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Outline '06 Report
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by CiH for Alive mag
(At least partially done in realtime...)
FRIDAY!
It is 22.40ish, on the 2nd of June 2006....
And here we are at De Panoven, in a very delayed Easter party sense, sitting
in my fortress of solitude and plastic bags, and waiting on rumours of
pizza. Conicidentally, this has now just arrived, so bear with me, as I go
away for some minutes of chomping happiness....
Or possibly longer, as it is now 00.35 on Saturday morning by the time my
attention returns to this report.
We're reporting from the Panoven at Zevenaar in De Netherlands. This is the
latest location to host an edition of the megamighty Outline '06 party. I'm
still trying to get used to my situation, and the strangeness of this venue,
so I might put that task off until tomorrow. The fact that Felice is
distracting me and Earx by showing off Japanese panty-grabbing candid videos
on his laptop does not help here.
Still, we should try to update on things for today, erm I mean yesterday.
This latest adventure started off innocently enough, with an overnight
crashing out at the residence of Felice and Paula. The two evil women have
wisely declined to travel over this time, opting to stay at home with each
others company. Looking at how things are unravelling here, maybe that was
the sensible decision? ;-)
The following morning, Felice and I set off at the crack of 06.45 hundred
hours, only managing to wake the entire household in the process. For added
interest for 'Top Gear' fans, Felice is road-testing his new Astra, and also
his new iPod which has a short-range radio widget so it can be picked up on
the radio part of his car stereo. This is illegal, and possibly akin to a
very localised pirate radio station, according to him. But we are happily
untroubled by over-zealous law enforcement agencies objecting to our
enjoyment of various soft rock power ballady tunes on Felices' playlist, as
Harwich, the toilet with a port attached, hoves into view. It seems to work
pretty well, apart from one occasion where a local radio station decided it
wanted to "share" the borrowed bandwidth.
This part of the journey is notably trouble-free, apart from Felice having
to stop at a roadside supermarket to buy a replacement for a forgotten
sleeping bag.
Back at the port, the Stena Discovery, mysteriously spared a threatened
cancellation of its route for the time being, is running nicely on time. We
are not too troubled by excessive numbers of people on this trip either, as
the ferry is running with about half of the normal easter passenger load.
There are the inevitable stag do's, with national team football shirts as
the chosen costume of the hopelessly deluded and willingly drunk. Of the
generous selection of oddities shown on the video wall for the trip over, a
catchy little number by Columbian songstress and total hornbag, Shakira,
stands out. In it, she uses her voodoo powers to transfer the life-force of
her unfaithful boyfriend into his car, and then crush the life out of the
car at the scrapyard, and him at the same time, or something.
The ferry trip seems to be quicker than normal, and we disembark at around
15.30 hundred million hours, full of hope and anticipation for a quick
arrival at the party.
Such hopes are cruelly dashed to the floor, when we encounter the first wall
of non-moving cars in Rotterdam. Approximately fifteen million Dutch people,
in nose to tail formation, moving at walking pace, lie between us and the
party. They are there to ruthlessly exploit every weakness in the Dutch
motorway system, and the plan works brilliantly of course. We finally
stagger in to De Panoven some three hours later.
There is a little direction related confusion to spice things up. Our
journey is straightforward until the last half-mile, as is so often the
case. The first failed attempt, comes with a turning taken too soon, and
takes us down a country lane hardly touched by the internal combustion
engine. We turn around in haste, suspecting that the locals, wearing ethnic
costume including wooden shoes, might still refer to our car as "The Devil's
infernal horseless carriage" and throw stones and burning straw at it! The
correct turning takes us through an industrial estate, not normally the sort
of place which can be taken as a through route, but eventually the
distinctive single upright chimney of De Panoven can be seen in the middle
distance.
Pulling up hopefully at the front doors of the main hall, we get out of the
car and find in the main hall, a large splodge of Reservoir Gods, various
PeeCee guys set up, and arriving at the same time as us, the Swedes,
including the Nature Brothers, Deez, and the mighty Baggio! Also spotted in
these early stages, are Grazey and MUG UK walking off into the distant
reaches of the campsite, looking for their sleeping accomodations.
Some initial unloading and setting up of gear follows. After some power
socket locating confusion, we find a suitable place opposite the organisers
desk, and quite close to the big screen. A quick check to make sure that the
CT60 falcy survived those last couple of speedhumps which took us by
surprise in the final stage of the journey, and we are off and running! Also
arriving in a smug and early fashion is Cyclone, who has happily set up an
'Alive mag' realtime article, which sort of negates the need for Felice's
laptop to take that role.
But the party isn't just about the focused and "serious" computing in the
main hall. As is so often the case, the 'real party' is outside the venue.
In fact there is a bar located further down from the main hall. This seems
to be the place where you can mostly find the organisers! We catch up again
with MUG UK, Grazey and co, and also we meet GGN of Kua, in a sense of "Hi,
and who are you actually?!" Not having seen him in the flesh. He is with his
rather nice girlfriend Rana. She has not yet learned the lessons that
feminine notions of comfort sort of clash with demo scene parties! Never
mind, she'll remind him of this weekend, for years to come! It is at about
this point that we identify ourselves as officially arrived to Earx and
Havoc.
To give you some background info about the party location, De Panoven is a
former brickworks or tileworks. The chimney comes out from a pudding-shaped
kiln building, which I think gives it the name. There are lots of traces of
its former industrial life, in fact large parts look like they were, the day
the site was abandoned from its original purpose. The "industrial heritage"
aspect is stretched to the limits of credibility, with abandoned rusting
junk and equipment some of which looks no older than c.1959. It is a bigger
site than either of the previous places that have hosted an Outline party.
De Panoven is a very spread-out sort of venue. A lot of the critical access
points seem to be across open ground, which could get potentially very muddy
if it gets any rain?! I think we're really really hoping that the weather
stays fine for these three days. And there have been no guarantees of that
with the lame and wet spring in Western Europe so far!
There is also a little sting in the tale with the sleeping venue. This looks
like General Custer's worst nightmare, a trio of Indian, sorry, Native
American style teepee's! Other smarter people heard about this before we
did, and booked themselves into one of the cabins. Those accommodations are
very reminiscent of the wooden shacks which provided so much enjoyment at
Braamt last Easter.
Of course, one of our first destinations is to the cluster of tables hosting
a virtually complete outfit of Reservoir Gods. Leon, who has been 'off the
scene' for reasons familiar to me in 1998-99 seems to be ok. He's gone a lot
further and given up smoking and is "taking healthy exercise"! Surely his
suppressed inner geek is going to burst out in an explosive fury of code and
clog-pun related humour before too long?! The other Gods are fine, more or
less where they were, the last time we met. These include SH3 (Kev D.), MSG
(Malc), Damo, Strata-RG, and Partycle. Wiztom is loosely attached to them,
as some joint Finnish-UK venture, we think.
Cyclone soon makes himself known to me, as he shows me around the Alive
realtime article. With an air of mounting excitment, he also shows off the
demo that he is doing. This is the "Alive Jukebox", for which I have seen
partially completed previews of. This consists of screens of single bitplane
'acid' style effects, and some very advanced soundchip stuff from the likes
of Stu and Marcer. This has about 45 minutes of tunes all told, and around
9-10 screens. There is also the little matter of some bootsector intros that
he has coded. One plasma-studded beauty is a real competition entry, the
other is a cunning fake of a beastly crew! He then thinks that another
ascii-inspired faketro crew might be having its own entry to the bootsector
compo, so off I go to rummage amongst the 'We dream of Atari demo' pile of
unused ascii stuff just to check and see if it is in there.
The organizers are slow to get going, but a pizza ordering service is just
about running, with Cyclone getting the first ticket, and photographic proof
of this.
Whilst we are awaiting the food, the copious booze supply that Felice and I
have brought with us is cracked open, and we start to relax. During this
stage of the evening, I show an unnamed Amiga guy around my CT60, who is
very interested to see how this kind of upgrade is done on the Atari. I am
pleased to show him around, and he is impressed with how the temperature
gauge and the CTCM cpu throttle work. By that time, Pizza does finally
arrive. It has been a long time since the last Stena-meal, and as they are
standard sized pizza's, I ordered a couple to quell the king-sized hunger!
Apart from the end crust on the second pizza, I manage to eat them as well!
The pizza's weren't the greatest, but good enough for the job, and at a
discounted price of 5 euro's, you couldn't go too far wrong.
At about the time when the party as a whole is nicely relaxed, and wrapping
itself around its third or fourth drinky, the organiser meister, Havoc
bursts in, with an air of a man with important news that can literally wait
not a second longer...
Apparently, we are in breach of some organisers terms by drinking alcohol in
the main room. And on that bombshell, most of the Atarian contingent got up
and left the room (to gather outside and carry on drinking legally, not at
protest against this shock move, in case you were wondering!)
Meanwhile, with all the Atarians out of the room and devoting their evening
to building a better and stronger hangover, the peecee crowd sit in their
corner, quietly working on stuff. So in case people were wondering why the
Atari scene isn't so prolific with their releases, here's one possible
answer!
Over at the bar, I chat with Baggio, Deez, and Wiztom, who are getting
ready for bed by drinking as many beers as possible, to help them sleep
through the first night! I think I might need a bit of help there too!
Amongst all the lighthearted recollections of past parties, there is at
least one new and really exciting bit of information. At this point, it
might be a good idea to look into seeing what demo rumours are floating
about.
Firstly, the real news, which is that the non-attending Evil of DHS is
looking at submitting a 96ktro! He is asking about the deadline. We are
informed that this is going to be set for Sunday morning, but the organisers
can be infinitely flexible, given enough warning. Next up, I suppose I'd
better tell you of a "release" or "escape" from the Dildo Fatwa demo
wormhole which is coming this way!
After that, the news is less clear, Evolution are working on a shootemup
game, and may have a level preview? The Reservoir Gods are not really
prepared with anything, bearing in mind the ongoing distractions of Mr Pink.
I guess the Frenchies have got something with them? With regard to demo
rumours, I've learnt not to ask too much, as the crushing disappointment
might be too much to bear. I almost forgot, the mighty but only occasionally
appearing Defjam is present at this party too. Some wild speculation
suggests that he's been coding, but nothing is certain, not even with Defjam
himself.
Cyclone had been busy, apart from the acid styled music demo, and the
bootsector coding, he 'found' a scrolling ascii Dildo Fatwa bootsector on
his hard drive, donated by an anonymous well-wisher.
It turned out that the person who coded the Dildo Fatwa bootsector is a
German penpal of Pongo's called 'Kaiser Cheeks'.
He looks something like this:-
/\
/__\
||
.---'--'----.
.' {@} '.
/ :.........: \
/== |\_________/| ==\
| / \ |
/__/ \__ __/ \__\
) ) (a_) (a_) ( (
\{ \ }/
( (__) ) Der Kaiser Cheeks!
' (_______/ '
\ /
'---___---'
Hmmm, I think we can spot a familial resemblance somewhere?!
Eventually, thoughts do turn reluctantly to bed, and Felice retires to our
temporary cloth and canvas home. I get sidetracked into a big chat with
Damo, SH3, Norman Feske and Nils about the day's events at the bar.
Eventually, I head back with Damo to his Reservoir Sleeping Gods complex,
then on to the Apache reservation shrouded in total darkness, and stumbling
across the darkened muddy field at 03.30hrs.
First surprise is, that the teepee dorm is deserted. There is only Felice in
there, the concept proving to be massively unpopular. Later on, Norman joins
us to make it three. This is in a space which is supposed to hold around ten
people in some degree of tightness. This comes as a major relief for
providing some space and privacy. The temperature is about as cool as I'd
expected, but thankfully not right down to Mekka Symposium 2002 levels. My
sleeping equipment is just about up to the job, and I manage some sort of
sleep, with strange and feverish dreams of an 1870-issue US Army Colt
revolver poking through the tent flap, until 08.30ish.
SATURDAY!
Sleeping in a cold tent means you wake up feeling like you slept on a
hangover a little bit. There might also have been some influence from the
booze I consumed as well? Upon searching for a bathroom, I discover someone
who has decided to stay outside in the open air to sleep! Better still, with
the noisy farm animals providing a background chorus, he managed to do it
too. The bathroom that I found nearby was a bit basic, with working toilets,
but no showers, and a choice of cold or very cold water. The real showers
are still to be discovered, but hopefully that will be soon.
Once freshly dressed, and cleaned up as best I can, the return to the main
hall uncovers a very quiet scene, with the Swedes mainlining yoghurt prior
to the real breakfast, which has a 10.30 deadline. By the time we get to the
bar where the breakfast is to be served, the vultures, mainly in the form of
the Frenchies, and the Dresden posse, are circling also, but Baggio and I
manage to get the first pick of the breakfast table. In the great tradition
of the party breakfast, this one ruled as well, with a copious choice of
cereals, meats, cheeses and bread-related items, also potato salad. We went
back for seconds, and gulped down huge amounts of their gorgeous black
coffee.
When that important business is concluded, the Nature brothers are setting
their gear up. Better still, they have the first run of Ethernats in the
building with them. Cyclone is lucky enough to be getting one of these, and
they are fitting his for him in his towered CT60.
A little later that morning, the familiar figures of gwEm and Manou arrive,
Manou is on crutches for a knee-related problem, but they seem to be pleased
to finally be here. They have kept their hardware requirements modest with a
couple of laptops, although we brought over some items needed for gwEm's ST-
DJ performance later on.
Presently, the bigscreen was tested with some nice loud peecee demos, and
the room in our area went a little bit dark to accomodate it.
In the early afternoon, Felice and I left the site, and went into the
Zevenaar town centre, for the all important search for food and liquid.
After finding 900 hairdressers, clothes retailers, and other non-food
selling places, we finally locate a distant 'Edah' supermarket in the far
corner. Felice almost forgets we haven't brought a car with us, but the
resulting bulk-buy of food and drink will probably keep us fed for weeks.
Apart from the bits which Felice drank first in a hurry! Still, he's been
back into town to replace these.
Lotek and Ray arrive in the mid-afternoon, and a search for tables to
accomodate their needs takes up much of the rest of the afternoon. Activity
levels are at a late afternoon torpor, the weather hangs heavy with rainy
expectation, and that just about brings us up to date for now.
It seems that there are lots more people here now, so we're no longer
isolated with the organisers opposite. Most of these are needing extra
tables, so the venue owners are even looking into obscure storage areas,
taking the tables they find in there, and cleaning off the years accretions
of dust and spiders before pressing them into service!
A bout of late afternoon laziness and a lack of focus followed. This is
quite common at this point of a party. Rainclouds threatened, but held off.
The weather in general is very variable and strange at times. When the wind
gusts up, it is like a prequel to something really nasty happening in the
'Omen' or a similar horror movie?
The next significant event blip is the evening pizza round. A small group
sits chatting in the lobby of the main hall. This has a heavily Swedish
influence, with the usual suspects indulging in some drinking, oh yes much
drinking! Baggio was extolling the virtues of Trappist beer, meanwhile we
were making a determined inroad into the 3 litre wine-box that came out with
us.
The evening pleasantries take us right up to mere nanoseconds before the
chipsound compo. There are entries by DMA-SC, SH3, MSG, Crazy Q, Marcer and
others. All of these are newschool tunes, and technically excellent. All of
them very recognisable from the individual styles of their composers. There
was no real standout favourite in my ears, so it will be interesting to see
where the winning votes fall.
The next competition is the 'Oldschool Music compo', which is a fancy name
for 4 channel modfiles. This had more than the usual share of technical
problems, as it started ok, but then distorted, and it was only when the
organisers were deep into the second song, that they realised the sound
quality was not all it should have been.
After several diversions with "haxx0red cables", this competition was
eventually run on a real Atari. Whilst all this was going on, people back
home decided to renew their interest in our welfare. The beepy zik tones
were punctuated by the sound of text messages, many of them requesting
chocolate, the rest wondering if I had entered Felice for a competition
without his knowledge! I lied through my teeth and other parts, saying "no",
but of course, a certain fake demo guest-stars him as one of the effects!
The graphics compo followed in a hassle-free fashion at around 22.00hrs. The
16 colour section was dominated by a mass invasion of the Reservoir God's.
Both Sarah_RG and SH3 entered. There were also some nice entries from
Exocet, and a stunner from someone in the group 'Hooey Program'. This last
one could be a possible winner as Exocet's picture was unfinished.
The raytracing compo was short and sweet, and didn't really leave a lasting
impression on me.
The next anticipated event is the live performance from '303F' and gwEm
doing his ST-DJ. But an appearance from 303F in the main hall is shot down
in flames, possibly down to the previous dispute with the venue owners? It
looks like gwEm is huddled in the darkness enveloping the stage area, and
getting something ready.
I take a tour of the main hall with my camera, and the Reservoir Gods are
caught "hard at work" playing a Nintendo DS game, photographic evidence was
obtained, and is available for a price for Atari scene blackmail purposes!
I'll take a look at the constantly shifting and mutating state of the demo
rumours. GGN is doing a bootsector entry. I got to see this, and so did my
camera (but not very well). Also our favourite coding dark horse Defjam goes
from doing a GBA screen to a last minute Atari 4ktro. I see him hard coding.
It turned out he did both. Also some earlier loose talk suggests Ray/tSCc
doing something for the CT60? I'm still not sure if the Dutchies are doing
anything or not? The DHS 96ktro was safely received by Baggio, this is
described by Evil as not the final version, but ok for the party.
With the collapse of the live performance, about half of the people went
over to the bar. Back in the main hall, I was witness to a determined push
by Felice to finish off the whole three litre wine box! So it seems we are
busily driving a tractor back and forth over the crushed corpse of the no-
alcohol rule for the main hall! Not that we're acting all cool and hard by
doing so. That is just how things turned out by accident! So sorry 'bout
that Havoc!
At last, gwEm is ready to hit the airwaves with an ST-DJ-set, and he does
so.
After a while, I make a move to the bar area, to see what is going down
there. it turns out that the answer for that question is "quite a bit!".
303F are performing in the bar, there is a lively and busy crowd, mostly the
Limp Ninja and other Peecee guys. Felice finds his chatting-up skills put to
the test with a blonde female there, and he seems to be doing better than
the Nature Brothers with their more direct "Me drunk, you go to bed with
me!" approach!
So back to the main hall some time later. I belatedly discover the Outline
party intranet, which allows you to create a user-account and upload details
of your party entries. So I do. At the same time, gwEm is trying to figure
out the voting system, this needs a (so far) non-existent key to make it
work. And in the final stages of day two, Earx blags Felice's VGA to ST
adaptor to try with the bigscreen beamer.
At around the unearthly and wicked hour of 03.00, it is time to contemplate
the night terrors of the freezy teepee. If anything, the tent is a bit
colder than last night. Also various other guys turn up at different stages
of the morning, so the teepee is now mostly filled up. Sleep, or a version
of it punctuated by wild-west tundra dreams follows, and that does get
easier once the sun is over the horizon, and the ambient temperature slowly
improves.
SUNDAY!
I got up about 9-ish, after someone's alarm stirred me to action. Seeking to
get clean, I was directed to a shower block by a helpful Dutchwoman. I half-
wish she hadn't, as the shower turned out to be lukewarm. It had another
nasty surprise, as it also dumped most of its water over my clothing left on
the floor, when there was no other place to put them. At least I did feel
clean afterwards, so score 5 out of 10 for that shower. And the clothes were
due to be changed for something clean anyway.
It is now just gone 10.00hrs the official deadline for the main
competitions, and there is no sign of any organisers, or even that many
people in the main hall as yet?
Breakfast is another long and leisurely affair, and it's at a special rate
of 1 euro! Food fanatics such as Baggio and myself scramble to the food
serving table, and with added coffee, we are soon content again. Summer has
woken up, and it is a pleasure to sit outside. Various Reservoir Gods join
in the food-related fun.
We talk to an attractive brunette seen in the company of Lotek and others,
who has decided to join our table. She is here on her own behalf, from
Vienna, and she's interested in the demo scene. This is the first Atari
party she's been to, and she finds a different atmosphere from the bigger
parties that she has also been to. The interest is not just casual
fangirldom, as she is researching for a dissertation on the demo scene! By
the time we go away, we may have either given her some new and useful lines
of enquiry to follow, or we may have ruined that project altogether! She
does have a name, but I'll reveal that later!
Back at the main hall, the organisers have woken up after breakfast. A full
schedule for the next two days is on the bigscreen, compo's start at 16.00,
but all times are subject to some delay, I'm sure!
A quiet period follows, so I take advantage of this to grab some down-time
in the deserted teepee. This is quite a pleasant place in the afternoon sun.
Also I take the time to rearrange my sleeping accomodations into a shape
resembling something which will be easy to get into in the dead of night,
without endless fumbling around in the darkness, only able to see anything
with a Nokia phone backlight. I think part of the reason for the previous
suckiness of the sleeping arrangements, is the fact that I wasn't able to
properly organise them into something too comfortable before.
We try some more optimised and enjoyable waiting around at the bar area. On
the way I spot a completed quick and rough Defjam made intro for the ST, it
features a zooming scrolltext and the thought of the day is expressed here
"What do you expect?". gwEm and Manou are seen sitting outside and wrapped
around a cold beer (a cold beer EACH, not the same one for both of them!
That would make life too difficult!) A crowd of Reservoir Gods arrives at
the next table, SH3 trying on various beermat/skullcap combinations to
protect his head from the scorching sun, before opting for the jersey/turban
terrorist look.
Arrival back at the main hall at 16.10 reveals a new problem with the sound
system, the start of the competitions has been delayed to 16.30hrs, this is
probably not going to be the first setback of the evening?
Oh yes, demo rumours, I was forgetting, Paradox were working on some sort of
ST demo or intro, is this going to be presented tonight?
The running order of some of the compo's was slightly changed. The Atari
bootsector compo was kicking off early at 16.45.
The bootsector compo produced five entries, including the two fake ones I
knew about. The most impressive, the one which screamed "winner!" was the
voxel landscape in a bootsector, by p01. Cyclone's boot plasma should come
second. (In fact, the voting went the other way, with Cyclone getting the
winner's step on the podium.)
The other competitions are awaiting the arrival of a new and unbroken sound
system, which should be with us shortly?
The electronic voting is neat, when it works! People are still struggling to
come to terms with it.
To break up the pre-compo waiting around, Ray gets his TT version of the
plaudit-winning 'Beams' demo out. This is a pixel-perfect conversion from
the Falcon, and it is certainly smoother than on the standard F030.
Newschool music (which is a posh name for multichannel compo) was supposed
to be coming next. A long time coming, as things turned out....
In the meantime, the entertainment gap is flled with the guitar and duck-
call playing from an unknown peecee dude in a lilac shirt. I find out later
he is 'beerTBP' of the megamighty Belgian Beer Squad. I find out from him
that he also knows Nosfe of various Finnish sauna terror party fame, which
doesn't seem very surprising!
In one of the classic party moments, the Reservoir God's opt for some
healthy outdoor pursuits, with a traditional game of street cricket, jumpers
for wickets, grown-ups impersonating small boys in the park etc. Of course,
with certain non-UK participants included, this unique match has a certain
disregard for the formal rules. A lame and limp underarm lob from Stratagem
was caught on digicam, which inexplicably bowls out a busily looking the
wrong way Mr Pink, to the delight of everyone present!
Unfortunately, they were stopped from playing cricket by the concerned venue
owner when Pink started clearing away shots into the windows! I think they
restarted the match in a more open space, but you got the feeling this was
another black mark against us from the venue owners?
The organisers had managed to avoid bringing a CT60 with them for some
reason, And like last year, they were seeking to borrow one for running the
sole CT60 entry on. This job, like last year, fell down to me. So I got a
Brucie bonus with an early look at the DHS 96k with Earx, Of course this
will rock!
We ordered pizza for the last time, and opened the final bottle of wine.
Analysing the totoal alcohol consumption over the last three days might be
too depressing, but certainly all the pre-brought supplies were killed off
with falling down and talking shite capacity to spare, and with a few
bottles of beer thrown into the mix for good measure.
At about this time, a small debate with Skrebbel and Earx breaks out,
concerning the destination compo for the Dildo Fatwa entry. It should
rightly be entered as a fake demo, but the great philosophical question is
asked, in the absence of a specific fake comp, whether a fake demo is closer
to a real demo or the wild compo. They decided in favour of the Wild compo,
as there were no other entries for the Falcon demo compo. So score one for
expediency over philosophy then!
The voting terminals were finally fully working, so I caught up on the
competitions that had been run so far.
Back outside, I got talking to the nice brunette thesis researching Mittel-
Europe femme we discussed earlier, she now has a name, Gina. Somehow, we
exchanged a lot of contact information, just in a 'professional' demoscene
capacity, you understand!
I then spotted some seriously cool Defjam coded screens. These weren't for
anything being shown today, but almost certainly, these were going to be for
the next big Checkpoint demo! I managed to film a couple of these with the
digicam movie mode, but then had to go under the Defjam Non-Disclosure
Agreement ;-)
Writing in a post-party sense at this point, my party notes go something
like "Newschool music, then pizza, then compos", which is, I guess, what
happened next. Here's some comments made at the time about some of the
newschool entries.
'De Dakpan Tidal Wave' - May be Tinkercore reinvented for the noughties, but
is it music? No, not really!
'A bit of Nostalgia ' by Cyrex, in the style of a mid-nineties XM tracker
tune.
'Is there Something' by Manou, a bit different, with vocals, nice! Could
win.
The organisers step into some more cowpats from the devil's own satanic
herd, as there is a suggestion of a problem with the Dildo Fatwa entry. No,
this is not the content or overall concept, but it is not unpacking from the
zipfile properly. A quick check, and it turns out that Earx ran out of hard
disk space! A bit of reshuffling and deleting stuff later, and the demo
unpacked and checked out fine!
The final Pizza's arrive, Baggio having got a couple in against late-night
munchie attacks, and Strata-RG indulges in a fit of wild compo sneezing!
It is now 21.00, a bit before the compo's, and BeerTBP, Chuck, gwEm and
Manou indulge in a mass guitar jamming session. The folksy atmosphere is
only slighty interrupted by Skrebbel checking the party audio.
At last, the main competitions kick off. The 4K compos are first. The in-
party demo rumours totally fail to pick up a little stunner from gwEm, which
consists of green-shaded effects, fairly conventional newschool stuff, but
with better than average synching to the rather good soundchip tune! From
the reaction, this is a likely winner. To be fair, I vaguely remember him
talking about something like this a while ago, but it was an open question
whether it was going to be a Noise party entry, or for Outline. Yes, that
long ago!
Defjam provides a quick but worthy entry in the limited time beforehand, but
it is clear where the winning votes will go.
The Atari 96k intro's are next, Paradox's effort is described by them as a
collection of leftover effects, but it all hangs together pretty well.
There are a couple of minor entries from Paradize/Sector One, and
MJJ/Checkpoint, but these aren't offering any major technical breakthroughs.
I step in with the mighty CT60 and the Dead Hackers entry, which runs
nicely, and gathers a favourable audience reaction.
The games competition falls between a couple of retro-themed little crackers
made for the PeeCee, by Grazey/PHF, one of which is a tribute to the old
'Backlash' shooter, the other a neat mixture of asteroids, defender and
others. There is also an in-party hack by SH3 and others, which is a comedy
card game based on the members of Atariscne IRC channel! Not quite up to the
usual polished Res Gods standard, but with their main coder off the job at
the moment, it is as good as you can reasonably expect.
The PeeCee demos are a mixed bag. There is some standard 3-D flyby stuff.
There is one fake demo scraping the outer edge of weirdness called 'Tik-
Tak'. This is based on a Belgian kids television show. It is an entry you
either understood, or else didn't and hated it or possibly as a third option
didn't understand but went with the general weirdness flow. This is a
concept well and truly understoood by the makers of Dildo Fatwa demos. We
respect the Flaming Marshmallows for it! I might note a PeeCee 64K entry
'Scary Dinosaurs', by the Bobby Davro Snooker Experience, which was rather
good when seen in that way too. Hey, maybe we would have had enough entries
for a combined platform fake demo competition. Then we may have been beaten
only into third place, rather then fifth!
Then it is the Wild competiton. gwEm's FPGA project is up first, and well
received it is too. The might "We Dreme of Atari" demo is next! Heart in
mouth and dinner ready to leave large intenstines etc! It is loudly
appreciated in some quarters, well at least Damo will be needing to claim on
his underpant insurance (third party, fire, theft, and uncontrolled shitting
peril!). There is a neat conversion of A.N.Cool's 1989-tastic 'Acid' demo by
Defjam, to the Gameboy Advance. We have Cyclone's "Alive Jukebox" to wind
things up. That is the end of the competitions, there is a hiatus for voting
to take place in.
MONDAY!
With all the queuing to use the voting terminals, after-party drinking etc,
there is a fairly long wait for the results and prizegiving ceremony. The
effects of the past three days are starting to catch up with me, and it is a
struggle to stay with the proceedings. I spend some time with gwEm and
Manou, with Damo, Wizton, and Partycle in close attendance. In a shock move,
Mr Pink had apparently gone to bed before the compo's even ended! Has his
true geek personality been ripped out by his significant other, and buried
on unconsecrated ground at midnight?
The results shuffle back into the building at about three-ish. Of the ones I
tend to remember easily, Manou wins the streaming newschool music. gwEm has
a brilliant evening by winning both the wild compo and the Atari 4ktro
compo. Not unexpectedly, DHS win the Atari 96ktro. Cyclone has a good
evening too as he carries the bootsector compo. Even less surprisingly,
Dildo Fatwa don't win a thing... Ah well.
The prizegiving ceremony has an added slight complication, as the power goes
off suddenly when we are about halfway through. Sabotage on the part of the
venue owner was a popular conspiracy theory, and the outage came around the
time the Frenchies were shouting "DMA, DMA!" at the success of their man's
soundchip entry.
We are unabashed at this latest mishap, and manage to complete the
prizegiving in a hail of whatever illumination is to hand.
In spite of Havoc's final shouted and unamplified entreaty for everyone left
to party the night away, I am off to bed straight after, as we have to be up
for around 8.00am.
The tent is cold again, but not quite as much as the night before. I manage
to sleep, but wake up some time before Felice's alarm kicks off. An imminent
bladder overload flashes a warning light in my subconscious, so I deal with
that, then go back to sleep.
I manage to get up at the official wake-up time, get dressed and clear out
of the teepee for the last time. Some people are up and around in the main
hall even then. Earx and Tinker are starting out on the long clearing up
road. Some Frenchies are about too, packing for an early departure on their
part. It is initially still very dark in the main hall as the missing power
hasn't returned yet, but some of the blinds are opened to let some light in.
I soon pack up, sort of having half-started last night, and Felice is soon
on the scene, so he packs his stuff too.
There is a "hangover breakfast" timetabled for late morning. We are going to
miss this, but manage an impromptu breakfast off our pre-bought supplies.
With everything done, bar the actual leaving of De Panoven, I go to wander
with Earx and Tinker up the railway tracks, to take a look at the landscape
near the nice looking lake. There is up to 1km of rusting railway track
connected to this site, which will take a little too much time to explore,
so we give up on that idea fairly quickly.
The Frenchies are loading their car, at the same time as we are filling
ours, and they are handily around to say goodbye to. They swirl off in their
fully loaded Peugeot, with some suggestion of a French-based Atari party
sometime.
We say hello to the just emerging Swedes and the Nature Brothers in
particular. They mentioned that they had an Ethernat for me! This turns out
to be correct, so I am handed a small box with the precious cargo in it.
Unfortunately, they don't have time to see if they can fit it into my
standard ST-cased CT60, which was originally sort of planned.
A final round of goodbye's to the people in the vicinity followed, and we
set off at around 09.30ish to make the reverse journey home.
There is a reason for our earlier than usual departure as we are breaking
our journey at Gouda, and stopping at diskmag legend Richard Karsmaker's
house there for a quick visit.
The motorway back turns out to be straightforward. And we manage to navigate
ok on Rich K's instructions most of the way. There is some small doubt on
the final part of the directions. A quick phone call to Rich K. sorts it,
and we are only a couple of minutes away anyway!
We get to meet Rich K, and his family. Including his post-Karin wife Laura,
and 2 year old daughter Anne. The latter, after being initially overawed by
strangers in the house, hits her stride in the 'terrible two' stage, and is
not feeling at all co-operative!
Laura is taking care of Anne's afternoon nap, so the menfolk can go out to
lunch with a clear conscience in the not too unattractive Gouda town centre.
A cafe in the main square does the job nicely, as we dine on beers and Dutch
style cheese and ham toasted sandwiches and catch up and generally
reminisce.
Heading back to Karsmakers GHQ, and soon it is goodbye to Rich K. and
family. There is a heavy exchange of foodstuffs as Felice swaps a bulk
consignment of Branston pickle for 1kg's worth of geniune Gouda cheese!
This final bit of the trip back to the ferry continues in a straightforward
fashion, even the scary Rotterdam interchange which slowed us down on the
way over. Back at the Hook, well within the appointed time, I spot and
photograph a rally of vintage cars and bikes getting ready to board our
ferry.
For the rest of the journey home, there is little to report. We manage to be
one of the first cars off the ferry and through the Harwich customs. We are
therefore back home at around the previously predicted time, where several
questions were asked by the girls about this earlier. This includes about
20-30 miles of excitingly tense driving on petrol fumes, as Felice announces
that he is right on the fuel gauge red line, as if this was not too much of
a problem! I can tell you that the A14 contains absolutely NO services from
where it is still the A12, until we are nearly back at Cambridge!
Back at Bar Hill, the females we left behind on Friday are running 300%
louder than usual caricature versions of themselves. The first remark not
being something like "How are you?", but "Where's my chocolate?!" This
instantly reminds me of the Blackadder series 2 episode 'potato' where
Blackadder and the gang are returning from their trip to the Cape of Good
Hope, and on their return 'Queenie' demands "PRESENTS!!" on pain of a swift
beheading!
I've also been handed the job of shepherding supper, some chile bolognaise
hybrid thing they made earlier, to a fully cooked safe ground without any
prior warning either. Somehow, the meal comes together alright, and we can
relax for a bit.
In fact, we relax so well, it is not before 23.00hrs before me and Nicky get
going for the final stage of the journey back to Northampton, and get back
at around midnight. Miraculously, I've not fallen asleep at the wheel of my
car after 3-4 days of "party-sleep", which is why I'm writing this report
now.
After a limited amount of unpacking, and some "essential" internet using, I
get to bed around 01.00, which is the official end of the party!
Conclusions and stuff..
Was Outline '06 a valid replacement for the missed Easter party? This would
be more of an Atarian view? The real Easter party, 'Noise', deserved to
attract more people than it did, but it was just too distantly located for a
lot. Outline '06 managed to bring in more than the usual amount of UK
people, including MUG UK, Grazey and a virtually complete set of Reservoir
Gods. We also had the pleasure of getting to meet GGN and his girlfriend
Rana in the flesh for the first time. Outline was also notable for
attracting various Frenchies, gwEm and Manou, and even a large part of the
Dresden posse, including the not seen enough Defjam. Of course, one of the
party pleasures was in socialising and catching up with people. So for this
year, Outline '06 was a good replacement for the Easter party we didn't get
to.
Outline '06 had an extra task, to promote a greater co-operation and
understanding with other parts of the scene. The multi-scene nature of the
organising team reflects this. There was some success from the contact, and
better appreciation of each other's point of view. People thrown together
for the first time in a new situation tend to be clannish and stick to their
own when socialising, which is natural. I would give an outstanding
services to the scene award to Gina, who turned out to be the great party
mixer. She was genuinely interested in the different and relaxed party
culture that Outline offered, from the more frenetic larger parties. For
some reason, I thought she was Lotek Style's girlfriend for the first couple
of days!
The PeeCee and Amiga guys that we met were pretty cool to socialise with.
'BeerTBP' springs instantly to mind. They had their eyes opened to the
mysteries of the Atari scene. On the other side, it was shown to Atarians,
that not all PeeCee guys are like the mindless attention-seeking idiots that
you stumble across at the bigger parties, so yes, Outline '06 was a success
here as well.
And did Outline '06 live up to its billing as a mellow summer party?
Going from the large amounts of accoustic guitars being played the
mellow vibe was most definitely there! The weather was the only slightly
disappointing aspect, as it was still stubbornly clinging onto late spring.
Summer only got going properly when we were hit with a heatwave a week
later, which would have been welcome in the evenings, but the daytime
conditions were very pleasant.
Still, if we had the party even a week earlier, then the weather would have
been very lame indeed!
The numbers turning up were healthy. Outline '06 attracted around 80-90
people, of which, roughly fifty percent were Atarian.
Outline '06 succeeding in maintaining the relaxed and civilised 'Atari
party' atmosphere to the extra guests. The reinforced organising team did a
great job in providing this.
The accomodation was memorably weird. We were expecting something along
the lines of the previous Outline parties, that is, dormitory style
accomodation. We did not read the small print, and it was too late to
realise that this was under canvas! To be really honest, the weather and
night-time temperature weren't quite up to sleeping outdoors. This would
have been okay for a party at the height of summer, say in July or August.
The food and drink, following the high expectations from previous Outline
parties, was a success. Our pre-brought alcohol was totally consumed. The
Pizza service was fair to middling, with a limited selection, but a good
price (5 eur). The on-site catering was very good too, with a series of
excellent breakfasts provided very cheaply, and beer sold at a tidy 1 eur
per bottle. Financially, this party turned out very cheap for us, and we
came back with oodles of cash to spare, up to the point where we hit the
ferry tax-free shop, ah well!
From a personal point of view, I went into 'annoying Japanese tourist with
new digicam' mode. This was a real camera, as opposed to the ropey mobycam
snaps that I took last year. This was a roaring success, with a great deal
of still and (still to be sorted out at time of writing!) movie footage
taken.
There were plenty of prods and new releases. We had a more varied diet than
usual, with the extra platforms coming along to play. There were more
bigger demos coming from the PeeCee end of the party. There was nothing
really major showing for the Atari. In general, the releases we got were at
a similar level to last years party. But then you have to remember that
Outline expectations would have been diluted by the previous major CT60 demo
shown at the "Noise" party, and also the Chosneck Supplement and Menace demo
releases, which were intended for the Noise party originally. If you were to
add all of these up, then the period from Easter 2006 has been quite a
fruitful one for us.
So overall, Outline '06 was a great success. I guess if we're staying on
the multi-scene road, then it won't re-run as an Easter party in future
years, but it would be likely to be a late spring/early summer occasion
again?
To end this report, a big thanks goes to Havoc, Skrebbel, and the rest of
the organizers for making Outline '06 yet another classic.
CiH, for Alive Mag, June '06..
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