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DemoNews Issue #90 - May 14, 1995 | Size : 49,828
------------- | Subscribers : 1376
DemoNews is a weekly newsletter for the demo scene. | Last Week : 1333
It is produced by Hornet at the site ftp.cdrom.com. | Change : +43
|
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<CONTENTS>
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Uploads
Articles
Introduction................................Snowman
Personalities...............................GraveDigger
Book Review: Zen of Code Optimization.......Maverick
Live from NAID..............................Multiple Authors
What's In a Name?...........................Snowman
Mailroom....................................Multiple Authors
Subscribing
Closing
=-[Uploads]-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=----------------------------------------------------------[File Information]-=
All files listed below are on ftp.cdrom.com or one of its mirrors.
Ratings are completely subjective and do not necessarily reflect opinions
of the demo scene in general.
ftp.cdrom.com too slow? Try our mirror at ftp.luth.se. You may even
upload to this site under /pub/msdos/demos_upload.
=---------------------------------------------------------------------[Demos]-=
Location /demos/alpha/1995 Size Description
=-------------------------------- ---- ---------------------------------------=
/a/arto.zip 809 VRH - Arto
/e/emf_vrs2.zip 509 EMF - Verses Revision #2
/e/ev.zip 419 Neural Image Syndicate - Etheral Visions
/f/fr_debut.zip 77 Fraction - Debut
/g/gamoto.zip 90 Debris - gamoto.zip
/i/intox.zip 331 Post Mortem - Intoxicated Intro
/m/methsign.zip 7 Extreme - Methadone BBS Intro
/r/ranztro.zip 92 The Revengers - Ranz!
/x/x-mas.arj 267 Neutron - X-mas, and Easter Intro
=-------------------------------------------------------------[Music:General]-=
Location /demos/music Size Rated Description
=-------------------------------- ---- ----- ---------------------------------=
/disks/1994/delight.zip 74 **** Various Various
/disks/1995/f/fm-toos1.zip 1364 ***+ Various Mellow-D/FM
/disks/1995/f/fm-toos2.zip 848 ***+ Various Mellow-D/FM
/songs/1995/mod/a/amu-rain.lha 135 **+ Ambient Amusic
/songs/1995/mod/a/amu-tra.zip 82 *** Ambient Amusic
/songs/1995/mod/a/axelf_8.zip 166 ** Realism S. Wilkins
/songs/1995/s3m/a/anrush.zip 192 *** Demo Music Zane
/songs/1995/s3m/c/c2h6_me.zip 148 ** Rave C2
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-chas.zip 107 **+ Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-core.zip 340 ** Techno Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-eclp.zip 225 *** Ambient Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-hrtc.zip 22 *** Ambient Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-ltyr.zip 187 **+ Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-nite.zip 199 ***+ Demo Music Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-peac.zip 69 **+ Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-prep.zip 435 ** Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-repm.zip 27 *** Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-star.zip 226 ***+ Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/s3m/d/dmk-trav.zip 94 *** Trance Hector/dMk
/songs/1995/xm/b/bassjung.zip 339 *** Trance Xenocide/MPI
=--------------------------------------------------------[Music:Non-Reviewed]-=
Location /demos/music Size Description
=-------------------------------- ---- ---------------------------------------=
/programs/players/dosbpla2.zip 42 Dosb Play 2 by J. Kitchen
=----------------------------------------------------------------------[Code]-=
Location /demos/code Size Rated Lang Description
=-------------------------------- ---- ----- ---- ----------------------------=
/graph/examples/demostuf.zip 80 ***** A P Excellent effect sample code
/graph/lens/lensv10a.arj 40 ** A Example Lens effect
/graph/rotation/fullr_1 17 **** C Full-screen bitmap rotation
/graph/vidcard/fakemode.zip 126 ***** A C Display more than 256 colors
/hardware/cpuid3.zip 6 **** A Code to idenitfy the CPU
/hardware/drivesex.zip 9 *** A C Identify drives and type
/memory/mikdll.arj 20 **** C Create DLLs for DOS C lang.
/sound/mdss040a.zip 1400 ***** A CP MIDAS v0.40a MOD playing lib.
/sound/mikm203.arj 288 ***** C MikMod v2.03 MOD playing lib.
/tutorial/asmvla01.lzh 10 *** A ASM tutorial # 2.
/tutorial/ctut2vla.zip 11 ** C C Tutorial #2 by Des./VLA
/tutorial/ctut3vla.zip 3 *** C C tutorial #3 by Des./VLA
/utils/fontedit.arj 52 **** Text-font editing tool
/utils/gfv20.lzh 12 *** A P Graphical binary viewer
=------------------------------------------------------------------[Graphics]-=
Location /demos/graphics Size Description
=-------------------------------- ---- ---------------------------------------=
/utils/slpcxraw.zip 43 PCX2RAW Fast converter by JiNX!
=-------------------------------------------------------------[Miscellaneous]-=
Location /demos Size Description
=-------------------------------- ---- ---------------------------------------=
/mags/1995/a/alt-10.zip 303 ALT-1 Issue #10
/mags/1995/a/alt-11.zip 155 ALT-1 Issue #11
/mags/1995/a/alt-12.zip 118 ALT-1 Issue #12
/mags/1995/p/p-ctrst1.zip 1304 1/2 Purple's new diskmag "Contact" No.1
/mags/1995/p/p-ctrst2.zip 475 2/2
/mags/1995/s/smok01.zip 215 Smok Issue #1 (polish scene mag)
/hornet/traxw/traxweek.009 42 TraxWeekly #9
=-[Articles]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=---------------------------------------------------[Introduction]--[Snowman]-=
Hello and welcome to DemoNews 90. This is a pretty laid back issue.
Nothing really ground breaking, just a good wholesome collection of
articles for your reading pleasure.
So start that massive download, pull up this newsletter into a view window,
relax, and read on.
-Christopher G. Mann r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com
=----------------------------------------------[Personalities]--[GraveDigger]-=
In cyberspace, one thing can be said as true: Nothing will stay true for
too long a time. And even that statement leaves doubts in one's mind.
It is with this fact that the entire Internet user base feasts. Anonymity
is one of the great features of the 'net world, as real people hide behind
an alias or email address. This can also create problems, such as anonymous
attacks in the way of mailbox bombs, or other "abusive" actions.
But a personality can not hide. And in the demo world, personality is
everything. Personality shines through on music, graphics, and code
creations. It is hard to not recognize a personality in such a world as the
demo scene.
Recently, I have really taken notice to several acts of kindness by people
in the demo scene. I think it needs to be addressed that such acts are
important to the survival of such a community.
First, it is very frequent that demo people on IRC will send you files.
They require no payment of any sort for these files, they just think the
files deserve to be spread around. It is very helpful also for someone who
is trying to find a particular file if someone else on IRC will send it to
them. I'm not really talking about people who will distribute their own
files, but people who offer other people's creations for transfer.
As we all know, software piracy exists, and the Internet is a major source
of much of this piracy. The people who distribute pirated software on IRC
will not be so kind. They require payment for their files. A "warez" FTP
site is what they seek, or a new file they don't have. Selfishness over
something that doesn't even belong to them. Score a point for honesty and
sharing.
Also, during my duties of file maintenance on ftp.cdrom.com, I came across
nearly 3 megs of archived samples made by one person. He sampled these
sounds from three keyboards and packaged them for anyone to use. It is an
act like this that could only come from a generous person. There are a few
hundred samples in three zip files. New samples that haven't been used
before often give a musician enough inspiration to create better music than
was possible with old, overused samples.
And just a couple days ago, he was on IRC distributing new percussion
samples. Therefore, a directory has been made on ftp.cdrom.com under
/pub/demos/music/samples, where we can hopefully store more archived
samples. If you so choose, upload your sample archives to /incoming/music
and they will be free for the taking. Please only upload samples that you
recorded yourself and not others' samples.
I really appreciate seeing actions like the above in the demo world, and
can only hope that such generosity will continue and allow the demo scene
to grow and develop for many more years to come. Hopefully, you can
appreciate such actions too.
-Brett Neely gd@ftp.cdrom.com
=-------------------------[Book Review: Zen of Code Optimization]--[Maverick]-=
Telkom have cut my phone off!!!! I can't bloody believe it!!!! After over a
year of wrangling about the money they owe me, they then suspend my phone
service coz of some money I'm supposed to owe them (but don't). I know
Europe's telco industry is also about as deregulated as the airline
industry worldwide but you guys in the US must just be thankful for what
you have! These clowns here can and do everything as bureaucratically,
inefficiently and sloooooooooowly as possible.
I'll have my revenge soon. I'm deputy-editor of the weekly computer paper
here in South Africa so sooner or later I'll find some juicy Telkom story
and print it ;-). Hey Maelcum, AT&T may be a monopoly but their service is
better than ours (joke about his comments found in Know The Number). Anyway
I still have a cell-phone so I'm still available for a chat at around
$16.95 a minute hehe from anywhere outside this country.
But no 28.8 Internet from home. Aaagh! I'm already shaking like I do after
1hr without coffee. The phone service is so basic and so pervasive that you
take it for granted and only scream when it's gone. Pretty much like the
80x86 family of processors I suppose. They have become so pervasive that
even a day without tapping in a bit of code, or trying to recover that song
that ST3 rewrote for you without asking, is like going through a day
without coffee. And yet, the real fun isn't even there either.
No the real fun is "making these ugly beasts called PCs perform miracles" -
Michael Abrash, Zen II 1994 Coriolis Books ($39 in the States, rip-off 300
rands price in South Africa). And Abrash must be THE most qualified person
in the planet to talk about optimization, with no offense to Maxwood, Mr.
Stone or Walken ;-). And whether mabrash@bix.com knows it or not he must be
one of the main indirect contributors to the demo scene through his
writing.
He-who-published-Mode-X starts his book "......now". That's the way the end
of the opening para reads. It's great stuff! Without dilly-dallying around,
MA starts probing the depths of the x86 chips, first with some rehashed
stuff from ZEN I, but with considerable updates and loads of new stuff on
the 386, 486 and Pentium BF (meaning Before FDIV). Plenty of the articles
are taken straight from Dr. Dobbs and his other mags he writes for so you
would expect clean, fast code.
Well, yes and no. Yes the code is *very*, *Very*, *VERY* good. Did I say it
was very good? OK. But equally emphasized in the text is THINKING. (Ed's
note : Yeah, right that process that tells you its time to refill the
coffee machine). No, he means thinking out optimizations and design and
making sure code and data are tightly integrated so as to achieve speed.
Examples are plentiful and the code taught me quite a bit even just reading
it on the plane back home (I bought my copy of ZEN II in SF, Calif). The
chapters on stuff his readers sent him are a real eye-opener. Hell, I
thought LEA was just some boring instruction that did what the Intel manual
said. Nuh-uh. But then you coders have all known for a while what LEA can
do so I won't teach you to suck eggs.
All code is in C and ASM. As he makes clear, the truly great optimizing
tricks are only to be found at the assembler level, but fear not if you're
not a die-hard ASM head. Using C *only*, Abrash takes a piece of code and
speeds it up several hundred times - not percent, *times*! Those techniques
alone make this book a worthwhile buy.
There's a disk to save you typing in all of that source, and an updated
version of the famous ZEN timer. Readers of DemoNews will remember an
excellent vector optimization tutorial a couple of issues back where the
author used the Zen timer version II. The new Zen timer is worth the
download even if you don't have the book (is it somewhere on hornet?
Definitely on x2ftp.oulu.fi). The example game of Life is fun, as are the
word count examples but the most common words used in the book are "speed",
"fast", "blazing", "lightning", "quick", and "slow" (when used negatively
only and then it seems to be in italics).
It's a book that will provide you with practical, fun ways of tweaking
those cycles so as to get that routine to behave just a little bit faster.
And isn't that what all coders want?
Get it and learn. Even if you don't learn anything which I doubt very much,
you will enjoy the way Mr. A writes. He always brings a fresh, human
approach to a highly technical and widely misunderstood subject. He just
has a grasp of the programming world and the way programmers think and work
that will appeal to every demo coder and not a few artists as well.
-Maverick/Serenity paulf@is.co.za
=----------------------------------------[Live from NAID]--[Multiple Authors]-=
(an undirected journal from the night of Saturday April 15th)
Its Saturday night here in Montreal and about half of the demo freaks here
at NAID are fast asleep. What you are about to read is live and edited. In
fact, I'm writing this introduction long after NAID has ended but for the
sake of argument, I'll pretend I'm writing it at the party place itself.
I'm sitting at the "Hornet Table" right now. To my left is GraveDigger. To
my right and behind me is some funny guy [who I would later learn was
PeriSoft]. The music competition has concluded and I am dead tired.
However, sleep is my enemy and as such I must focus my energies on
something... anything.
I have a feeling that many people will be contributing to this log.
Anything in []'s has been added for clarification.
Here is the roll call:
* Snowman
> GraveDigger
>> Ior
>>> Katherine Poire (Jeff's sister)
>>>> The NAID photographer
>>>>> Perisoft
Well folks, if you wanted to read something interesting, THIS IS IT!
<Start of Log>
* Hello there, this is Christopher G. Mann, writing live from the NAID
party place. With me here is GraveDigger. Say "hi" GD...
> "Hi," GD.
* Very funny. ;) Well, the two of us are just sitting here listening
to some live kewl-rad band called Public Enema.
> I don't think that DJ up there scratching the records and all, is
real. But, its a nice touch, as is all of the smoke.
* GD, I can hardly hear anything! I'm now looking at the MediaTrix
representative here in front of me. He was a judge for the music
compo. GD, who do you think will win the music compo this year and
why?
> That's a really tough call. Especially since I lost interest about
halfway through. The music really was excellent, but I just got so
tired. It was a very long compo. I liked the fact that Basehead and
Necros did some really different styles than we are used to. I guess
at this point I can't make any judgement because I really would rather
hear it all again. :)_ Just when I'm more awake and alert.
* Hmmm.... What if I told you that I was a judge for the music compo and
could tell you RIGHT NOW who the winner was going to be?
> I'd rather not know, I think. Even if it was dead obvious, I'd rather
wait. Ok, then again, we'll just wait until we get away from this
crowd and you can pass me the list. :)
* Maybe I should keep the results to myself and just publish them in 01.
That might boost the ratings! :) I'm trying right now to remember
the distinction between o1art and hnews. One serious and one
funny/informal. What kind of article titles ya' think we'll have in
the next couple of weeks for each?
> Uhh, which was which again? You confuse me. I'll just leave it up to
you like I always do. :P Maybe you *can* enlighten us on how to get a
prostitute [refer to o1fil.001]. Even still, I'm sure I don't have
enough money. Hey, didn't you rip me off in a poker game or something?
* You were drunk! How do you remember that? Boy, you look a lot
younger in person than I thought you would be... but you're still
older than that guy working on DNDM [Ior].
> Me? Drunk? You must have seen Necros and Mosaic stumbling in the first
night. Anyway, I guess it is about time to stop sucking my thumb and
carrying my blanket. Hey Snowman, where the hell did you go? Oh well,
I guess it's time for another guest...
>> Hey. This is Ior... (NOT Eeyore :) Believe it or not, I made it to yet
another demo party... And I'll admit, although this doesn't live up to
Asm '94 (it wasn't expected to), it's not a bad start for this
continent.
> I can't really say anything about past parties, but I'll take your
word for it. I heard there are some 700 people here, but the capacity
was 1100. Though I don't think I could handle any more people here.
Ah, guess what, Ior? We have _more_ guest speakers! That means more
arrow-brackets. :)
>>> Hi! Here's Katherine and I'm Jeff's sister... Christopher just left
and God knows where he is...
>>>> Hello! Here I am the photographer for Hornet, I'm R.A.D. from
Longueuil...
> Hey, you get to take pictures, that's cool. Did you happen to get any
pictures of females with exposed, well.. umm..
>>>> Not yet, but I'll try... There's plenty of them here...
> Well, that's sure good to hear. There are more than I expected. And it
seems someone is trying to take the keybosu6 n09s [???]
>>>>> Muahahaha, this keyboard has been LIBERATED by PeriSoft.. :> today,
Hornet-- tomorrow, the world!!! AAaAUAuuUAAUUAGH!! Actually, I'm just
freaking out cause all these speakers are over-driven and made my
piano samples sound like dying cats.. Oh.. SV RULEZ!!
* What the hell! This is getting out of control. I leave for a second,
and now there are like 5 people who have written stuff. I give up...
>> Good. Now that he's gone, we can get back on topic. :) There was a
little bit of controversy over the way the music compo was run, due to
the fact that the audience had to listen to every single entry... And
after a while it did get a little dull. :)
But on the the more serious competition: The Demo Compo (and here is
CCCatch pounding on the table due to his MUD withdrawal :) ... There
might be a total of 5 (count that, *5*) demos here (Hey! Stop hitting
me, Kenny! :) ... all from this continent! (Being America) Here's what
I can count so far, from rumors, and from actually seeing them with my
own eyes: 1. KFMF - Flight 2. Craw Prods. - Opticron 3. Night
Vision - Figment 4. Necros - ?????? 5. Pure Resistance - ????? I
can't wait to see any of them (even though I've already seen some of
them )
>>>>> Well, IOR has faced the facts and relinquished control of the keyboard
to me.. :) actually, I'm not so sure how they should've dealt with the
overload of music, since they obviously have to judge them all
anyway... so they might as well play 'em all. I dunno how you pick the
worst ones without hearing them.. :) unless you just take a dart board
with the names of the contestants on it and toss darts until only
those composers in Kosmic or Renaissance are left.. ;>
>> Hahahaha... it seems that way sometimes... but I think all of the
people in Ren that entered songs actually deserve to be in the finals.
Their songs are just that good... BTW, did I mention that CCCatch
actually TRACKED A SONG?!?!?!?! It's amazing! First one in... Ummm ...
A long time. Uh oh. The boss is back. :)
>>>>> Aauugh! Take cover! Grab the women and children! Take cover! Take---
(sounds of gunfire and shells exploding) aaaAuughhh..g.f,. (raising
head from the sidewalk, spilling dark blood to the ground) Hmm.. GD
has returned. damn. (head flops back down in a spray of blood)
> Well, Christopher and I were fortunate enough to witness a new and yet
unreleased tune being written by three people: Basehead, Necros, and
one other we seem to have forgotten. Sorry dude, but the tune is
killer and should be released in a short time. By the way, you guys
_really_ screwed this damn thing up :) Touche.
>> Bah. We stayed closer to the topic than you two ever would have. :)
And see! Now that you're back, we're straying again. Go away. :)
>>>>> Yeah... let's boot 'im outa here. Here we were discussing fine
concepts of music ratings, here we are talking about issues affecting
the ENTIRE DEMO WORLD (even finland! ;> ) and you just come here and
say we're off topic. Disgusting. ;) Did I say that SV rules? :)
> PS, we know that you have a Super Virus, and I think you need to see a
doctor. Damn, I know that I probably made this keyboard wire a few
feet longer. (That part was accidentally typed in all caps, but you
of course won't see that. :) Nevertheless, all watching are laughing at
my pathetic typing skills. Ok, though, I would like to ask both of you
a question regarding this competition. Now, I could ask, "Who is going
to win?" But, nevermind that. There will be a results report and all
that good stuff. But, what I want to know is, Who's going to lose? :)
>> Well... I'm assuming that you're talking about the demo compo... There
will be too many losers in the music compo. :)
>>>>> Yeah. We ALL know there are way too many losers in the music compo.
Just quit talking about me, will ya? ;)
>> Hahahaha... Okay... I haven't seen all the demos yet... Only the KFMF
demo, the Night Vision demo, and I've heard some inside comments from
the makers of Opticron, and also Necros, concerning their demos. The
KFMF demo was coded completely by GooRoo (wow. :) and has music by
Maelcum and Floss. It has some nice effects, and could end up high.
The Night Vision demo is unfortunately being put together in a hurry,
so it won't be as good as it could be... Which is too bad, since some
of their effects are nice. I especially like the beginning of it.
Opticron is supposed to have some good and hard to code effects, but I
haven't seen it. And Necros' demo is supposed to be so smooth, that it
almost appears to be animation.
Not directly related to this, of course, is Dope. We got it in about
mid-day today. It was amazing. I think it blows away all demos
currently out there, and I can be fairly certain in saying that none
of the demos from this compo will be up to par... Good job Jmagic! :)
>>>>> Yeah... GD and I waltzed in about halfway through that demo, as we'd
been observing some weird ray traced movie on all the TV monitors
scattered throughout the hallways around here, and the DEMO was
better.. :) In fact, it was so good that GD almost dropped his "Pepsi
Max" :)
Oh yeah. Question... well.. I haven't seen any of the demos yet, so I
can't really generalize about who's going to lose. And just for the
sake of argument, as far as boolean logic goes, asking who's going to
lose because we're going to have a list of who wins is not good
logic-- anyone who does not win will, by definition, lose :) and
therefore, a list of winners will explain losers as well. So there.
Pttth. :)
>> Well, about my previous comment, I realize that some people could take
offense to it, but I didn't mean it that way. I was just stating that
the coders in Europe have much more experience with demos than the
coders here in America. I think that answers GD's question, and as
expected, he's gone again. Uh oh.
That means that PS and I have free run of this document (But this will
all probably be edited out by Snowman and GD when we leave NAID :)
[Though I seriously considered doing so, I felt I should leaving the
rest of this 'document' in for sake of accuracy.]
It's about 1:30 AM right now... and as I guessed no one is sleeping.
Snowman, GD, Floss, and Trixter were all threatening to go to sleep a
while ago, but they didn't... Which is no surprise. You just DON'T go
to sleep at a demo party. Not only is it a faux pas, but also nearly
impossible by the volume of all the activities going on.
Right now we have Public Enema blasting our eardrums to smithereens,
and then we will have some sort of rave. We'll see how that turns out
(I'm not one of those heavy ravers, but PS looks like the type, so
I'll let him tell you guys all about that =)
>>>>> Hahaha, I'm afraid I can't tell ya much about raves. Oh, currently
Ior is attempting to kidnap CCCatch and make him type, but he's just
too damn quick for us. :) Must be reflexes from all his MUDs. Ooh, now
he's casting some spell on us.. ;) Well, back on topic, or this WILL
be deleted.. Hmm..
There's a guitarist over there who looks like he has a weird tropical
disease from the way he's weaving and twisting.. ooh.. poor guitar.
But anyway.. the intro compo's been delayed, I guess in order to give
some people time to write intros. :)
It appears nobody did before this time-- but now it looks like we're
going to have a "pisstro" from FUDD with music by necros--rumor has it
that all the samples are ST3.DOC, ST3.SET and ########.ST3 files.
We'll have to see how that turns out. :) In fact, I myself wrote a
little 7k text mode intro in pascal this afternoon, but owing to the
fact that more than three entrants are likely to take part, my chances
of getting some fast cash are reduced, and it isn't worth the damage
to my reputation to submit it now. :)
>> Damage to your reputation? What reput- Oh! Sorry. :) It's true. I've
seen PISSTRO ... It is hilarious. I can't wait to see it on big
screen. :) Everyone's going to die laughing. :) I couldn't confirm
anything about the samples, though. I'd have to take the 8 minute walk
down to the Kosmic/Ren room to ask Necros himself. :)
I do have one small complaint/suggestion about this party. Right now
(NIGHTTIME!) they are having the bands play, and the rave happening.
And they plan on showing the demos/intros in the DAYTIME!!!! What kind
of reasoning is this? They do have the windows covered up (some of
them) but a lot of light still gets through.
Anyone who has been to any other demo party (ahem :) could tell you
that you want to show the gfx compo, intro compo, and demo compo when
it is dark! It is just easier to see the screen! I remember that at
Asm '94, the demo compo was running a little late, and the sun started
coming up (at 3:30 AM :) and that really made watching the demos hard
to do. I wonder what the organizers are thinking. :)
>>>>> Yeah, and also we're all probably going to be half dead by that time
tomorrow.. :) amazingly enough, though, I'm still not that tired, even
though it's now now 2:00am and I got up at 6:30 am yesterday..
Actually, I must agree with Ior that the compos, especially the gfx
compo, will be somewhat hurt by the bright Montreal sun ;>
>> Pyro just reminded me! It was snowing when the party started! It was
the first snow I've seen in 13 years! After all, we don't get much
snow in "sunny" Southern California. :)
>>>>> Well, I come from wonderful upstate New York-- "Where seldom is heard,
an encouraging word, and the sky is not sunny all daaayy" -- and the
last time *I* saw snow was... last wednesday. :)
>> Well, we seem to be wandering again, but that's probably because we've
run out of things to say about NAID so far... We've only had one
compo, and that wasn't too exciting (except for music from all of the
big names on this side of the Atlantic - Oh! And Mellow-D :) ...
Right... We did have a live "coverage" (or as close as you can get) of
most of the music compo in IRC. I'm sure that someone got a screen
capture of it, and will release it later. I'll try to do the demo
compo, but the way that they have the Net terminals set up in relation
to the screen, it will make it VERY difficult to see the demo and be
on IRC at the same time. But I'll see what I can do. :) Hmm.
Well, PeriSoft had to leave for some reason. and I've run out of
things to say, and Snowman and GD will have a heart attack when they
get back from flirting with women and see how much we've typed...
So... Bye for now from NAID!
>>>>> Well, you know me, I always have to have the last word :) I actually
had to leave to get another root beer, which I believe (looks at the
can) oh damn! No caffeine! Oh well.. it's the thought that counts.
Hmm, maybe we could try here what they did in the 1890s when there
wasn't any news--yellow journalism. Hell with the facts! =) Ok, here I
go.. awww. Ior doesn't want me to do this. But that's just 'cause of
what those space aliens did to him. Hey. Well--guess I gotta go. Elvis
wants me over in the corner. Uh oh. Anyway--L8a ppl.. adioz---and
remember-- sv rules. :)
>> I wish you would tell us what this SV thing is, sometime. But not now.
:) Bye all!
=----------------------------------------------[What's In a Name?]--[Snowman]-=
Hornet, what's that? Are we a demo group, an ftp site, newsletter repor-
ters, or a bunch of people from all around the world gathered together for
_no_ clear-cut purpose? Many people have asked us to define ourselves so
we will attempt to do so here.
We have made the disclaimer at the top of this newsletter that it will have
articles less-related to the demo scene. As such, we take no responsibil-
ity for any boredom incurred through reading the remainder of this article.
_____Hornet Core
As a group, Hornet is divided into two very specific branches. The
first is "Hornet Core" which is composed of exactly 5 members. The
second is Hornet Family which fluctuates its membership total. This
distinction is set up for happy lucky reasons explained below.
[The previous paragraph had periods that were vertically aligned. We
think that's cool.]
Hornet Core is the heart of our group. Here is a brief description of
its members and their respective functions:
Leonard, Jim (Trixter):
Jim is the latest edition to our group. With notable productions
such as Grind and Chromatiks, he is already known to many of you. He
now takes care of two very important areas: Hornet responses on
comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos, and the moving and reviewing of all
/incoming/code uploads.
Jim has been in the scene for a long time and can provide insight
into current happenings based on previous experience. He is
temperamental, older (mid-twenties), married to his wife, and tall.
In general, he is one of the more conservative members of the group.
[At this point, we realize that the last description had one paragraph
for duties, and one for personality description. So as not to break
the trend, we will follow with it for the rest of the descriptions.
This might mean that the article will be structured to the point of
anality (adverb form of anal). We do not care.]
Neely, Brett (GraveDigger):
Brett is the music guy. He handles a team of people who review music
that is uploaded each week to our site. In addition, he is our most
active columnist with contributions each week in all three of our
newsletters and TraxWeekly (plug). Brett is definitely the most
gifted keyboard jockey in our group.
Brett is a quiet man . . . almost too quiet in fact. You might even
think something was wrong with him if you met him in person. However,
by asking him a lot of direct questions, one can get him pulled into
a conversation. Once that happens, stand back!
He likes to wear clothes that are jean-based (jean jacket, etc.) and
has a strip beard. A baseball cap is almost always nailed to his
head.
Scholastically, Brett is the only member of the Core division still
in high school. The rest of us would make fun of this more if we
could think of anything related to make fun of.
[We realize that we are now going astray with this article in several
regards. First, a significant amount of humor has started to creep in.
This is strictly unintentional (a lie). Second, Brett's description
just broke the pattern we set up with Jim's. We make no promises that
this article will remained structured any further.]
Mann, Christopher G. (Snowman):
Christopher is in charge of putting out the newsletters late. After
NAID, he is the self-dubbed 'Hornet Public Speaker'. In addition, he
attempts to manage the Hornet Family projects. He is the creator of
the Music Contests, but because he is lazy has passed of all
coordination of MC3 to Floss.
He smokes, he drinks, he eats lots of fast food. Yes, he is a
college student. He has a flare for grades with ascii equivalents
higher than 66d.
Christopher is in a time of change. He is coming out of the "Me, me
me! Look at all the things I'M doing" stage and entering the "i'm
hidden, i'm secret, look at what _Hornet_ is doing" stage. To
support this change, he often writes about himself in the third
person just to confuse readers.
Poire, Jean Francois (White Noise):
Jeff has three very important functions. First, he is our Webmaster,
handling most of the WWide Web activity. Second, he is the official
public relations correspondent 4 Hornet. Third, he will be one of
the official organizers for NAID in 96'.
[Vertically aligned periods again, huh huh]
We affectionately refer Jean as Jeff. "Jean" is french and therefore
too difficult to pronounce correctly.
Jeff is a very hospitable fellow, having made all other members feel
at home when at NAID this past month. He is a Windows lover and
hence must start medical treatment soon. Other than Dan Wright, he
is the longest-time member of our group.
Wright, Dan (Pallbearer):
Dan handles the most tangible aspect of Hornet: the CDs. After a
very successful "Escape" CD, he has gone on to organize efforts to
produce the sequel entitled "Freedom". Although the founder of our
group, he no longer helps to maintain the sight.
Dan looks like an ex-marine. There is a quiet, calm determination
about him. Having met him at NAID, I can only wonder what he must
have gone through to get this whole thing started.
_____Hornet Family
In addition to the Core members, there are many floating Hornet Family
members. These include such notables as:
Ior - organizer of DNDM diskmag
Floss - coordinator of Music Contest 3
Popcorn and Maverick - roving columnists
Stony - fast, reliable, and excellent artist
Jason Nunn - coder from "down under"
In addition, this division of Hornet includes all reviewers GraveDigger
has helping him, the crew working on DNDM, our listserver maintainer,
and many others.
We stated earlier that we would explain why there are two divisions.
Here we go!
Hornet Policy:
Frequently comes the time when Hornet needs to decide something.
Examples include: changing the spelling from "HORNET" to "Hornet",
keeping music reviews or stopping them, and deciding which uploads
are appropriate to our site.
When a decision needs to be made, one of us initiates the discussion
by mailing the other members with a Subject Line: COUNCIL [topic]. In
general, only a single response from the others is required. However,
our opinions sometimes differ and we must exchange mail and try to
persuade the others.
Jim and Brett seem to initiate the most council mails. Christopher
and Jeff seem to disagree the most. All in all, we're one big happy
family that can come to a solid agreement... or compromise.
if (Decision == Reached)
Make appropriate changes;
else Use Dan as the tie breaker;
Since Dan does not actively work on the ftp site any more, he is an
excellent tie breaker. Usually Jim, Brett, Jeff, and Christopher
do not have to resort to this though.
If Hornet Family members were consulted (or if Hornet Core were
larger), this system would quickly become ineffective. Score one for
small groups!
Organization:
[Note: Europeans probably want to spell it "organiSation", but our
spell checkers are different here.]
The way we have things set up, the administration is very smooth in
our group. We will appoint project leaders like Ior for DNDM, or
Jason Nunn for the MC3 Intro. These people can gather the people
they need to complete the task without Hornet Core having to worry
about the details.
In this aspect, we are a group unlike any other. Imagine Future Crew
trying to appoint Purple Motion as "music leader" or KFMF having an
"Ambient/House coordinator". Just wouldn't work.
_____Hornet FTP Site
Our ftp site is where it all comes together, where it all started,
where our lifeblood is. Without the site, it would be very difficult
to do most of our projects.
Over the years, the official address has changed a few times. We
started out as ftp.uwp.edu, moved to the University of Florida at
ftp.eng.ufl.edu and finally have settled at Walnut Creek's archive at
ftp.cdrom.com. We have no plans to move again, but we _are_ expanding.
Our ftp site has a name. It is Hornet. This name is derived from the
fact that one of the ftp servers at ftp.eng.ufl.edu was called
"hornet".
Almost a year ago, the group Hornet did not exist, at least not in
title. Then for some odd reason, Christopher started signing his name
as "Snowman / Hornet". He did not really belong to a group but he
worked on the ftp site a lot and wanted to belong to a group very
badly. The trend caught on and the group Hornet was formed.
_____Hornet Demo Group
In the future, we plan to start producing demos and intros. However,
we do not currently have enough skills or time to do so. We hope to
have something ready for NAID in 1996.
_____Summary
Hornet, what's that? Are we a demo group, an ftp site, newsletter
reporters, or a bunch of people from all around the world gathered
together for _no_ clear-cut purpose?
Hornet is a demo group, an ftp site, and newsletter reporters. We are
a bunch of people from all around the world gathered together. However,
we _do_ have a clear-cut purpose. It is our goal to make the demo
scene a better place. Pretty simple eh?
Thank you all for being so supportive.
We hope to be around for a long time.
-Christopher G. Mann r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com
=----------------------------------------------[Mailroom]--[Multiple Authors]-=
_____Clarification about MAZURkA and the light show at NAID
In the last Hornet News, Snowman wrote about his experiences at NAID. I
read it and then came across the following passage:
..The group Mazurka had about 7 entries. No problem there until about
the 5th entry. At about song 30 something, one of the Mazurka musicians
decided that he wanted to have a light show with his tune. He announced
over the loud speaker "Hey you guys, you don't mind if we have some
lights to go along with my song do you?". The audience was split on
this. I was dead opposed. This was unusual, this was preferential, this
was _unfair_.
They played the song and these fancy lights kept zipping around the room
and into my face. I was so disgusted that I got up and went to get a
drink of water. I came back after the song was over and we continued...
I replied to Snowman explaining the truth behind the matter and he
suggested that I write in HNews to clear up the situation. So here it is.
It was not bOb (the composer who's song was played during the light show)
that asked for the light show, and to my knowledge nobody DID ask for a
light show. From what bOb told me, it was the NAID organizers (the ones
who were running the music compo) who volunteered a light show, and
coincidentally it happened to be on bOb's song.
The audience WAS split on this offer, but apparently the majority wanted to
see the lights go on with the music. Even though (in my opinion) it was a
funky little light show, I agree that it was inappropriate because there
were already what... 29 songs played before this one, but I just want to
make it clear that it was not MAZURkA's fault, but the NAID organizers.
With this information I am sharing with you, I hope you can see MAZURkA in
a different light (a good one i hope :) ). Thank you very much, and if you
have any comments concerning this issue and would like to msg me about it,
email me at mayhem1@io.org. Ciao 4 Now.
-Max Quagliotto / MAZURkA
_____ftp.luth.se Defends its Mirror
[taken from newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos]
I'm the maintainer of ftp.luth.se. I'd just like to say that we have about
26GB of disc on ftp.luth.se. The computer today handles all ftp-requests,
mirroring and NFS-traffic to a slave machine that handles all http-requests
for the archive.
We don't have any problems with giving up a 1.1GB disc for demos and we
mirror cdrom.com every night BUT the mirroring fails sometimes because
there have been some problems with the connections to the States lately.
This we can't do much about right now.
Our site have a 34Mbit connection and a direct 10Mbit connection to the
archive.
SO, please stop the debate about if ftp.luth.se should mirror cdrom.com or
not.
-Peppar
_____Multilingual Demo Parties
[a forwarded mail from Trixter, taken without permission, sorry :)]
I'm rather happy to report that Naid 2 will be happening, it's now been
officially confirmed.
Actually, I've had something which has been wondering in my head for the
last 2 weeks, regarding a conversation we never finished at Naid... Well,
it was concerning the need to announce in both languages all the time, I
figured it needed some sort of explanation... We'll, it's rather simple,
really.
Quebec is one of the last places in North America were people use french as
a main language, and people round here are rather peculiar about that. (For
a long time Quebecers have been discriminated by the rest of the country
for that, and not until the late 1950's did that improve. Our small
province has been battling to keep some sort of identity for a very long
time, and some people figure they should keep on fighting, although I'm
personally convinced it's kinda time to relax about the whole issue.)
It sometimes borders insanity and prejudice, but as a rule when you use
both languages people will be satisfied. Well, now you know, it's a
political thing. <Or rather a technique to avoid heated political debates
:>
-Etienne "Mr. Khan" Caron
_____Interesting mail Snowman found the other day...
January 5, 1994
> This is Snowman. I'll make this letter short and to the point,
> as I am sure you are very busy. I have recently concluded my Music
> Contest here in the United States. It was a very big success with around
> 30 entries to the competition.
> I am due to announce Music Contest 2 in a month or two and I
> really want a nice intro for it. I have a mod which is pretty good
> already written for it. All I need is a little intro, not too flashy,
> announcing the specifics of the contest.
> Rather than tell you exactly what I want, I would first like to
> see if you would consider doing this. Then, if you decide that you
> would like to, we can go into specifics.
I'm sorry, but due to the fact that we have so many projects open right
now, we will not be able to make an intro without a reasonable price.
-Samuli "GORE" Syvahuoko / Future Crew
=-[Subscribing]-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
_____How to subscribe to DemoNews
#1 E-mail to listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za (any subject line will do)
#2 On the first line in the body of the mail, write:
subscribe demuan-list FirstName LastName
Examples:
subscribe demuan-list Christopher Mann
subscribe demuan-list Snowman
subscribe demuan-list r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu <---- WRONG!!
The listserver will automatically take the return address of your
mail. That address is where newsletters will be sent. You can not
specify an alternate address.
#3 Send it
_____How to UNsubscribe to DemoNews
#1 E-mail to listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za (any subject line will do)
#2 On the first line in the body of the mail, write:
unsubscribe demuan-list
Do not specify any address or name when you unsubscribe. The
listserver will automatically take the return address of your mail
and unsubscribe it. You can not specify an alternate address.
If you know that your e-mail address will soon expire, please
unsubscribe it.
_____Having Trouble?
If you have difficulty with the listserver, feel free to write Snowman
at r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu.
=-[Closing]-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
For questions and comments, you can contact Hornet at:
Handle Address Area
----------- ------------------------ -----------------------------------
Dan Wright dmw@inca.gate.net Freedom CD coordinator
GraveDigger gd@ftp.cdrom.com columnist, file mover, musician
Snowman r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com organizer, editor (DemoNews), coder
Trixter trixter@ftp.cdrom.com coder, web master, file mover
...........................................................End.of.DemoNews.090.