A
PARTY REPORT
OF
THE HUNO 2003
----------------------- by STS -----------------------
During the last days of May 2003 a small party organized by Amiga freaks
was held in Villers Les Pots, a small place not so far from Dijon, France. This
was nothing more than a friendly meeting where all kinds of freaks were invited
regardless of the platform they used and cherished. Recovering slowly from the
great Error In Line 3 I thought this was a nice occasion to keep the good
feeling alive and to meet some friends who had not been able to drive to
Dresden.
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Being lazy I almost missed the opportunity as preregistration was sort of
officially closed when I decided to join. Indeed the organizers had planned to
welcome about 50 people but one more freak wasn't such a problem, so I made a
step forward and moved my lazy ass at the last minute :) Preparation was very
short too : I got some maps, checked my car, packed some stuff and went to bed
late on Friday 30th after I set my alarm clock for not so late departure on the
next morning. This time I only had to drive 180 kms what still took me about 2
hours and a half as I had decided to avoid typical damn heavy fees on French
highways.
Day One : Welcome to Hell :)
I reached the place safely and smoothly on Saturday shortly before noon and
soon faced a certainty : the sun was high and so hot that we were about to
spend a sauna-like weekend ! I unpacked my stuff and managed to put my STe
among its fellows. I have to say that the Atari freaks were cool enough to find
room for me and C-rem was once again a great friend who, not only helped, but
also brought me the first beer :)
Who was there then ? Well from EIL were C-rem, Strider, Frost and ST Cooper
but also most of MJJ members as well as some French Atari Sceners such as :
Fel'X, Monsieur Nours, Rajah, Exolon, Hervv, Gloky, Zorro 2, Aldyn and maybe a
couple of others I have forgotten :)
We soon got our first meal as food was accounted for in the entrance fee of
23 euros. We had sandwiches and drinks with a fruit. Tho a bit sober that was
enough to get us happy for a while :) Cooper and I then drove to a nearby
supermarket to buy some more drinks (juice for him and beer for me of course :)
We were ready now !
The hot and sweaty hallroom was divided in 2 main rows of tables and seats
while the center part was dedicated to further meals. Atarians invaded the left
part while Amiga people and Peecee lamers spread over the right and front. To
be honest we didn't mix at all... Explanations may be given later :)
Browsing thru my harddrive partitions I showed my fellows and visitors gfx
but also the latest ST demos released at Error In Line. I mostly amazed Aldyn
(formely a member of ST Knights who had left in 1997) that our Scene wasn't
quite dead and that we still had things to show the world ! This egotrip proved
quite entertaining on the first day. I also took some time to talk to the MJJ
guys who were mostly friendly (well, Zorro 2 still believes I am Satan or
something :) C-rem kept painting, as usual, esp as he planned to enter the gfx
compo and I worked on Alive 7 for a while. We spent a lot of time talking about
the Scene, its evolution (or lack of ? :) but also about life and that was cool
since that's the main thing in parties : talk to people you mostly meet in that
virtual place called the internet.
The heat was just unbearable surely due to the too many Peecees running
here and there (hey it can't be hot Ataris, these machines are so cooool :)
In the evening we were offered an "ap‚ro" by the place mayor, understand
bottles of wine with appetizers. Seeing the end of the bottles come closer,
Aldyn saved us with his magic juice :) Then we had a real meal, again with wine
(and the magic bottle was "killed" by C-rem :p) and we ended sort of drunk, tho
not too seriously. It was still hot and we spent more time outside having talks
than before our Sts ! I forgot to say that there were about as many STs as
Falcons on the Atari side, not to mention one or two laptops running emulators.
This first day came to a quiet end until I grabbed my sleeping bag and reached
the sleeping place, it was getting cooler, in other words time to enjoy it
before another day in the furnace !
Day Two : Compos and Deeper Thoughts
Woke up after about 6 hours of troubled sleep tho I don't have to complain
here since some fools did not sleep at all ! Breakfast was also included in the
fee so that I was happy to get my hands on a cup of coffee. Unsurprisingly this
second day seemed to be as hot as the previous but somehow we were prepared to
sweat again. Funny thing is that I was the only one who took his shoes off :
dunno about you but when I am hot, bearing shoes kinda sucks (and stinks in the
end too) so that I opted for the hippy style :) But no one dared follow me,
suckers :)
Let's now focus on the so called party itself : C-rem was still working on
his gfx for the compo while his coder - Gloky - was debugging his nice screen
featuring a bouncing flexiscroll. On my own, I was slowly but surely fixing
some stuff for Alive7 (hey, what ? D'ya think I'm trying to look like active ?)
and others were doing obscure things :p
On the Amiga side of things, it looked oddly opposed : first, from a quick
glance it was damn hard to make a difference between a Peecee and an Amiga !
Huge towers, huge screens, gamers, stupid samples looped for hours... Geez what
has happened to the Amiga Scene ? Is it called 'evolution' ? Later on we were
given a presentation of PEGASOS, which is (if I got it more or less right) some
sort of a new OS for Amigas ? Or maybe a fully new computer ? Anyway the
presentation didn't come without some troubles like crashes, screens frozen or
stuff that just... did not work as planned :) Saddly the show turned into such
dumb demonstration that it reminded me of some Micro$oft stuff : "see, you can
magnify all icons up to 500% without wasting CPU time... bla bla". That is pure
bullshit to me ! From what I heard most Amiga people aren't that drawn to the
PEGASOS project anyway...
Most of the time, the giant screen was used to show crap, namely play MP3s
with Winamp while some animation was displayed... Such a lack of imagination
terrified me ! No Amiga demo was shown on the big screen and when they offered
to connect a Falcon and show demos... we realized that the Falcon video output
was NOT compatible with the beamer :(
Soon enough the compos entertained us or so I thought but I was SO wrong !
The msx entries were brainless MP3s replayed on that Peecee... Why didn't they
use an Amiga at least ? The gfx compo was plain ridiculous with rendered crap,
photoshop reworking of no interest and... a SINGLE original and pixellised
picture presented by C-rem of course !! As for the demos or wild entries, they
only gathered dumb videos and more shit ! The only thing worth was the screen
coded by Gloky ! In other words the only Scene based entries were done by
Atarians. From the shit I saw from Amiga people I can tell you that today their
motto seems to be "Power without the Pride". Man, I'm so happy to be on Atari !
I want to seize this opportunity to tell you my feelings about accelerators
on Falcon : so far it's been an individual war between all projects hence a
huge waste of time, skills and money. Now it seems that most people interested
in such cards are expecting the CT060. And then what ? Once the 100 cards are
out you'll end up with a collectible Falcon, good for you mate ! I doubt we'll
ever reach a standard as far as acc cards are concerned but to speak the truth,
I just don't give a shit :) the ST has grown 18 years old this year and it's
still kicking, then I see no reason why the Falcon shouldn't follow the same
path. Maybe that accelerator issue explains why the Falcon Scene gets even
smaller while the ST Scene is still so strong... Whatever... If you want to get
an accelerator, do it, your decision anyway but I will cling to my good old STe
and I know that many people agree with me : the ST(e) has limitations and
breaking them IS where the fun and challenge lies ! I don't want a Peecee like
Falcon... End of this parenthesis :)
Once the "compos" finished, we all felt like going home. We started packing
stuff again on Sunday late afternoon and atfer another 2 and a half hours I was
back home, longing for a shower after two days spent sweating like a pig !
Did I forget to say there were no showers ? :) I have to thank the organizers
for the nice meals and the work they've put into that small meeting.
Now for the plus and minuses (slashing time ! whip ! whip !)
+ nice to meet good old fellows and see new ones like the guys of MJJ
+ friendly atmosphere
+ nice meals included
+ hmm, beer ?
- the heat ! I felt like trapped into a fucking shoe box !
- poor minded use of the giant screen
- brainless activities of Amiga ppl, really hard to make them from Peecee
suckers !
- no releases, nor even interesting compos entries but from MJJ Prod.
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I have to thank C-remwho kindly gave me an SC1425 monitor for my STe ! I
can tell you my heart was heavy when I removed the tele I have been using for
more than 12 years now (yeah so stupid, isn't it ?). Anyway now that I have a
decent monitor, painting's gonna be easier, no bad suprises with colors :)
About a possible HUNO 2004 ? Hmm all Atarians agreed that Amiga ppl act and
sound like stupid kids bragging with their Peecee... It would be nice tho to
have such meetings in France but only with Atari people. Future will tell if
that happens and when...
Greetings are sent to the fellows I met and talked to at the HUNO party !
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