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                        UNCONVENTIONAL 2oo2 PARTY REPORT
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The following report is  written right after the influences that smashed down on
me, life at the partyplace... Ok, let's start with yesterday...

Friday...

The party started quite early and I wanted to be there as early as possible too,
but since my brother-in-law wanted  so smash me off if I  wouldn't do a bit more
on the building site on my house, I must stay at home until the late evening...

Finally, after 11 hours  glueing styropor  onto the walls  of my house I left my
home around 8 PM in direction UNCON 2k2. Short before I leeched the latest mails
and plundered some shop. Unfortunately I was already quite tired and so I needed
for the  about 1oo km  to the partyplace  nearly 2 hours, yeah! I drived several
times into the wrong direction, following street diversions or wrong signs, yuk!

Finally  I reached  Lengenfeld around  1o PM, already a bit  nerved from all the
surroundings that  aren't nice looking  on the day, but  horrible in  the night.
I had written down the way as good as I could on the damn  small scaled map from
the UNCON homepage, but in the end in a dark city  with no people on the streets
it was more stress as I thought and so I  drived around in  the streets for some
time... the  only thing  I remembered was that it took place  on a house, the so
called "Schützenhaus" on a  hill... but... this city  is laying in  a valley and
so there are hills with houses around, sucks!

In the end I found it via coincidence since I droved a street that turned out to
be closed and as I followed the  diversion I found  the part of the city I could
remember in my mind in  some way... yeah! Then I saw  the parking space in front
of the "Schützenhaus" and wondered  a lot, except  mine there were only two cars
and no  lights guided the way to  the entrance, hell, is  it wrong? Is the party
taking place on another place?!

As I saw there were a  lot of lights on in the house and so something must go on
there... I whamed onto the door, nothing happened, I tried the bells on the door
and the same happened, just nothing... Damn!

After all some woman  popped up and opened the  door, yeah... so I jumped up the
stairs and entered  the party hall. It was  quite stuffed in comparison with the
event 2 years back but I saw on the first view that it was overflooded with 8bit
Atarians. I  took a  fast look  around and I  saw a few 16/32 bit  guys. After a
short welcome by HELMUT WEIDNER, one of the  main organizers and a small talk to
MAD BUTSCHER I saw in the ST/Falcon corner FLASH, tormenting  his "Crackart" and
painting or better converting (eeeeh) animations  for the Lynx conversion of the
game "Bunion Canyon". Wow, at least one  active Falcon/ST  guy... But then I saw
also  the Feske brothers, NILS and NO, that  were here together with  NO's group
mate CHARON... that makes a round up of 5 (!) Falcon/ST sceners now, wow!

NO wasn't lazy as well and so I could take a sneak look onto new effects that he
squeezed out of his standard (!) machine, very impressive! After some smalltalk,
installing the machines (Falcon & PC) I took a small look around.

In the middle of the hall the "game competition area" was built up, featuring an
Atari Jaguar running "Super Burnout", a ST  running "Grid Runner" (but I thought
the  competition  was planned  for "Llamatron"?), an  Atari 26oo  running "Space
Invaders" and an XE game system running "Quix". Most times some people tried out
their skills on these games for the gaming competition.

Behind that there  was a big table by 16/32bit systems from the UK selling a lot
of old  games  for ST, Falcon, Jaguar and Lynx, as well as  new and  second hand
harddisx, complete Jaguar systems, connectors, adapters  and  so  on. I also saw
some games for the ST/Falcon I didn't got my hands on so far such as "Epi-Lepsi"
from Parx from France  and "Tetris Strikes Back" from Beast Software  from Czech
Republic (or so?). I wouldn't  say that many  of the  games would  have a bigger
attraction  to me, esp. since more  or less the most  are spreaded around on the
Internet, but maybe some collector could get something here...

The rest of the hall was filled with 2 rows of tables that were  mainly occupied
by 8bit Atari's. After a short  count down I counted  about 1o ST's  and Falcons
(mainly Falcons...) but I have to  say that some  of them were  misused  as dust
collectors or  realtime article machines only :/ The 8bit front was  a bit (...)
stronger represented by  about 15 machines, that  were mostly used for  watching
demos, coding, painting and  so on. Furthermore a few PC's were  present, mainly
in form of laptops.

The active  core  of the  ST/Falcon scene (...) was  sitting next to  each other
in  a corner of  the hall... and  this caused  later a  problem... So I  took my
water heater to create some noodles and as the water  was  cooking my 2KW heater
dropped down the power supply of the whole table  range. FLASH happily had saved
his fresh  drawn animation files for "Bunion Canyon". But in  the  end there was
not only a cable  connection burned  away, nope, as  the power was back, FLASH's
harddrive was crashed and  don't wanted  to turn  back to life... So 6,5 GB were
lost as material damage, as well as  about 3o animation  files for "Bunion", and
last but not least some original pixel work... as he told me...

Aaargl... but at least my noodles were fine :)

After the organizers have found the error  and installed  the power supply again
FLASH  started  to try  to recover  his harddisk  but  all failed. Also a try to
install a second harddisk he had in an external mini tower  ended positive since
that harddisk had errors and couldn't be formatted again.
But then I was witness of  an action surely  only a few  people  had done. FLASH
just created a disk for the  Falcon, copied backups of  the  grafix and CRACKART
onto  it and started  to go on painting, the same things  again. That  has to be
called -hardcore-... if all people would  think and  work like he did, our scene
would be a bit bigger nowadays and surely we had the one  or other demo and tool
and game more to play around with...

Ok, after I finished eating  I started to dig out the parts of UCM I did so far,
copied some stuff for UCM, that  I got in last minute, from my PC to the Falcon,
but only after I had borrowed a disk  since I forgot mine, as well as NO and 5o5
don't had disx as well and CHARON had  just  one, while  FLASH also had just one
he had found in his laptop and needed now for  painting... Yui... I can remember
times as we never were going to a party without  boxes fullfilled with disx just
to be able the catch  the new stuff on  the  parties... Now we're running around
with CDR and  CDRW medias but  without a chance  to  use them for a  single file
transfer between Falcon-Falcon or Falcon-PC... how lame... ;)

Anyway, I started to take a closer look onto my  UCM bits then, finding out that
there is still so much work left that I nearly lost  my motivation again, but as
I took  a look onto EDO's shell  grafix, the  life  came  back to me... But this
evening I was too tired to do anything, so I took  another look around and after
some smalltalk and waiting for REMO, who wanted to  come over at the evening but
didn't appeared so far, I decided  to roll out my sleepingback  in my car and to
end this first party day... after all  it was already 2:3o AM on  Saturday and I
was since 21 hours on my feet...

Saturday...

I woke up on Saturday morning as I heard breaking  glass, again, again and again
untill I took  a sneak look out of  the window of my  car and saw the containers
to collect old glass and several  people filling  them up... It was just 7:3o AM
and I wonder if there is a must to  bring away his old glass at this early time?

I packed all stuff  together and stumbled  back to the  party hall and found out
that the door  was closed... arg... I whamed  against the  door again  and after
some time some other  tired guy opened. Right at my first look around I saw REMO
under his table  that  was  build up next  to ours. So I  went to the toilets to
clean up my  tooth and to use some  deo since there  was no shower  or something
else, just some  tiny little  5liters  water boiler. I went back to the hall and
started my little breakfast, some cornflakes and coffee with chocolate...

After a while  I switched on my PC and  depacking  some C64 demos and emulation,
just watching a few  of them, to went  over to my  Falcon, but  after  a while I
lost my  motivation again and so I waited  untill FLASH  came back to  the hall,
as he was sleeping in his car as well. After a while  the whole hall came slowly
back to life and as REMO also woke up it was some time for smalltalk.

REMO presented me some sneak little preview of  the  forthcoming .tSCc. demo and
told me  that at least  the demo  system was  up and running  now. Wow. Later on
also NO and 5o5 joined the  round, as  well as  CHARON and FLASH, so finally the
whole present Falcon scene was gathered here :)
We had some smalltalk  about movements in  the scene, sense, standards and so on
and I have to  say that  it  was quite funny, thanx  to some people that weren't
present ;)

Since it was an open  secret that REMO had something  about tSCc's future on his
harddisk, he was  forced by  NO and  5o5 to open  his chest, but he was standing
the attacks... After a while we all joined  the active  forces, NO was inventing
some extremely  cool effects  on his  Falcon (yummy), REMO started  to code some
stuff as well, CHARON assisted  NO, FLASH  did  further steps  on his animations
for BUNION CANYON LYNX and I started to test  stuff on FLASH's  consoles, mainly
the Jaguar, since he brought some rare items to  the party as some demo cd roms,
prototype roms and so on, that he has ordered in the US or got at Ebay.

Later on also MAD BUTSCHER turned out to be not  lost for the Falcon scene since
he was working on some Game  project  and wanted to show us his first stuff that
was already  running in early  stages. Ofcourse  there was  enough time to watch
the others doing some stuffs, such as 5o5 who watched demos on a 8bit machine.

The guy of 16/32bit systems  woke up too and  started to sell some of his stuffs
again and later on a few more people showed up. At the highest point of activity
about 3o freaks were in the hall, using  mainly  8bit machines. After all I made
a run down  on the  machines again  and saw that  besides an Acorn machine a few
more 8bit Atari's were built up.

Unfortunately my keyboard seems to burn  away  later on and it was a pain in the
ass to do something with my Falcon then, Nils told  me my mouse was to dirty and
cleaned  it up but it  didn't helped  me either. Ofcourse  the 16/32 bits seller
saw my problems and  wanted to sell  me a PS2 mouse  adapter but  I hadn't money
for such stuff...

So I tormented  mainly FLASHs' Jaguar then, playing most  times the prototype of
"Phase Zero" that I have tested for this UCM as  well. After a while it was time
for the first competitions, such  as harddisk  throwing, leaderboard golf and so
on. There the  people were gathered  in 8bit/16bit  and  Acorn Teams of 3 people
each while NO was splitting our forces to help out  the two Acorn freaks, yurk.

It took  a very long  time  untill  all competitions  ended, just  like harddisk
throwing, playing  golf with  a  Pentium chip as  well as some  kind of baseball
using a keyboard as bat and  still  the same Pentium chip as ball... The kind of
checking who has thrown  the things as  far as  possible was a bit strange since
just checked with the eyes... I doubt  that  this  was  very exact and  a higher
beer level could have kicked the one or other out of competition...

In the end the 8bit team has won, followed by the  16bit posse  and as end light
the Acorn gang featuring NO (maybe he's responsible for their last place ;)

Ok, back in the hall the  party was going  on in the  same  way, mainly gambling
around, a few coding bits, pixels and making musix. The  LYNX gaming competition
was held later  the day and I have  to admit that I ended  up on one of the last
places... arg. But I never played racing games on the LYNX and  it was the first
time that I touched a LYNX at all (huiuiui...)

I don't know, in some  way I lost  more and  more my  motivation to do something
and so I decided to search something to eat in  the city. There we found a Kebap
shop that was still closed and we  tried later again... I have to admit that the
Döner I got there was one of the worst I ever tried, ieeks.

Back on  the party hall there  was still the  same  going on... Later on it some
Falcon demo watching  started on NO's machine, yeah, checking  out all things of
the  last  times... Meanwhile  the  organizers started  to grill  some  original
thuringian sausages, even  if it was  raining  outside, really  a cool  move and
very cheap after all.

Later on the  evening some noises  came over from  another big room in the house
and entering the toilet  I checked out some very noble  dressed older people are
filling the floors, hu? Was  it some silver marriage or  something? I don't know
but later on the door to the party  hall smashed open and those guys were making
a polonaise through the party hall! Arg! The power supplies! The connectors!
Happily they went  back to  their own  dull  party without damaging something in
our hall... Huuu. Very strange, for us  and surely  for  them, seeing a bunch of
computer freaks with squared eyes because of the long monitor watching...

Anyway, I for myself felt a bit sucked out, the  air  was out in some way, maybe
the problem that I opened a bottle  of german met was  the  final reason to make
me damn tired so it didn't  lasted very  long this  evening untill  I decided to
search my car again  to get  some sleep. Outside it was still raining and so the
dripping of  the raindrops onto  the roof of my car helped me to find some sleep
very fast...

Sunday...

I went back to the party hall  quite  early in the morning again and found again
the most guys still in sleep. So I  fumbled  around on  my machines a bit, still
fighting with the defect keyboard of my  Falcon, yawn. I  asked  someone if some
competitions were hold yesterday evening and there weren't... since  they should
take place today! Cool I thought, even if I know  that there surely wont be much
to check out...

So the  competitions  were a farce... The grafix  compo went  out to  be a manga
slideshow (and  I doubt that  those were originally  drawn...). Again  and again
another manga picture and  I hate  those  cheap styled  pix... yawn! The biggest
drawback was the point that except one  were done  all by one  guy, the only one
that wasn't was drawn by his girlfriend... arf...

The voting was quite  easy... holding an  arm up... since I don't wanted to give
my voice to any of  those pix I  tried to  boycott the  voting  but MAD BUTSCHER
decided to count my not given vote for a pic with a bare tittied girl... arg!

The music competition wasn't much better since there was just  one pokey tune to
vote for, done by R.I.K.... ofcourse he has one :)

Another  strange thing  appeared with  the  Sector Copy  race competition. There
were two  different Sector Copy programs  for  the  XL competing and it was just
checked what tool needed  longer  time. The funky  beeping of  the floppy drives
finally invented the idea to  create a tool on the Falcon to  emulate this sound
by NO, who already started on the party to work out that idea more! Strange!

Last but not least the prices  were given away in a  rather strange way too, but
you haven't missed anything. The things  that were left were given away for free
for the ones who liked them (posters of old  games, disks  with software without
books and so on...).

So the party was slowly going to its  end. I started to pack my hardwares, still
damn tired  and watched the  others doing  the  same. Some smalltalks  later and
the swearing to  be there  the next  year too  I  finally left  the party in the
early afternoon. The  way back was  much  shorter  in driving  time, I also took
another  route and  was back at  home  after  just not even 1,5 hours... There I
smased something to eat into the micro wave  again (since  the  last stuff I got
to eat  on the  party were  some  instant soups  since I  didn't  matched  it to
plunder some super market in time) and thought about the days in Lengenfeld...

Final words...

The Unconventional still is a very  small event and  still  mainly 8bit related.
It isn't a  real coding  party as  we know it on  the ST/Falcon  scene, the most
time on  the Uncon was used to  play together  many different games  and so some
sticker that was given away  on the party was printed with  the slogan "I played
Atari today!".
Apart from playing games the most time  is used to speak to  other people and so
the competitions  were more done for fun as to see who's the  best pixler, coder
or musician.
But in the  end it makes  fun and it was  nice to meet the  guys there, even the
8bit heroes that are a bit strange acting sometimes ;)

The biggest drawback  in my eyes was  that this party was  so less frequented by
16/3bit sceners. It was the only  Atari  related  event in  Germany at  all this
year and only so few people decided to meet  there, even if there was nothing to
pay as entrance fee...

Another  more personal  drawback was the  fact  that I  was  damn tired  at this
weekend as I was  going to work  14 days before  and was working  on my house as
well every day. So I wasn't very motivated  to do something  on  the UNCON, esp,
since I first  tought to make  some further steps  in finishing the already damn
delayed UCM... And  so I ended up as  small talker, gambler and  demo watcher on
the UNCON, too bad.

After all I  would wish that next  time a few more  Atarians  with ST and Falcon
will  find the  way to  this event, surely it  wouldn't be  a  big  loss for the
organizers if we  wouldn't join this  event  since  the 8bit oriented people are
coming  for sure, but  after all it isn't  good  for  the image to leave out the
possibility to meet other friends  and  Atari freaks since nowadays there aren't
much events left to do so... Ok, next year  will be the  EIL and this  will make
it  hard for  the UNCON to  gather some  more  people since  many  people aren't
driving for more than one event through  half  of Europe, but  I mean especially
the german Atarians here that didn't showed much interest...

Anyway, greetings  to all I met  there, esp. to  MAD BUTSCHER (thanx for another
really  unconventional  party),  FLASH  (sorry  for  the  HD b urner), NO (geile
Vektoren, Alter!), CHARON (Sorry, in some  way I didn't  matched it to check out
the  STUNE  update for  this issue... :( ...maybe  next time  then), REMO (oller
Sack!) and last but not least 5o5...

_.tSCc._________________________________________________________moondog_o9/2k2__