but of course they
  promptly dug up a production with a Mandelbrot zoom.  And they had even
  older equipment: TNT is the proud owner of a Z88 laptop with a screen of
  maybe 4 LCD lines, upgraded to the max with 512 KB ram and several flash
  cartridges.  The little thingie can run a day on 4 AA batteries, compare
  that to todays power guzzlers!

  18:32:
  The opening ceremony hasn't started yet, I hope the orgos will follow the
  schedule as well as they did last year.  Bjorn Lynne is selling various
  scene CDs again, last year I didn't have enough money but now I came
  prepared.  An instant later I've the Meregon, Audiophonic and Instant
  Remedy CDs in my possession (about time for some of those :))

  The lights go out and everyone applauds.  The view of the thousands of
  computers in the dark with their screens, LEDs, case-mod lights etc
  glowing looks incredible!

  The opening ceremony is pretty standard: first an animation with the
  highlights of last year, then Abyss gives a pep talk about how much better
  this Assembly will be.  He sums up the new features (the outdoor concert,
  the Robotosa demonstration,...) and ends with his "Sceners and gamers:
  they CAN live together in peace"-speech.  Cheezy, but essential if we
  don't want this party to turn into a bloody carnage.

  20:33:
  The Demo Top10, oldskool edition on Assembly TV just started, and it's
  also shown on the big screen.  It's an attempt to make a scene-version of
  the usual music top10 on TV, but it has a few flaws IMHO.  While the
  choice of demos and their positions is OK (made with public voting), they
  are announced from the first to the last place, which kills most of the
  anticipation.  Also, comments that the voters gave for each demo and which
  the girl who announces the demos reads from paper, are all very similar
  (think "This is probably one of the best demos ever, with great music and
  good design.  Enjoy!").  But those are minor bad points, it's great to
  watch some old and newer classics from Byterapers, Bandwagon and PWP
  again.

  The pizza is still expensive: 3.5 Euro for one slice :( Behind the various
  food shops, which sell fast food 24 hours a day, are a number of sponsor
  booths.  Here you can buy overclocking hardware such as water coolers or
  exotic fans, high-precision mouses and mouse pads for (supposedly)
  superior gaming, network cards and cables for those who forgot them at
  home, and fluorescent lights for all your case-modding needs.

  AMD is showing off a PC running at 4055 Mhz (only a few tens of Mhz better
  than last year), HP has a area with tens of comfortable sit bags, probably
  meant to watch one of their presentations but which are quickly co-opted
  as sleeping area, and Nokia is advertising their new phone-plus-game-
  console the NGage.  I talked a bit to one of the Nokia guys about their
  business model for the NGage, they want to keep the platform open so
  everybody can develop for it without paying huge license fees as with
  Nintendo.  You can pay to get libraries so you can develop your game
  faster, but it's not obliged.  So we'll probably see it in the mobile demo
  compo next year :)

  22:40:
  There'll be a "Dance Dance Revolution" contest in the official "Unofficial
  compos" at midnight, but in the meantime the organizers allowed everyone
  to try and make an idiot of theirselves, a chance I happily took :) In
  case you don't know, DDR is one of those crazy Japanese games where you
  have to jump on a controller mat with arrows on the buttons, with the aim
  of duplicating the pattern of arrows that move on your screen in the
  rhythm of the song you selected.  It's rather difficult at first, but it
  starts to be addicting after a while.

  The design of the Assembly T-shirt is much better than last year, IMHO, so
  I bought one before they are gone.  There's the same cute animal on it as
  on the poster, a mix of a dolphin, a tiger, an dragon and a kangaroo.

  23:27:
  Assembly is full of custom made cases and crazy mods, but one of the best
  has to be the PC-in-a-microwave I saw at the oldskool area.  It has a TFT
  screen in the door, the motherboard and hard drive on the inside and
  there's a slot loaded DVD at the back, like a toaster.  The control
  buttons on the front are rewired to the power and reset buttons, the OSD
  (On Screen Display) buttons and the sound volume.

  It's actually made by a small company, Genesi, that makes PCs for
  hobbyists or nostalgic people.  The hardware is a custom PowerPC board
  with a 600 Mhz G3 CPU, running the MorphOS.  They've quite some software
  for it, including an emulator for old Sierra games such as Leisure Suit
  Larry.  A mature platform indeed :)

  The game development entries were distributed before the party, so there's
  little surprise in this compo.  Taat will probably win again with their
  upgrade to "Stair dismount".  In "Truck dismount", you must do as much
  damage as possible to a little guy, using a wall, a truck and two ramps.
  In the compos they made the truck hit the wall so it landed standing on
  its cabin, and then it sloooowly toppled over on the puppets head, cruel
  but funny to see.  The weirdest game has to be "Bailer", a Linux simuation
  of a leaky boat navigating towards an island.  Your mission: to use a cup
  to shovel enough water out your boat to reach the island.  If you succeed,
  you can buy bigger cups.  Mindless and ugly drawn, but funny nonetheless.
  More playable games include "Space Adventures of a Small Ship", a variant
  of the old spacewar duels between 2 ships but with lots of different ships
  and options, "Netpuck", a hockey simulation, and "Pekka Kanna 2", a very
  well drawn platform game with a rooster.  It suffered a bit of the fixed
  640*400 resolution, it was shown rather small on the 800*600 big screen.

  -=- Friday 8 August -=-
  1:00:
  The DDR compo was fun to watch, but it took place beside the Counterstrike
  compo so occasionally it was interrupted by loud cheers of the fans when
  their favorite clan had made a frag.  I've been making photos of the
  compos and the party place, because everyone is still awake the first
  night so you get much more impressive overview pics of the halls.  Night
  after night, more and more monitors are turned off when their owners
  succumb to the temptation of sleep (which I'm feeling strongly as well
  right now).

  When I got to my table, there was a guy telling me I had a nice laptop,
  and he asked whether it had a DVD or CDRW.  At first I was puzzled why he
  was asking this, then my paranoia woke up and I realized this was
  interesting info for would-be thieves, so I drew his attention to the lock
  connecting it to the table.  He and his friend suddenly had to go, leaving
  me feeling rather suspicious.  After some doubt I packed my stuff and
  checked it in at the info desk.  They charge a Euro to keep an eye on it,
  but at least I know my plane ticket, camera or wallet won't be missing
  when I wake up.

  9:30:
  Back awake, to an extend.  I reinstalled my stuff, and went for some food.
  Sandwiches are also expensive :/

  10:39:
  Not much is happening.  The big screen shows the AssemblyTV broadcasts,
  but I prefer to listen to Nectarine.  It's getting cold in the hall, and I
  regret not bringing a sweater.

  12:42:
  I started coding a little on my texture generator, an ongoing project to
  be used in some hypothetical future production.

  13:10:
  The Demo top10, PC edition is shown on the big screen.  There's a nice mix
  of old and new demos, but I have my doubts on the sanity of some voters.
  Of course tastes differ, blablala :) I'll let you judge for yourself:

  1: "Second Reality"/Future Crew
  2: "FR-25 (The popular demo)"/Farbrausch
  3: "Live Evil"/Mandula
  4: "Variform"/Kewlers
  5: "Paimen"/Coma
  6: "Project Plant"/EMF
  7: "Dope"/Complex
  8: "Nonstop Ibiza Experience"/Orange
  9: "VIP2"/Popsy Team
  10: "Haujobb: Liquid wen"

  After each Top10 a random voter is picked who wins a T-shirt, and this
  time Melwyn is the lucky winner.

  14:33:
  Last year I was running into people I knew from other demo parties all the
  time, but this year there seems to be few non-Finnish visitors, even in
  the oldskool area and at Boozembly.  I've seen Nosfe, who said Kewlers &
  MFX are going to release a demo here, and Dixan and Melwyn should be here
  too but I haven't seen them yet.

  15:52:
  The ALT party orgos are organizing some small fun-compos, such as a
  Nethack compo, a marathon (running around the building), and a poetry
  recital compo which I just saw.  Most poems were in Finnish, except one
  ode to an Atari ST, and two "poems" based on a cooking receipt and the
  usage instructions of a name tag.  As you can guess, participating is more
  important than winning :)

  16:33:
  The fast graphics compo is about to begin.  The participants had only 90
  minutes to make a picture about a given subject.

  The subject seems to have been ice cubes and summer.  There were 8 pics,
  with one very clear winner: "The Magic Ice cube of the Caribbean", it's
  really a striking picture with amazing colors.  The other entries aren't
  half as good, but still well above joke-entry level.

  The fast music compo is next, the second entry was my favorite, a really
  energetic tune whose name I unfortunately don't remember because I was
  paying too much attention to the giant sound meters on the stairs.  Since
  the arena is a hockey stadium, there are stairs all around the ground
  level, leading to the chairs.  On eight of those, the orgos put large
  1-character LED displays on each step.  They blink following the volume of
  the music, so the whole arena looks like a giant sound meter, including
  the green-yellow-red pattern.  And before each compo, the LEDs display the
  phrases "KILL ALL" "AUDIO & LIGHTS".

  18:36:
  The hand drawn graphics compo is over: 20 pics in various styles, with
  some very good ones.  I really liked "Parallel Twirl" and "Find The Little
  Green Men".  For each picture, the title and entry number are shown first,
  which leads to some artists messing with the audiences expectations: what
  would you expect from a picture called "Female Melon Display
  Extraordinaire?" All pictures are shown twice, but they don't zoom into
  details so it's hard to judge techniques :(

  There are two new animations that are shown on the big screen before a
  compo to make the audience switch off all lights and sound: the first
  features the same penguins as the original, but a cannon is used to make
  the point instead of a hammer, and in the second one bad things happen in
  a drive-in cinema to a car with booming music and flashing lights.  I hope
  we can download them from the FTP server...  [ update after the party: I
  noticed the ones with the penguins are on the Asm'02 DVDs, joy!]

  After the count down to the instrumental music compo, the big screen says
  "Our equipment needs a little bit of adjusting.  Please hold on." I guess
  nobody is perfect.

  The problems were fixed soon, the 15 songs played ranged from so-so to
  pretty good.  I like the "Acula class" song the most, it's a symphonic
  track suitable for a science fiction movie.  A slower tune I liked was
  Travelogue, although it is probably too calm to get much votes.  With only
  one chance to impress the audience, most musicians make remarkable songs
  with lots of variation, or very fast or loud, so people will remember them
  when it is time to vote, and simpler songs don't stand a chance.

  23:26:
  The outdoor concert was really worth the time to attend! The location has
  been changed from the largest corridor, which was overcrowded last year,
  to the main loading place.  So it's kind of outside, but we have still a
  roof above our heads.  Axess Denied opened the concert with a rock version
  of the "Xenon 2" theme, then went through various other old game tunes
  from Rob Hubbard and others, some famous demo tracks such as from
  Dope/Complex, and ended with the "Bubble Bobble" theme.  Next CNCD Outside
  mixed real instruments such as a trumpet, a hobo and some yembes with
  VIC-20 beeps and basses.  Cool, but a bit too long at times.  Purple
  Motion was next, on the synthesizer but with the support of a guitarist,
  drummer and percussionist.  He played some fantastic non-scene songs, I
  believe the announcer said several were even played public for the first
  time at Assembly, and he ended with an incredible version of the "Second
  Reality" score.  You can imagine that the public went crazy :) Then there
  was a surprise guest, a bass guitarist with some groupies that held up
  jokes about bassists, unfortunately in Finnish only.  The concert was
  closed by the Stereo Gentlemen, and the free earplugs the orgos had handed
  out at the start were put to use: it was LOUD! There was one long-haired
  guy paying the electrical guitar, assisted by two young rappers and four
  dancers in sexy leather outfits.  The music was the kind you feel rather
  than hear, which is not my favorite kind but it was OK.

  -=- Saturday 9 August -=-
  1:42:
  Talk about coincidence: the guy who organized the DDR compo is Bemmu, who
  I was sitting next to last year in the oldskool area!  We both didn't
  recognize each other until now :) He has told me how to get "Stepmania",
  the free PC clone of "Dance Dance Revolution".  That's something I have to
  check out.  The winner of the compo, Stuf, and his girlfriend are still
  playing, it's amazing how fast they move their feet.

  Two more compos have passed: the oldskool graphics, and the oldskool
  music.  The graphics had one entry that stood out, Blackbeard, although I
  also liked the 2nd Countess and the Yessagician pics.  The music had lots
  of cool tunes, I can't remember any specific names but it was nice to see
  some XMs and S3Ms in there so I can listen to them on PC [Update after the
  party: The orgos where thoughtful enough to make MP3s of the non-PC
  entries so everyone can listen to them! Great!]

  2:08:
  The oldskool demo compo had 5 entries, one down from last year, and the
  quality seemed a bit less but still enjoyable.  PWP, who won the compo
  last year, made a funny cartoon-like entry called "Robotic Liberation", Da
  Jormas had made a port of one of their philosophical demos, and Dekadence
  had a good effect-based demo.

  3:35:
  The last compo for today is one we can't vote for: the mobile game
  development compo.  It's jury-based, I assume with the sponsors of the
  development kits (Nokia etc) as the judges.  There were 6 games, but most
  of them were unfinished or had flaws.  The best-looking entry featured a
  top-down view on a 3D environment, but no enemies at all.  There was a
  medieval strategy game that had to pause after every move to "merge
  changes with the gameworld", I think that would quickly become annoying.
  There was one game with hedgehogs or so throwing bombs to each others that
  was actually playable, so that's a good candidate to win the compo :)

  9:29:
  Back awake.  I've been sleeping in the sleeping area, but it seems the
  security people do not really enforce the rules: when walking back to my
  table, I see plenty of people sleeping on chairs, under tables and in the
  grand stand, all of which are forbidden due to fire regulations.  My right
  arm feels weirdly insensitive, I slept on it and the bloodstream must have
  been cut off: when I make a fist, it feels as if my hand is still half-
  open.  But after a shower it slowly goes back to normal <phew!>.  There
  was no queue in the showers, and the number of black screens in the arena
  shows I woke up early for Assembly standards.

  The big screen is showing a wild demo similar to Real Reality/Never: demo
  scene effects done with real life objects.  There's a 3D duckie, clouds,
  an asteroid, a donut, bubbles, balls, a 3D FPS scene etc.  Simple, but
  nice.  At the end the title is shown: Get Real, by the Assembly 99
  netcrew.

  11:18:
  And today must be sales pitch day: the promotion teams have escaped from
  their booths and are roaming in the arena.  First there's some guy from
  Validitas offering a free test of their CAIS system, apparently a service
  that can simulate all kinds of mobile connections (GPRS, WAP, I-mode etc)
  with various quality settings.  This would be useful to make sure the
  data-protocol of your mobile application works correctly both in big
  cities, and small towns with few base stations.  I've never made a Symbian
  program in my life, but that doesn't stop the guy from explaining
  everything in detail.  Next there's a girl from Nokia demonstrating the
  NGage to everyone whether they're interested or not, with a 3D game called
  Pandemonium (a port from an old PC game) that looks quite good, but hey,
  I'm just not a gamer!

  12:05:
  And the last Demo Top10 is shown: the Amiga edition.  There are the usual
  classics like "Desert Dreams"/Kefrens and "State Of The Art & 9
  Fingers"/Spaceballs, plus more recent releases such as
  "Lapsuus"/Maturefurk and "Perfect Circle"/The Black Lotus.  It's nice to
  see them all again, especially on a big screen.

  13:50:
  The Robotosa event was extremely popular: by the time I got to the parking
  place, where it was held, people were standing 5 lines deep around the
  battlefield, and only by standing on some stacked boxes could I see
  anything.  Robotosa is a small-scale robot wars variant, where two remote-
  controlled cars try to defeat each other by immobilizing the enemy, or
  pushing him out the battlefield.  Most cars had some armor added, and some
  a bladed weapon, but that didn't seem to have much influence.  The most
  effective strategies were to have better traction so you can push the
  other car around, or to have a sloped edge close to the ground so the
  enemy cannot have a good grip on you.  After the duels, each car had to do
  a dexterity test: tipping cans over, pressing a lever in a maze, opening a
  "door" etc, all without falling from the platform.  That last part was a
  problem for most robots, it seems their brakes weren't the most reliable
  part of them :)

  15:00:
  This afternoon and evening, the majority of the compos will be held.  The
  vocal music compo had only 10 preselected entries, varying in style
  between ambient, DnB, rap, rock,...  I think the quality of the vocals is
  less amateurish than last year, but I still prefer the instrumental music.
  The "Never Had A Gun In My Hand" entry was quite good IMO.

  The free style graphics compo allowed everything that isn't hand drawn, so
  it's not just ray traced images anymore.  There were 25 entries, with a
  very high average quality, and the usual range of subjects:
  fantasy(Sentinel, Mental Inferno), science fiction (My City), nature
  scenes (1-800-xxx, Decommissioned II),...  It will be difficult to choose
  the best 3.

  I quickly go eat another slice of pizza, before the browser demo starts,
  and discuss various geeky subjects with Bemmu, such as what chances the
  NGage has, or how evil Microsoft is :)

  16:47:
  The browser demo had 1O entries, all using flash except one lonely demo
  made with Director.  Java entries have to take part in the normal demo
  compo.  Since flash is pretty much 2D-only, faked 3D effects are quite
  popular.  The best designed entry is without doubt "Super fantastic gay
  disco all night long", which has also fitting dance music.

  17:38:
  There were no less then 14 great 4K intros! I recognized the one Preacher
  was working on last year (Another soul lost), seems he finally finished it
  :) It has some simple DOS-era effects, but also contains a funny story
  about gamers discussing the demo scene.  Then there was a 4K with voice
  synths, singing the old "99 bottles on the wall" song but with beer
  instead of bottles, and no effects at all.  There was another Humus entry
  for the Amiga, number 4 in the series and still fantastic, there was a
  Linux entry ("Topsy Turvy" I think) showing a complete amusement park,
  with a roller coaster, swings, a merry-go-round, and of course fitting
  music.  I also liked Etherium, showing a cool landscape, also with music,
  and the final Linux entry that has only a single effect, a white ever-
  morphing flower with great techno-music.

  18:55:
  I've been feeling sleepy during the compos, but now it's over so I decide
  to go to the Farbrausch seminar after all.  Chaos explains the history of
  the tools they use to make their awesome productions.  It turns out the
  coders don't code demos anymore: they've made a very complex, ever-
  evolving tool that allows a artist to design a whole demo , and a player
  to show that design.  So it's a bit like the Demopajaa tool on steroids.
  Chaos gives lots of tips for people who'd like to make a similar tool:
  make your own GUI, don't use overlapping windows, give real time feedback,
  don't hide complexity, make everything from the sounds to the camera
  movements an operator, etc etc.  He also explains how to do the glow-
  effect from "The Popular Demo": you've to post-process the entire image.
  First you subtract a fixed amount so only the highlights of the image
  remain.  You blur them a lot ("you can do almost everything with blur!"),
  increase the brightness again, and combine it with the original scene, and
  voila: every highlight has an aura around it.

  21:22:
  The first part of the prize ceremony is over.  Just like last year, to
  limit the length of the ceremony it's broken in two, which is a very good
  thing.  Most results were as expected, although the Blackbeard C64 graphic
  is disqualified due to being a copy.  There was also an Asus-sponsored
  tattoo compo (which I hadn't heard about before), plus the outdoor compos
  such as basketball, soccer, CD throwing etc.  The winners get a chance to
  say something to the audience, but alas I can't understand Finnish...

  While we're waiting for the 64K compo, the big screen is showing the Demo
  Quiz on AssemblyTV.  I wouldn't be able to answer a lot of the questions:
  how many times was Mekka/Symposium held? Who was the coder of <some
  obscure demo>?  At which party did this or that demo reached first place?

  22:30:
  The 64K compo is over, with 12 entries.  I first thought it would be an
  average compo, with no really special entries, although I liked
  "Oddjob"/Kewlers.  Then ANDs new entry was shown, and everyone knew who
  would be the winner.  "Zoom 3" is everything Squish was, plus a good voice
  synthesizer, an incredible model of a giant robot walking through a high-
  tech environment, a long end scroller, etc etc.  The music is from
  Cybermage this time, so it's not a one-man production this time, but it's
  still incredible how much AND has been able to improve in one year.
  Respect!

  23:43:
  Due to the overwhelming success of last year, the mobile demo compo was
  held again this year, for devices that weight less then 250 gram.  At
  first it looks as if all demos are comparable: using low-res color
  screens, on the level of the early Pentium demos (1995).  But the two last
  productions run on the monochrome TI calculators, and it's nice to see
  that the public likes these even more then the more advanced ones.  Still,
  I guess the Matrix spoof "Zion" will win the compo, the subject is just
  too popular in the Assembly public.

  I wanted to drop by Boozembly, but it's raining :( Dixan, Uncle X, Droid
  and Energy are hiding from the rain, we talk about how Assembly has been
  so far.  Dixan is miffed only 10 vocal music where preselected out of over
  40 entries, versus 15 in the oldskool and instrumental music compos.  I
  hadn't noticed it yet, but it's indeed a bit strange.  On the other hand,
  I believe last year the time limit was 3 minutes, versus 3m30 now...

  2:44:
  The animation compo had only 5 entries, but the quality was OK.  Most had
  short stories, like the medieval tale of the sword of Nur, or the beer-
  stealing rats from Dice Productions, but I also liked the pure art of
  "Energy of The Atom".

  The wild demo compo had the opposite problem: plenty of entries, but the
  majority were boring home-videos, not even funny, and in Finnish only.
  Newborn had at least a kind of story arc, "The Trip" was funny, although
  the group name "Low Budget Movies" was not a joke.  There was a spoof of a
  Finnish children TV show with birds, which the audience found hilarious,
  but I preferred the real-life "Grand Theft Auto" movie: funny, and with
  some nice rendered elements in it.  The only real wild demo according to
  the old definition (a demo on a non-standard platform) was the LCD mega
  demo, which ran on a 4*20-character LCD screen, build into someone's PC
  case.

  Outside any competition, Yodel made good on their promise last year that
  they would make a boys-band-clip as a successor to their "What's up (in
  the Gangsta-hood)" clip.  And indeed, their "2 Hard (2 Get)" could easily
  rival the latest Take That or Boyzone in sheer quality :)

  3:00:
  The compos are over for today, but the Tiny Music compo results are played
  on the main sound system (as this is was an unofficial compo, the results
  are already known).  After that the disqualified demos are shown, some are
  not bad at all.  This gives me hope for the quality of the preselected
  entries! After a problem with my FTP settings (thanks to the NetCrew for
  fixing it!) I manage to download the releases from the first prize
  ceremony.  By this time people are sleeping everywhere and the security
  guys don't seem to mind, so instead of giving my laptop to the info desk I
  just sleep next to it on the table.

  7:52:
  I'm awake again, luckily not due to the security crew.  Nosfe is
  collecting bottles for the return money, his wild demo was once again not
  preselected, even though there were too many low-quality home videos.  I
  can only nod sadly.

  All during the party, people have been playing this extremely annoying MP3
  with a child singing very off-key "I'm an apple", but in Finnish, over and
  over again.  It's like a virus, everyone hates it but they still become
  infected with it and play it themselves.

  9:51:
  The demo compos is about to start, so the orgos play loud music in order
  to wake everyone up.

  11:21:
  This was hands down one of the best demo compos ever! In order of my
  personal preferences: Doomsday is back, with probably the best demo of
  2003: "Legomania".  Remember the scene in Boost, where a giant lego man
  walked around a planet? He's tired of walking, and goes on an adventure
  with his brothers.  Besides the funny lego-scenes in cartoon rendering,
  this demo also has great normal effects, interesting transitions, splendid
  design, and very cool music.  My bet for the second place is "I Feel Like
  A Computer", by Melon Design.  Yes, they're back as well, and they bring
  you an entertaining story with a drunken dog, John Travolta, Donky Kong,
  aliens and cops.  Everything is rendered with flat shaded cubes, but it
  really fits the Melon style.  Moppi Productions released something
  completely different from their last demo, as usual :) "Ix" is an
  innovative demo with a mix of 3D objects and 2D people, about the people
  (and animals) taking the tram.  Fairlight made "Digital Dynamix", with
  excellent modeling and 3D effects, and I also liked "Feed Your
  Machine"/Faktory, with a brand new 3D smoke effect and an amazing fur-
  rendered dog.  And then there were the demos from Complex (on the X-box!),
  Farbrausch, Kewlers, MFX,...  With this much choice, I'm glad the orgos
  allow us to vote for 5 demos instead of the usual 3.

  13:50:
  People are slowly starting to pack.  I've had a discussion with Bjorn
  Lynne about MP3s, he believes people have simply become accustomed to not
  having to pay for MP3s, and thus never will.  I think students will always
  copy music for free, but that people with enough income are willing to
  support the artists, which is not the same as supporting the recording
  industry.

  14:33:
  Aha! A quick look on the FTP server shows that the orgos are uploading the
  remaining releases.  Since the network was dismantled right after the
  prize ceremony last year, I start leeching them ASAP.

  15:05:
  The ceremony hasn't begun yet, I'm starting to get nervous about the train
  and bus I have to take to get back to the airport...

  And finally it begins! There's a collage of fragments of the best releases
  shown on the big screen,after which Abyss starts to give away the prizes.
  There are some sponsored compos, such as the fastest PC or coolest case
  (photos at coolputer.fi), and the Altparty orgos have improvised a special
  prize for the most original production, which goes to the Yellow Rose of
  Texas 4K by Fit & bandwagon.  That one also wins the 4K compo, with humus
  4 placing 2nd.  The makers of Topsy Turvy apologize for placing third and
  pushing the other demos a place down (they deserve the 3th place IMHO).

  Next are the game compos, "Unreal Tournament", "Counterstrike" etc...  The
  winners don't get much applause from the (largely gamers-)crowd, maybe
  there's more rivalry between gamers than between sceners.  I'm glad no
  home videos got in the Wild demo top 3, instead "Grand Theft", that
  children show and the LCD-demo place first to third.

  Abyss announces the prize money for the 64K compo has been increased,
  which is nice for AND and Cybermage, whose Zoom 3 has almost 3 times as
  many votes as the entry from Cryonics.  AND gives a little speech to thank
  the voters in broken English, and people just keep applauding!

  The demo compo starts with a big disappointment: Melon Designs demo is
  disqualified because they used two minutes of copyrighted music without
  permission.  This sucks badly :( I know the rule is necessary, but it's
  sad when good groups are hit by it...  How could they forget about it?!
  Abyss is obviously sad about it as well, and gives them a change to thank
  the voters, who had wanted to see them take the 3th place...  "Legomania"
  wins the compo, of course, and Doomsday give Abyss some lego men as a
  present.  Moppi Productions place second place for the 3th time in a row
  (Halla in 2002, and Gerbera in 2001).  "Doomsday" by Complex is the new
  number 3, I hope they release a PC port as well.  The ambient "Dreamchild"
  demo by ASD is 4th, and "Mental"/Push Entertainment shows there is still a
  place (5th, to be exact) for Amiga demos in 2003.

  After the usual thanks to the participants, sponsors, and crew, Abyss
  invites us all to Assembly'04, and I hope I'll be able to attend.
  Stuf/Xill and Janita are so kind to give me a lift to the airport, much
  thanks to them! I fall asleep while the plane is still on the ground, and
  the rest of the trip back home goes smoothly as well.

  I don't think it needs to be said, but just in case: Assembly'03 rocked!
  There were several big improvements over last year, and after the party
  the orgos actively asked for feedback on the mailing list.  I have no
  doubt they'll listen to it carefully, to make Asm'04 even better.
  Personally I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't sit in the oldskool
  area (for which I have only myself to blame, I know), and I also expected
  to see more people I knew.  But these were minor points, and I'd like to
  greet everyone I met there.  See you again next year!

                 --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Party Report
    Pilgrimage '03
  By:  N-site
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Let me preface this review by saying that I've never been to a demo party
  before going to Pilgrimage 2003, and would not be considered a true demo
  scenester by many of those who attended, considering I haven't paid
  attention to demos since my dated computer stopped being able to run them
  back in 1999.  I was, however, amazed with demos ever since my brother
  showed me Second Reality on a computer in a Radio Shack store back in
  1994.  From what I've heard that demo also got a lot of other people
  interested in graphics programming, but I'm sure there are plenty of you
  out there more l337 than I am so you'll have to bear with me on this one.

  Organizers Adam Helps and Richard Thomson chose to host Pilgrimage 2003 in
  Salt Lake City most likely because they're both from SLC, but as they
  explained on the demo web site the city does have an impressive history of
  research and innovation in computer graphics technologies.  Besides, as a
  major airport hub in a central position within the country, the city was a
  jump, hop and a skip for most Americans (and even the obligatory Canadian
  or two).  More importantly, the actual space for the event, SLCC's Metro
  Learning Center, worked out perfect for the party, with a convenient
  downtown location, friendly staff, air conditioners pumping cold air a
  plenty, and enough Internet hookups and desktop real estate for everyone's
  PCs.

  The morning's speakers covered topics ranging from beginning to advanced
  and some of these presentations were very good.  In "Designing Your Own
  Game Console" Russ Christensen discussed his own experiences designing a
  simple 5MHz video game console, and the presentation attracted a large
  audience, though his project was probably more suitable for the
  engineering and electronics gurus in the audience than your average
  Playstation 2 enthusiast.  Adam Helps taught newbies how to track, and
  Thant Tessman wowed audiences with his very fancy real-time 3D shading
  demos, while Jason Ehrhart helped many early risers catch up on their
  sleep with his 1fps rotating Java cubes.  I didn't see David's, Rich's,
  and Dan's presentations, so I can't say anything about theirs, but from
  what I did see the presenters had quality, interesting information to
  offer.

  After the presentations the rest of the day was spent showing off previous
  demos on projector screens while those competing rushed to finish up their
  entries.  This part of the day perhaps could have used more organization,
  as there was really no order to what was happening.  For instance, I heard
  beforehand that there would be a live broadcast of Assembly '03, and I was
  hoping there would be a specific room where I could go and check out what
  was going on at Assembly, but the room that was broadcasting it was also
  being used to show demos, to film video postcards, and to show off a
  certain somebody's 5MHz game console.  Now all these other things were
  fine and dandy, but I wanted to see the Assembly telecast! They should
  have had a separate room for coders, a room for watching the demo DVD, a
  then a third room for the live Assembly broadcast.  Hey, a room with a
  couple X-box's and Halo would have been cool too, but I guess that's
  asking for too much, isn't it!

  The actual competition itself took place later in the evening, and ended a
  little too quickly because of the limited number of participants.  This,
  too, was disappointing, since I saw so many people there during the day
  and expected all of them to have something in the works for the
  competition.  While the votes were being tallied Jeremiah Johnson a.k.a.
  Nullsleep put on a show of music composed using a couple Gameboys and an
  NES.  Depeche Mode on a Gameboy is quite a feat indeed, but Gameboy
  arpeggios at 10 in the evening is quite another matter!  Luckily I used to
  listen to a lot of Piano Maker PC Speaker tunes, so I felt right at home.

  Apart from one or two shining moments, most of the demos and music entries
  were noticeably inferior to what you find at Assembly, which made the
  whole event at Pilgrimage '03 seem like more of a tribute to or a fan club
  of the vastly more popular European demo scene than an actual competition.
  The nuts and bolts of an American demo scene are there--I can gripe about
  the lack of a dedicated Assembly broadcast or a larger room for the
  competition, but really Richard and Adam put a lot of work into organizing
  the event, and we're lucky to have them there taking the initiative.  They
  laid the groundwork, but the problem is there aren't enough American
  coders out there yet who either know about demos or have tried putting
  their energy and talent into making good demos.  All of us who want to see
  a real American demo scene ultimately share the responsibility not only to
  bite the bullet and show up the Europeans through our own hard work, but
  also to spread the word to all the skilled coders and electronic musicians
  out there that might not know about the demo scene so that we can increase
  our ranks.  University of Utah's own Phong Bui-Toung (Phong shading), Ed
  Catmull (texture mapping, Z-buffer hidden surface removal), Jim Blinn
  (environmental reflection mapping, bump mapping), and most all of the
  great innovators of computer graphics techniques developed their skills on
  this side of the Atlantic.  Pilgrimage is just the place for that legacy
  to be reclaimed, but it's going to take more than Pilgrimage '03 to do so.

  Many thanks to Richard Thomson and Adam Helps for putting on the even this
  year in Salt Lake City, and see you again next year!

                 --N-site


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Organizing a US Demo Party
  By:  Legalize / Polygony <legalize@xmission.com>
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Pilgrimage 2003 is over and now that I've had time to get things back to
  normal, I'm going to talk about Pilgrimage from the organizer's
  perspective.  I'm combining a recounting of my experiences with advice for
  other organizers.

  -=- Don't Know Nuthin' -=-
  I've never been to a demo party before.  I first heard about the demo
  scene in August 2002 at SIGGRAPH in San Antonio, Texas.  I have never
  organized a demo party before, or anything as large as Pilgrimage.  I've
  seen pictures, read trip reports, browsed slengpung, talked to people on
  IRC, browsed pouet and ojuice, downloaded the demoshow CDs and watched as
  many demos as I could, downloaded Assembly 2002 results after SIGGRAPH
  2002, browsed two headed squirrel, monostep.org and other personally
  recommended demos lists.  I can't really tell you if our demo party "felt"
  like a European demo party or previous North American parties having
  attended none of them.

  In addition to my lack of experience, we have the current state of the
  demo scene in the USA.  Very few people know about demos at this point.
  Those who do know about demos are not necessarily geographically
  concentrated and don't have a well defined electronic community web
  portal.  The interests are currently splintered across the music,
  graphics, and gaming communities.

  -=- Demo Scene Cherry -=-
  After seeing the demo scene panel at SIGGRAPH 2002, I wanted to do
  something involving the demo scene.  I went to the demoscene BOF and spent
  time talking over the demo scene with Vince Scheib and Phil Taylor over
  dinner at SIGGRAPH.  I think this is where I first got the idea to
  organize a demo party.  I started putting together my plans for what I
  wanted a demo party to contain besides the usual socializing and compos.
  I wanted something to fall back on should there end up not being very many
  compo entries.

  The easiest backup plan was to show demos from the demoshow CD
  compilations on scene.org.  I could contact the people I know and ask them
  to come talk on a subject at the event.  I could try to organize a concert
  finale.  From what I could tell in the scene, your only currency is the
  amount of respect you get for what you have done.  I didn't want to
  organize an event that sucked!  I couldn't depend on compo entries to
  float my event by itself, so it needed something extra.

  To simplify the problem, I constrained the event to a single day.  Being
  only a single day was also likely to reduce participation from out of
  town, but the logistics and expense of a multi-day event were just out of
  our grasp the first time around.  It would be better to run a great 1 day
  event than a sucky 3 day event.

  After being back from SIGGRAPH for a short while, I was contacted by Adam
  Helps, a CS undergraduate student at Brigham Young University in Provo,
  Utah, about a 45 minute drive south from Salt Lake City.  Adam and I
  exchanged phone numbers by email and talked at length on the phone
  discussing our ideas for a demo party and how to raise interest in the
  event.

  Both of us had very similar ideas for organizing a party, so it was a
  great coming-together of like-minded sceners.  Where each of us had
  specific ideas on some aspect of the organizing, they were either
  synergistic with or identical to the ideas of the other.  Adam would be
  able to reach people in Utah County while I could reach people in Salt
  Lake County.  Just as the USA is geographically large, Utah itself is a
  large western state with most of its urban population along the western
  edge of the mountains called the Wasatch front.  The major cities of Utah
  are Salt Lake City, Provo and Ogden.  They all lie on the Wasatch front.

  -=- Parties as Non-Profit Corporations -=-
  While I didn't have any experience with demo parties, I do have planning
  and organizing skills.  My plan was to: form a non-profit Utah corporation
  to handle the financial and legal details of running an event, hold a 1
  day event, and file for IRS 501(c)3 status.  My biggest single resource
  for these tasks is "Non-Profits for Dummies" which, despite the title,
  contains lots of good information for would-be US party organizers.  A
  non-profit corporation shares many of the same problems and attributes as
  an organization that puts on a demo party.  The book contains these
  chapters in about 350 pages:

     Part I: Getting Started with Nonprofits
     Chapter 1: Tuning In to the World of Nonprofit Organizations
     Chapter 2: Deciding to Start a Nonprofit
     Chapter 3: Writing Your Mission Statement
     Chapter 4: Incorporating and Applying for Tax Exemption
     Chapter 5: Safeguarding Your Nonprofit Status

     Part II: Managing a Nonprofit Organization
     Chapter 6: Building Your Board of Directors
     Chapter 7: Getting the Work Done with Paid Staff
     Chapter 8: Getting the Work Done with Volunteers
     Chapter 9: Planning: Why and How Nonprofits Make Plans
     Chapter 10: Showing the Money: Budgets and Financial Reports
     Chapter 11: Creating a Home for Your Nonprofit and Insuring It
     Chapter 12: Finding Outside Help When You Need It

     Part II: Raising Money and Visibility
     Chapter 13: Crafting a Fundraising Plan
     Chapter 14: Raising Money from Individuals
     Chapter 15: Making the Most of Special Events
     Chapter 16: Finding the Grant-Givers
     Chapter 17: Writing a Grant Proposal
     Chapter 18: Marketing: Spreading the Word about Your Good Work

     Part IV: The Part of Tens
     Chapter 20: Ten Myths about Nonprofit Organizations
     Chapter 21: Ten Tips for Raising Money

  As you can see from the chapter titles, many of the activities that
  nonprofit corporations perform are the same things that demo party
  organizers must go through in order to have a successful party.

  If you're forming an event in the USA and want to organize a non-profit
  corporation around the event, get things in motion about a year before
  your event date.  If you don't have that much time, start this process
  first since it will take a while to complete in full.  The book (and
  others like it) has the full details on what you need.  It is also
  possible to operate underneath a sponsoring Nonprofit corporation, check
  out the book for details on this option.

  For Pilgrimage, it was pretty easy based on the advice given in the book
  and the guidelines given by the State of Utah to construct the articles of
  incorporation and the bylaws.  A small filing fee of $20 and about 2
  months of processing time and we had our Utah nonprofit corporation.

  Showing proof of incorporation was required to open up a bank account at
  the bank we used (University of Utah Credit Union).  You will definitely
  want a separate bank account through which you track your financial
  transactions.

  Why go through all this?  Because you won't ever get any sizable donations
  or grants unless you have a 501(c)3 IRS designation.  If you look at art
  grant applications from local, state and federal sources you will see that
  they all require applicants to be 501(c)3 organizations.  The same is true
  for philanthropy from private foundations.  You don't want to be funding
  demo parties out of your own pocket if you can help it.

  -=- Web Site & Domain Name -=-
  My ISP, XMission, offers pro bono accounts to nonprofit organizations in
  the state of Utah, so that got us a web space once we had our
  incorporation papers.  A couple of email messages to scene.org and
  XMission staff and we had a DNS entry for pilgrimage.scene.org resolving
  to our web space on XMission.  At the time we applied for scene.org DNS
  hosting, they were on their old server and were temporarily holding all
  applications for FTP or web space.  We needed a consistent web site ASAP
  to keep interest growing from one familiar place, rather than a string of
  changed URLs.  Have you ever noticed how many stale North American demo
  scene links are out there on the web and in NFO files and such?  I didn't
  want to add to the pot!

  While we got the whole nonprofit/webspace/domain thing sorted out, Mike No
  Worth worked on a web design for the pages that we ultimately stole and
  expanded for content into the pages we have today.  A preliminary version
  of this was placed on Adam's CS account at BYU and leaked to OJuice :-).
  Shortly thereafter our real web site was available and running.

  I thought that having a scene.org domain name would give us more cred, but
  you can do any domain naming scheme you want for your party.  As a first
  time organizer, I was going to do everything within my reach to increase
  the credibility and image of our party as a new birth for the demo scene
  in the USA.  I looked at a scene.org domain name as one that would be good
  for our reputation.  Once our web account was created on XMission, it was
  a snap to have pilgrimage.scene.org resolve out to our virtual web server
  on XMission.

  We initially created our XMission account with the name 'demos', but this
  resulted in us receiving large amounts of spam.  Spammers now routinely do
  "dictionary attacks" on email servers hoping to deliver as much spam as
  possible to "john@<domain>" and apparently "demos" is a word that's often
  used on these dictionary style attacks.  So unless you're willing to deal
  with the spam, I'd suggest using an account name or email alias that's
  unique to your event and unlikely to be spammed with such an attack.

  -=- Mailing Lists and Discussion Forums -=-
  Hopefully you've got at least one other person working on organizing your
  event!  You will need a way to communicate what each of you is doing and
  have a place to refer back to for a refreshening of details.  A mailing
  list is perfect for this and everyone's got email now, right?  We formed
  an internal mailing list for the Pilgrimage organizers.  It was getting to
  the point where mail sent back and forth between two people needed to be
  sent to all three people so that we were all on the same page.  It was
  just easier to setup a mailing list and then we all send to the list to
  keep everyone informed.

  We probably would have started a mailing list for party goers but
  SceneSpot stepped into action and provided us with a discussion forum area
  on the web.  Personally I prefer a mailing list or a newsgroup, but they
  offered and we took it!  This is an example of a good rule of thumb for
  organizers: don't look gift horses in the mouth!  Take everything you can
  get and any opportunity that's offered to you even if you would prefer to
  "implement" things differently.  Now that Pilgrimage is over, we will
  probably implement a pilgrims mailing list from our contact list at the
  party.

  -=- Outreach -=-
  Let's face it -- the scene in the USA is dispersed to the four corners of
  the continent at this point.  To get a successful event happening, you're
  going to need to talk to people in your area as often as you can manage
  it.  This is a long-term strategy.  Expect a few onesy twosy sort of
  recruitment from this approach at first.  Community involvement requires
  persistence and patience from you as an organizer and outreach activist.
  Each time you do it, it becomes easier and soon you'll be able to make an
  outreach presentation on the demo scene in your sleep.  You will also
  learn that different audiences require different kinds of talks -- you'll
  want to go into more details about code if you're talking to a programming
  class, for instance.

  A good goal would be to perform a demo scene outreach activity at least
  once a month.  "Activity" could be anything from introducing a single
  individual to the demo scene (say, with the demoshow CDs), talking to a
  class of programming students as a guest lecturer, giving a talk at the
  local library (always showing demos, of course), or participating in a
  community fair, county fair or state fair.

  The best thing about demo outreach is that you basically just let the
  demos sell themselves.  All you need to do is shut up and play the demos!
  A little introduction at the beginning helps, but I've done events where I
  just dimmed the lights, put on the DemoDVD, cranked up the sound, and
  propped open the doors with trash cans to encourage people to just get
  into it without a lot of intellectual blather.

  -=- Reaching Out -=-
  You not only have to talk to audiences, you need to reach out to them to
  get them involved in the demo scene.  Ask them if they are coders?
  musicians? graphic artists?  If they are any of those, make a note of it
  for when you talk to them later.

  Have a contact sign up sheet so that people can provide you with
  information that you can use to build a relationship with them over time.
  Will they remember to phone/email you?  (In my experience, they won't.)
  Get their contact information so that you can initiate contact with them.
  When you talk to people during your outreach and they make specific offers
  or comments, write them down next to their name so that you can match that
  up with the contact sheet later.  Ask them to sign the contact sheet if
  they haven't yet done so when you talk to them.  Your contact sheet will
  be your source of potential volunteers and attendees at your future
  events.

  Besides getting people to work with you on your demo party, you're going
  to need funds to pay for your event's expenses.  Unless you can work
  directly with another nonprofit that helps fund your event, you shouldn't
  expect any financial assistance from grants or corporate foundations in
  your first year.  You're going to need to find sponsors and financial
  support from yourself, people you know and any relationships with
  corporations you personally have formed.  One way to raise money is to
  always have something that you provide as a gift for a donation of a
  certain amount of money.  My personal rule of thumb is that the gift
  should not cost more than 10% of the donated amount -- remember that you
  are doing this to raise money for your nonprofit/event, not to make a 10%
  margin on retail goods.  Now you know why you get a $1.95 coffee mug for
  donating $50 to PBS!  You can also sell items outright as a nonprofit
  corporation.  The details are in the nonprofit book mentioned above.

  -=- Literature on the Demo Scene -=-
  Beyond the immediate-gratification aspect of demos, you'll want to have
  printed information ready to explain the details of demos.  I didn't have
  anything printed at my first outreach event.  At my second outreach event
  at the SynOrgy 2002 Decompression party, I had a printed one-sheet
  pamphlet that gave some basic information about demos and the demo scene.
  I refined this handout for the next outreach event I did for a programming
  class.  It was further refined into a three-panel foldout style pamphlet
  to contain information about the demo scene as well as our upcoming event.

  I would recommend having a "What is the demo scene?" style pamphlet ready
  for use in all events.  I'm preparing one right now and will make this
  available for all to use and re-use when its finished.  A generic pamphlet
  gets the preliminaries out of the way for complete newbies and can be
  reused year-in and year-out.  You can make minor updates and
  clarifications based on how well it works for your local audience.

  Supplement the basic demo scene pamphlet with a pamphlet or flyer on your
  event.  You don't have to go into tons of detail if you want to do a
  flyer-style promotion, just make sure you include a one line summary of
  your event ("Chicago's First Demo Party!"), and contact information for
  your event: phone number, email address and URL.

  Make a flyer or pamphlet for each event that you do, big or small.  It may
  just announce a talk on the demo scene given at a particular place and
  time, or it may be the time and place of your party.  We are preparing a
  pamphlet for First Night 2004, which we expect to be our next event.

  -=- Finding a Space -=-
  Finding a space for your event is your primary item of concern once you've
  gotten certain that you want to hold a demo party.  This was the stickiest
  issue for Pilgrimage because spaces would appear and disappear and we were
  getting closer to the party date and we needed to address this first.

  Start at least one year in advance of your party date to start scouting
  out a party space.  There are several areas of concern when scouting a
  space: availability, logistical, and legal.  You want to make certain that
  the space will be available when your event is taking place.  This seems
  pretty straightforward, but once you start talking to potential space you
  find out they have constraints on operating hours, may be available only
  on a first-come first serve basis, and so-on.  I would recommend having at
  least one backup space in case your first choice falls apart.  Having two
  backup spaces would be preferable.

  The logistical aspects of a space cover the mundane aspects of what a demo
  party requires: control of the lighting, adequate power for the number of
  computers and additional equipment you expect, adequate HVAC
  (cooling/heating) for the time of year and number of people, and so-on.
  You'll have to figure in the amount of time it will take you to setup any
  infrastructure you may need on top of renting the space itself: tables,
  chairs, power supply, network cabling, projection screens, etc.

  The legal aspects mostly have to deal with fire, safety and health
  regulations.  If you plan a multi-day event, you may wish to consider
  using a local hotel as the venue, with rented rooms for sleeping.

  Make sure that your event has a comfortable environment!  I'm talking
  creature comforts here -- ensure that there is adequate cooling in the
  summer and adequate heating in the winter.  Make sure that you have good,
  clean toilet facilities at your event.  People will go home remembering
  how hot/cold they were at your event as their first memory if you don't
  take care of this.  Make sure that there are enough chairs for people to
  sit down if they want.  I would recommend having chairs for a event where
  you will be showing demos.  Even if it were just showing demos on the
  street, I would have four chairs in front of the screen.

  -=- Start Up Tasks -=-
  Many of these things are tasks that you only have to do once when you are
  starting up your event for the first time.  Once you have a nonprofit
  corporation and your tax status settled, they pretty much take care of
  themselves from that point on.  The same goes for getting a web space
  setup, although the web content updating is a job that is ongoing in
  nature.

  Writing your compo rules is another area where the difficulty is getting
  the first set written.  We used a combination of specific recommendations
  and rules from other parties to create the rules for Pilgrimage.  Next
  year, it will only require minor changes before we are ready to announce
  the rules.

  -=- Last Minute Party Tasks -=-
  As we got closer to the date of Pilgrimage, I had a list of outreach
  activities designed to give a local last-minute pump to the attendance.  I
  wanted to draw some of the club crowd over with our free concert promotion
  and also hit the clubs with small flyers to generate some interest in our
  web site and to encourage the participation of more first timers to the
  demo scene.  I had also planned to practice creating video postcards so
  that I was familiar with the software before the party date.

  At the same time, I was unemployed and looking for work.  About three
  weeks before the party date, I interviewed for a job.  They made me an
  offer and I took it, starting the following Tuesday.  Oops.  Now I had
  some major competition for my time working 40 hour weeks again and still
  trying to do all my demo party tasks.  Fortunately for my wallet, but
  unfortunately for Pilgrimage, I placed work a higher priority than
  Pilgrimage promotional tasks, so not much was done in the last few weeks
  before the party date.

  I did take off the Friday before Pilgrimage from work so that I could
  finish off the last tasks that must be done before the party could start.
  I had three people to pick up at the airport for Pilgrimage, two of whom
  were going to be staying at my house.  We got a press release faxed out to
  a bunch of local news organizations the day before the party.

  -=- The Day of Pilgrimage -=-
  We officially let people start coming in to setup their computers at 8 AM.
  Since we were the only event going on at the facility, they had setup our
  tables and chairs weeks in advance.  I had to get up at 5:30 am to start
  getting all my equipment and all the Pilgrimage materials packed into my
  Ford Explorer.  We were ready to leave with a fully loaded truck around
  7:30 AM.  My truck was loaded to capacity -- if anything else needed to go
  it would have to be strapped to the luggage rack on top!

  Once we got down to the party place (just a 10-15 minute drive), we had to
  unpack everything from my truck, up the elevator, and start setting it up.
  Volunteers helped move the boxes and equipment up to the party place while
  I parked my truck.

  -=- Greets -=-
  Once back to the party place, it was time to get the Greeting table set
  up.  You want your Greeting table to be the first thing people see when
  they get to your event.  Here you give them a name badge, ask them to sign
  your contact list and ask them to make a donation.  Remember to have
  something in return for the donation, even if it is just a lollipop!
  Follow my 10% rule above.  That last bit is important, so I'm going to
  repeat it again:
     - ASK THEM TO SIGN YOUR CONTACT SHEET
     - ASK THEM TO MAKE A DONATION

  I'm sorry for the shouting, but its really important that you do this!
  Most people will sign up or donate if you ask, but its up to you to do the
  asking.  If you don't ask for donations and participation, you will find
  it much harder to get your event off the ground and prosper.

  Your greeting table should also display your literature ("What is the Demo
  Scene?" plus your event literature) and any giveaways you have from
  corporate sponsors.  We gave out ATI lollipops, keychains and temporary
  tattoos on the main table and our greeter Fred asked everyone who came if
  they were a coder and would like a copy of VS.NET.  We didn't charge any
  money for our first Pilgrimage, but if we did, it would be charged at the
  greet table.

  -=- Event Setup -=-
  We had three rooms available for Pilgrimage, so we used 3 easels to
  display poster board showing the schedule for each room.  We didn't have
  time to get them printed up nicely so we just used magic marker to write
  them out.  It was OK, at least it was something better than nothing.  The
  IT staff at the facility had power and networking already setup in our
  computer spaces room when we got there, so all we had to do was plug in
  and go.  There was a sticky point with sharing files later, which we
  resolved by setting up an FTP server on a machine I had brought.

  There was also a miscommunication about the availability of wireless
  Internet access -- the marketing guys for the facility told us it was
  available, but the IT guy said it was only for students at the facility.
  Oh well, since I didn't have a wireless card, I didn't test this part of
  their network before hand.  If your facility is providing you with any IT
  services, be sure to test all of the services in advance to find out
  exactly what is available and working.

  -=- Keeping the Schedule -=-
  We had an aggressive schedule of up to three simultaneous speakers in our
  morning session.  I did this because I wanted to get all the "seminar"
  type stuff out of the way in the morning.  I gave myself the first talk
  time slot in one of the rooms so that I could get it over with right in
  the beginning.  I didn't expect much of an audience at my talk unless
  there were lots of newbie coders at the event.  Most people there seemed
  proficient in coding, so I only had a couple people just casually talking
  about Direct3D with me in my talk.  Thant's talk came right after mine and
  his had more of an audience.

  Dan Wright wanted to shift his talk to the afternoon, which was fine with
  us since the rooms were not specifically scheduled for the afternoon.
  Dan's talk was moved to 2 PM.

  After the talks are done, we dispersed for lunch.  I took a group of guys
  down to the Crown Burger, a local burger chain whose specialty is a cheese
  burger topped with pastrami -- The Crown Burger.  We head back to the
  party place with full bellies :).

  Once I get back to the party place, I just hang around solving whatever
  problems are coming up until Dan's talk starts up.  I go in and notice
  that there is a lot of drunk people at this party :-).

  -=- Video Postcards -=-
  The video postcards -- where each scener has an opportunity to make a
  short video presentation to the scene -- were a novel aspect for our
  party.  I'm not aware of any other party specifically trying to create
  video greetings of the guests.  I hadn't had a chance to setup the machine
  lent to us by Serious Magic to run their Visual Communicator product.
  They had shipped us two big boxes and we started unpacking them and
  setting up the equipment around 3 PM.

  When we opened the boxes, which I expected to both contain bits of the
  computer for some reason, one of them contained about 30 copies of Visual
  Communicator.  Bonus!  I took the box out to a table near the center of
  the action and called out to everyone that if they wanted a copy of Visual
  Communicator, they should come over and get one.  I think some people were
  taking them at first not quite realizing what the software did :-).  We
  then went back to setting up the video camera and machine for making the
  postcards.

  We got the machine all setup and did some practice runs and things seemed
  to be working fine until we realized that there was no audio on the
  published video file.  After a little debugging, we concluded that we
  needed a microphone on the PC in order to get audio working properly, so I
  pulled a microphone out of my box of computer equipment and we used that.
  We would have been set up much faster if I had the chance to use Visual
  Communicator before the party date, but even with our audio bugs and late
  setup we got 4 video postcards recorded, which I thought was a good
  number.

  I would like to see more people making video postcards at their demo
  parties.  Next year I would like to have someone who is familiar with the
  software "operating" it for the duration.  Then we could have people walk
  in, get interviewed by the operator who uses their responses to write the
  script.  The person rehearses their script and then the operator helps
  them add any effects, transitions, video clips, backgrounds, etc., that
  they want in their postcard.  They record it, the operator publishes the
  video file and the next person is ready to walk in and sit down.

  For this year, the best we could do was setup the machine and leave people
  to their own devices :-).  Considering the situation, I think we did
  pretty good with 4 postcards.

  -=- Compo Server -=-
  For the compo server, we couldn't seem to mount shares by either NetBUI
  name or IP address.  We never did get to the bottom of that one!  Instead,
  we decided to install an FTP server.  I had never installed an FTP server
  on this machine before, so we needed a Windows 2000 Professional
  installation CD in order to get the server components installed.
  Fortunately Adam had an image of one that he could burn to CD-R.  So 15
  minutes later, we were continuing with the FTP server installation.  Once
  the server was installed, we created a party account on the machine, gave
  everyone the IP address and party account/password pair.  We logged the
  party user into the desktop so that people could make submissions by
  floppy or by CD-ROM by dragging files onto a folder on the desktop.

  In the future we would like to have a better system for submitting
  results, but it was another one of those things where there just wasn't
  time beforehand to setup anything sophisticated.  We should have tested
  the network facility for sharing a hard drive between two machines though.
  That gets back to testing everything your facility says they are going to
  provide in terms of IT services.  Try everything first in a test run for
  your party to avoid last minute surprises.

  -=- Gathering Compo Results -=-
  The music and graphics compo entries were done on time.  We let the demo
  compo deadline slip so that Tfinn could finish curses demo and Hurricane
  could finish Charged.  Unfortunately Charged didn't end up being quite as
  finished as we would have liked :-(, but the advantage of stating that you
  can change your rules at any time is so that you can be flexible enough to
  adapt to the situation.  We could have been hard-nosed about the demo
  compo deadline, but that only would have resulted in two less demos to
  show during voting.

  Once we had all the compo entries gathered, we assembled our juries who
  did the job of qualifying the entries.  A qualified entry is one that is
  judged to have been made in accordance with the compo rules.  Judges are
  also given the flexibility to adapt to the situation.  We didn't want to
  discourage people from participating.  I believe we had only a single
  disqualified entry from all the compos; a graphics entry was disqualified
  because the final image was missing.

  -=- Voting -=-
  Once we had the entries qualified, we assembled everyone into the middle
  Salon for the voting.  Since we are a small party, we just manually
  displayed each entry on the big screen and sound system, letting people
  vote for the entries they liked.  We had a voting system that gave
  everyone the ability to specify preferences within each compo and gave
  heavier weighting to the jury of the compo.  The end result is that each
  production had a number of points assigned to it and the top three point
  getting entries won our 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes.

  At one point during the music compo, I looked out towards the hallway and
  saw some people dancing to the entries!

  We had everyone write out their votes on a sheet of paper.  In the future,
  we will have a printed ballot with the production names already recorded
  so that people could just cast their ballot without having to write any of
  the other information down.  It could have been better, but at least we
  had some sort of system, even if it was very low tech.

  -=- Concert -=-
  I tried confirming our sound system guy the day before the event, but
  being a Friday night, I was unable to reach him only his answering
  machine.  During the afternoon of the event I still hadn't heard back any
  confirmation, so we started working on a backup plan for the concert
  sound.  The facility staff were very helpful in offering to let us use an
  additional space as large as the one we rented for the concert performance
  and they were going to provide sound through the overhead speakers.  While
  not great, this was at least something.  Another backup plan was for me to
  go back to my house and get my stereo!

  However, just as we were putting contingencies in place, our sound man
  Stephen called and confirmed he would be there to provide a proper sound
  system for us.  Yay!  Stephen arrived while we were voting on the music
  compo entries and started setting up Nullsleep's sound.  By the time the
  voting was over, we had everyone go over to listen to Nullsleep's
  performance while we tallied the votes.  This was a good distraction for
  everyone, since they all wanted to know the results of the voting.

  -=- Awarding the Prizes -=-
  Adam hand tallied the results for each production.  We then paired on
  adding the entries up in sa a spread sheet: I would read out the points
  for each vote while Adam typed them in.  After the totals were counted up
  for all the productions, we gathered them up along with the prizes and
  went into the concert room.  I got to groove out to a particularly cool
  part of Nullsleep's performance until I interjected during a song break.

  We had given out raffle tickets for the remaining ATI material that wasn't
  awarded during our compos, including a chance to win a Radeon 9800 since
  we had 5 cards and 3 compos.  First we raffled off the last of the
  remaining ATI promotional material: a bunch of calendars and some battery
  operated fans.  People were wanting to get to the Radeons, but you want to
  give out the weakest items first.  In the first place, people won't stick
  around for the weaker items if you give out the best items first.  In the
  second place, you want to build from weakest to best items in your prize
  presentations to end on a high note.

  After the calendars and fans, I went to the compo winners.  I announced in
  the order of 3rd place, 2nd place and 1st place for each compo.  I did the
  compos in the order of weakest to strongest.  Our weakest compo was the
  graphics compo, followed by the music and demo compos.  After giving out
  the compo prizes, I raffled off the last two Radeon 9800 Pros.

  -=- Nullsleep Encore -=-
  Since I had interrupted Nullsleep in between songs, I asked him to keep
  playing after I awarded all the prizes.  Ending on a tune seemed like the
  better thing to do!  Besides, we still had some time left on the room.
  Nullsleep played for another 15 or 20 minutes.

  -=- Breakdown and Cleanup -=-
  We started packing up the equipment around 11:30 PM.  After getting it all
  loaded into my truck and ready to head home, it was around 12:30 AM.  The
  next day, Mac mentioned that its amazing how fast things clean up when you
  don't allow boozing and eating at the party place!

  -=- Next Year -=-
  If you're planning an ongoing event like Pilgrimage, there is always next
  year.  There is always something you could have done better and some
  things you know you will do better the next year.

  Mac commented that Pilgrimage had about the same showing in terms of
  people and entries as BCN'01, a Spanish demo party.  I personally felt
  that it would be a success if we could get at least 50 people to show up
  throughout the day.  Our contact list shows about 65-75 people throughout
  the day, so I achieved my attendance goal as an organizer.  The number and
  quality of entries in all compos made me proud to have organized
  Pilgrimage.  I was also proud that the graphics and music compos were both
  won by Utahns.

  Specific things we would like to do for next year are:
     - compo submission / voting server.  We need to have this worked out in
     advance next time and we need to provide printed ballots for voting.
     - grow to a traditional 3-day event
     - printed party information handouts (schedule, compo rules, etc.)
     - double our level of local participation
     - get more high school participation

  -=- Ongoing Efforts -=-
  As demo party organizers in the USA we need to work more closely in
  networking with local rave scenes, local gaming scenes, local music scenes
  and local graphic artist scenes.  Pilgrimage has been building contacts in
  these areas but we also need to do more.

  Sceners in the USA need to pool their resources to create a more closely
  knit Internet portal (web, news, email and beyond) with low barriers for
  participation.  The geographic hugeness of the US needs to be addressed in
  any Internet portal so that sceners can find others local to their area.
  SceneSpot could evolve in this direction, but it currently lacks news or
  email access and has no geographic oriented tools.

                 --Legalize


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  In Tune
    Assembly and Pilgrimage Winners
  By:  Coplan
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  -=- Introduction -=-
  The weekend of August 9th yielded two demo parties that were vastly
  different from each other.  First was Assembly.  Assembly has been around
  for years, and it can be argued as the most popular demo party still alive
  today.  This year, there were an estimated 4,000 people in attendance.
  Pilgrimage, on the other hand, made its debut this year in Salt Lake City,
  USA.  It was a much smaller party pulling only around 50 or so people.
  But whether a party is 50 people or 4,500 people, there are still music
  competitions to be had, and we still have winners for each.

  This month, I'm going to review some of the winning tunes for each of the
  parties.

  Unlike other times with In Tune, I am not going to break out each song's
  information separately.  Every single song that I review here this month
  can be found on Scene.org (http://www.scene.org) in the respective party
  sections.


  -=- "Acula Class" by !Cube / Armada + SCS*TRC + Skalaria -=-
  1st Place at Assembly:  Instrumental Music competition

  The thing I liked about this tune is that you had a mix of modern music
  technology with a twist of the oldskool demo scene sound.  This is a song
  that you might see on the sound track for some dramatic action movie,
  maybe even the title track.  The quality of the tune can be left to none
  other than the chord progression and the incredible work with the stringed
  instruments.  !Cube has done a wonderful job with his mixing.  Unlike so
  many other scene tunes out there, the strings don't hold a static volume.

  The introduction is simple, but very characteristic of a dramatic song
  such as this.  You get a couple riffs from the high strings, and then it
  fades momentarily before the percussion kicks in.  If it were a title
  track for a movie, this is where the main title would come up.  But after
  a short time with the dramatic percussion and background, you get a more
  mellow stretch again.  Mellow, but not any less dramatic.  This song is
  definitely worth a download.


  -=- "Mist of Deceit" by Quasian -=-
  2nd Place at Assembly:  Instrumental Music Competition

  If this were an oldskool scene competition, this song would've taken the
  trophy.  It has all the ingredients of a good demo scene production, the
  complicated base lines, the catchy leads, the multiple moods and the high-
  energy production.  But there is no way you could ever get this kind of
  sound out of the file size limitations of yesterday.

  I like the way Quasian did the percussion in this song.  It really sounds
  like a real drummer is sitting there in the flesh.  The samples are
  incredible, and the riffs are clean, crisp and refreshing.  I want to make
  a big deal of the percussion because it truly makes the song.  Don't get
  me wrong, it would be an awesome song with a lesser quality percussion
  track.  But if you really want to feel the emotion portrayed by this song,
  the percussion molds you into Quasian's mind-set.  Even at the very mellow
  parts of the song, you'll hear a couple of taps on the hi hats and the
  ride cymbals.  Very classy, very awesome.

  In my own experiences, one of the instruments that is hardest to work with
  in electronic music is the electric over-driven guitar.  Quasian does
  exceptionally well.  From the lead to the second string guitar riffs, the
  sound is almost as if it were a live recording.  Writing a guitar song
  like this requires some understanding of the instrument, and Quasian has
  definitely demonstrated his wisdom.  If I were a judge at Assembly, I
  might even pick this song as the winner of the competition.  I think it's
  cleaner and shows more skill than "Acula Class".  But again, that's just
  my opinion, and I wasn't a judge there.  It would be difficult to choose
  between the two songs.


  -=- "Awaken" by _pk_ -=-
  3rd Place at Assembly:  Instrumental Music Competition

  If you ever want to please me with a tune, make sure you have a piano and
  a violin playing off of each other.  But I offer one caveat:  If you're
  going to do some sort of dramatic piece with these two instruments, leave
  the electric guitar out of it.  I have only ever heard a couple of songs
  that managed the combination well.  It's difficult, and often not done
  very well.

  The best part of this song is the piano riffs at the beginning and the
  end.  It's a very simple riff that lays out the chord progression for the
  rest of the track.  The piano itself sounds almost muffled and has the
  sound as if it's being played in a glass room.  It's a feeling that I
  really enjoy.

  I said earlier that my favorite combination of instruments is the piano
  and violin.  I'll give _pk_ credit for the combination.  But the violin
  samples are lacking the quality I would've expected in a competition like
  this.  The background mid-strings are nice.  But the lead strings are of
  poor quality.  I'm not even sure if its a Violin or a Viola.  To me, it
  sounds like a violin sample that has been taken out of its range.  I'm
  very disappointed in that fact.  In a competition this large, one should
  pay very close attention to such details.  As a musician, you should
  always be conscious of such things.

  Now before you think I'm entirely discrediting the song, please realize
  that I recognize the skill involved in writing a song like this.  The
  reality is that it's a great song.  The choice of instrument samples,
  however, has affected my judgment of the tune.  I would like it a great
  deal better if the samples were better.  And that electric guitar riff
  about two-thirds of the way through could've been done with nice brass
  instrument or some sort of deep, powerful woodwind.  I think the guitar is
  a bit inappropriate and out of place.  Regardless, this is a much better
  song than average, and I suggest that you download the tune.  The
  technical aspects of the song are very nice and worth a good study.  But
  it won't be on my play list.


  -=- "Ipanema Sands" by Mr. Moses -=-
  1st at Pilgrimage

  Beating out second place ("Her Lazer Light Eyes" by Nullsleep) by only
  seven points was this tune by the talented Mr. Moses.  I've never heard
  anything by this individual before today, and I can say I'm quite
  impressed.  This is one of those tunes where you can't quite identify the
  genre of the song.  And like almost every case when I've discovered such a
  situation, I'm not disappointed at all.

  There was an old MOD that was popular when I first entered the scene many
  years ago.  The MOD was called "Cheerleader" and it toted a reputation for
  some incredible percussion and some rather bizarre riffs on instruments
  not intended for percussion.  That old MOD is what this song reminds me
  of.  There is a great base line, and some really fun Calypso sounds
  carried throughout the song.  How often do you hear someone talk about
  Calypso music in the demo scene?

  I think the thing that won so many votes on this tune is the fact that is
  was so much fun to listen to.  It's the type of song you want to move to
  when you hear it.  It's fun, and for most people, that is why they like a
  song.  That is why I like it, and that is why many of you will like it.
  If you want to prove me wrong, download the tune, and make sure you send
  me a message.  But you'll find some appreciation for the tune, regardless
  of what type of genre you prefer.


  -=- "Her Lazer Light Eyes" by Nullsleep -=-
  2nd at Pilgrimage

  When I first played this song, I wasn't exactly sure what to think.  I
  felt like I was taken back to the Atari age.  But once I was able to
  identify the tune as a classic chip tune, I found a new appreciation for
  the song.

  For those of you who aren't aware, a chip tune is something that uses VERY
  small audio samples called "chips".  The version of this song that I'm
  listening to is an MP3.  So, you can understand why I didn't think of it
  as a chip tune at first.  The file size isn't as small as a chip (chips
  often full at a size less than 1k, rarely over).  Unfortunately, the
  drawback about listening to an MP3 version of a chip (other than file
  size) is the fact that I can't see what wonderful effects Nullsleep was
  able to use, or how many channels the fellow used.  But true to form,
  there is always something going on in a chip tune, and Nullsleep covered
  his bases.

  I will admit that it takes a certain type of person to appreciate a chip
  tune.  There are a lot of people that think of them as a dying style.  I,
  on the other hand, have a great deal of appreciation for such things.
  Knowing what Pilgrimage was, an introduction to many new sceners, this was
  an appropriate tune, and I'm glad it placed as well as it did.

  I wish I could say a whole lot about the tune.  Unfortunately, I have
  always found it difficult to describe chip tunes.  They are definitely not
  high quality, but that's not the intent.  This tune, just like any good
  chip tune, is definitely an art form.  And it is one that is often
  overlooked as a good song.  This is an awesome example of a great work of
  art, and I highly recommend it.


  -=- "Embraced" by ChaoticOne and Troll -=-
  I have two things to say before I review this.  First is the fact that
  I've known Troll for a long time.  And this is the first tune I've heard
  from him (granted the fact that this was a co-op) in well over three
  years.  He has come a long way, and I'm proud of his advancement in the
  music world.  Second is the fact that according to the Sample Message
  data, this song was written in a matter of hours.  So while I might be a
  bit critical of this piece, keep this simple fact in mind:  Refinement
  does not come in a matter of minutes.  It comes in a matter of days.  And
  days, they did not have.

  That being said, I tend to put the negative thoughts first.  I was not
  happy with the piano.  It was not natural, and the sample was clipped.  I
  would've expected this sort of work from an S3M module, but not with IT.
  Impulse Tracker supports New Note Actions (NNAs), which should make the
  sound of a piano sample such as this much cleaner, much more realistic.
  Any IT artist should know this, and should write with this in mind.  NNAs
  and the instrument setting should be set before anything else.  There
  should still be some cleanup involved...but not nearly this much.

  Aside from that simple fact, I am quite intrigued by the tune.  There are
  two things that I like most about the song.  The percussion and the base
  lines.  The base lines are almost inaudible on my standard PC speakers.
  But when you turn on the stereo with the sub-woofer, I'm quite happy with
  the base progression.  It's simple, but it does so much to add to the
  depth of the song.  The percussion, on the other hand, does not benefit
  from the high quality samples that are so often heard in such
  competitions.  But the percussion is tight, and very justified.  The
  percussion is simple, but it's clean, and very precise.  Simplicity, in
  some cases, is a virtue.  And the percussion in this song does not detract
  from the quality of the song.  It creates a very warm sound to the song,
  and that is something that makes this song special.

  There is a little spot where there is some sort of pan flute.  I love pan
  flute, but I think it should've been used more in this song.  Regardless
  of that fact, it was used in a rather sensual way.  When that pan flute
  struck my ear drums, I felt a sense of resolve.  I was both happy and
  satisfied.  A great introduction of an instrument, even as late in the
  song as this was.  This song is definitely worth the download.


                 --Coplan

  "In Tune" is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and
  singular works by fellow trackers.  It is to be used as a tool to expand
  your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general
  rating system.  Coplan's opinions are not the opinions of the Static Line
  Staff.

  If you have heard a song you would like to recommend (either your own, or
  another person's), We can be contacted through e-mail using the addresses
  found in the closing notes.  Please do not send files attached to e-mail
  without first contacting us.  Thank you!


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  On The Sideline
    "My Sweet Atlas" by Kaneel
  By:  Ben
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  I found this in The Lineup for March, and at first I did not like the
  repetitive theme and anxious atmosphere.  But over time the song grew on
  me, because a certain intelligence has been used in the composition, and
  it succeeds in conveying an idea of boredom and longing.

  "My Sweet Atlas" starts quietly with slow minor scales and subdued
  percusion.  The introduction sets a bleak backdrop for the wistful motif
  to come.  I like Kaneel's use of the portamento effect throughout the
  song, it adds an expressiveness to the lead.  The retrigger percussive
  chirps and buzzes are also charming.  I thought the arpeggio on the
  delayed lead in patterns 49 and 50 was interesting, it made for more of a
  hectic sensation.

  There isn't much variation from the initial theme, it transitions smoothly
  from minimalism to a louder and more crowded sound.  In my opinion Kaneel
  makes artful use of the instruments as a whole, and I could imagine lyrics
  being made for this song.  It is a good example of epic ambient music, and
  Kaneel's other songs are similar in style.

  Song Information:

  Title:       My Sweet Atlas
  Author:      Kaneel
  Length:      4:51
  Filename:    kl_msa.zip
  File Size:   1120k
  Source:      ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/kaneel/

                 --Ben Collver


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  The Lineup
  By:  Novus
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Welcome to The Lineup! Every month, I scour through the hundreds of new
  releases on the scene's major archive sites to find the best new music,
  saving you the trouble of having to download 20 instant-delete songs to
  find 1 that's worth keeping.

  The Lineup is still playing catch-up, so here's the comeback plan: for
  August's issue, the issue you're reading right now, you'll get the best
  tracks of June and July, which means we're officially caught up now. Yay!
  Next month's issue will feature the best tracks of August.

  As always, you can add YOUR feedback, positive or negative by e-mailing me
  at vince_young@hotmail.com.

  In the meantime, you may consider the following 35 tunes to be the best
  tracks of June and July 2003:


  -=- THE BEST OF THE BEST: JUNE 2003 -=-
  "Umber Dawn" - Quasian - progressive rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_umber_dawn.zip

  -=- THE BEST OF THE BEST: JULY 2003 -=-
  "Winter Night" - Butch - fantasy
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/butch/b_winter.zip

  -=- THE REST OF THE BEST -=-
  "Alone In Infinity" - Butch - fantasy
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/butch/b_alone.zip

  "Blindmind" - Quasian - demostyle
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_blindmind.zip

  "Blue Lotus" - Impulse - light rock
  http://pp.kpnet.fi/mavis/i_blue.it

  "Da Feelin'" - Josss - funk
  ftp://ftp.scenesp.org/pub/modulez/josss/Jos-dfln.zip

  "Damask Rose" - Quasian - progressive rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_damask_rose_16bit.zip

  "Elusive Images" - Quasian - pop/rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_elusive_images.zip

  "Feeling My Way" - Quasian - light rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_feeling_my_way.zip

  "For A Friend" - Xerxes - fantasy
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/xerxes/xm/xr-frnd.zip

  "Fragging Arena" - Speci - trance
  http://www.mbnet.fi/~special1/files2001/spc-frag.zip

  "Frozen" - Dr. Abez - ambient
  http://www.modplug.com/mods/nrdetail.php3?session=&detailno=10662

  "Gamejube" - Sebuko - demostyle
  http://www.novusmusic.org/songs/gamejube.zip

  "Homeless" - Gargoyle - funk
  http://www.tunestore.de/songs/homeless.zip

  "Horisont" - Xerxes - fantasy
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/xerxes/xm/xr-hsont.zip

  "Improvise" - Wizard - acid jazz
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/wizard/wiz_imp.zip

  "Injection" - Mempheria - pop
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/mempheria/mpn-inj.zip

  "Lost Cause" - Quasian - light rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_lost_cause.zip

  "Magenta Magnet" - Quasian - funk
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_magenta_magnet.zip

  "Meaning" - Quasian - pop/rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_meaning.zip

  "New Life" - Kricke - pop
  http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/K/ke-life.xm

  "Night Of The Wolf" - SaxxonPike - trance
  http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/S/spk-notw.it

  "OA Theme" - DJ Relax - orchestral
  http://www.modplug.com/mods/nrdetail.php3?session=&detailno=10676

  "Overdose" - Quasian - demostyle
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_overdose.zip

  "Parasite Blessing" - Quasian - demostyle
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_parasite_blessing.zip

  "Relix" - Pro-Xex - electronica
  http://pro-xex.kenamick.com/tracks/relix.zip

  "Return To Nebula 9" - Gopher - demostyle
  http://www.planetheck.co.uk/~gophers/Download/gh-rtn9.rar

  "Second Time" - Quasian - pop/rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_second_time.zip

  "Shades Of Futility" - Christofori - jazz
  http://www.christofori.net/music.php?file=fb-sofutile.it

  "Shadow Dancing" - Speci - trance
  http://www.mbnet.fi/~special1/files2002/spc-sd.zip

  "Stream Of Lethe" - Quasian - rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_stream_of_lethe.zip

  "System 51" - Quasian - rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/quasian/quasian_-_system51.zip

  "Unreal Fantasy" - Prophecy - fantasy
  http://koti.mbnet.fi/~prophecy/musat/p-unrlf.it

  "Ventil" - Xerxes - dance
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/xerxes/xm/xr-vent.zip

  "You Wanna Battle Me?" - Wizard - pop
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/wizard/wiz_ywbm.zip

  Latez!

                 --Novus


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Screen Lit Vertigo
    "Legomania", "I Feel Like a Computer", "Schism", and "Ciasson"
  By:  Seven
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  -=- "Legomania" by Doomsday -=-

  (party-version)

  1st place at the Assembly 2003 demo compo

  System requirements: 14 MB HD, OpenGL 3D card, Windows.

  Test Machine: P4 2.6GHz 512MB DDR, Realtek AC'97, NVidia 488 GO 64MB, WinXP
    (Did not run on P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround 3, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB,
    Win98 SE)

  The credits:
    Code: MRI, Memon/Moppi (for DemoPajaa)
    3D & 2D: Dice, Wode
    Music: Firestorm

  The demo:
  "Legomania" starts with a scene from Boost: the lego man walking on a
  small planet.  After 6 years walking, the planet has visibly eroded, and
  the lego man is tired of it and jumps away.  The flight with the Star Wars
  X-wing that follows is only one of the scenes that gave this demo it's
  name, other lego scenes include a medieval ship, a graveyard, a highway
  and an apartment block.  That last scene even has a subtle reference to
  the Matrix, can you find it?  The round lego blocks actually look round,
  except the tops on the blocks that are hexagons.  There's a subtle snow-
  effect added on top of the 3D scenes, which makes them look less flat.
  The only bad point to the Lego scenes are the poems that are displayed,
  they're cheezy and don't make much sense.

  The lego parts are pieced together with normal 3D and effects, and it's
  obvious they put some thought in the transitions.  The way we go from the
  ship to the "Doomsday still rules!" coffee cup is surprising, and the
  puzzle with the flashy 3D blob looks lovely.  Some effects are almost
  hidden, like the texture morphing on the cinema screen and the rubics
  cube.

  There are little winks to oldskool effects, such as the golden scroller on
  top of the chessboard, and some not-so-subtle elite arrogance, such as the
  coffee cup, or implying that Doomsday lives and the groups they greet are
  dead.

  The music really ties everything together.  It's like a condensed movie
  track, quickly changing emotions and styles: electronic, symphonic,
  ambient,...  It adapts to the scenes shown (f.e, trumpets are added in the
  medieval part), and all changes in scenes are synchronized perfectly to
  it.

  Overall:
  This is IMHO the best demo of 2003 so far.  Doomsday show their skills
  haven't deteriorated since Off.  They know how to make a demo that grabs
  your attention and doesn't let go for the whole 8 minutes.  The whole
  design and story are perfectly executed, it has the right mix between 3D
  scenes and effects, between fast and slow parts, it even has imperfections
  that add something (the missing puzzle piece, f.e.) The only bad points
  are the poems, and the fact it loops automatically (make that an option,
  boys).  If your hardware can run this, you HAVE to check it out.  It's a
  really amazing demo! Now if only Doomsday had listed the minimum
  requirements in their info file...


  -=- "I FEEL Like A Computer" by Melon Dezign -=-

  (party-version)

  Found at the assembly FTP server, but should be at www.scene.org
  Disqualified at the Assembly 2003 demo compo (would have been 3th)

  System requirements: 15.5 MB HD, OpenGL 3D card, Windows.

  Test Machine: P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround 3, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB, Win98 SE

  The credits:
    Code: jumbo Borger, Toyos
    Graphics: Walt
    Music: Nico

  The demo:
  Melon Dezigns demo is made almost entirely of flat-shaded cubes.  A ship
  in a waving sea, the clouds in the sky, rainbows, cars, a dog, a phone,
  John Travolta: everything looks as if it escaped from a low-resolution
  8-bit game.  The best part of the demo is its story, and I don't want to
  spoil it so you should really watch it for yourself.  Suffice to say its
  as bizarre as you would expect from Melon Dezign, and it includes some
  references to popular movies and games.

  There are some rubber vectors and square smoke from the ship, and
  transitions between different parts are marked with rainbows sweeping over
  the screen, but for the rest there are little to no effects, it's all pure
  3D animation.  The models are very simple and the animation of the
  characters is choppy (think bitmap-animations of early games), but the
  camera switches, the physics and the flow of the story are good enough to
  keep your attention.

  The music switches constantly with each part of the story, with sudden
  breaks, and sometimes there's no music at all, only sound effects.
  There's DnB, techno with computer vocals, ancient Gameboy music,...  I
  have no idea which fragment of the music was ripped without permission, or
  even if this is the same version that played in the compo: it wasn't
  available during the party, I got it the next day from the assembly
  server, and it's possible they've already fixed the sound track as they
  said they would.

  Overall:
  I FEEL Like A Computer doesn't have spectacular effects or impressive 3D,
  its main attractions are the bizarre but funny story, the simple rendering
  and the smooth flow.  Be patient when you load it, because unpacking takes
  a while on a slow computer and there is no progress bar or any other
  indication the demo is running.  But it'll definitely be worth the wait!


  -=- "Schism" by Noice -=-

  (party-version)

  Found at www.scene.org
  1st place at the Remedy 2003 demo compo

  System requirements: 19 MB HD, OpenGL 1.1 compatible 3D card (DX9 card
    recommended), Windows.

  (Did not run on P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround 3, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB, Win98 SE)

  The credits:
    Code: Mazy, Gnilk
    Graphics: Twixy, Flood
    3D: Vaniljus
    Music: Evade, Erik Lyden

  The demo:
  Noices latest production weights a whopping 19.6 MB, and they offer no
  apology: "we dislike file size limitations in demo compos, this is the
  21th century".  Call me old fashioned, but I still think demos are about
  breaking limits, and that goes out of the window if you allow file sizes
  that approach those of their DivX equivalents.  But to each his own :-/
  Schism is a heavy 3D effects demo, and requires DirectX9 compatible
  hardware (which has fragment shaders) for optimal viewing pleasure.  But
  even if you don't have a GeForce FX or ATI 9700, you can still enjoy it
  because the demo sacrifices quality for frame rate.  So the demo runs
  smooth, but some surfaces have textures that aren't as fancy as they
  should be.  Still, on my inadequate GF 488 Go, there are some effects that
  really impressed me: a very detailed human head with animated hair for
  example, or the typical valley fly through with atmospheric perspective:
  the horizon isn't hidden by mist, but instead hills further away look
  fuzzy because of the air through which we are (supposedly) looking.  Some
  effects in the "done before but still nice" category include the texts
  breaking in thousands of cubes, and the zooming into a picture where each
  pixel becomes a new image itself.

  Both those and the few background images are gray or amber-tinted faces of
  gorgeous women, I recognize a few old Flood pics in there.  Maybe it's
  just to rake in the votes but who's complaining :) Several 3D objects have
  a weird organic look, there's something that resembles an alien train
  following a trail of lights, and a cave that looks like the inside of a
  sponge with blue ribbons flying through it.  The white greetings on top of
  the 3 linked virus-like objects are difficult to read, a font with more
  contrast would have been better.

  The music is a typical good old demo tune, starting slowly and a bit
  ambient with sweeping leads and little percussion but it quickly
  transforms into a more electronic tune with a drum track that make you tap
  the rhythm with your feet.

  Overall:
  I don't really have the hardware to judge Schism fairly.  The effects are
  nice, although it's obvious there are textures missing in places.  The
  models are original and very detailed, and the music binds everything
  together.  But there isn't much coherent design, and the demo is quite
  short for its size (only 3min30).  OTOH, I guess that if you have the 3D
  card to run this baby in it's full glory, you'll have the Internet
  connection to match.  For the people with GeForce 2's and dialup
  connections, I suggest you wait getting this one until your next upgrade.


  -=- "Caisson" by TBC -=-

  (debugged party-version)

  Found at www.scene.org
  1st place at the SceneEvent 2003 demo compo

  System requirements: 8.8 MB HD, 800Mhz CPU, 256 MB RAM, GeForce2

  Test Machine: P4 2.6GHz 512MB DDR, Realtek AC'97, NVidia 488 GO 64MB, WinXP

  (crashed after 3th effect on a P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround 3, Radeon 8500
    LE 64MB, Win98 SE)

  The credits:
    Code: Mentor
    Visuals: Cheezy
    Music: Puryx/Scarab

  The demo:
  "Caisson" is also a 3D effect demo, no story, no theme, and only a few
  elaborate 3D objects.  Some of the effects I like best are amazingly
  simple, but they are effective due to the close syncing with the music:
  the blue particles with gravity at the start for example, lighting up to
  the beat, or the six glass plates in a circle that are each linked to a
  different note.  It has also a few over-used effects (how much more
  variants on swirling octopi or TVs-on-a-stake do we need? None for the
  next few years I say), but others look simply beautiful, like the swarm of
  blue threads with flares at the top.  In fact, it annoys me that TBC tries
  to hide them behind layers of snow, or overlays of black smudges.  Aren't
  we supposed to admire them?

  There's no 2D artwork, but all kinds of 3D ones.  It looks like TBC tried
  to cover every style under the sun, from half-smooth half-polygonal
  morphing blobs to a human torso suspended by wires, and from a metallic
  ring with hundreds of white words floating around it (a la Farbrausch) to
  a very realistic prison block (someone in TBC must have seen one from the
  inside recently :) ).  There's no theme or link between scenes, each
  stands on its own.

  The best part of the demo IMHO is the music: it has a simple but
  infectious happy lead melody that is repeated over and over again,
  accompanied by heavy drums and little beeps.  All effects are synced to
  it, and unfortunately each and every camera change as well.  This is a bit
  overdone IMO.  There's a break in the middle, and the torso-part which is
  shown at that time is stretched too long match the break.  More variation
  please!

  Overall:
  One of the meanings of caisson is "a chest to hold ammunition".  It looks
  like TBC threw all their ammo in one program, added some funky music,
  shaked the whole and released the explosive result at SceneEvent.  It
  looks good and it sounds great, even though the mood swings around between
  happy (the music, the effects) and dark (the 3D parts, the overlays).
  Recommended for everyone, although I hope the final fixes the crash on my
  main machine.


                 --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  New Perspective For A Tiny Scene
    What American Demosceners Can Learn From LAN Parties
  By:  Phoenix
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Just recently, a small gathering called Pilgrimage took place in Salt Lake
  City, Utah, attracting somewhere around 50 people.  Their common interest:
  Underground PC creativity, in the form of demos, music tracking, and pixel
  painting.  Seminars were held and there were three competitions for
  prizes.

  This event was highly unusual.  Those of you reading this may be puzzled
  why.  What made it unusual was that it was held in the United States.  In
  fact, it was the first "demo party" in the states in four years.  The last
  one also attracted just around 50 people.  European demosceners have
  always been puzzled by this phenomenon - how can a country chock full of
  creative computer users find opportunities to gather so scarce?

  I am not going to try to explain that in this article.  I'm often asked
  that question when I'm at parties in Europe, and try as I may, I can never
  come up with definitive answers.  You may have your own, and they may be
  right or wrong.  But naturally, actions speak louder than excuses.

  What I will write about is something that has caught my interest.  I often
  check up on Tom's Hardware, a well-known computer news/review website.
  Lately, they've published many gaming articles to appeal to the massive
  computer gaming community.  They include reports from LAN parties, which
  are like demoparties without the demos, basically - just a bunch of PCs, a
  LAN, and plenty of frag-hungry gamers.  What interested me was that most
  of these party reviews were in the United States.  I couldn't help but
  read deeper into how these LAN parties happened.

  At this point, you may be thinking that good ol' demo-boy Phoenix has
  finally lost it, and turned to the "dark side" of computing - a drooling,
  joystick/mouse wiggling zombie  That couldn't be further from the truth.
  I am merely curious as to how LAN parties tick, and more importantly, WHY
  they can be so seemingly easy to organize in the US while demoparties are
  not.  Let's look at a few that happened recently.

  Lanaholics - Dekalb, IL - early August? - www.lanaholics.com
  Reviewed at http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030809

       This party was held in a convention/sports arena at Northern Illinois
       University.  The venue is new and the entrance view almost reminds me
       of the Hartwall Arena for Assembly (though this place was certainly
       smaller).  There were a large number of PC component sponsors.  There
       weren't so many attenders, but they plan a larger event next March.

  PCA LAN - Zion, IL - July 18-20 - www.pcalan.com
  Reviewed at http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030727

       This party was held in a more remote location.  In fact, it was inside
       a barn! But there was room for at least a couple hundred people.  I
       couldn't help but think of Breakpoint when looked through the pictures
       and descriptions.  It seemed just as casual an atmosphere.

  Million Man LAN - Louisville, KY - June 26-29 - www.millionmanlan.com
  Reviewed at http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030628

       The name for this LAN party is no doubt a bit ambitious...  in reality,
       only about 1000 people attended.  For America, that seems really good,
       but bear in mind that Assembly, The Party, and The Gathering all
       attract at least 4000 gamers each.  MML had a dream team of sponsors,
       including Cisco, AMD, ATi, and NVidia.  That should give some hope to
       would-be American demo party organizers.  These guys have no less than
       20 parties under their belt.

  Winter Fragnation - Buffalo, NY - January - www.fragnation.com
  Reviewed at http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030111

       Trust me, winters in Buffalo are about on par with Scandinavian nations
       - so events like this are no doubt welcomed.  This one had a bit of a
       military theme - which I suppose is just fine for people who like to
       blow stuff up.  Accomodations were provided by the Armed Forces Reserve
       Unit - again, Breakpoint anyone?

  You may notice that I said nothing about gaming activities, because like I
  said, I couldn't care less about gaming.  But I've certainly come to some
  conclusions:

     1. Demoscener culture and gamer culture have a lot more in common than
        you would imagine.  Sure, they do different things with their PCs, but
        the parties they do them at are run basically the same way.  Surely,
        the above is proof that demo culture in the US may not be shunned as
        much as you'd think.

     2. The notion that multi-day events of this caliber are impossible in the
        US is a bunch of bull.  There's no doubt that fire and building codes
        are stricter over here, but LAN party organizers seem to go the extra
        mile to ensure their attenders have a place to crash.

     3. You'd think that tech-savvy towns like San Francisco, Portland,
        Austin, and Seattle would have all the parties.  Well, it looks like
        just the opposite is true, and that in fact the midwest is the hot
        spot.  This shows that parties aren't dependent on location - but
        certainly being centralized is a plus.

     4. Sponsors are no doubt attracted more by consumers than by producers.
        They see LAN parties as a haven for kids demanding the latest
        hardware, even if it means several upgrades a year.  Demosceners are a
        bit more frugal with their machines, but a bit wiser in how to use
        them.  The message American demo party organizers should convey to
        sponsors is that these are great people to hire and to demonstrate the
        power of their equipment.

  So, in summary, you can still hate gamers, but I hope that reading about
  the above parties inspire some potential American demo party organizers.
  "Outreach" events held by DOG and the Pilgrimage organizers have done a
  great job of presenting the world of demos to others.  But at the same
  time, remember that it's all about having a great time! And surely, we
  Americans can figure out how do THAT, can't we?

                 --Phoenix


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Coplan's Eyes
    A Snob of What?
  By:  Coplan
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  There was a time when I would've never given any thought to the fact that
  I was anti-anything-that-wasn't-IBM-Clone (They call it PC now, which is
  silly).  Yes, that was a time when BBS was king, and I was a guy who
  logged on twice a day and added at least ten posts per visit.  That was a
  day when I was king.  MS-DOS was the OS of choice, and Windows had yet to
  reach the horizon..  A song any larger than 100k was considered large, and
  anything faster than 2,400 BPS was fast.  Broadband was the brand new
  28.8k BPS modems.  Up until that point, we waited all day to download the
  latest tunes from Skaven and Purple Motion.  Apple was something you
  played "Oregon Trail" on at school, and even then, you thought it was a
  simple game.  Segregation was rampant then.  I had a friend whose father
  worked in Mainframe.  He was learning about Unix, and I couldn't give it
  two thoughts.  I had another friend who was raving about this new computer
  that Apple was bringing out called the Macintosh.  The only thing I
  thought was cool about the mighty Macintosh was the commercial on TV.  I
  can remember it now:  Some guy (maybe it was a woman) was running with a
  hammer.  There were lines of people acting like androids.  Perhaps they
  were androids.  But they were obviously not thinking on their own.  They
  were all piling into an auditorium, and this runner (with the hammer) was
  running down the central aisle.  Then the runner started swinging that
  hammer much like the hammer throw in the olympics.  There was a speaker on
  stage shouting orders.  It was either a scene from Orsen Well's "1984" or
  something from the Third Reich.  But everyone was listening to him.  And
  behind him was a large screen with him and a whole bunch of other
  gibberish.  But this hammer thrower, formerly the runner, was spinning
  this damn hammer...and then let go.  The hammer crashed into the screen.

  Back then, I was a PC snob.  I wouldn't admit it, but it was a good
  commercial.  It was classy.  But it didn't give me the information I
  needed.  Would I be able to do what I wanted to do with this new computer
  that was coming out?  I didn't care.  I had my good old 8088, which even
  at that time was kinda old, and I was happy.  I had my modem, I had my
  piles of floppys.  I even had an add-on 5MB hard drive, and a dot matrix
  printer that had a "Near Letter Quality" setting.  I was living the high
  life.  When it came to music, I was already on a 486dx-33mhz.  Yes, that's
  a 33mhz to you young-uns.  That was all that I needed to run Scream
  Tracker.  Well, that and my good old SB-16.  The 16 meant that I could
  track a total of 16 channels, not 16-bit.  That came later.  But that was
  what I needed to make music.  Unix, on the other hand, was still very
  business...very NASA.  Macintosh toted it's cute little mouse and silly
  sounds.  That GUI got in the way of any real music genious.  A true artist
  didn't need a GUI.  A true artist worked with what he had.  If his vision
  or his tune was clear in his head, he needed nothing else.  Right?

  How naive I was.

  That was a long time ago.  I wasn't releasing music for the 'scene yet.  I
  hadn't even really gotten on the Internet.  Hell, the 'net wasn't even
  available to most people yet.  When I entered the scene, it was Amiga or
  PC, and that was about it.  Things came down to Gravis Ultrasound or Sound
  Blaster.  None of which even worked on a MAC.  Unix didn't support either,
  that wasn't their focus.  And Linux hadn't yet been officially born
  outside the mind of Linus himself.  No one ever thought that any of these
  alternative operating systems would ever catch on.  Well, we all thought
  OS2-warp would've caught on.  But it didn't stand the test of time.

  And now we sit in 2003.  Mac OSX is almost as popular as Linux, which is
  catching up to Windows more and more each day.  I've seen demos for almost
  any operating system you could think of.  Some of the best musicians use
  Mac, and you wouldn't know with an MP3.  And some of the best artists use
  Linux with Gimp, and you wouldn't know with a JPG.  And just a few weeks
  ago, I grabbed myself an iPod (an apple product) with some skepticism.
  Yes, some of my PC snobbery still holds out.  But anymore, it has to do
  with the price.  It's true that I'm not a huge fan of the interface, but
  there are things that one can do about that.  My friend Ranger Rick, and
  avid supporter of both SceneSpot and Static Line (The hardware behind all
  this is his), is working on the Fink Project to bring KDE (familiar to you
  Linux guys) to OSX.  Throw a Unix core under OSX, and you're bound to make
  someone happy.  I see Microsoft losing ground in the OS war every day.
  And I see PC and MAC hardware blending more every day.  Just look at the
  'scene.  I can think of three guys who use MAC exclusively for their
  music.  I can think of five that use it for their art.  I can think of
  many more who use Linux exclusively, even for their demo coding.  And if
  you threw it all up on the big screen with the computer hidden from a
  watchful eye... you wouldn't know the difference.

  So a guy comes to my forums today and asks about Mac as a usable medium
  for the demo scene.  I had to be honest with the guy, it's very usable.
  But it'll be a bumpy road, 'cause there are still many PC snobs out there.
  Then I scratch my head and wonder two things.  First:  I question whether
  or not I've been reformed.  I still use PC, and I still prefer it (That
  includes my Linux machine, which runs on the same hardware).  But I'm much
  more accepting of MAC.  I guess I'm not so much of a snob anymore.  And
  Second:  What do the snobs know that I don't know?  Is it really a war
  worth fighting?  The end product is just as enjoyable.  So what does it
  really matter?

  That's what I thought.

                 --Coplan


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Link List
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

    Portals:

        SceneSpot (Home of Static Line).......http://www.scenespot.org
        CFXweb.......................................http://cfxweb.net
        Czech Scene................................http://www.scene.cz
        Danish Scene..............................http://demo-scene.dk
        Demoscene.org.........................http://www.demoscene.org
        Demo.org...................................http://www.demo.org
        Diskmag.de...................................http://diskmag.de
        Greek Scene............................http://www.demoscene.gr
        Hungarian Scene........................http://www.demoscene.hu
        Italian Scene...........................http://run.to/la_scena
        ModPlug Central Resources..........http://www.castlex.com/mods
        Noerror.................................http://www.noerror.org
        Norwegian Scene........................http://www.demoscene.no
        Orange Juice.............................http://www.ojuice.net
        Planet Zeus..........................http://www.planetzeus.net
        Polish Scene...........................http://www.demoscena.pl
        Pouet.net.................................http://www.pouet.net
        Russian Scene..........................http://www.demoscene.ru
        Scene.org.................................http://www.scene.org
        Scenergy on-line (8bit)............http://www.scenergy.natm.ru
        Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
        Spanish Scene............................http://www.escena.org
        Swiss Scene..............................http://www.chscene.ch
        United Trackers.................http://www.united-trackers.org

    Archives:

        Acid2.....................................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
        Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
        Aminet.....................http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/
        Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
        Hornet (1992-1996)........................ftp://ftp.hornet.org
        MOD Archive..........................http://www.modarchive.com
        Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org
        Scene.org Austra........................ftp://ftp.au.scene.org
        Scene.org Netherlands...................ftp://ftp.nl.scene.org
        Swiss Scene FTP...........................ftp://ftp.chscene.ch

    Demo Groups:

        3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net
        3State...................................http://threestate.com
        7 Gods.........................................http://7gods.sk
        Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com
        Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain
        Addict..................................http://addict.scene.pl
        Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl
        Alien Prophets.....................http://www.alienprophets.dk
        Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
        ASD....................................http://asd.demoscene.gr
        Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com
        Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com
        BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net
        Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk
        Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net
        Broncs..................................http://broncs.scene.cz
        Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org
        Bypass.................................http://bypass.scene.org
        Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org
        Cocoon..............................http://cocoon.planet-d.net
        Confine.................................http://www.confine.org
        Damage...................................http://come.to/damage
        Dc5.........................................http://www.dc5.org
        Delirium..............................http://delirium.scene.pl
        Eclipse............................http://www.eclipse-game.com
        Elitegroup..........................http://elitegroup.demo.org
        Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~exceed
        Fairlight.............................http://www.fairlight.com
        Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org
        Freestyle............................http://www.freestylas.org
        Fresh! Mindworks...................http://kac.poliod.hu/~fresh
        Future Crew..........................http://www.futurecrew.org
        Fuzzion.................................http://www.fuzzion.org
        GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods
        Halcyon...........................http://www.halcyon.scene.org
        Haujobb..................................http://www.haujobb.de
        Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl
        Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org
        Inquisition....................http://inquisition.demoscene.hu
        Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net
        Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor
        Komplex.................................http://www.komplex.org
        Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com
        Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula
        Maturefurk...........................http://www.maturefurk.com
        Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar
        MOVSD....................................http://movsd.scene.cz
        Nextempire...........................http://www.nextempire.com
        Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org
        Orange.................................http://orange.scene.org
        Orion................................http://orion.planet-d.net
        Outbreak................................http://www.outbreak.nu
        Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr
        Prone................................http://www.prone.ninja.dk
        Purple....................................http://www.purple.dk
        Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu
        Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay
        Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net
        Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de
        Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org
        Skrju.....................................http://www.skrju.org
        Spinning Kids......................http://www.spinningkids.org
        Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl
        Talent.............................http://talent.eurochart.org
        The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org
        The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net
        The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no
        TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com
        Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma
        T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org
        Unik........................................http://www.unik.de
        Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net
        Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch
        Wipe....................................http://www.wipe-fr.org

    Music Labels, Music Sites:

        Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com
        Aural Planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com
        Azure...................................http://azure-music.com
        Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp
        BrothomStates.............http://www.katastro.fi/brothomstates
        Chill..........................http://www.chillproductions.com
        Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/~cnd
        Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com
        Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com
        Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/~boris/fabtrax/home.htm
        Fairlight Music.....................http://fairlight.scene.org
        Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
        Fusion Music Crew.................http://members.home.nl/cyrex
        Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
        Hellven.................................http://www.hellven.org
        Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org
        Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.l7.net
        Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org
        Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net
        Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
        Lackluster.....................http://www.m3rck.net/lackluster
        Level-D.................................http://www.level-d.com
        Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music
        Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/~mon
        MAZ's sound homepage..................http://www.maz-sound.com
        Med.......................................http://www.med.fr.fm
        Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
        Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
        Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
        Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
        Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
        Moods..............................http://www.moodymusic.de.vu
        Mstation.....................http://mstation.org/software.html
    <*> Nectarine Demoscene Radio................http://scenemusic.net
        Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
        One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net
        Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net
        pHluid..................................http://phluid.acid.org
        Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr
        RBi Music.............................http://www.rbi-music.com
        Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruff_engine
        SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m
        Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev
        Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate
    <U> Sunlikamelo-D.....................http://www.sunlikamelo-d.com
        Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr
        Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila
        Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net
        Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris
        Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr
        Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tokyodawn.org
        Triad's C64 music archive.............http://www.triad.c64.org
        UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub
        Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk
        Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm

    Programming:

        3D engines..........http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html
        3D programming portal.................http://www.3dgamedev.com
        Documents...............http://www.neutralzone.org/home/faqsys
        File format collection...................http://www.wotsit.org
        Game programming portal...............http://www.gamasutra.com
        LCC (free C compiler).........http://www.remcomp.com/lcc-win32
        NASM (free Assembly compiler)......http://www.cryogen.com/nasm
        Programming portal......................http://www.gamedev.net
        Programming portal.....................http://www.flipcode.com
        Programming portal......................http://www.exaflop.org
        Programming portal............http://www.programmersheaven.com
        Programming portal.....................http://www.freecode.com
        PTC video engine.........................http://www.gaffer.org

    Magazines:

        Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/di_mag
        Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com
        Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net
        Eurochart.............................http://www.eurochart.org
        Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net
        Hugi........................................http://www.hugi.de
        Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage
        Jurassic Pack...........................www.jurassicpack.de.vu
        Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net
        Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org
        Shine...............................http://www.shine.scene.org
        Static Line................http://www.scenespot.org/staticline
        Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net
        TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org
        WildMag..................................http://www.wildmag.de

    Parties:

        Assembly (Finland).....................http://www.assembly.org
        Ambience (The Netherlands)..............http://www.ambience.nl
        Buenzli (Switzerland)......................http://www.buenz.li
        Dreamhack (Sweden)....................http://www.dreamhack.org
        Gravity (Poland)............http://www.demoscena.cp.pl/gravity
        Mekka-Symposium (Germany)...................http://ms.demo.org
   <*>  Pilgrimage (Utah, US)..............http://pilgrimage.scene.org
        ReAct (Greece).............................http://www.react.gr
        Takeover (The Netherlands).............,http://www.takeover.nl
        The Party (Denmark).....................http://www.theparty.dk

    Others:

        Demo secret parts....http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula/secret.txt
        Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net
        Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org
        #coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net
        Csound-tekno e-mail list......................................
           ............http://plot.bek.no/mailman/listinfo/csoundtekno
        Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express
        Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
        Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
        Everything tracking..http://zolaweb.com/Zola/trax/tracking.htm
        Freax.....................................http://www.freax.hu/
        GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
    <U> Mod-Radio.....................http://www.back2roots.org/Radio/
        PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
        Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
        #trax e-mail list.............................................
           .............http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/trax
        Underground Mine.............http://www.spinningkids.org/umine

    IRC Channels:

        Graphics.........................................ircnet #pixel
        Graphics (French)..............................ircnet #pixelfr
        Music......................................irc.scene.org #trax
        Music.............................................ircnet #trax
        Programming.....................................ircnet #coders
        Programming....................................efnet #flipcode
        Programming (French)............................ircnet #codefr
        Programming (German)........................ircnet #coders.ger
        Programming (Hungarian)......................ircnet #coders.hu
        Scene.........................................ircnet #thescene
        Scene (French)..................................ircnet #demofr
        Scene (Hungarian)............................ircnet #demoscene
        Zx-spectrum scene..................................ircnet #z80

--=--=--
----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------


  -=- Staff -=-

    Editors:         Ciaran / Ciaran Hamilton / staticline@theblob.org
                     Ben / Ben Collver / collver1@comcast.net
    Staff Writers:   Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
                      Dilvie / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@dilvie.com
                      Novus / Vince Young / vince_young@hotmail.com
                      Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / tigerhawk@stic.net
                      Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
                      Seven / Stefaan VanNieuwenhuyze/ seven7@pandora.be
                      Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / vojtech.tryhuk@worldonline.cz
                      Vill / Brian Frank / darkvill@yahoo.com
                      The Watcher / Paul-Jan Pauptit / sprout@zonnet.nl

  The current issue of Static Line can always be found on the Web at:
    http://staticline.scenespot.org/issues/current_issue

  Static Line Subscription Management:
    http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/static_line

  If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware that
  we will format your article to 76 columns with two columns at the
  beginning of each line.  Please avoid foul language and high ASCII
  characters.  Contributions (Plain Text) should be e-mailed to
  (static_line-owner@scenespot.org) by the last Friday of each month.  New
  issues are released on a monthly basis.

  See you next month!
-eof---=------=--=------=--=--
