scene.org File Archive

File download

<root>­/­mags­/­staticline/sl-013.txt

File size:
32 658 bytes (31.89K)
File date:
2004-01-27 23:03:07
Download count:
all-time: 3 235

Preview

_//\\_______________________________________________________________________
_\\__T_A_T_I_C___L_I_N_E____________________________________ September, 1999
__\\________________________________________________________________________
\\//___ Monthly Music E-Zine ________________________________ 73 Subscribers
____________________________________________________________________________


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Table Of Contents
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
     Opening:
           Message From the Editor
     Columns:
           In Tune -- Smash's "Spider to the fly"
           The Zen of Tracking -- Of Limits and Laws
           Screen Lit Vertigo -- "Pyy" by Koma, Doomsday & Pyy
           Crackhead Trackhead -- The Scene Education Forum
     Features:
           Occasionally Live Bizarre '99 Party Report
     Closing:
           Credits

--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Message From the Editor
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
     Hello, and welcome to the September issue.  For those of you who didn't
  notice, we have a new marquee.  Hopefully this won't cause any problems
  with the mailing list (as the old one did).  Let me know how you like it.

     Some late news with me...other than this message, I havn't been able to
  write anything this month.  Needless to say, moving to another state isn't
  exactly easy.  I hope to be back into the swing of things for next month,
  and I'm hopeful that everyone is understanding.  Fortunately, my wonderful
  staff has backed me up and we have a great issue.

     So, lets roll down the important announcements.  First, Louis Gorenfeld
  won't be with us this month.  I can only assume that he may be having
  e-mail problems because he seems unreachable.  Never fear, he'll be back.
  Also, we have a new columnist.  We welcome Virt!  Virt's music was the
  former  subject of an 'In Tune' review.  Well, now he's back with his own
  humor column.  Please note that it is a _HUMOR_ column, and everything
  should be taken tongue-and-cheek.

     Articles for this week include Setec's review of Smash's "Spider to the
  Fly" (I'll be back next month).  Dilvish returns with a deep installment
  of Zen.  Seven has two articles for us this month:  The first is his
  montly demo review column, Screen Lit Vertigo, where he reviews "Pyy" by
  Koma, Doomsday & Pyy; the second is a report on Bizarre '99.  Finally, you
  have Virt's debut article in Crackhead Trackhead.

     Enjoy!

                --Coplan


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  In Tune
    Smash's "Spider to the fly"
  By:  Coplan and Setec
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
  -=- Introduction -=-
     As it is already a few days late, I (Coplan) an not going to be able to
  publish my half of the article tonight.  My review is somewhat schematic
  in "Coplan Speak" at this time, and would be unfair to publish it now.
  For now, Setec is flying solo.  However, an unofficial review has been
  offered to Smash.  As for Setec's review...here it is.

  -=- Setec -=-
     Wow. Has this been a hectic week! So sorry if this review seems to lack
  order, structure and spell tjekking.  [Coplan: I'll leave this spelling
  error here...=P]  I only barely had the time.

     The tune for this month is the marvelous "Spider to the fly" by Smash
  of Razor. Smash asked me to review this and after giving it a spin I did
  not hestitate a second to email Coplan and suggest this be our review of
  the month. This is a great piece indeed.

     First things first. The opening is really good, a nice break away from
  the rather generic intros that are so common in tracked music. This starts
  out with a few nice warbly chords and then breaks into a bass line and a
  beat. Really well executed and quite the surprise when I first heard it.
  One thing I might pick on in the intro is one of the background samples.
  It seems rather noisy and I am not quite sure if it is intended or if it
  is simply due to low quality samples. It sounds a little like quantization
  noise so it might be helped by using 16bit samples. And I am not really
  sure they are actually needed. I tried muting the channels and it seemed
  fine without them. Oh well. This is really minor stuff.

     Back to that marvelous bass line. This is really one of the things that
  make this tune. It consists of two channels, one for a synth bass with
  that nice saw sound and another for a more real-sounding slapped bass. I
  tried muting these channels all the way through the track and was stunned
  by the amount of variety that is put into it. Too many trackers use the
  same bass line too much in a piece, without adding diversity to it. This
  one flows nicely into the different parts, changing all the time.
  Wonderful work, I would have almost liked the track if it had consisted
  just of the bass line and percussion. :)

     To compliment and add to the bass line is a really good melody track.
  This is your well-known synth lead, only in this case it consists of an
  insane amount of samples. This adds tremendous colour to the instrument,
  and makes it a little less of an ear-sore than these leads usually become
  after a while. When the tune first shifted into the chorus I was amazed.
  Nothing less, this is a tremendous chorus line. The string-like samples
  used are excellent and the actual melody has a very unique sound and a
  certain touch of mystery that I really enjoyed. This is without a doubt
  one of the best crafted melodies I have yet heard in the scene. And this
  goes for the verses as well, they are memorable and pleasant. I found
  myself humming the lead all day, and that is usually a very good sign
  indeed. The most tricky thing to make is a memorable lead.

     Focusing on the percussion for a while I was really pleased to see how
  Smash made an effort to fit the progression of the beat to that of the
  rest of the tune. Whenever the melody reaches a peak so does the beat.
  Once again this is seen way to rare in modules. I especially enjoyed the
  parts in the later part of the piece where there are some very good breaks
  added to the beats, complimenting the remainder of the tune perfectly.

     And one more thing. This tune has a B-part. Yes, this is what you need
  to really keep the interest of the listener. Something that shiftes the
  mood, changes the chord progression entirely and adds a different lead.
  Too many tunes follow a simple verse to chorus and back structure, which
  quickly becomes very boring. This piece doesn't. Just at the right time,
  Smash throws in a B-part that changes progression entirely and then shifts
  it into the well-known bass line from the intro. This goes along with the
  beat and slowly fades as the tune ends. I have to say, I usually dislike
  simple volume ramps in the end of a tune, but this one is done in a way
  that it does not sound like 'the easy way out'. It is always a good thing
  to round a piece off, to finish it along the same lines as it started,
  bring back something wellknown and finish it off on that. And this is what
  Smash did in this case. The b-part breaks into the bassline and beat from
  the intro and that is slowly ramped down. Nice indeed.

     Okay. I have now been licking the arse of this tune almost from start
  to finish. So this may not seem like the most constructive of reviews, but
  the fact is I am simply in love with this tune. I cannot get it out of my
  head, it haunts me at night and I wake up whistling that chorus like a
  basket case. Okay, maybe not, but believe me. This is a tune you will
  wanna grab. It is simply awesome.

                --Setec


  Song Information:
     Title:  Spider to the Fly
     Author:  Smash
     Filename (zipped/unzipped):  spider.zip / spider.xm
     File Size (zipped/unzipped):  601 k / 1.2 MB
     Source:  ?
        Alternate:  http://ic.l7.net/statline/current.html

     "In Tune" is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and
  singular works by fellow trackers.  It is to be used as a tool to expand
  your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general
  rating system.  Coplan's and Setec's opinions are not the opinions of
  the Static Line Staff.

     If you have heard a song you would like to recommend (either your own,
  or another person's), We can be contacted through e-mail useing the
  addresses found in the closing notes.  Please do not send files attached
  to e-mail without first contacting us.  Thank you!


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  The Zen of Tracking
     Of Limits and Laws
  By:  Dilvish
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
     Many musicians have come to me for creative advice when they get stuck
  in a rut, and  can't seem to get beyond a certain point in their
  abilities. This is what I tell them:

     You fail to reach new heights because you believe you have reached your
  limits.  You have yourself convinced that you will never break out of
  where you are.

     Feeling confined and restrained is a perfectly natural phenomenon for
  us. We all grew up in a world where we are subject to the laws of time,
  gravity, and science as we understand it.

     We feel like prisoners in this mortal cage, and it's very natural to
  feel as though you have little or no power over your situation.  Here's
  the secret:  As long as you believe in rules or limits, you are subject to
  them.

     You are a slave to your own ideas about what is beyond your reach.  If
  you can free your mind and believe in something - no matter how far
  fetched it sounds - you will achieve it.

     If you are a follower of The Way of Light, you should have at least
  some understanding that you are already one with the Buddha Mind - you
  just don't know it yet. As soon as you grasp what that means, and believe
  in it, you will achieve Enlightenment.

     Christians should be very familiar with the awesome powers of faith.
  It was fath that parted the Red Sea, faith that healed the sick, and faith
  that allowed Jesus to walk on water.

     Those things happened because they believed, and for no other reason.
  Believe in yourself!  You are capable of doing anything you believe in.

     Like other skills, faith takes time to build and hone - why do you
  think we don't see enormous miracles every day?  It's not something that
  will happen for you over night, or without a lot of thought and study. It
  is one of the most important things you will ever learn, though.  It is
  faith that will allow you to see without seeing, know without knowing, and
  rise far beyond the limits of your mortal bonds.

     Many people believe that they will someday achieve perfection,
  immortality, and limitless power if  they live right, and work constantly
  to perfect themselves. It is written in the Bible that we are all the
  children of God.  Do not children grow up to be like their parents?

     If you believe that God is not subject to the laws of time (evidenced
  by miraculously accurate prophesies, and  his own descriptions of
  eternity), and  that you will someday be perfected in Him (achieve
  exaltation), you must also believe that - like the Buddhists - you are
  already a God.  If you will someday become a God, and Gods are not subject
  to time, isn't it safe to say that you will  exist in all times, having
  eternity to visit any place or any time that you desire?

     Assuming this is true, isn't it logical that you would not neglect to
  visit this time in your exalted state?  If you believe this to be
  possible, you admit to yourself that it's possible to be in more than one
  place at the same time.

     If you believe that it's possible to be in more than one place at a
  time physically - how much easier it is to believe that your spirit can
  visit other places where your body can't go.  Some people have even
  claimed to have encountered a more enlightened self on their spirit
  journeys.

     Once, while in a very deep trance, I encountered a much older, and much
  wiser version of myself.  He (or I, rather) came to me in the spirit,
  while I was very much awake and sober in the flesh, and he (I) unraveled
  for me some of the mysteries of creation.

     If you open your mind and believe in the possibilities, you will begin
  to see things you never before thought possible.  You will see and think
  on a higher level, and then your creative ruts will virtually dissapear.
  Your spiritual strength will always provide you with wisdom, endurance,
  and understanding, and it's quite possible that it will do much more for
  you than that.  Don't limit yourself or your mind with disbelief.  You'll
  only make yourself feel  trapped and frustrated by this very limitted
  temporal existance.  Break free, and see what all this stuff is really
  about.

                --Dilvish

--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Screen Lit Vertigo
    "Pyy" by Koma, Doomsday & Pyy (party version)
  By:  Seven
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
  Found at www.scene.org
  4th place at Assembly'99

  System requirements:
     2MB HD, Midas-compatible soundcard, Vesa

  Test Machine: PII 350 64MB SB16, Win98 in dos-mode (BOOTGUI = 0)
  Dos: XMS (himem): Works OK.
       EMM: Crashes at the end of the rotating baby (3/4 of the demo)
  Windows: Works OK.

  The demo:
     Less than a year has passed since Off, Doomsday's final demo, and a
  few Doomsday-members are already unable to resist the joys of demo-making
  :) Half of the effects in this co-op feature a picture of a guy standing
  with his arms stretched wide open. I suppose this is Pyy, looking at the
  title and the credits, but correct me if I'm wrong. Most of the effects in
  Pyy are  2D-effects, and are very difficult to describe. There is for
  example a strange blur, where the edges of the blurred objects actually
  become brighter. Even the lights are no standard flares, but something
  like round lightning. One of the few 3D-scenes, apart from lots of Pyys
  rotating in space, is a bunch of cubes, all with different
  transparency/radiosity, that come back a bit later, but with damaged
  textures where you can see through. Looks nice. There are a lot of
  scanned(?) pictures, like a page in a book, a wire-fence, and several
  faces (James Bond?), mostly used as a background. They have a blurred
  look, and are interlaced: every other horizontal line is darker. There is
  also a short clip of a baby, spinning around. The interlacing, together
  with the color-scheme used through the whole demo (green as main color,
  red for a few details), helps to give it a consistent feel.

  The music:
     This tune reminds me of Off: very rhythmical, large parts without
  melody. The strangeness from the demo is also found in the music. There
  are some very weird samples in there, but when I checked them in IT, most
  of the samplenames where "sound0xx". Not very useful, he :) 3/4th of them
  are short ploinks, but the rest have multi-second long echo's. There are
  almost no transitions between different parts, and at the spinning baby,
  there is just one very high shriek. The first time I watched the demo, it
  crashed at that part (due to EMM), and when I tried it again with XMS, I
  reset my PC because I thought the musicplayer had crashed :D I don't feel
  anything pro of contra the music, it just fits the demo.

  Overall:
     In my opinion, Pyy should have placed higher then 4th, but hey,
  Quake-players vote stupid, right? Seriously, I think the originality and
  strangeness of this demo might scare some people a bit. If you liked Off,
  you'll like this one. The only bad points are the instability, and the
  constant appearing of Pyy (the person), that makes it look like a
  joke-demo. I think it makes the demo less attractive f you don't know that
  person.


                --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Crackhead Trackhead (Humor)
    The Scene Education Forum
  By:  Virt
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
     How many of you truly know where the demoscene came from? You might
  think it was the work of a bunch of nerdy Scandinavian kids who decided to
  release graphic/sound shows independent of their pirated cracks. You might
  also be a fool. Any decently educated person knows that the demoscene far
  pre-dates the invention of the computer.

     The first demo-coders were midieval spinstresses who grew bored with
  their daily task of whatever it is spinstresses do. They got their looms,
  and wove complex patterns which they could change simply by pulling the
  right yarns. They then presented these patterns to their lords, who were
  very amused until they realized the girls weren't doing their spinstress
  thing and had them beheaded. The other spinstresses were in an uproar,
  their friends being plucked from their looms and beheaded. It hurt. It
  hurt worse than taking a Jose Canseco line-drive to the adam's apple. But
  being that a) the spinstresses didn't have adam's apples (most of them, at
  least, some were pretty goddamned homely) and b) Jose Canseco would not be
  born for at least another 10 years, the spinstresses persevered.

     They called on their friends, the minstrels. This was in the time
  where music was in full midieval groove, not that dark and quiet
  pre-minstrel period (Sorry, it had to be done) and the minstrels were very
  concerned about their female friends being beheaded (namely because you
  can't serenade and woo a girl if she no longer posesses ears) so they
  jumped into action. They began playing music to the time of the
  spinstresses' loom demos. And the music they played was legendary, so much
  that later scene musicians like Purple Motion and Necros replicated their
  music. In fact, the whole of "Mechanism Eight" is nothing more than a
  simple Midieval tune in the style of SerfCore, and Necros, being crafty
  (of the cackling-and-twirling-his-handlebar-mustache-while-the-tied-to-
  the-railroad-track-maiden-squirms-in-the-face-of-the-speeding-train
  variety) copied the SerfCore verbatim.  Shame on you, Necros, you dirty
  old villain.

     So anyway, the lords ceased their rampant beheading. The minstrels'
  accompaniment so bolstered the demos' appeal that the spinstresses were
  able to focus on more complex and impressive effects, such as the
  sine-scroller and metaball rendering. Also particles, which is tough as
  hell with yarn, believe me. And the music improved by leaps and bounds,
  with the advent of New Technology. The minstrels were no longer forced to
  sample entire lute riffs and chords, they could actually apply envelopes
  to their instruments (Although let it be noted that their envelopes were
  crude at best - they involved playing a note and then drinking a lot of
  ale really fast so they became too drunk to hold the note and it faded
  out. NNAs were out of the question.)

     As it turns out, the resurfacing of the demo was a huge step
  backwards, as the computer technology was not up to par with the live
  performance of weaving and plucking of forgotten times. But we're back in
  full force now, even if our best art is only replicas of those long-dead
  masters.

     So for you kids who think you know all kinds of scene trivia, I insist
  it's nothing next to the TRUE legends. I'm off to find lute samples!

                --Virt


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Occasionally Live Bizarre '99 Party Report
  By: Seven
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
  -=- Note -=-
  Time is in European notation, so 1h = 1h am and 13h = 1h p.m.
  Anything in [brackets] is added after the party.

  Friday 3 September
  --------------------
  -=- 22h23 -=-
     Ok, I got my PC up and running, so I can start typing. What happened so
  far? As usual, I've tried to make a 4K the last week, and as usual, I'm
  not ready yet. Which means, as usual, that I didn't sleep much last week,
  and that I'll use this report to vent my frustrations :)

     After Quasar picked me up, we drove to Yicusur's house to meet the rest
  of the gang: Yicusur, dK, Ntropy, and Christoppel. Christoppel and I are
  independent, all others are Green-members. And so we set off to Etten-Leur
  in Holland (we're all from Belgium). We arrived without too many problems
  at 20h15, (the doors opened at 20h) and a large queue was waiting at the
  entrance. Someone with a black T-shirt asked "if we were also from Green".
  He appeared to be Eggbird, the mysterious Dutch member no one had seen
  before. When unpacking, Baxter & Corona arrived too. The main hall was
  already pretty crowded and we didn't found 9 consecutive places, so we had
  to split.

     Apart from the usual network and screen-resolution problems, my PC
  seems to suffer from damaged isolation around the video-cable. If the
  screen is on and my PC is down, I get an electroshock when I touch the
  cover. Maybe it tries to kill me :)

  Saturday 4 September
  ----------------------
  -=- 3h15 -=-
     I should update this more often. But so far, not much is happening. The
  opening ceremony was delayed, and so are now the films that should follow
  it. Let's use the opportunity to describe the partyplace. Most people sit
  in the large main hall. It looks like the average partyplace, lots of
  equipment and wires laying and hanging everywhere, but is very crowded. It
  has a less-populated balcony, where Baxter & Corona are sitting now, and
  there is also a smaller, much quieter hall for the Linux-users. Walking
  through a corridor, you arrive at the cafeteria, with the movie-theater
  next to it. The atmosphere is very relaxed. It was forbidden to bring
  speakers along that are bigger than 1m * 50 cm, and if your neighbors
  complain, you must lower the volume. So we can actually talk without
  screaming :) I haven't seen much gamers, lots of people are leeching
  films, and quite a few people are making something for the compos. Next to
  me, the Solar Group is making a demo that look pretty good. [Someone who
  introduced himself as Smoke asked if I was coding a 4K. He was working on
  a cooperation-Linux-4K. I wondered how good a 4K for Linux could be, and
  it turned out to be very good. Check the results!]

  -=- 8h10 -=-
     Green is making a joke-demo. Quasar is now struggling with some code
  that he wrote several years ago. From time to time, we both feel desperate
  :) They play lots of interesting movies [Wild Things, Con Air, ...] in the
  theater, but I've no time to watch... Why on earth did I ever switched
  from the joystick to the keyboard? Gamers enjoy themselves, even if they
  irritate their surrounding, like that lamer that has been playing music
  very hard, politely lowering the volume when asked, but increasing it
  again 5 minutes later.  Deadline for intros is 23 o'clock. I _should_ have
  enough time to finish the damn thing... [The joke-demo was not finished
  due to lack of time, and some coding-problems. So Eggbird was the only
  Green-member that released something, a house-entry that did not make it
  through the preselections. Quasar was a bit worried about their
  reputation, last year they placed 2nd with the Control-demo and now they
  don't even have a demo.]

  -=- 13h56 -=-
     Sorry for the long break, but time goes so fast when you are having fun
  :)  The opening ceremony has been held, about 10 hours delayed, but I'm
  happy there was one after all. It was not a true ceremony, but a long
  welcoming-demo by Overflow. I missed the beginning, but I can say the rest
  looked impressive. Of course, on a 10x8-meter bigscreen, almost everything
  looks impressive :) Outside, the sun is shining, which means that the
  temperature in the main hall is already very high. On the balcony, the
  temperature is almost unbearable, because hot air rises (as we all know).
  Bizarre'99, sauna for free :)

  -=- 20h05 -=-
     The ANSI & gfx compos have been held, but there were a few problems
  with the ANSI (I heard) [Something with a wrong video-mode. I did not know
  the compo was held until it was over. There should be a better way to
  announce compos than just the schedule on the website, as not everyone has
  net-access, and compos are often delayed.]

  -=- 23h00 -=-
     One minute before the deadline, I upped my entry. Phew! I'm glad I have
  it finished. It's about 80 % of what I wanted it to be (the music is CRAP
  now), but I think it's the best I've made to date. [Quasar disagrees :)].
  Excuse me for my lack of modesty, but I've worked the last 24 hours almost
  full-time at it, so I'm "personally involved" and hence not objective.

     Ok, forget it. Back to the party. The multichannel music compo was held
  and there have been seminars on Linux (The Dutch Users Linux Group is one
  of the big sponsors of Bizarre). The temperature is bearable again, the
  French fries are pretty good [but expensive], and I heard the sleeping
  room is very comfortable (I'll check that personally very soon), although
  you can still hear the music. The network works very good for some
  persons, and hardly at all for others. The noise level is reasonable (with
  the same lame exception).

  Sunday 5 September
  --------------------
  -=- 7h15
     At 1 o'clock the animation compo started. There were around 10 entries,
  with only a few joke-entries, and I remember that the first
  (Satisfaction/Screes) and the last (Magic Dreamz/Superstitious) entries
  were very good, together with one about cubes that I don't remember the
  name of [Reddot/Oryx]. I'll try to find that one, to be able to vote for
  it. After that, 3 films were shown [Alien resurrection, the one that I
  wanted to see, was canceled], but I took my sleeping bag and headed for
  the sleeping room. It was pretty big and very quiet [ and very crowded,
  you had to search for 2 square meters empty place while stepping over
  sleeping sceners], but when I woke up, so many people were sleeping that
  the room was full and they had to use the corridors, the stairs and
  another room :) For some reason, the net has decided that it will, for a
  small amount of time, tolerate my existence, so I start browsing. Hey,
  some wild-entries are there already. Let's get them!

  -=- 13h48 -=-
     Phew. I've got to catch up several hours! What happened? Activity was
  low at morning, until 10o'clock, when the 4K en 64K intros would get
  shown. Most people went to see them, but there was a 20-minute delay. I
  was very nervous, Corona & Quasar tried to calm me a bit, but their
  efforts where in vain :) The quality of the 4K's was very high, except for
  rECTUM cAUDAs textmode "4k sucks". There was a Java 4K met hardware
  accelerated 3D, very sharp en impressive, but without sound. A good Linux
  4K with sound amazed me too [The one from Smoke, indeed]. But then the
  64K-compo started, without Dreamscape shown! Aaargh! I scrambled to the
  organizers, but they said they didn't receive it! I ran to my PC to put it
  on diskette , and it was shown between two 64Ks (with a 4K-start-screen,
  of course). Too bad the music didn't work, although I told the orgos it
  had Adlib sound, and that most 4K's with sound had run OK. But I was too
  relieved to care much. I missed 3 out of the 5 64Ks, but I heard they were
  only of average quality. The demos started at 12h, and were of varying
  quality. I liked Summer Terror, the demo from Solar Group, rECTUM cAUDA's
  Lover, Satisfied/Domage and even the newbie-demo Fire! by Screw. That last
  one is a below-average demo, but at least it tried to be a serious demo.
  The others were fun-demos: photos of sleeping sceners, a drawing of
  someone masturbating, .... They were not all bad, some were funny, but I
  think most people make joke-demos only because they don't want to take the
  time to create a full-length demo. After a walk and some food, I go to
  catch some more sleep. The temperature is raising again, I hope it's
  cooler at the sleeping room. [ It was, and the sleeping room was empty now
  :)]

  -=- 21h07 -=-
     We started packing right after the prize ceremony, so I write this at
  home. I didn't sleep very long, as the organizers had to clean the room.
  The prize ceremony started a bit after 16h, and was quite funny. There
  were no spotlights, but the organizers used a paint-program to drag white
  circles over the screen, which had almost the same result. Almost, as the
  bigscreen doesn't touch the floor, so the legs of everyone on the stage
  were in the dark. I think it was Cyclone who presented the event, in
  English, but he warned beforehand that he was not very good at English.
  Whenever he did not know the correct English word, he said it in Dutch and
  the crowd yelled back the translation. The ceremony was a bit like a
  TV-show, first the 3 winners were announced in random order, they had to
  tell who they were & what they made, then the NR 3, 1 and 2 (in that
  order) were announced. The "charming assistant" Walter showed the prizes
  before giving them to the winners, and a photo of all the winners of that
  comp was taken. I got 3rd place with Dreamscape, yahoo! The linux-thingy
  was 2nd and the java-entry Out Of Space was first in the 4K-compo. The
  demos were announced before the animations, as the quality of the anims
  was way above that of the demos. The demo-winners were (from 1st to 3rd):
  Are you satisfied/Domage, Summer Terror/The Solar Group, and Lovers/rECTUM
  cAUDA. I'm not sure about the 3rd anim, but the nrs 1 & 2 were Magic
  Dreams/Superstition and Reddot/oryx. It was a very close competition, and
  some people started booing, as they though Reddot should have won. The
  winning anim was played again, plus a demo that Superstitious had made in
  only two hours, at the partyplace [It was not very good, the code was
  recycled from previous Superstitious-demos]. After that, we started
  packing & went home.

  [ So a short list of good/bad points of Bizarre:
  Good points: Not too much noise, great atmosphere, helpful organizers,
     enough things to do/watch, fast network (when it worked).
  Bad points: the heat, the expensive food, the lack of announcing compos,
     the network was hard to get working.

     As usual, the balance is positive. I enjoyed Bizarre'99, much thanks to
  the organizers, and I hope to be there again next year. ]

                --Seven


--=--=--
----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------
  Editor:             Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com
  Assistant Editors:  Ranger Rick / Ben Reed / ranger@where.are.u.com
                       Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net
  Web Manager:        Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
  Columnists:         Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com
                       Calvin French / frenchc@cadvision.com
                       Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
                       Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net
                       Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be
                       Virt / virt@bellsouth.net
  Staff Writers:      Acell / Jamie LeSouef / jlesouef@melbpc.org.au
                       Darkheart / Zach Heitling / darkhart@san.rr.com
                       Psychic Symphony / psychic@esoterica.pt
                       Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
                       SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca
  Technical Support:  Draggy / Nicolas St. Pierre / draggy@kosmic.org
                       Jim / Jim Nicholson / jim@kosmic.org

  Static Line on the Web:  http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
                           ftp://demo.cat.hu/scene/DiskMag/StaticLine

     To subscribe to the Static Line mailing list, send an e-mail message
  to "majordomo@kosmic.org" with "subscribe static_line <your e-mail>" in
  the message text. You will then be asked to confirm your addition to the
  mailing list.  Expect a new issue during the first weekend of each
  month.

     To unsubscribe from the mailing list, send an e-mail message to
  "majordomo@kosmic.org" with "unsubscribe static_line <your e-mail>" in
  the message text. Your subscription will then be removed.

     If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware
  that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one
  space at the end of each line.  Please avoid foul language and high ascii
  characters.  Contributions should be mailed to Coplan
  (coplan.ic@rcn.com).

     See you next month!

-eof---=------=--=------=--=--