The 3rd ALT Party! Now the full story can be told! I'm sparing you all most of the pre-amble bit. Aren't you pleased with me!? Well not quite all of it, as there is an all-new feature to this familiar party landscape, that is, a brand new currency to get used to! Outside of the Euro-hubbub, views here in the UK are rather mixed, some people get all defensive, seeing it as some sort of 'attack' on the great British way of life. Others are rather more enthusiastic, and look on with regret, wishing they could join in with the Euro fun. Now I've come up close and personal to this new funny money for the first time, and my first impression is of feeling distinctly underwhelmed. It seems that the designers of the Euro have decided to make it as charisma- free as possible. Firstly, the notes themselves are on the small side, even the higher denomination 50 euro note. The 5 euro note could easily slip by without being spotted. Secondly, I have a real problem establishing the country of origin from my UK-acquired monetary spoils. I see that there is a standard design on one side, something like a map of Europe and a bunch of bridges, to prove the 'Euro' part of it. The other side gives the individual euro zone states free reign to express its proud nationalistic and artistic tendencies. But the other side of my notes seem to continue the blandness from the standardised cross-border 'bridges n' harmony' motif. I really can't tell where these euro-notes originated from.. Hang on a minute, now I remember that the notes are the same wherever, it's the coins that are freeform on one side, and I don't have any of those as yet.. There are several anti-forgery devices built in, some of them are a little bit scary on first viewing, and I seriously thought that I had been given dud notes initially! There is a weird 'see through' gadget, which only prints part of the number on one side, and the 'missing' bit on the other. so what you see at first glance, looks like something went horribly wrong in the printing process, and it is only when you hold the note up to the light, that you can see the rest of the number, then it all becomes clear. Near the top of the note, something that might be a signature of the chief cashier of the central bank, which looks at first glance, like a clerk or teller has rudely scribbled on your brand new note, and at second glance, like a very roughly sketched concept for a replacement for Concorde, but drawn by someone on bendrezine... The watermarking is good and going on for brilliant, and I like the neat little metal strips at the side. But I've got a feeling there might even be too much of a good thing there, whilst people are still getting used to the new currency, they may not be able to pick up all the anti-copying gadgets at once, which gives the counterfeiters a momentary opportunity? But I look at the small, forlorn, if very neat and new pile of euro's, and never has 100 UKP Sterling never looked so small! I hope that isn't a prophecy for how far my money goes at 3 Alt? Okay, that's your lot for this one, see you back after the party... DAY 1, Thursday January 10th. 09.00ish, and CiH struggles free from the Northampton rush hour traffic, to rendevous with Felice and John H. (the being known as 'Asteroid' in the realtime text) at Felice's place in sunny St Neots, the town that time forgot. An incident free journey, with some old thing by Depeche Mode on the car stereo, leads to the premises of the Felicing one. Both he and John are in the throes of packing, with stuff in various states of confusion in the hallway and bedrooms. My SCSI hard drive (the smaller 400 meg version) is to join Felice's Falcon, in a big hardened suitcase, and suitably padded out with (protective?) clothing. John has brought his own item of rare hardware with him to take to 3 Alt, an Acorn Archimedes laptop, known as an A4. There is an idea to host a Maggie or Alive! realtime on this, so cleverly avoiding the more normal sort of 'A4' that we tend to use, as in paper... That is if it chooses to work, as it hasn't reached John in an ideal condition. It has been abused by several years use in a school situation, apparently works when it feels like it, and is generally starting to fall apart. John switches it on to run some funny little game or other. It seems to look okay to my eyes, apart from some damage to the external casing, caused by a determined schoolchild and a piece of sandpaper? He is looking forward to trying out some more Acorn software I've brought on my SCSI. As it turns out, the Archie based realtime party log is one of the successes of the party, as the accompanying realtime report of over 70k in size reveals. The fact that we are travelling by air means that baggage is kept on the sensible side, and Felice's car loads very easily for the next stage of the journey to Stanstead Airport. This passes by painlessly, and we park up at a long stay car park, seemingly going halfway back to Cambridge. Checking in at the airport goes by in a haze of routineness, apart from John having some screwdrivers confiscated. Fortunately, the security people didn't take any further action with reference to John's possible Bin Laden tendencies, and so we are left to pass the couple of hours or so to our flight unmolested. Looking around the shopping area, and eating pricey and so-so quality food help to ease the time lag. We also make our first stab at the Archie realtime, and get a little distance until the battery gives out. (The Archie had a "brilliant" low battery warning widget, which was supposed to give around five minutes warning, which actually turned out to be just enough time to fumble frantically for the 'Save' command, and not quite make it before the machine died altogether!) At the departure gate, there is more success with the realtime, as John locates a 'spare' power socket, normally used by cleaning staff, so we were able to make a renewed attempt on it. No-one dropped by to stop us. Nearby, a loud-voiced American person lets us know that he owns a high-end mobile phone. The flight is on a bright yellow Buzz aircraft, and is totally unremarkable, apart from an in-flight sandwich cunningly disguised to make it look larger than it is. Some later, at a locally adjusted mid-evening sort of time, we arrive at Vantaa, the Helsinki international airport. We know it well, the ancient Fokker monoplane, possibly the first member of the Finnair fleet, is still dangling from the ceiling, the customs and security people have seen it all before, and we are to meet up with Q-Funk, the former fellow traveller to the first ALT Party. He is not there waiting for us. John H. and Felice attempt to call him on the phone numbers he has left with us, but they fumble, and are still trying to figure it out, when the man himself arrives suddenly in our midst. He looks remarkably like he did, when we first met in person, back at Heathrow airport, on the way to the first Alt Party, all those years ago, a large amount of facial hair, and throwing out a constant stream of humourous mannerisms behind him. We are to head back to his place, across town, in the not entirely unfamiliar suburb of Espoo, the former residence of the big man himself, Setok! A series of buses follow, firstly from the airport to the city centre, then a breath-takingly bumpy drag across town, particularly for the suitcase containing Felice's Falcon. It is wheeled, so Q-Funk charges on ahead with it, over cobbles, and down kerbs with a thump and a bump. I remember my external hard drive is in there as well! We pick up the final bus to Q-Funk's place at the other bus station, and it is only a short, snow-covered distance to his place. The weather was in traditional winter mode, but not as cold as I had been led to expect. Temperatures as low as minus 25 degrees centigrade had been experienced in the period after Xmas. These were temperatures more typical of the north, than downtown Helsinki, but right now, the winter weather was more in line with that of a middling day in the UK. I was prepared for the colder harsher scenario, bringing extra clothing, and wearing much of it for the journey over. So I ended up sweating into most of it by the time we got back to Q- Funk's place. A perilous scramble up some hilly, and uncleared icy paths gets us into Q- Funks apartment. We establish crash spaces for the nights sleep, then set off to sample some localised version of that international burger-monger, Macdonalds, a branch of which was handily located a short distance from Q's apartment complex. A close encounter with a local burger, described in the realtime follows, and clean-up squads with high powered hoses are summoned to take care of the aftermath, or something. A quick stop at the nearby garage to top up on chocolates and carbohydrates follows, then back to Q-Funks for more general reminiscing, with some interesting personal information given out. (Now I know the full story behind the origin of the scene nick of 'Felice'!) Eventually, we head to bed, as tomorrow promises to be an early start, with us spending the early hours at one of Q-Funk's workplaces. We bed down in two rooms, Felice and I in Q-Funk's room, and John H. in the sitting room cum other bedroom for the presently missing housemate. To help John get a poor nights sleep wobbling on a razor edge of fear and uncertainty, Q-Funk mentions that his housemate is something of a paranoid delusional alcoholic, with violent tendencies! Sleep tight John! DAY 2, Friday January 11th. But it isn't any drunken blatherings that rouse us, rather the insistent tones of Q-Funk's alarm clock, at some ungodlike hour of the morning. Lying still to make it go away works for a short time, but we have to get up in the end. A twilight bus whirls us into the city centre, luggage and all, and so we end up at the first, and plushest of Q-Funk's various workplaces. The pleasant sight of a blonde uber-babe receptionist smiles at us, and we make our way upstairs, in the very hi-tech lifts with the inner workings exposed for all to see. Before he disappears, Q-Funk is considerate enough to show us the coffee machine, and a free classroom with some internet enabled PeeCee's running. And we keep ourselves quietly amused, well apart from when Felice tumbled on some anti Bin Laden animations, until lunchtime when the bearded one returns. (Q-Funk, that is, not B-L!) Lunch is in a high quality staff restaurant. The menu choices vary between some intimidatingly heavy Finnish winter food, and a curried stir fry, cooked on the spot, so we decide to give the latter a go. This is good, and we are refreshed, so the final stage of the journey to the partyplace, Gloria, begins. A mad-arse taxi driver spins across the icefield at the side of the workplace, this is our transport there... Getting to Gloria is straightforward, and we drag our gear into the main hall. Already present are some of the organisers tables, someone else who unloaded, set up and left, and the Reservoir Gods, sitting in a very dark corner. There are four of them this time, the strongest 'Gods' showing for a long time. regulars such as Mr Pink, MSG, and Sh3 are complemented by the fair presence of Ripley, for whom this is her first major coding party. She is here with a traditional reporters notebook, in a disturbing echo of previous Maggie attendances, and is looking for a story for one of the magazines she writes for back home. The others are hard at work on their various projects, and I get to see a nearly completed 'Godpee' in action, as well as an early version of another conversion being done in collaboration with a well-known French Atari crew. There was also another so far unknown project mentioned, which was being done with another Res Gods member 'Neo'. but I didn't get to see any of this last one. At this very moment of arrival, only Mr Pink is working, having the advantage of his Sony Vaio laptop, the others have brought more orthodox 'Alternative' hardware, but are stuck impatiently awaiting monitors to turn up. Meanwhile, Felice makes a disheartening discovery, as he unpacks his Falcon. The casing has picked up some scars and gouges from the trip across town last night, and several of the keys have come off. All but one of these is put back easily, the '3' key on the top row is broken though. For now, lacking monitors ourselves, we have to wait and see whether the damage is more than on the surface? The Archie based RTA seems to be coming along fine though. Q-Funk goes away to his next job, to reappear in the evening. In the afternoon period, more people gradually arrive, and start to set up their gear. In this fashion we get to catch up with fellow Atarians, Wiztom, Baggio, and ZPQ. Wiztom seems to be planning on making some sort of return to Atari coding. For the demo competitions at Alt, he is getting ready some kind of record breaking shadebob screen, and for something more interesting, he is apparently investigating a 3D texture map world engine for the STe. Ultimately, nothing appeared from either of these in the competitions. Baggio has a bit more to show off, some new and so far unseen effects from Wildfire's long forthcoming Falcon demo. These are seriously good, and the finished demo, hopefully will be out at some point this year? Also in this 'lull before the live music power tool specialists' period, we get to check out the rest of Gloria's facilities, the small cafe/bar, and the rather useful internet connection. Also, there is the small matter of purchasing the official 3 Alt t-shirt, which continues the slightly paramilitary theme of the party website. The time for the opening ceremony approaches, a certain amount of tuning up, or is that last minute repairs to the stage? commences, with the live music acts, who are to pleasure our ears a bit later that evening. A revival of the C64 deejay is promised as well. The opening ceremony passes off quickly enough. Q-Funk reappears, decides to move his kit upstairs onto the balcony. About this time, thoughts turn to meeting Pahartik, due in from Tampere at around 19.30, and getting some more food in. Q-Funk, myself, Felice, and John H. head out into the city, and we opt for a nice pizza place by the railway station. Q-Funk goes to fetch Pahartik whilst we eat ours, and soon I spot the distinctive silhouette of a small person under a strange hat drift past the restaurant window. I correctly conclude this is Pahartik.. We head back after our food is finished, back via a series of slippery hills, with John H carrying Pahartik's monitor for him, what a great bloke John is! Still, no accidents on the way back, so that was alright then. Q- Funk whisks off upstairs with Pahartik, we remaining Maggie/Alive people opt to stay where we are. Q-Funk and Felice head back to pick up some more gear from Q-Funk's place, his 486 Debian Linux box, and a portable telly for use with Felice's Falcy. The rest of us stay behind, as the first of the evening's live music acts is gearing up to begin performing. The quality is variable, some of it is rather good, some of it most charitably described as "experimental", and not so much music, but more a series of noises. By this time, the main hall is rapidly filling up, in contrast to previous Alt parties, where there always seemed to be some table space left, and soon, a couple (male-female, what were you thinking?!) are sitting next to us. Among other items of older hardware, they have a Vectrex running! This was one of the cool machines of 2 Alt, and a reappearance here is very welcome! He has a devkit going from a PC, to the Vectrex itself, and he is working on a small demo for the competitions! In the meantime, more classical Vectrex fare, such as a vector version of Scramble is running, there is even a rare transparent coloured plastic overlay on the screen. In our corner meanwhile, John H. takes a break from the realtime, to get some image files working on his Archie. We manage to get some demos running, but these seem to be from an era when scrolly texts ruled, and they don't look that great on a blurry LCD screen. About 22.00 hours, the live music flips over, almost unannounced, to the Commodore 64 live DJ set. This is variable in quality too, going from 'good', to 'blummin' excellent!' The length of the set is more satisfactory this time too. In my opinion, it was over all too quickly at 2 Alt. This is seriously cool, and we are entranced, but what follows after, is way too loud, so we retreat to the lobby area, and take cover behind the internet terminals and coffee bar for the following hour. By the time that volume levels in the main hall have returned to a safe level, it is nearly midnight, Felice and Q-Funk have returned with the rest of their gear, and Felice is about to check to see if his Falcon internals have survived the journey better than the casing did? An initial attempt with the wrong sort of aerial lead is inconclusive, but a second go with the correct connection shows us the good news, that Felice's Falcy isn't dead after all! DAY 3, Saturday January 12th. Midnight creeps up, and is gone again. I head upstairs, to see how Q-Funk and Pahartik are doing, and also to establish a base camp for the sleeping area. They seem to be doing alright, with a tri-machine local network, based on the Debian box, with Q-Funk's TT, and Pahartik's ancient Sparc Station running off it. We pause to ask ourselves the question, is Q-Funk's nudie desktop a paen to sexual frustration, or what? Setting up sleeping equipment here seems to be a good idea initially. It is clean, and relatively quiet, if you discount the noises coming from down below in the main hall, which ultimately, you couldn't. I'm guessing, it was around two or three am before I attempted to get some sleep. Stepping over the slumbering corpses of Felice and John H. The solitary figure of Pahartik still at his Sparc, I settled into my sleeping back, gratefully, for a nights rest.... Unfortunately, although the live music had finished downstairs, the music in general had not. Eventually, the loud and upfront bassy tunes gave way to something more 'ambient' and soothing, but truth be told, still a bit on the loud side. I manage some sort of half-sleep for around a couple of hours, before it gets too much, and I get up again. By then, the main music has stopped, but someone is using one of the big display screens to play some beepy chippy sounding MSX game. A case where YM chip sounds really WERE a racket! What motivated me to get up, was a loud English accented voice, which may have belonged to the Oric enthusiast known as 'Twilighte' talking to Setok. So I get up to see if I can find him. Downstairs, there are a few people moving around, and a sizeable chunk of porn on the local cable teevee. I decide against waking Felice. Looking for some kind of breakfast reveals the coffee bar shut, so I end up chatting to one of the organisers, a big untidy looking bloke, who remembers me from the other Alt parties. Another chap, a member of a PeeCee crew, and employee of Wiztom's workplace, Housemarque joins in. His (real) name is Sami Koistinen, and he works as a coder there. We get into a discussion on how long we've been into the scene. I seem to get extra credibility points when I say that I've been interested since the late 1980's, and even incur some degree of awe, when I mention that I was involved with a diskmag for ten years. (Maggie, of course!) Eventually, foodless, I drift back to bed, around 06.00, to attempt to sleep once more. The music has all but stopped, but the ingame annoying soundchip racket still goes on. Sleep is starting to catch up, may even yet win out, until the final surprise of the night blunders into the adjoining balcony area, and starts crashing about drunkenly and yelling down to the main hall below. That did it, I am awake, there is no going back now, and the curse of Alt Parties past, lack of sleep, wins out yet again! The scene around 08.30 - 09.00 finds me, and John H. awake, and borrowing back my spare power cable off MSG's currently switched off monitor. We are reviving my SCSI hard drive, getting it to talk to Felice's Falcy, which it does, grudgingly at first, more willingly when we get HD Driver on the case. Transfer the contents of my '3 Alt temporary' partition to one of Felice's unused IDE virtual drives, and update on things like the Archie realtime. Also update on things like coffee, very welcome after such a long and noise packed night. Eventually, Felice rouses himself up and joins us, so we make an executive decision to go out for some food and check out the local Macdonalds at the bottom of the street. Instead, we find that at 10.30hrs, they STILL aren't open yet, presumably never heard of a breakfast Macmuffin? Instead, we head to the adjoining mini-mart or convenience stall. These seem to offer a range of quick cheap things to eat that mirrors the sort of thing a garage shop sells, but without petrol, or windscreen defroster. They happen to serve a hotdog, which turns into one of the nicest snacks of the whole weekend, with a lightly toasted bun, ketchup, mustard, and an onion dressing, yummee! Suitably snacked up, we get back to Gloria, and one of the first things we do, is to check out the neat display of several of the other old computers at the party. On a slightly disappointing note, unlike the second Alt party, they do not seem to be doing too much, and the majority of the hardware has a little caption card with it, a bit like a museum in fact? (Could be the Arctic Computer Museum.) This way, we get to see a rare Finnish badge- engineered version of the Dragon 32 (where literally only the name was changed!) I pick up and lovingly fondle a ZX81, rekindling ancient memories. The SAM Coupe is back, but sits silently. The Telmac is picked up, and feels very lightweight, but there is going to be no demo written for it this time. Almost passing unnoticed, is some very new hardware, the next gen Nintendo console, the Game Cube. This is playing the rather filmlike intro sequence to some Star Wars game. (I found out shortly after writing this bit of the report, it was actually playing back a ten minute 'short' feature film called 'Troopers', about a day in the life of a couple of Imperial Troopers, done in the style of a reality teevee police documentary.) Of other hardware around the party. A fair number of Commodore 64's predominated, not so much MSX stuff this time. A Commodore Pet did its tightly looped textual thing next to us, and the MC6800 evaluation kit made a welcome comeback! We learnt earlier at the party, there was going to be a return to demo amazement form from Viznut, the coder of the Vic 20 entry at the first Alt Party. For now, someone is demonstrating an enhanced C64, which has up to 4 megabytes of RAM, and a 16-bit version of the 6502 CPU (which is the same CPU used in the SNES!) clocked up to 20 mhz. They are showing a very nice demo, written about a couple of years ago with this expander in mind. This super-C64 was based on a C128 chassis, and it looks like the 'dual' Z80 part of the machine got lost with the upgrade! Although it was possible to have the same sort of expansion done to the Z80 half if you felt so inclined. Really, apart from one or two isolated showings, and some interesting related material a bit later on, this party underplayed the exposure to demo material from diverse platforms. A promised Falcon specific spot got scrubbed, and it was mainly through one-to-one viewings of individual machines, that I saw much of interest before the competitions. We didn't get to see any MSX demos, and I'm sure there were releases since the second Alt Party for that platform? Note for the next Alt Party, we need more demos from diverse computers, maybe lose one or two of the dodgier live music acts? After that, I am talking to Wiztom about his planned 3-D world demo for the STe, which seems to sum up as a quite simple main bit of code, but a hell of a lot of ancilliary sounding stuff. Whilst he is doing this, I feel my concentration going rapidly as lack of sleep catches up, like the mean motherfarmer it is. So I make my excuses and leave to crash out for a bit. This is right back in the spot which I abandoned earlier, and everything seems to be alright at first. Q-Funk and Pahartik are silently tapping away on their screens. I recline back in my sleeping back to relax, which works until people start stepping over me to get to the control desk for the main projector. With this third attempt at sleeping killed off prematurely, I relocate my bedding in the side corridor, a hopefully quieter location. Back downstairs, and I finally meet Twilighte, the other British Alt Party attendee, and keen Oric fan. He initially catches sight of us, and I show him around Felice's Falcon, and Maggie and the Hmmm demo in particular. He is suitably impressed, and reveals that he was a closet ST owner in the past, along with other machines such as the C64, and of course, the famous Oric. Today, he has not brought any real hardware, but is able to give us a pretty good demonstration of what he's been up to, on the emulated version of Oric, known as 'Euphoric', on his PeeCee Laptop. Twilighte has been doing the odd bit of demo coding, namely in cooperation with Dbug of NeXT, but with a little demo all his own, whose main tweak seemed to be inventing new colour modes with cunning combinations of red green and blue pixels. The Dbug demo, was a follow on from the STNICCC demo, for some French party last summer, and quite possibly even more impressive ñthan that earlier demo, featuring more enhanced screen modes with many colours, and fantastic zooming. Even a clever use of hi-res mono got in there, with a better than average greets section, which included a lot of Atari people, as well as Oric dudes. We also saw a couple of games that Twilighte had been working on. These were to a very high standard for the 8-bitter, and we semi-seriously considered if 'Chu Chu Rocket!' could be converted Oric-wise, then we saw sense! (Check out 'Mini-Mag' in this issue for another viewpoint on the wisdom of converting Chu Chu for the Oric!) Also, we got to see, or hear a modfile tracker for the Oric. Don't forget the Oric has practically identical sound hardware to the basic STFM, so clearly the difference in CPU power makes life easier for the ST. So the Oric was doing well, to be kicking out sample replay at a humble 5khz. Twilighte has been interested for a long time, but has only started doing things of a scenish nature relatively recently. With a view to dropping in and checking out his Oric setup at home, I urge him to stay in touch, as he only lives an hour or so's drive away from me. Afterwards, back to the Alive!/Maggie table, where Felice seems to be into past glories of Falcon Maggie, and John H. has been loaned a VGA monitor, so he can run his Archie laptop in glorious full colour. At this moment, he is running the vastly ambitious 'Star Fighter 3000', a game which combines elements of Star Glider and Cybermorph, with touches of some SNES mode 7 thing as well. This looks way cool, but John gets trashed by the heavily opposing forces very frequently, with lots of polygon shatter. Eventually, all this fiery death gets too much, so we go and look for some lunch. Macdonalds have roused themselves at last, so we head there. encountering the Finnish equivalent of a children's hour, including one baby Bin Laden suspect, who seems to be incarcerated withing a penal playpen, but perfectly happy in there? In the latter part of the afternoon, the next pre-planned event comes to pass, this can be loosely described as the 'MSX laserdisk hour'. Here, we get to see a couple of real rarities. These are games based on a combination of an MSX computer, and a laserdisk player. A rare and expensive combination in the mid-eighties, pre-CD ROM, when a lot of us were still using audio cassettes. As the realtime admirably describes, these seem to combine an awful lot of work in areas like background rendering, with a really crummy, lightweight, sub-VCS game. The second game is based more on the "classic" Dragon Quest style, with its arcade rooted potential for sudden premature death. In fact, watching the many different variations on the violent ending theme proves to be the most entertaining part of the experience! The live games competition springs into existence amid a blaze of incomprehension. Some kind of combat or tank game features, but without any shooting, as far as I could see. This was running on an Intellivision console, the ñearly 80's Sega Saturn equivalent, to the Atari VCS Playstation. Shortly afterwards, I manage to corner Setok in the organisers tent, to round up the latest rumours for this evening's competitions. He is in a confident mood, claiming up to eight good quality demo releases, a mixture of anything from Macintosh to Vectrex, with a good helping of Commodore 64 in the middle. The Vic 20 is to return to centre stage too, courtesy of that talented young man, Viznut. It all looks rather good from this viewpoint, although there is no sign of any Atari badged entries, not even Wiztom's trace of shadebobbing code? We are also able to view the results of the analogue graphics competition in the lobby. These have been created via the medium of paper and assorted crayons, and a large number of interesting entries are on view on the wall. Out ahead of all of them, is Lance of Aggression and his depiction of a 'Cyber Fish in Space', which does not look too different from how he might have done this with computer paints? We guess that this will be the likely winner. Another 'Alternative' competition next, and one with only one taker, the eternally excellent overhead projector compo comes up. A group called 'Taat' (no relation to you know who?) manages the seemingly impossible. To create a demo without computers! This is done with a clever use of transparent acetates, some effects, particularly things like overlapping acid circles, came out very well indeed. Others, including a 'rendering' section done with a set-square, were hilarious in the extreme. Surely this was how the eastern bloc countries used to do demos, even before the first Atari 8-bits reached them? Somewhere before the live music, and the first major competitions of the evening start, we grab some food from the ever-handy Macdonalds, as we are told the doors are going to be locked during the competitions. The Res Gods also go out to grab a pizza, and just about make the return deadline. Back into the main hall, and just as the live music acts are starting to gear up for their instalment of the evening's fun, a middle-aged American drops by to check out the Vectrex set up next to us. He seems to be radically different from the normal run of Alt party guests, apart from old farts such as Twilighte and myself, and is taking a keen interest, but from an outsiders point of view. This person turns out to be the famous guest speaker, Robert Michal, creator of the Amiga and Lynx (not to mention the 3DO). He is in our bit of the hall, and even when talking to him, we don't realise who he is! As the realtime reveals, he did also look at what we were doing, principally with the Archie laptop, and I managed to run a demo which he thought highly of. Meanwhile the live music competition was starting to get going at this point in time. Most memorable moments from the live music compo. One guy trying to play a digeridoo, and not succeeding too well. Also Setok with a vocal style of a sea mammal in its death agonies groaning "Boring buggers suck!" The scary thing is, that I'm still not sure if Setok was taking himself seriously up there!? More musical hell follows, with the modfile competition with no samples! Oh great, and why not follow that with an electric chair execution done by candlelight!? The end results are done in very little time, "live", meaning about an hour before, and with whatever scratches and clicks that the composers have been able to 'make' themselves. Some of them sound passable, but not the sort of thing that takes pride of place in a modfile competition, let's face it. A 4k graphics compo gets in there somewhere, then we're almost on the last leg, waiting for the main demo competition. Felice starts showing some camcordered excerpts from the STNICCC party, about five minutes worth, taking us back to a time where warm luxurious rooms, with Atari people enjoying sumptuous catering, ran riot. We didn't sleep there a lot either.... Just one more thing before the demo competitions, as our guest speaker, the recently blissfully unknown to us Robert J Michal, creator of the Amiga, Lynx and 3DO goes to the front of the main hall to speak. At that point, we connect with the middle-aged but youthful sounding American person in our midst earlier! He goes on to a rapturous reception, in the manner of an elderly and past his best form rockstar playing a gig to his most diehard fans, and lapping up every last nano-second of the experience. The realtime gives quite a good summary of the main parts of his speech, so I'm not going to repeat them here. Needless to say, every word is lapped up, and Robert is invited to take some questions afterwards. Initially he takes some questions from the floor, and gives some interesting answers including the disheartening possibility that Microsoft might be around for a very long time to come yet (if current multi-national companies in other areas, like the car manufacturer Mercedes are a guide.) Although they may be tempered by the growth of Linux in its forthcoming easy-to-use- for-newbies incarnation 'Lindows'. There is also an interesting sideline which picks up on his relationship with Atari, in the very early days of Amiga, which was not so great. Indeed, Robert was only latterly able to bring himself to mention 'Atari' by name, and still wasn't able to mention the dreaded 'first family of Atari', the Tr*miels, unless really pushed! The formal part of the meeting breaks up, then Robert is surrounded by a heaving mass of interested bodies, including just about all of the Atari kids of the UK contingent. This close-up probing goes on for a very very long time indeed, and Robert finds himself fielding pretty detailed questions about the Atari Lynx in particular. It is a typically Felician 'curved ball' question that solicits some of the most interesting information about the status of the Tramiel family. "Are Jack and Sam Tramiel still alive?" gets the response that, yes they are, but not doing too much else at the moment, opting for a profile that is positively subterranean these days. Indeed, this eager pushing close and questioning continues, and it is well past midnight, by the time the demo competition is clear to go. DAY 4, Sunday January 13th. The much anticipated demo competion, with loads of high quality entries, begins at last. It doesn't start off too badly, with a conventional solid vector 3-D 'dentro' production, produced on a fairly bog-standard 386 SX PeeCee by the overhead projector people. The grins on people's faces become rather more fixed, and start to blur into a frown of worried incomprehension, when the iMac entry comes on next. This is a clever parody of 'advice of an intimate nature, given to young women of a certain age, in bygone years', with some 'artistic' or truly fucked-up video. A return of the 'Ego demo' of 1st Error in Line infamy? Quite possibly! On further reflection, this would have suited our visit on Tuesday to the Kiasma museum of contemporary 'ars' in central Helsinki very well. A good and funny fake or joke demo from a famous C64 group 'Extend', is next, then something called 'Megademo' on the MSX, which turns out to be one of those 2 Alt five minute creations, then the C64 follows with something very similar. An endless black pit opens up before the screaming audience... Another BASIC demo on the supercharged C128, better than the two entries preceding it, but purely of dry technical interest keeps us from falling in totally. The last three entries reintroduce the missing factor of ass-kicking coolness into the competition. Viznut blasts out with another Vic 20 masterpiece, shorter than his first one, but with a gorgeous 'truecolour' or palette-faking screen reminiscent of Dbug's Oric efforts. The applause at the end of that one included a large and heartfelt chunk of relief! A classic Gameboy demo starts slowly and confusingly, then all of a sudden, classic effects, well executed, can be seen, this one goes on to finish well and keep interest levels bubbling. Finally, a demo on a most unusual platform for demos, the Vectrex demo, or 'Vecdemo'. This has no video output, but the screen is filmed, live and the result beamed onto the big screen. The Vecdemo actually benefits from this method of transmission, as otherwise mundane vector effects seem to gain a brilliant blue lense-flare at crucial moments, and I'm sure, fooling a lot of people into thinking it was a natural and intentional part of the demo! Now if someone were to reproduce this in a 'normal' demo on another platform. Right, are you lot taking notes, brilliant blue 'sunburst' or flare coming from common vector line objects, how about it, mainstream? What we actually see, seems to be a specially adapted version of a trailer and credits for a forthcoming game. With that, the demo competition is over, but not a single entry with a Fuji badge anywhere near it, not even a Senior Dads 'GEM fake demo'. I manage to get to an internet terminal, a very lonely 'first' with the news, or non-news, for the Dead Hackers pages, on a weekend where everyone else in the Atari scene seemed to be on holiday. Afterwards, there seems to be some expression of regret from a Godlike corner of the hall, that given the prevailing standard of some of the middle order entries, they could have pulled off something better on the Falcy? Indeed, the world is keenly awaiting the next ñ128 byte-tro, or better still, the follow-up to the 'Snow- tro'! It is damn late by now, and the post-competition collapse into freefall madness is well underway. At some unnamed hour, some of us attempt to get some sleep, denied to us the previous night. This proved to be nearly as complicated as last night... When I get to my newly appointed resting place, in one of the side corridors, Felice is already out of things, along with a number of other sleep-anonymous Finnish bodies. John H. comes to join us, and my inflatable pillow seems to have gone on a unilateral world tour, without telling me. Still, it seems to be quieter, and more settled than the noisy central part of the hall, so John and I settle down. But a constant flow of pedestrian traffic, shuffling back and forth, none of it feeling able to shut the doors to the central gallery, provides just enough interest to keep us awake. Some of it is packing to leave, as an intensive torchlit search for stray goods and chattels, also keeps sleep just at bay. At one stage, a possible wild competition entry consisting of a man in a black binliner hobbles about purposelessly. Unlike MSG's ever popular 'worm-bag' style, this guy is wearing his bag over the top half of his body! It may have been real, or it could have been a rogue hallucination from lack of sleep? Eventually, I get to sleep, don't know when, and wake up around 09.00, look around for a bit, clean up, and go back to sleep for a short time, until I properly awake a bit later on. This late morning part of the day mumbles inaudably into life. Presently, the others join me. Large amounts of lazy relaxed adding to the realtime article, web-browsing, and watching what the Vectrex fan next door to us was up to, follows. He is working on a small demo, based on a Windowze screensaver, which was an early work in progress to something bigger and better? Some food, from the ever-ubiquitous Macdonalds, makes its presence felt. I turn to packing my stuff for the journey home, relocating the major part of the missing pillow in the far corner of the corridor. A missing shirt, which didn't move out with me after the first sleepless night is rediscovered, and that is that. It is wearing on to mid afternoon before the results of the competitions are announced. Here they are, reproduced in full: THE ALTERNATIVE PARTY 11th-13th January 2002 Gloria, Helsinki, Finland http://www.altparty.org/ RESULTS Classic Gaming Competition ---------------------------------- 1. Shocky 2. Kameli Overhead Projector Competition ---------------------------------- 1. tAAt: Valoköysiviljelijä Live Music Competition ---------------------------------- 1. Epävire 55 Nosfe + kumpp. 55 3. Bass Cadet 41 Analogia 41 5. Die Rebels 38 6. Pilvisten herrasväki 37 7. tAAt 20 Realtime Music Competition With No Samples ---------------------------------- 1. Deetsay: Prop Eller Paeae 80 2. Tripper: Vaihto(ehto)kalsari 52 3. Ravel: Irresponsibility 37 4. tArzAn: Viidakon huoltomies 26 5. Hooligan/DCS: Kyrpae 25 Cahva: Gauheeta scheissea 25 Skrebbel: Lapzwans 25 8. Stonda: Medium 0 Pi kB Graphics Competition ---------------------------------- 1. Uncle-X/MFX: Metropolis 80 2. Electric: Meiju Suvas 46 3. Nosfe/MFX: Sceneboylove 31 4. Random/Armada: Kebabelaein 30 5. Marquee/Rapbisse: Hilsemutki 17 6. tArzAn/tAAt: Media 15 7. Scoopr: Scp-alt 14 Zeroic/Details: Steve McQueen14 Stonda: Stonda 14 10.Kameli: Downhill 7 11.Ravel: Pizza-man 6 12.Nosfe/MFX: Tuijotus 5 13.Sauli/Jumalauta: Saulin penis 4 Analogue Graphics Competition With Colours ---------------------------------- 1. Lance/Aggression Alt-machine Demo Competition ---------------------------------- 1. pWp: THOH 109 (Vic-20) 2. CNCD: ALT TOO 65 (Game Boy) 3. Pelikonepeijoonit: Vecdemo 44 (Vectrex) 4. tAAt: Partaitiö 41 (386SX) 5. MFX: Space Cadet 31 (iMac) 6. Extend: Hunger One 9 (C64) 7. Jumalauta: MSX-megademo 7 (MSX) 8. Pihtisoft & pWp: NMNMNA 5 (C128+SuperCPU) 9. Extend: Cafe Lamer 1 (C64) Obscure Machine Competition ---------------------------------- Pelikonepeijoonit Poster Placement Competition ---------------------------------- 1. Marquee The Unofficial NetHack Competition ---------------------------------- 1. Tokio 534409 No surprises for the demo competition, with Viznut as top dog with his wicked Vic 20 code, and honourable second and third places to the Gameboy and Vectrex demos respectively. The rest of the results won't mean too much to you non-Atarians and non-Finns out there? A barely awake or alive Setok concludes the closing ceremony, for a fast disappearing third Alt party. It is over, bar the going home part, the party rapidly reduces down to a small group consisting of the Reservoir Gods, with Partycle, our favourite vampire, ourselves, Wiztom, and a small band of Gloria staff who were starting the clear-up operation, sparing us the table moving traumas of the second Alt party. Thoughts, and phone calls turn to getting a taxi, the bigger the better, as Q-Funk and Pahartik's stuff, in combination with our own, is really quite an impressive floorful. An initial taxi turns up, but this is too small for our huge luggage needs, and it is sent away again. Indeed, it may not even be ours in the first place? Mucho taxi confusion with Q-Funk follows. Several times, he phones the taxi firm, with different and ever more entertaining excuses given when the taxi concerned, seems to have been mislaid. Eventually, a suitable vehicle turns up, but this is the one that the Reservoir Gods booked, so with a whoop of vegetable headgear inspired joy (don't ask!) They rush off, leaving a small group of us behind. A further long wait ensues, with more casual backchat passing between an ever more irritated Q-Funk, and the taxi company. A long time later, a station wagon sized vehicle arrives. We charge with armfuls of monitors and bags, taking the taxi driver by surprise, but he bravely helps out, and we stack ourselves, and the gear as best as we can. Back at Q-Funk's, he persuades the driver to go most of the way up the slippery ice covered hills next to his bit of the apartment complex. This just leaves the final bit of path, and steep stairs to go. Still, with five of us on the job, we soon clear away the gear upstairs, and thankfully collapse. A thoroughly pleasant evening follows, where sauna's are taken, in Q-Funk's minature hotbox, which seats three people. Interesting design feature of even this humble Finnish apartment, as it manages to fit a half-decent sauna in. Pizza's are ordered, via the ever reliable Pizza-Taxi, fondly eaten at past Alt events. These arrive whilst we are still sauna-ing, so a gaggle of us hide in a naked fashion behind the bathroom door, goading each other on to peer out, whilst Q-Funk answers the front door, presumably in a not so naked fashion? (Well, where would he keep the money to pay for the pizzas otherwise?!) The pizzas are good, even better when ordered in a borderline Baggio large size in my case, and we eat well. Large scale chat resumes at this point, with Q-Funk revealing that he was dissatisfied with life in Finland, in a strange echo of many of the same reasons that had him escaping from Canada three years ago, when we met him on the way to the first Alt party? His present escape route involves a likely looking job in Estonia. If Q-Funk goes for this, I hope it works out, but at the same time, I wonder if he is going to be having this same conversation in another three years time with us. "This place is useless, the women are too proud/dumb/materialistic, and they don't like foreigners here.." (??) It gets later, more beer slips down, and eventually, sleeping equipment is made ready. It could have been either side of midnight when we went to bed, I'm not sure, but it was close either way... DAY 5, Monday January 14th. Sleep the sleep of the totally shagged out, fade to black as the world outside spins away..... 02.00ish, Intruder alert! Lights in the hallway, voices in the next room! Q-Funk's nightmare alcoholic flatmate has made an unwelcome return. John H. is in the chair, as the flatmate is clearly the worse for wear, apparently covered in blood from a kicking he took at a local seedy dive from the friendly local drug dealer(!) John opens hailing frequencies, with "Hi, we're the British guys!" (Which might translate to "Don't shoot, we're British!") Mark, for this is the drunkard's name, asks if John has got any weed or booze, to which John replies that he hasn't. (Or he COULD have said, "No, but we're British, and we've got a nice cup of tea, doncha' know!") The initial tense period of misunderstanding is over, and Mark now has an unwilling if attentive audience in the form of John. Mark treats John to a series of paranoid ramblings, specifically that Q-Funk sent him a death threat, and that Q-Funk wanted him out of the way, because Q-Funk wanted to get to his girlfriend, and was ñconstantly staring at her tits! He also complained about his injuries, saying that he got beaten up for no reason, and that he was such a loser, he would never hit them back. He goes on in this vein for some time, before wandering over to the kitchen, finding the half-bottle of beer that we missed, which seems to quieten him down a bit. Pahartik, also in the same room as John, has his identity queried, "Are you really Finnish?" We are all awake, and listening to this very carefully. Do we get up and help John? Bollocks, do we! He seems to be handling this situation very well, so the part of my brain that handles sleep and cowardice decides to leave him to it. Eventually, Mark quietens down in a manner which suggests he is going to bed. Quietness, darkness, and sleep thankfully resume. 08.00. BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! 09.00. BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! - BLEEP BLEEP! Stops for a short time, resumes, with the occasional angry sound of a text message hitting the memory banks of Mark's phone. Yes, it is his phone which is filling the apartment with much unwanted mid-morning noise. Eventually, John has had enough, and gets up, picks up the phone, practically shoving it in the face of Mark, who is sleeping off the exciting events of the night before, until he wakes up enough to answer it. Poor old John, as if he had not suffered enough already! The caller turns out to be the girlfriend of Mark, fascinating to Q-Funk tits and all. As it is, in spite of the tragicomic interruptions, we sleep in a determined fashion, only getting up a very long time later, around 13.30. In daylight, and without the blood and booze, Mark seems to be a normal human again, as opposed to one of the paranoid or weird variety. Before setting off for town, we catch some highlights of the local community cable teevee channel, including a piece filmed, live at the Alt Party, featuring a interviewer aiming in the general direction of that non-boring bugger, Setok. As this is one of those channels which constantly repeats the hour's output, we make sure that Setok is warned to look out for it the next time it comes around. Into the city centre, and we make much needed phone calls (hello Nicky! She sent me an email to my cih@atari.org address, just a short time after we finally left Gloria, so I didn't get it until Tuesday, damn...) Get out much needed cash from a much used ATM. We go on to a nice cafe to stuff ourselves with some very nice buns and cakes, Finnish style. We then go on to the not entirely unfamiliar premises of Molly Malone's, to consume some even more needed beer! This takes us up nicely to early evening, when thoughts turn to going back to Q-Funk's place, and then onto the post-party sauna. Some more lurking in the metro, and various record shops follows, John H. is taken by a Moomins souvenir shop in the metro shopping centre, but the shopkeeper is out, so he doesn't buy anything. Back home, we get to meet the girlfriend of scary alky man Mark. She manages blondeness with a wry smile that suggests she has seen all too much of Mark's more off the wall antics, her name is Margaret. We move everyone else into Q-Funk's room, in accordance with the unspoken wish that she and Mark might want to be left alone tonight. This takes some major reorganisation, in which I personally end up better off, swapping a pretty good airbed, for an even better mattress. That done, thoughts turn to the after party sauna. The sauna is some distance away, not at the former (2000 vintage) plush premises of Fishpool, as they have been forced to downsize to some extent in the harsh world following the Dotcom crash. Instead, this is at some municipal place, attached to an apartment complex, and we are to make our own way there. The journey to the after party was memorable, chiefly for the sort of reasons that the last moments of the Titanic were memorable. Now Q-Funk was either a bad judge of distances, or a very good liar, as he decided that as the after party was "only a couple of kilometres" away, we could walk to it. Now this sounds nice and reasonable, and even my asthmatic mathematics would give an approximate timing of around half an hour to complete a journey of that length on foot? But the realtime, in all its gory glory, details a much longer journey, say an hours walking, and around twenty minutes buggering about in a confused fashion, when we did get to the other end. So it can't have been "only a couple of kilometres", can it? I'm not even going to get entangled in discussing Q-Funk's knack of making 'short-cuts' out of odd places where foot traffic wasn't really intended to go, as that may turn into a rant too far. Still, all abysmal things do eventually pass, even after a very long time, and so we arrive at the rapidly gathering sauna party. This seems to be filled with a lot of Fishpool and Aggression guys, and assorted hangers-on. Setok has yet to arrive with the Reservoir Gods, but they wil be there soon. In the meantime, We take our coats off gratefully, collapse, and John H. sets up the realtime Archie laptop that he brought along specially for the evening. One of the Fishpoolers is playing with a laptop of his own with some weird little speech synth program. Setok and the 'Gods arrive, bringing with them, large quantities of potato snacks, crisps, beer and coke. Also a selection of nervous humour, as the sauna derived tension becomes palpable. We take a closer look at the crisps, these are in very big bags, labelled 'Megapussi'. Oh wow, more opportunities for sexually based cheap wordplay, there will be no holding back Felice and John H. now! Putting my hand into the megapussi, I grabbed a crispy handful... Soon, activities turn to sauna, and we go in the first batch, as the sauna can only hold eight people at a time. There is someone with a large television camera on the premises who is taking a keen interest in the proceedings. John H. slips into 'Stupid Boy' mode, hoping out loud that the camera doesn't follow us in. Q-Funk decides this would be a great laugh if he did. So he comes in, and we're wondering how we might be able to get to lynch Q-Funk twice in one evening? The sauna, well, it's just these guys, you know. Just to add an extra flavour to the evenings proceedings, John drops one in the sauna. The fellow sauna-goers flinch, and it seems that John had committed a major 'saunacrime'! (With a one strike, or guff, then you're out, policy!?) ("Hehe, Hey Beavis, I've got this really cool idea, like, when we're in the sauna, why don't we, you know, like fart in the direction of the burner, then throw some water on it, to make, like, FART STEAM!") ("Now why would you want to do that, Mr President, Sir?") Anyway, we survive the rest of our sauna, without any more anal incidents or anecdotes, and we dry off and dress in a very relaxed frame of mind, doubly so, after extracting a promise from Q-Funk that we are going home by means other than foot transport. The Reservoir Gods are still reluctant, doing their best impersonation of a sauna-hating cat on a hot tin roof. Meanwhile, we gain an unexpected bonus, as we get talking to a nice Finnish babe, whom mother would surely have approved of for marriage! Her name is Heli, and we even are as bold to get her to type into the realtime before she goes. One of the 'Gods does go in, the most confident member of the team is Ripley, who goes in on her own, with Partycyle guarding the door, hmmm? Inside the main lounge or post sauna rest area, a big discussion on weighty topics, such as 'the future of the scene' is building. There are lots of suggestions, but with no conclusions reached. DAY 6, Tuesday January 15th. It is sometime around midnight, not too late, when the five of us head off home. There is no rerun of the forced march. An abortive attempt to catch the last bus home, results in a taxi turning up a little later and cramming five of us in. The drive back takes a good while, and we wonder just how far we actually walked? Definitely more than 'two kilometres'! The rest of the night is straightforward, there is no rerun of last night's oddball dialogue, and we sleep happily right through until Q-Funks alarm announces the new day. He goes to work, leaving us to sleep on, a sensible move. We do get up at a suitably mid-morning hour, and manage to rouse Mark and Margaret to let us out. (A lot of Finnish apartments don't have a pull- shut latch lock, and you HAVE to have a key to get in and out.) We are meeting Q-Funk in the centre, but making our own plans first. Having got the Helsinki bus service well and truly sussed, we wind up in the centre of town, looking around awhile for a place to eat. We find one, sit back and eat, then onto the Computer Club Bookshop, in a very ritzy and upmarket development, near a whole load of other upmarket stuff, including the place that is to make this Tuesday afternoon so memorable, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. The bookshop is very accommodating, and very well stocked, mainly with English language material on many flavours of computing, with a strong Linux bias, it has to be said :) We meet up briefly with Q-Funk to set up plans for the rest of the day, we are to go on to the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Arts, a huge curved aircraft hangar of a building often glimpsed from the outside, during our various travels around Helsinki. Now we were going in! One thing which led to more juvenile language-based hilarity, was the Finnish word for 'arts', which was 'ars'. So notices within the hall asking us not to touch the 'ars' elicit a gentle titter, apart from Pahartik, who may be just that little bit more cultured than the rest of us? The interior is striking, modern, and the exhibition is organised so you are gradually heading ever upwards, until it culminates in a Volkswagen Beetle, cut up and with the bits redistributed around in an artistic fashion, right up at the top. In keeping with the contemporary theme, the exhibits are 'Tate Modern', rather than 'Old masters'. Some of these may be considered as 'ars'. There was one which seemed to (unconsciously?) draw on some techniques of demo coders, used and long discarded, which developed on a recursive sprites theme! Other exhibits verged on the impressive, including the huge stack of radios known as 'The Tower of Babel', which took up two floors. There was an awful lot of the sort of thing, where the artists life was photographed, or videotaped, and reinterpreted through a curiously twisted viewpoint. I thought that the iMac demo, from the Alt Party demo competitions would have fitted in here perfectly well. Speaking of which, there were some smart Macintoshes which were running the museum information service. A John H. bit in the realtime also goes into pleasurable spasms of technoporn appreciation, at some of the very expensive kit used to display this stuff. We considered if it would be possible to smuggle out a 40 inch plasma flat screen under our coats, but drop the idea with some regret. I would say that none of it was dull, and we whiled away a thoroughly entertaining afternoon in Kiasma. Eventually, we head back down, and find the restaurant, as taking in all that culture was thirsty work. Then to meet up with Q-Funk to collect his cable modem. Q-Funk disappears to collect some documents from the Canadian embassy or something, and we head over to the cable modem shop, to wait to pick up this modem. It seems that this shop has borrowed its retailing practices from the Soviet Union, as we take a ticket, and wait, and wait.... Internet terminals, when one can be grabbed, and a rolling multiscreen presentation of various tele programmes and films, help to break the monotony a little bit, but an hour later, and we still seem to be little closer to getting out of there. Q-Funk returns, leaves us with the key to his apartment, and dashes off back to work, whilst we remain in the waiting room. Empires rise, civilisations crumble, glaciers grow and retreat, and eventually, our number is called. Pahartik is in charge of the paperwork, which the counter clerk seems to accept, and he comes away, clutching a brand new Motorola cable modem. It subsequently turns out that they accepted Pahartik's handling of the paperwork so much, there was an imminent danger of him getting all the bills for Q-Funk's cable subscription and internet useage! At the time we left, they were still trying to sort that one out! After a bit of a diversion around the shopping centre known as the Forum, trying to get a belt or strap for Pahartik to rig up to carry his monitor home, we eventually stagger home on a handy bus (number 105). We make it back, about ten minutes ahead of Q-Funk, he arrives, and much fiddling with cable wall sockets, and setting up computers abandoned since our hurried Alt party return on Sunday, commences. Q-Funky is so happy he is back online again. This is the event that makes and defines his day. His Debian box is the first to burst into life but soon, the TT, and then Pahartik's SparcStation join in the fun as well. We burst back onto the Atariscne IRC, and surprise a number of residents on there. The Debian box is a sluggish but adequate web browser, so we get some surfing in as well. This is going so well, that when thoughts turn to getting the Pizza Taxi back out, it is too late, and they have stopped delivering. No-one is too pleased with this development, but an alternative plan is forged, that is, a late late pizza show, made possible by purchasing and cooking the damn things ourselves. The local Esso garage makes the purchasing possible, and we opt to do the job properly, oldschool style, by oven cooking, rather than the soggy mess that the microwave would have made of them. DAY 7, Wednesday January 16th. So we start this final day in Finland with the taste of pizza in our mouths.. It just remains for us to bed down, firstly after another session of IRC mania. The usual crowd is there, Grey tries to join in, several times, as his connection keeps dropping, maybe rainwater or rats got in the telephone cables? Mr Pink assures me that the UK is still there, and it is safe to return to it. I am almost the last person abed, leaving Mr Pink and co in a discussion about PS2 development kits. You need the best part of 15,000 UKP for an official one, apparently. Getting up is a leisurely process. Q-Funk has left us with his key, and a plan for us to take our luggage to the airport, leave it there, and come back to meet him at the French school, one of his varied workplaces. The leg to the airport is straightforward, a large and luxurious station- wagon taxi takes us to Vantaa, a large and luxurious price is charged by the driver! Still, it was worth it, getting our gear out of the way. We make our way back to the city centre by bus, then pick up another bus to get to the French School. This turns out to be some distance out of town, half-an-hour later, and with Pahartik looking none too clear, we are concerned. About where Pahartik says, "I think the last stop is where we should have got off?" he asks the driver, who assures him that he hadn't missed his stop. But ten minutes later, Pahartik suddenly dives off the bus, we follow, but where are we? Another ten minutes foot travel, in an uncertain location, brings about horrible memories of Monday night. We stop to ask directions from a woman who gets hit intermittently by a swinging garage door. At that point, Pahartik bravely decides to go on alone to look for Q-Funk, and the rest of us decide to return to town. It is at the branch of Macdonalds where we ended up meeting Partycle at the first Alt party, where we break our self-imposed famine. Never has a big Mac tasted so good! (And a couple of them tasted even better!) Afterwards, we search out the payphones in the Forum we first used, a couple of days ago, and re-establish contact with Q-Funk. A much better plan to take the place of the chaotic first attempt is sorted out. We are to remeet at Molly Malone's, for a final drink before we set off for the airport. It is around 17.00 when Q-Funk finally turns up, with the little behatted fellow Pahartik in tow, we relax downstairs, drink, and slowly add to the realtime, in anticipation of the final journey back home. For our final meal in town, we find a very nice, but cramped Indian restaurant. The food is authentic, and just needing a nan bread to make it perfect. The staff is totally non-indian, being more blonde and local. We all head back to the airport on the bus. We're on time, but Felice, with a sad expression on his face tells us that the flight home isn't going to be! We check in anyway, with a dire warning that there will be no food on the flight, no big loss really. To while away the additional two hours waiting, we go and sit in a bar in the upstairs part of the terminal. From there, anything is possible, as long as it involves drink, chat, and a great view of the runway, from which, aircraft of all sizes take off and land. Time ambles by, and eventually, our flight comes in, more or less at the revised time expected for it. It is finally time to take our leave of Q-Funk and Pahartik. We head back downstairs, and find the airport darkened and largely shut. There is a couple of minutes of real panic when this lack of activity extends to the security check-in to the departure lounge. At the other end of the airport, an information desk is still open, and just twenty yards or so further on, a security check is also waiting, for a long haul overnight flight that is due to depart a bit later on. We say our final goodbyes, and Q-Funk and Pahartik slide out of sight. There is a tax-free shop still open, we dash around it with ten minutes to go to our allotted departure time. We stride purposely to our gate, and make it to the queue waiting to board our flight, with, oh, minutes to spare. Another surprise, as 'technical difficulties' have stopped our normal semi- comfortable Boeing aircraft from flying. 'Technical Difficulties' meaning anything from a cabin light needing replacing, to an engine falling off, I suppose? It has been replaced by a cramped Bae 146 short haul jet which was pulled off a flight to Milan at the last minute. It is a squeeze-in, and we take off with the "enjoyable" company of a party of drunk Finns who are constantly queueing to use the toilet at the back. We wonder if this is some bizarre Scandinavian variant on the mile high club? But not for too long. I attempt to get some sleep, knowing that the delayed flight will put my personal arrival time in my own bed, at some very late hour. I am only very slightly successful. The seats recline, and you can lean back in them reasonably well, but the agitated atmosphere of the flight means that you wake up suddenly, with your heart pounding, as if you've jut woken up from taking part in a high activity nightmare? A while later, adjusted for a UK time near to midnight, we arrive back at Stanstead. Fortunately, luggage collection and departure is quick and straightforward, apart from some heavy handed antics from the baggage handling gorillas leaving their mark on Felice's case ñ(his Falcon survived, so don't worry.) At this point, John parts company, opting to see if he can pick up an early or late train back to Portsmouth. Felice goes to see if his car is still there, it is, so the journey home resumes. After stopping off at Felice's place to collect my car, I'm finally back home, with my comfortable double bed, in my own room, by myself, for 02.30 in the end. 3 Alt, an assessment and summing up? I'm not sure where to place this one. There was the memorable novelty of the first Alt Party, the travelling to Turku, and the great showing by the local 8-bit scene. The second party was more up close and personal, to the extent where we were helping with some of the preparation and cleaning up, and we lived closely in Setok's pockets back then. We saw a return of some of the elements of the first party, with a return of certain key people, missing from 2 Alt, such as Q-Funk, and the Res.Gods. Incidentally, we would like to thank Martin very much, for the loan of his floor space and his valuable time and invaluable assistance, whilst we were over there. Impressions of the party itself were mixed. From what started as a fairly purist geekfest, Setok seems to be moving to a more diverse and general definition of "Alternative", including things such as live music, and the 'arts' in general. 3 Alt seemed to be uneasily balanced between the two sides of its dual identity, and it is debatable which way it will go next time, or will the two aspects learn to merge together in relative harmony? We were treated to a lot of live music on Friday night, and a more or less continuous DJ'd soundtrack throughout the night. So we didn't go short of music. On the other hand, apart from what I was able to search out for myself, there wasn't an awful lot of demo showing of any platform. Such things, as Twilighte's Oric material, really deserved a wider audience, but stayed locked away in the private world of his hard drive. This was an aspect, previously stronger, and somewhat neglected this time around. If someone really wanted us to, we could have arranged a showing of cool Acorn Archimedes material on John's laptop, as we were getting plenty of goodies organised. Instead, the big screen seemed to be mostly used for some repetitively lame MSX R-Type game or other. In contrast to past parties, the 'Alternativeness' of the computer hardware itself was less strongly emphasised, this time around, with less being done or shown than before. Some owners were opting for a static museum-like display of dead machines, which weren't switched on at any point during the party, which I found personally disappointing. Honourable exceptions did include the Vectrex owners two person fan club next to us, who seem to be entering a new era of software development! Also, the large number of Commodore 64's seemed to be buzzing with life. Not to mention the Swedish, Finnish and UK Atari contingents, who seemed to be coding or doing something productive, whatever time of day or night you found them. I also enjoyed the bizarre novelty value of the MSX Laserdisk games, and was glad I only got to see that one secondhand. As for the competitions, we did see a wide range of amusing entries, with the occasional jaw-dropper. In this light, the return of the Vic 20 was welcome, and it was cool to see demos for the classic Gameboy and Vectrex. Big disappointments were a non-appearance of the MSX scene, and a lack of anything on that big screen with a Fuji badge to it! What made 3 Alt special, was the cunning choice of a celebrity guest, which was the not totally unknown Robert J Michal, the designer of the Amiga and Lynx. His interesting speech, and the lengthy questions afterwards transmogrified the evening beyond a normal party competition viewing, so to some extent, the demo competitions had a very tough act to follow at the end. More good points in general:- Free and easy internet access, good location in relation to Helsinki central, and to local amenities. Also a nice venue. The party itself seemed to be more popular and fuller than ever. At previous parties, there were always spare tables, but not this time. Also, NO CLEARING UP, or shifting tables needed afterwards. The C64 live set was even better than the last time. Before I forget, the analogue graphics competition (with crayon) was a big success as well. Not to mention that the cool T-shirts were ready for sale at the party, rather than sometime after it. Some not so good points:- The sleeping facilities sucked big time, if they actually existed at all? This reminded me of the waking nightmare of the first Alt party, and makes me ask whether there is going to be some restraints put on the drunk moron contingent who made the scene at 05.00 hours so wonderful! On a related theme, there ought be a moratorium, or at least a lessening of intensity, of some of the music very late at night, not to mention the people playing a beepy 8-bit game on one of the big screens, could be taught to put a sock in it as well? And a non-party specific point for Helsinki taxi firms, when we ask for a big taxi, we MEAN a big taxi, and today would be very nice as well! There was also the fun and games not immediately connected with the party, such as the post-party sauna, with the preceding epic forced march across the snowfields of Espoo, and the visit to the Kiasma museum which made it all as memorable as past visits. If I did this third Alt Party again, I would choose to do less buggering and waiting about, as things such as missing taxis, getting lost outdoors (more than once), and waiting to pick up cable modems were causing me to want to gnaw my fingers off in frustration by the end of it! So in the end, I did enjoy 3 Alt. I enjoyed it a lot, and with a great bunch of people, but there is still room for improvements, or to bring back some things which have been allowed to slip to one side perhaps? If there is another one, will I go? Almost certainly, yeah!! CiH - Alive Mag, Jan '02 w