Notcon 2004 report
Gasman
Notcon 2004 report
by Gasman
At the festival, Extreme Computing
2002, where much of the
the program was devoted to
celebrating the 20 anniversary of the Spectrum, I had
wish to speak. Anyone interested were given the opportunity to
go out and give a "lightning osnuyu presentation, but then I
thought that the preparation of speeches on the spot - it's too
cool for me. So we had to wait
a couple of years, until such an event ... Finally,
Notcon gave me this
opportunity.
I was allocated 10 minutes
presentations, with the suggestion to concentrate on
Softpedia issues. I began to think that I could cover, but
soon came to the conclusion that the greater challenge will be
to decide what to leave b ithout attention 10 minutes is quite
a bit. Initially, I was not going to mention the demoscene in
general, but would like Show DivIDE, in the process of
downloading the game, but at the last minute realized that this
would lead to awkward moments in conversation, where I will i
ection "Look, it's Manic Miner. Yes, Manic Miner, see
everything. Hmm, yeah ..." So I decided do a little
self-promotion and Losing Victoria to make a playlist.
From past experience I knew that when you mention demoscene
ordinary British man in the street, then is one of the two. Or
their eyes light up in a lyrical
impulse to speak about the Future
Crew, Desert Dream, Gravis Ultrasounds and Farbrausch, or they
look at you with embarrassment at the
face. For the sake of the past, I had to give a concise
definition of demoscene, and of course, you understand how
difficult it is to do it. After cutting the countless details
of the crack stage, 256 byte intro, realtime against
prekalkulyatsii, technical demos against artistic dem, well
and the rest of what I wanted
Tell described decreased
up to 30 seconds.
My appearance on the stage followed after
James Larsson, who gave
very bizarre demonstration of computing time using the BBC
Micro and shrimp sandwich. (For those who are not familiar
with this - BBC Micro was the main
rival the Spectrum in Britain
but virtually unknown in other countries. In any case, it is
not so important, compared with shrimp sandwich).
It seems that this action will not be easy
repeat ... (Ed. - the calculation
time, in this case were based on measuring changes
capacity decaying component sandwich, accuracy was + - 2 hours)
Nevertheless, something that gave me
courage from the very beginning, when
(After a slight delay in
Time to set the projector), the start menu appeared Spectrum
on the screen, the audience responded
warm cheers. How does
These were people who mostly grew up with
Spectrum and experienced tender
memories of him, despite the fact that from the time they
a little "progress."
In connection with this, somewhat surprising was that no one
learned Sinclair microdrive
cartridge, which I showed at the beginning of the conversation,
to further demonstrate how far we've come in the last 20-Th
years. Ultimately, the early stages of the performances were
quite quiet, but the audience livened up a bit when started my
demo. On Actually, I have not had time to watch it, because I
was busy crawling under a table in an attempt to get the sound.
(In a fit of Paran Oia I decided to bring their own dynamics,
just case. This proved to be good
idea.)
The demo led to a large rise in applause, that I certainly was
pleased. Small respite, and then I switched to the topic
CompactFlash. People still do not laughed at my silly jokes,
but it definitely could be heard whispering
Softpedia admirable achievement zheniyam. Me personally, the
jump from IDE to CF does not seem significant (or
very interesting from the point of view
Spectrum of iron), but I guess that the idea of an ultra
modern storage media, reference to the outdated
computer, captured the imagination and every one present.)
<twra2|down> from IDE to CF file system ISO?
<Ewan_> :-)
<twra2|down> it _bezumie_
<johnli> unorganized chaos
<johnli> will be a technical condition
But bright madness that pochtivsegda well
-A lively discussion on the IRC # notcon
By this time I was finishing time, so it was necessary
to move faster to complete -
Video "Let Forever Be" by the Chemical Brothers. The first
mention video stream caused laughter - people
were not sure by how much
seriously about it to take ... I was going to present
together with a small technical description BMP2SCR and
restrictions AY chip, but the result missed that part and went
directly to the demonstration. This improvisation was very
effective as if I said
"Yes, that's what we do at
Speccy always "- in this time of the submission of the crowd on
features eight-car overturned.
Heh, let forever be
is the most
disorderly thing that I
seen in my damn life
In his opening speech, one
of the organizers - Danny O'Brien
inspired by all the cooperation and discussions, then I think
he has in mind more mainstream seminars, but was
pleasantly surprised by the feedback received from visitors
later - in I had a conversation with someone who are in search
of interesting new applications of your laptop Amstrad NC100,
based on Z80 (who decided that porting
Contiki is an interesting option), I shared tips
on to the Ross-on development
Speccy, and met future sceners, recently moved to
England from South Africa, but found that the scene here is not
so active, as he had hoped.
In the evening, when we were all sent to Wagamama - one of the
best London's bars, I talked
Mark Robson, representing vectrex.org.uk. Vectrex - it
one of the very few domestic
PC 80, a remarkable
its CRT display meters, which is a vector, not raster.
I heard about a particular ballet steps, necessary for the
to make the electron beam
give a flat graphic ... If
would only make it easier to find, they
Of course the same would be as follows
great gain demoscene.
elfh> text of the presentation can be found at
http://www.zxdemo.org/
article.php? id = 8)
