Busybodies, flies not being on me

I've been beyond negligent with the blagging experience for some months now. Fact is, I'm busy. Trainings, seminars, a webhosting apocalypse and exciting changes at work... you name it.

I've been jarring up on some things: the Hackintosh, why I wasn't at Breakpoint (or any demo party outside Evoke and Outline for that matter), my conclusion as to how serious we can take the professional underpinnings of HTML5 and why I'm seriously going to be buying a handheld device from Apple.

I'm sure there's at least two people who remotely care.

The 90s called -they want their fad back

It's always nice to see common aspects of the demoscene trickle down into the mainstream, but the opposite can give me the occasional jolt. Assembly 2008 has decided that a revamp of the traditional Oldskool competitions was in order, and to the general positive reception of its audience, they went on and did it.

The mailing list surprised me this morning with an update on the matter. You might want to take a step back here:

Oldskool music has become Realtime Extreme Music

Oldskool graphics has become Realtime Extreme Graphics


…Extreme?! Supplanting of Oldskool music and graphics with Executable 4k Graphics and Executable 32k music competitions -two competitions and two terms proven to be successful at other demoparties, can only be made acceptable with the corniest idea in Sports marketing taped onto it? I'm lost here.

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 :)

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.

I'm not really sure why, but the Flash people at work updated the Spang Makandra display at work with an FLV background of wavy grass. As if the 1920x1200 resolution wasn't killer enough, we now have coarse VCD quality grass animating at 10fps.

I eased the pain by watching the demos from ASD and Excess from last weekend. I really ought to get around writing some incensed article explaining my absence at Breakpoint -to my chagrin I had to explain the situation ad nauseam even DURING the damn event.

Demoscene activities + 2008 = Oh god, not again

It's a good thing I don't really take well to New Years' resolutions, since I would have definitely decided to keep my activity in the demoscene to the maximum of minimums. It would appear this is not going to be easy. Who am I kidding, it would have been broken by now.

First a reunion that'll be most likely due for Breakpoint, the obvious Outline chores (and Limp Ninja releases) and yesterday I got the least sympathetic offer (the "everone we wanted to work with is retired or dead, so you'll do" kind) to join in a rather interesting prospect.

I hate myself :)

New Years' at 4D

In short: Champagne, great music, dancing like a loon on said music and a nice little ego-boost and a phone number transaction.

Went back to Amsterdam in the afternoon, dropped Niko off at the station and went into the easiest comatose ever early in the evening.

Greetings from Limp Ninja and Lemon

Note to non-demosceners: You probably won't get this.

Facet is in the country for a couple of days to seal some business deals here. It's been a while since the lovable Amiga graphician made me feel like I'm the least funny person on the planet. Moreover, it's good to see a familiar face. Who knows, I might catch him so piss-drunk that he can be persuaded to pixel a naked woman on a serpent. With a volcano in the background.