_//\\_______________________________________________________________________ _\\__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 " 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 " 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---=------=--=------=--=--