Kimchi in space

Huh. I didn't know South Korea had astronauts, but it would appear that Yi So-Yeon has gone up to the Soyuz space station, bringing some home cuisine along for the ride. Beats a tube of tuna paste :)

Icons 2008 competitions: hypocritic hogwash

The Icons demo party 2008 edition has been somewhat of a problematic venture for me -the rules are broken.

Something that sticks out in the realtime demo competitions, as a sore thumb after a nice hammer session:

• It's not "Rob is Jarig" nor any kind of a remake of it

For the non-sceners out there, Rob Is Jarig (note incorrect case of the Icons people) is a sub-par, non-serious demo made by dutch demo group Aardbei way back in 1999 to commemorate the birthday of one of the coders in the group. It was a joke production which has gathered a rather notorious following after it was released in several demo competitions.

Typically, demo competitions dictate that previously released entries are not allowed. For some reason, Rob Is Jarig is usually exempt from this rule and appears at many demo competitions. Several homages, remixes and ports of the original demo were made, and in general, the stage get hijacked by people who dance and sing along to the karaoke text for the duration. It is more of a ritual than serious competition.

Granted, not everybody likes to see this dead horse being beaten over and over, but to instate a specific rule like this is overdone and petty. All you really need to do is to actually enforce the original goldenrule -no previously released entries. All the other demo parties tend to have that rule, but waive it for the simple reason that there is no way that Rob Is Jarig will ever rock the vote due to being released earlier. In some occasions, they do play the demo, but disqualify it to make sure nobody gets any crazy ideas during the voting rounds.

Why would Icons not stick to general rules? Well, because that would mean they'd have to be hardliners on their own turf as well. Take a look at this rule:

• Production must not contain methods that are very likely highly uncompatible. (For example import by ordinals, BAT droppers)
  • Special exception is applied for Flo releases

When from Finland, deviations from the rules are allowed? Way to go, guys :)

Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Guy managed to surprise me with the proposal to head out to Paradiso to catch a gig of Does It Offend You, Yeah? which had been flying under the radar for me.

Since my sleep pattern was still a bit freaky from the aftermath of CPX, I figured that getting out of the house for the evening might be a good idea. It was their last gig of their tour, so it was pretty much the last chance we'd get for a little while.

DIOYY was booked for the small stage, and for some bizarre reason in combination with Kamelot, a rather bizarre pyrotechnic orchestral metal band, playing at the main stage. The guitarist of DIOYY quipped that we'd really ought to take a look at the bizarre spectacle after their concert -which was perfectly possible, since their played a measly 45 minutes before leaving the stage.
I'm still a bit divided on the merit of that, but at least it were 45 minutes well spent -unlike the obscenely bad 45 minute performance by Mike Patton & Fennesz last summer (I wish I could undo that unfortunate waste of money, time and credit for Patton).


We had a drink elsewhere to discuss the whole ordeal. We mutually agreed that the bastard who operated the strobe light needs a smack over the head for keeping the thing on the whole bloody time and while it was a short, it was a pretty good concert. Left for home and finally managed to sleep during the night :)

Back from CPX'08

Whew. Spent a week with 23 other male examples of the geeky persuasion in the middle of nowhere. It was pretty neat, even though I managed to complete none of the challenges I set out for myself and now possess the bioryhtim of a bat.

To outline what the typical day consisted of:

• Wake up, shower with the listless enthusiasm of a fern and find my flip-flops so I can walk outside
• Walk from one holiday bungalow to the other, enter a pit of smells with computers, musical instruments and a wild variety of electronic stuff.
• Sit back in the sofas to watch a terrible movie, play Katamari and/or Rez.
• Feel like breakfast, only to note that it is, in fact, 8:00 PM.
• Thinking "Hmm, I really ought to finish that jQuery thing I was working on" while playing Katamari.

It was, in all, pretty much a week of doing nothing much but gain up on an enormeous amount of movies, tinkering with stuff I never have the time for and being able to sleep properly.

I found out that the house I was sleeping in actually had the kind of sauna that I tend to encounter in Finland, so I was pretty much happy to spend some time there. The others didn't really get the point and stuck to the ones they had -the steam bath variant (which is crap).

Now on to a new challenge: to get my sleeping patterns back into acceptable terms before monday.