UCM25
.tHE .sIRIUS .cYBERNETICS .cORPORATION
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party report by earx
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Next to the bi-anual big atari party there's always a more or less fixed amount
of smaller parties each year. Paracon is one of those smaller events and it just
reached it's fifth edition.
Although the editions I attended seemed a success, last year's edition I didn't
visit because of the usual exams. That year there also was a limit on the amount
of visitors which seemed quite strange to me. However, only now I understand
why. But more about that later.
The trip to a party is a problem. Maybe it even is _the_ problem. Planning the
trip and meeting up with your friends at the right time can be a bit of a
nightmare. Although this year everything went smoothly. I put my stuff into my
bagpack and got on the train. Just over two hours later I arrived in Enschede
(+kut) and there Havoc picked me up with his infamous red Ford Escort.
The car trip to Selters, the traditional location of Paracon, was just as
quick. We checked out a bit of the scenery at first, but soon it went dark. We
had just one pause for stretching the legs and continued onwards.
Near Selters we had to keep our eyes peeled for roadsigns but after some
minutes we arrived safely at the partyplace. This was at 19:00, 2 hours after
the party had begun. So far, the only visitor there was Charon of Escape. Quite
uncommon, with the Dutch guys often arriving last.
We installed our stuff and spoke a few words with Paranoid and Charon and
waited for the rest of the visitors to appear. Meanwhile, there was a bit of
stressing going on in the demo production department. There were bugs to fix,
there was syncing to improve, etc.
Eventually the first other visitors came in: the guys from Cruor (now ex-Cruor
;)) and the guys from Escape and Checkpoint (including Defjam this time). Even
Ray managed to replace his uniform with some casual clothes for this event :)
There was alot of talking about the ACP with Norman, who even brought his
coldfire testboard + PCI video card for working at the party. Was very
interesting to see! Especially the insane development tools he had constructed
for reverse engineering linux x86 display drivers had me scratching the back of
my head =)
Eventually another familiar face popped up: Marakaman. He lived quite nearby
the partyplace and decided to drop by with his ct60 tower. I admit it looked
sexy. Even if it didn't have that atari flair the colors of the machine matched
the atari desktop pretty well (grey + light blue). The ct60 seemed very stable
and I guess made a pretty fine Mint setup.
Questions remained about the usual visitors from previous years: Lotekstyle,
ST_suvivor and Zerkman. Sadly none of them could make it this year. Hope to see
you guys at Paracon6!
PIZZATIME! The pizza wasn't half bad I might add. Although Havoc complained
alot about the bottom being halfbaked. I told him to shut up and he went sitting
in his corner of shame again. Although, with his size he could also have rolled
me into a ball and kicked me out the window ;) Anyway, the pizza was okay I
thought, although the medium size didn't fully saturate me (This is beginning to
sound gay isn't it?).
So the night went on with some coding (and some pixelling for Havoc) and at
some time it seemed there was so many glitches and bugs to be killed that it
would be better to skip sleep alltoghether. So that's how it went, coding,
pixelling, drinking AfriCola, peeking a few times at some screens by Ray,
checking out Zweckform's democollection, etc.
AfriCola, a really much better than I expected type of drink, was consumed
eagerly throughout the party. The local AfriCola fountain was guarded by Mr
Paranoid and his evil henchmen, who were easily bribed for 1 EUR / litre. The
extra caffeine did give that kick to code through the night probably..
The morning was up and that's a strange sensation when not getting any sleep.
However, there was a delicious breakfast to anticipate. It was splendid, as
usual at all the edititions of Paracon. Having consumed about five broodjes I
decided to call it a breakfast and went back to bugging.
At that time Paranoid had put up the beamer, which sadly didn't seem to like
many of the Falcon video formats. However, there was a good selection of newer
vga60 supporting demos to choose from.
The bugging went on and at some moment it was possible to show a (somewhat
ugly) preview of the new lineout demo. It was ofcourse a bit crappy, but enough
about that.
The party went on and there was a small informal competition of Gyrus and
Desert Falcon II on the Paranoia commodore 128. Quite cool to play these games.
Gyrus I hadn't played in like 18 years perhaps. "memories..."
*needle scratching on record*
Some of the guys went outside to visit a local spring which I completely missed
out on. And there was also a big fucking building of Jehova freakazoids around
as well. I did see that one, and it looked huge. Quite strange for a small
looking town like Selters. What would be the odds? Yeah, what would be the odds
of an atari scene still existing in 2003?! Get on it with it will ya?
= entering slag mode ===========================================================
Apparently there was some radio program made by somekind of an old haig to
'interview' (read: slag down) the members of Paranoia and this radio interview
was presented on the stereo of the partyplace. Although it seemed like a laugh I
think these reporters have poor taste.
There is an oldschool 8bit/16bit revival happening (emulators, atari-shirts,
sid sounds in the charts, isometric sprite 3d in musicvideos) so the media have
to write a little about this. Unluckily they decide to target longtime fans of
the cult machines and call them so 'uncool' and 'ungay' whatever.
They talk about blocky graphics, completely oblivious to gameplay or sport or
creativity and without the slightest notion that people can also enjoy
themselves without slagging other people off. These reporters have the insights
of a 13 year old (and a stupid one at that) and present their opinion as an
expert view on trends.
The piece on the radio was indeed a laugh at sometimes, but I would urge the
reporter to do something more useful with her time. Respect to Paranoid for
actually playing this at the party :)
= exiting slag mode ============================================================
There was some pizza again that night and I liked it, so I did not wipe my ass
with it and it wasn't hard enough to use as a frisbee so that was out of the
question as well.
That night we decided it was time for a nap. After a huge period of 6 hours I
woke up again and descended from the stairs back to the main party hall. There
was the 1040STe of Zweckform again to play some games and demos on again and I
decided to put it to good use.
By the way, this party was the first time I ever spoke to Zweckform and Ralf in
real life. Really friendly chaps as well they were! Defjam seemed to be dozing
off again. Sadly he hadn't brought that comfy 1040STf to put his head on.
Too bad ;)
Later on again it was time for that breakfast again (yeah!) and now there was a
little Paranoia birthday cake for the 5th anniversary. I ate 4 broodjes, an egg
and a bowl of cornflakes mixed with that honey-corn cerial.
*Burp* That was that.
After some more craptalk it was time to pack up again, say goodbye and drive
home. The ride home was even more easy than the ride to Selters and at the
pluskut trainstation I say goodbye to Havoc.
Let me spare you the trainstuff for this time and just conclude that it was a
good party. I'd say it was about the best of the three Paracon's I've been to.
Paranoia continually decided to keep to party as small and cosy as possible. No
other party has such things as a breakfast this good and it's possible to talk
to all people in just under two days as well. A winning concept.
It seemed that Paranoid didn't have any plans for a 5th edition this year at
first. That's just strange when seeing the outcome of this great party!
Thanx a million to the organisers for making this possible :)
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