From: static_line-admin@scenespot.org Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 9:17 PM To: static_line@scenespot.org Subject: [Static Line] Issue #26 (sl-026.txt) _//\\________________________________________________________________________ _\\__T_A_T_I_C___L_I_N_E_____________________________________ October, 2000 __\\_________________________________________________________________________ \\//__ Monthly Scene E-Zine ________________________________ 161 Subscribers _____________________________________________________________________________ --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Table Of Contents ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Opening: Message From the Editor Letters From Our Readers Features: Bizarre 2000 Party Report Official results Bizarre 2000 demoparty Columns: Music: In Tune -- Nightbeat's "The Approach" Retro Tunage -- "Shattered Skye" by Catspaw Demo: Screen Lit Vertigo -- "Spot" by Exceed (party-version) Intro Watch -- "Sink" by Pulse General: Editorial -- Time to Move On? Scene Sense -- Where the heck did our values go? Scene Dirt -- News & Rumors Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene Closing: Credits --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Message From the Editor ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Well, Static Line is averaging about 8 new subscribers a month now. Not bad, but I think we can do better. When Demo News and Trax Weekly finally died, they each had thousands of readers -- and that was a long time ago when the scene was much smaller. Spread the word people. If nothing else, maybe you'll help us discover the next great columnist that will write high content magazine articles. We all want that. Now, down to business. We got a few special things going on this month. First things first, Seven is back with another party review of Bizarre 2000. Seven truly does create the feeling of being there. I have also provided the top three finishing results in each category for Bizzare. We have a new columnist this month. Last week, PsiTron wrote a pretty blunt article about being a tracker. Not everyone liked it, but the guy has a thing about saying what's on his mind -- no bull-shit. I like that, so I adopted him as a staff member. He now writes the editorial column titled "Scene Sense." We also got a pretty important rebut from Mysterium, the founder of Trax-In-Space. He has some things to clear up, and some information from the other side of the fence. He also is defending TIS from some things related to PsiTron's last column/letter. Contrary to popular belief, I did not recruit PsiTron because of this feedback. Well...Ben wants to go to bed soon, and we gotta get this issue parsed out for the web database. So, I think I'll wrap up now. Until next month. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Letters From Our Readers ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Letter from Mysterium -=- Dear Editor, I am writing in response to a letter you posted from PsiTron concerning Trax In Space (TiS). I am the founder of Trax In Space, and I would like to clear up some misinformation given in PsiTron's letter. Unfortunately there are several rumors spreading around the Web regarding our mission, and most notably, our VIP memberships. PsiTron pointed out that the "commercialization of the scene is bad, and sites like TiS seem to lead the scene toward this end." While it is true that TiS does offer extended services for a small fee, the term "commercialization" is a rather general word that does not begin to depict the true nature of TiS's mission. In my recent post, "Myths and Truths about Trax In Space," I explain the situation and the necessity for our actions. (http://www.traxinspace.com/ArtistsCorner/ArtistsCorner-Myths.asp) Someone once told me, "Trax In Space stands for the Free Music Revolution. Keep it free." He was absolutely right! Trax In Space does stand for the Free Music Revolution. Though the term includes free music, it rather stands for the freedom for the artist. The artist has the control; our site thrives from the artists and the community that consists of these artists. We want to give artists the chance that the commercial world masks with gimmicks and master marketing schemes. We want artists to be able to make their music and do what they want with it, and not have to make forced choices based on what big corporate execs think the artists should make. Trax In Space stands for the Free Music Revolution, as it applies to the musician, not just the listener. We stand up for the musician and are creating a community that supports itself and recognizes the hard work of musicians. Of course the site still has free music downloads and free artist registration (not to mention all of the features included within our Artist's Corner). Another person had begun to tell others, out of ignorance, that the VIP memberships create a caste system, in which artists that pay receive unfair recognition. This bold statement is a total contradiction of our mission and the point of the VIP Memberships. The VIP Memberships are designed to help take the creation of music to a higher level through tools and features that help the artist save time, receive feedback on their music, and understand their fans better. The following are the features that are included in VIP Memberships so far: --Trax Traders: Trax Traders does get the artist more people to listen to their music, but the downloads from Trax Traders do not count toward the Top Charts, and do not affect the ratings of the artist. Trax Traders will have its own charts, but the overall charts are not tainted. We will not make the playing field unfair - the VIP memberships are tools to help musicians focus on music, not to separate artists from each other. --VIP Reviews: Artists get reviewed by a few handpicked reviewers. It's a great way for them to get better feedback on their music. Did you know that *100%* of the money for VIP Reviews goes to the reviewer? --Personal Pages: If the artist puts the pages in the search engines, I guess they will get more downloads. But many artists already have their own personal pages, should we ask them to take their sites down because it is unfair to others? Pretty unrealistic, wouldn't you say so? It is another tool that allows the artist to promote him/herself, and a place within the scene to do something that they may have done outside of the scene at places like Geocities or Xoom. --Samples In Space: The artist now has a gigantic sample library for their next song. It saves time as opposed to searching around the web, or through their own music collection for samples to use. Considering these features, how do VIP Memberships make it unfair to other artists? The VIP Memberships are extended, optional services for serious musicians, who see value in our site and the centralization of these features. PsiTron also correctly points out that artists on TiS can sell their music. If I understand PsiTron's position, scene artists should not sell their music. Of course, they can use their alter egos and sell through MP3.com or the other commercial sites. Most artists would jump at an opportunity to sell their music if someone would buy it, and many fans would buy their favorite artist's CD were it available. So if this is just the natural state of things, I find it ludicrous that we should not try to facilitate this interaction through our site. Our artists wanted this feature, and again its optional-you do not have to sell a CD if you do not want to. But if you want to, TiS has the facilities set up to allow artists to sell their CDs to people all around the world at no cost to the artist. Of course we also work with tracker files, not just MP3s. We are simply trying to "keep it within the scene". PsiTron did correctly identify another issue concerning the maintenance of a large site such as TiS: time. In addition to fixed costs of running the site, there is an enormous amount of time spent to keep the site working and up to date. Anyone who has ever managed a site with over 100,000 registered users, 60 gigs of files, and traffic that runs in the hundreds of thousands per month will know that this is not an easy task. Of course, most people who spread these rumors have not had this experience. Lastly, I would like to point out one generally false statement that PsiTron made when he narrowed down the commercialization of the scene to Trax In Space. The demoscene remains a large and important part of the "scene." As TiS and the demoscene both know, it requires money to make it all happen. Demoparties accomplish this by accepting sponsorships from companies like Cisco, AMD, and Sun Microsystems. Scene.org recently asked its visitors to sponsor the site with monetary donations, promising advertising space and the attention of "young, talented and motivated people in the computer and design business" to corporate sponsors. As far as TiS is concerned, we are doing this by offering enhanced tools for artists, banner advertisements and the like, and artist CDs. We offer great services in return for this support, all to help keep the site running. For those readers out there who may think that deleting files would help our situation, I must inform you that bandwidth and file space are not a major concern for TiS, but there are other costs associated with the maintenance and administration of a large archive that we look to offset through these programs. It can't be done for nothing, and why not give something back to the artists who support us? I am always available at saurin@traxinspace.com. For those of you interested in learning more about Trax In Space, please visit our website at http://www.traxinspace.com. Thank you. Sincerely, Saurin Shah (aka Mysterium) Founder, Trax In Space -=> Reply from Coplan: I think this is an issue that is overwelming the demoscene these days. The scene is torn between oldskool thinking and those of the next generation sceners. Many people worry about where the scene will end up in the next few years -- but one thing is true at this moment in time. The scene is not nearly as cutting edge as it used to be. The awe and pure admiration for the scene is no longer what it used to be. I think a lot of people miss that. Others, who never knew the feeling of seeing fancy demos and music played on an Amiga, might not understand what the demoscene is about. It has always been an underground movement, but it seems to be fading in strength as such anymore. While it is good to hear both sides of the story, someone is always going to have a biased opinion. Sometimes it may be justified, other times, it may not. Being a person who doesn't find need to muffle such opinions, I will most likely post such articles as PsiTron's. That doesn't mean I agree with his views -- nor does it mean it's an image that Static Line wants to carry. However, it does mean that I respect his views. Since I like to give everyone a chance, it is only fair that you all now get to hear the other side of the story. Thank you, Mysterium, for sending in your message. I am sure there are still a lot of people out there that are still sitting on the fence about the issue, but at least they got more information about your case. --Coplan -=- Letter from Eino Keskitalo -=- Seven does great party reviews. Of course they're great parties, but he simply writes about them catching the feeling, so you start to wish you were there too. Anyway, great latest three issues. --Eino --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Bizarre 2000 Party Report By: Seven ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Friday 29 October -=- Another month, another party :) I'm gonna have serious craving problems during the winter. OK, the Static Line deadline is actually today. I bribed Coplan to allow me to send this article a few days later for obvious reasons, but I won't have much time for after-party editing. So, a significant amount of effort is put in this report *at the partyplace itself*, unlike my last few reports. That should be an improvement (cheers!). If you're one of the few who wondered what happened to the demo that Green wanted to make at LTP4: it got postponed till Bizarre, and now it's postponed till 2Thousand, a new party in Belgium. One of the reasons is that a few people couldn't visit Bizarre: Quasar is going to some other event in the Netherlands, and Baxter is on a vacation to some tropical destination, and his plane will land in Belgium on Sunday night. Driving all the way to Bizarre just to see the prize ceremony isn't worth the effort for Baxter, and though I pointed out an obvious shortcut involving a gun, a parachute and the words "This is a hijack", he preferred not to use it. So that left A0a, Corona, DJefke, Eggbird and myself (aside from the inactive members). I was the first to arrive, around 20:00. The doors had opened at 19:00, so the usual waiting queue had already disappeared. The Bizarre party still takes place at the same location, the Nobelaer center, and we have access to a large (max 500 ppl) and a small hall (max 120 ppl), a movie theater, a cafeteria and a sleeping room. The large hall is always very noisy, very crowded, and suffers from LTP4-like temperatures. The small hall was Linux-only last year, but now it's scene-only: no gamers, no big speakers. Needless to say which hall I chose :) Five minutes later Eggbird joined me, together with Bemmel. They form a joke-group Ijskast (refrigerator). The others arrived a few hours later. I've seen already some nice releases: the wild demo by RBI is really good, and Okkie/De brasserie has made a crazy Dutch cover of Eminem's "The real slim shady", in which he disses the whole Dutch scene. No doubt this will end up high in the MP3 compo :) In the meantime, there is absolutely no information about compos/deadlines/ whatever. The website says "web services currently offline, work in progress". The opening ceremony is delayed too. Let's hope things get fixed soon. -=- Saturday 30 October -=- The crew finally got the projector working correctly, so they showed the first movie, Romper Stomper. Never heard of it? Me neither, and when they said it was a cult-movie and very violent, I didn't bother to watch and got back to the small hall (which is now warmer and more filled with cigarette-smoke than the large hall :/). There, A0a was struggling with my VC++ project settings to get the demo framework to compile. Remember, when you code, change settings or install new programs at a demoparty, your PC is ten times as vulnerable to problems then it is at home :( But in the end, human endurance and intelligence won over machine incompatibility and stuff. Happy end! Corona, A0a and I sat down together talk about the messy details of our demo-under-construction. Due to the sensitive nature of the information, I can't disclose the entire talk , but "fast voronoi != fast delaunay", "how to clip a 3D fractal" and "and why should *that* be a problem?" were some of the subjects discussed. Typical coders chitchat, yes. The only way to get info about the schedule is via IRC on the #bizarre channel, but since there are 80 people on it talking full-time about nothing at all, we decide to ignore it to protect our mental health. A tad later, the website got up, but it uses flash-animations so I'll have to find the right plugins Oh boy, some sceners are setting new records in childish behavior :) There's a lot of porn on the ftp servers, among them a particular obscene (and for some people very funny) mpeg, and they are playing the "soundtrack" over and over again very loud and with all kinds of filters over it. They only ended because it was waking up certain people and these people complained to the orgos. The "no big speakers in the small hall" rule isn't followed 100%, but it's still much more quiet in here. Eggbird is now asking other sceners if they have music of Krezip or Britney Spears, he wants to make a tune with samples from it. Someone threatens to shoot him :) Someone from The Solar Group (who placed second in the democompo last year) tells me they've a new demo ready, and another Belgian scener, Infinite Reboot/Fuel just arrives and has a demo to submit too. Nice to hear from Fuel again, it's been two years since they released Gaz at Wired98. It's now 8:45, and I think it's time to follow A0a's & Corona's example and take a nap. Back again. The sleeping room was very crowded, and all hallways were filled with sleeping sceners, but I managed to find some empty floorspace. When I got back, DJefke wondered if he would watch the compos or not, because we couldn't vote anyway. Excuse me? To my surprise, voting would be 100% jury voting, as we could read on the website. Hmm, I should have checked the website a bit earlier. Let's hope it will turn out positive. The Nobelaer center also houses the local library, which is open on Saturday, and its entrance is right at the big party hall. The people who bring their books back look a bit strange at us. Are they afraid of us, or do we just smell funny? -=> Editors Note: A bit of Both, probably...=P --Coplan The RBI animation had some parts added, and looks even better now. The RBI guys tried to convince someone who had just woken up that it was Sunday now and that he had missed all the compos, but their victim wasn't as credulous as they expected :) While Infinite Reboot attempts in vain to keep a rational discussion with DJefke about the advantages of Win2000 vs Linux, I'm browsing the net and even eating a bit. It's 14:24 and the graphic compos have passed. There were only 4 hand-drawn graphics, one was a joke-entry, two were girl faces and one weirdo face. The raytrace compo had nine entries, but only a few of them were really raytraced. The others were what I call website-backgrounds, with photoshopped pictures and faded anti-aliased lines. While it may take talent to create such a picture, I don't think they belong to the raytrace compo, and I won't vote for them. Oops. Forgot that we can't vote :( The flash compo had three entries, with low to average-complexity objects which were shown very crisp, but also very slow, say 5 to 10 fps. Flash is definitely a compo for designers, not for coders. I can't say much about the MP3 and the house compo, although I've done a feeble attempt to listen to some tunes. But happy hardcore and similar Dutch interpretations of "music" are not really my taste, especially when played *way* too loud through a professional soundsystem. A good point was that the orgos showed some kind of techno-style animation during the compo, so the audience had something to watch when the music starts to bore them. I'm running out of HD space, and I've no CD burner, so I want to transfer my wild demos to Bemmels HD who has one. But as usual, there's something wrong with either his or my settings, cause he sucks and I don't. Maar je hebt ook lui die gaat zitten messen met me partyreports, en dat willen we al helemaal niet! Hum :-) doe coplan de groeten, eggbird. :P < Translation: But there are also people who will mess up my partyreports, and that is something we do no want at all! Hum :-) Greet Coplan from me, Eggbird :P > Thank you, Eggbird, for pointing out in such a friendly way that I can't leave my report safely alone for 5 minutes when you're in the vicinity. Next time when A0a needs me to fix a bug in my code, I'll finish my sentence, close the file, encrypt it and carry it along with me on a diskette. -=> Editors Note: What? And me miss a greet? --Coplan What I wanted to say: to minimize the risk of interrupted uploads, I didn't run any other program simultaneous with FTP, so I had plenty of time to walk through the halls and see what people were doing. The RBI guys, having finished their productions, have started another crazy project: a fake phone-sex advertisement, using censored jpgs from the LAN plus some videos from their own members they made at a previous demoparty. People ask Infinite Reboot if they can see the Fuel demo, even though it's not completely polished. It's a dark 3D demo, but not in the blood/lightning style a la Shad. I wonder how well it will do in the compo. Some Amiga sceners are here too, some are constantly playing classic Amiga demos: Desert dreams, State of the art, Nine fingers... Technically we just laugh at those today ("coming up next: a sphere wit 48 polys!"), but they have tons of attitude, design and beautiful pixeled fonts. Even though the small hall is "scene-only", there are also people playing games. Still it's cozier than the big hall, where I haven't seen any people coding, drawing or modeling (composing is out of question due to the noise). And I don't know whether I just overlooked them last year or if they are "new" at Bizarre, but there are some 10-12 year old kids gaming too, 'till early in the morning :/ I don't think this is a healthy situation, not for the kids nor for the party. Around 22:30, Corona and A0a decided to search a pizzeria in Etten-Leur. Since I didn't like the French fries in the cafeteria, I joined them and so did DJefke (hint to the cafeteria people: cutting a potato in 4 is *not* enough to call it fries) Luckily the place was still open, and we had some deep discussions while eating a big Pizza Hawaii/Marguerita. It was already 23:45 when we came back, and it seems we missed the music compo :/ -=- Sunday 1 October -=- A0a and I interrupted our debugging activities to watch the 4K and 64K intros at 1 o'clock. Since the schedule has become widely available (on the bigscreen, on paper and on the website), it has been followed without major delays. Unfortunately there were "no 4K's of acceptable quality" at all :( It's a pity to see your favorite demo-category lose it's popularity to the point that there are zero productions at a major demoparty. Flex had intended to make a windows-4K, but apparently he didn't finish it in time. The 64K compo contained 4 entries: 1 was a joke-entry with only one effect (a rotozoom), another intro had OK effects on the left and middle of the screen, and oldskool game screens on the right. Since you can't watch everything at once, you immediately feel the urge to see it again. The last two were both made by Ile and No_sx from Aardbei and were of a high quality, but they didn't had enough time to finish the last one (which was shown first). Most people either went to sleep or watched the movies in the theater after the intro compo. Corona & A0a just have watched American Psycho, not exactly a feel-good movie, and looked a bit scared when they came back. Mental note: don't watch movies about serial killers right before you go to sleep if you don't have your pet toy with you. The next compo (animation) starts at 10:30, so we can sleep without missing too much. Strange fact: no matter how crowded the sleeping room is, there is always place for one more scener. I woke up in time to see the animation compo, which was slightly delayed. There was quite some variation in the anims: joke-entries of high or low quality, one of those "Destroy a PC" videos (made by Amiga sceners of course), heavy-duty 3D rendered demos... I'm almost sure that Create and destroy/RBI will win, due to its length and high quality. 12:50 and the democompo is over. Seven demos were show, only two of high quality: Untamed/Fuel and We ain't real/The Solar Group. They are very different: Untamed is a camera flight in a Quake-like environment, and We ain't real is a typical Danish design demo. rECTUM cAUDA made a low-fi porn demo as usual, Kontvlokken Posse made a jokedemo "Mekker ende Blaet", which shows a picture of a goat and a sheep, plus a sinus-scroller with a big rant (in Dutch). The title is hard to translate, but "mekker" is the sound a goat makes, "blaat" is the sound a sheep makes, and using "ae" iso "aa" and "ende" iso "en (and)" is medieval spelling. Ijskast released a half-finished flash-like demo, LifLaf, which was entirely "coded" at the partyplace. Two more serious demos were Noronium, which showed a bowling ball/face travelling through a 3D world, and Vpitrod, about which I can only remember that it was quite good (where has my memory gone?). At the end, the orgos showed a message that the jury should come to the control room, and that they could still use some more jury-members. We thought about volunteering, but in the end we decided that we were a little bit too biased to vote objectively :) Now all we could do was waiting for the prize ceremony, and for the entries to be put on the ftp servers. Everyone I spoke to agreed that We ain't real and Untamed are a match for each other. Since Coplan has still the Spot review, I'll give some quick info about Untamed here: it's a camera flight through an impressive, dark 3D world, without a really story. Technically there are some hard-to-code effects, like volumetric shadows: there's a hole in the ground with volumetric light shining out, and you can see that a part of the light is blocked by an object even before you see the object itself. Some effects use textures that change every frame, for example the fountain with waves in which particles are reflected. Unfortunately, uploading textures is a very slow action on some 3D cards, and of course the compo machine had such a card. The music is a self-made rock/metal MP3 with real guitars. I don't know if that is an advantage, as the Dutch scene seems to favor house/hardcore tunes. The doors to the theater room opened a bit later than announced, but we had to wait even longer due to technical problems. In the meantime, the orgos showed some TV-program about BMX stunt competitions, which seems to be a dangerous sport judging the accidents that they showed. I don't know the name of the organizer who presented the ceremony, but he was very funny. It's one of the few times I've seen someone thank the sponsors in a way which was not boring, and they during the show they showed animations by Arcturus, the same that were shown during the music compos and just before each entry in the other compos, to announce their name/group/category. Because another event would start at the partyplace right after Bizarre, they had little time left and announced the winners without much delays. RBI was the absolute winner of Bizarre: they had one or two places in the top 3 of every compo they competed in: animation, handdrawn and raytraced pictures, several music compos... When the presenting orgo said that Jay/RBI must have too much time on his hands, someone in the crowd jelled "Get a job, man!" Must have been slightly jealous :) In the demo compo, Vpitrod finished third, We ain't real came second and Untamed ended up first. It had been a difficult decision, as 45% of the jury preferred The Solar Group's demo and 55% that of Fuel. I felt glad for Fuel, because Infinite Reboot said it might very well be Fuel's last demo, but it's of course a bit sad for The Solar Group who missed the first place for two years in a row. After the prize ceremony, everyone started to pack, said goodbye to his/her friends and traveled home. I think Bizarre was a good party, it had a few bad points but the organizers fixed them quickly. The scene-only room is definitely a good idea, as the atmosphere was very friendly there. You know that when you talk to a random person there, he'll be a scener. The jury voting was accurate as far as I can judge from the compos I've seen, but not being able to vote takes away some of the feeling. Maybe using 50% jury and 50% public would be the best of both worlds ? The only bad point is the low number of entries for a party with 500 people. If I compare it with LTP, which had less visitors and more entries in every compo, I can only think of one reason: a low sceners vs gamers ratio. Another point that proves this is the fact that there were almost no foreign people. At the start of the prize ceremony, the orgos asked if anyone preferred English over Dutch, but no one wanted that :/ Anyway, I enjoyed Bizarre, thanks to the crew, and see you again next year. --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Official results Bizarre 2000 demoparty By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Only showing first, second and third place. http://www.bizarre.nl -=- Animation -=- Create and Destroy RBI Video Neen, dit is niet hopjesvla 2 rECTUM cAUDA nL Oryx sux! Oryx AVD -=- Demo -=- Untamed Fuel We ain't real The Solar Group VPITROD Paranoid Productions -=- 64 KB -=- Loc no-XS / Ile Ivlx Kaleido 8bit Bliss -=- Mp3 -=- See the sun Jay / RBI Solid RBI Obsession E-sense -=- House -=- Headzone Jay / RBI Tipsy Gipsies De Brasserie Bud! - Don't do that RBI - Guest -=- Music -=- Chill 'n green Jay / RBI Funtex Total Eclipse F*cking bird hill choir - -=- Flash -=- Possibilities with Flash Active Interactive Flash Compo ? UT clan LEGO Widescreen RBI -=- Website -=- Smooth - Coredump - Quo Usque Tandem Third Foundation -=- Raytraced Graphics -=- Sonar MagicBoy / RBI Video Backdroppel RBI Lost and Found Kaleido -=- Handdrawn Graphics -=- Angelina Croft Mirage Silkyway RBI Girlie Fuel -=- Ansi -=- Strangers in the Dark Insane Now show them tities Expose --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- In Tune Nightbeat's "The Approach" By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Introduction -=- Where's Setec? Well, fear not, he is still around and still alive. Unfortunatley, time has gotten the best of him. He has been busy with school, of course. He has also been working on a major project with Dilvish, and I hope to share that with you in a few months. For now, I'm solo. I don't know how much longer that will last. This month, I am in a rather eclectic mood, so I chose a song that has a lot of Celtic influence. I'll be honest, I know very little about Celtic culture, but it seems to have a lot of Modern influences as well. Whatever, it is definately a song worth a review. The song is from an artist known as Nightbeat. I am not familiar with the artist, and this is the first time I have ever heard anything from him. I am told that there is an oldskool artist that used to use the same name -- I cannot deny or confirm that this might be the same person. Now, a review of "The Approach" by Nightbeat -=- Coplan -=- There are two key elements to this song that I truly love. First is the flute, and second is the percussion. These two elements combined form a general characteristic of Celtic music that most people would agree upon (except maybe the experts, of which I am not one). First, the percussion. I am quite fond of properly executed percussion. In order for percussion of any form to sound refined and accurate, it must contain volume variation. That is the key to any instrument that is monotone in nature. Percussion isn't just a series of fancy riffs, it's soul is rooted deeply in volume. Nightbeat has hit this nail on the head. Not only has he made an exceptional example of good percussion, but he has also created a mood. He has brought back a style that is centuries old and he has done it well. I can almost picture the guy sitting there with his primative calf skin drum, and another guy with hand made tamborine. Then there is the flute. I have heard this flute sample floating around some tracked tunes before, but I never thought much of it. Then I heard what Nightbeat can do with it. I think a lot of his tracking style definately has an influence on the effective use of this flute sample. You'll notice that he stacks several notes together in a relatively fast moveing song. That gives the flute it's realism, as if you can hear the player sliding his fingers off the holes in the flute. This flute player is very fast at what he does -- but isn't that characteristic of the style? Needless to say, Nightbeat has also provided this ancient orchestra with a bunch of well written music, so the flute player has no trouble breathing life into this song. There is a very fast part towards the end of the song when the flute drops out. This is just a fun section of the song, and I am glad Nightbeat put it in. I don't have much to say about this part of the song other than the fact that it is enjoyable, and the percussion is still very tight. "The Approach" is a short song, a mere 3 minutes. But don't let that dictate it's quality. I assure you, it is a quality song, and you'll like it. Download it, then listen to it. Then go read the Retro Tunage column where I review more middle-age music (Sorry, had to get that plug in). --Coplan Song Information: Title: The Approach Author: Nightbeat Filename (zipped/unzipped): Nb_appr.zip / Nb_appr.it (IT 2.14) File Size (zipped/unzipped): 765 kb / 851 kb Source: http://www.traxinspace.com Alternate: ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/static_line/suppliment/Nb_appr.zip "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 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! --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Retro Tunage "Shattered Skye" by Catspaw By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Occasionally, Tryhuk asks me for recommendations for this column. This month, I recommended a tune that we decided I should review, as it has such an influence on my tracking development. The song is "Shattered Skye" by Catspaw (at the time, a member of RAT -- and yes, Skye is spelled that way in the song). I will first start out by saying Shattered Skye is not considered a great opus by most people. The samples are mediocre, the tune is good, but nothing truly exceptional...but the song has a lot of character. For one, it was one of the few songs tracked in the mid 1990's that wasn't of electronic influence. Sure, there were others, but not like this. "Shattered Skye" has an heir of medieval music. It is a style that I love, favor and attempt to do almost every day. My admiration for admiration for the style started long before I discovered the scene, but it is carried through today with such works that I keep stored in a special section of my hard drive. Just a warning though, the song doesn't always play well in players other than Impulse Tracker. If you want to catch the true feeling, you gotta use Impules Tracker. The song starts out with a characteristic riff that you'll see throughout the song. It is most noticeable at this point in channel 5, where you have the percussion. The kettle drum (one of the best samples in this song) and the shaker play back and forth in a relatively repetative nature. This gets carried throughout most of the instruments in the first part of the song: The violins, the cellos and so on. The primary acoustic work in this part of the song is left up to the lead violins, the cymbol crashes and brass instruments. You'll also notice that Catspaw takes advantage of the ever popular song speed rock method, but in a unique way. He rocks from a speed of 4, to a speed of 6 (to get a very quick and realistic shaker) down to an average speed of 5 to finish out each section of a pattern (Catspaw takes full advantage of the fact that IT supports patterns longer than 64 lines). My favorite part of the song starts at about order 7. Catspaw returns back to the original key (he changed, earlier. Did you notice?), and introduces a larger part for the brass. The brass is rather impressive, considering the samples he used. Brass is such a touchy instrument in tracking, instruments difficult to replicate realistically in tracking. But, if you got enough going on, and lots of brass playing different notes in a song like this, it sounds good -- even though it is simple. At this point, we take a short little slow interlude, then things pick up again. That doesn't last too long, though, because things start to die down at order 20. We transfer into a very low key part of the song in what I would consider a less-than-satisfactory transition. Again, this short little bit doesn't last long. Then we close out with another energetic interpretation of the first section. The song will always be one of my favorites, but even my favorite tunes have faults. This is one tune that could've benefited from a little snip of the unecessary slow parts. I don't think they add anything to the song. But, it is a great song, and definately worth a download. Especially for those of you who are trying to get into more orchestral work. Song Information: Title: Shattered Skye Author: Catspaw Release date: 1996? Length: 4m Filename (zipped/unzipped): rat_skye.zip / rat_skye.it File Size (zipped/unzipped): 290kb / 420kb Source: ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/static_line/suppliment/Rat_skye.zip --Coplan (Tryhuk returns next time) --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Screen Lit Vertigo "Spot" by Exceed (party-version) By: Seven ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Found at www.scene.org 1st place at the Assembly 2K demo compo System requirements: Win98, 9,5 MB HD. I think a heavy CPU (pIII) and/or a lot of memory are necessary to run the demo smoothly. Test Machine: Baxter's machine, a PIII 500 with some fast 3D card and lots of memory. The credits: code: nns, picard, robson visuals: warpig, der piipo music: generic The demo: Exceeds latest demo uses 100% software rendering in medium resolution (512*318), which unfortunately makes a fast CPU a must. I've experienced a lot of stutter with my PII 350 64MB, but now I'm at LTP4 and I can abuse Baxter/Green's machine for reviews :) Desktop Adventures starts with a ceiling lamp rocking back and forth, illuminating the 3D title and casting shadows on the wall. Hmm, they must have adapted the code from Heaven 7 (hi Picard). An infinite zoom a la Contour follows, when the camera dives into the title. A solar system with planets appear when higher levels of detail are generated, and we fly through the cloudy sky of the blue planet. The destination is a rustic farm with sheep, lying between grassy hills. This landscape looks really good, although it's actually done with a clever 2D trick. The main part of the demo is an animated sequence of several objects on a desktop: a clock, a jar of yogurt, cubes, pencils and a big desktop lamp. All these objects are asleep at the start, snoring and breathing slowly, until the clock starts to ring and everyone jumps into action. All the movements are fluently and realistic, for as far as you can say that about (normally) inanimate things. IMHO the best thing is the water floating out a flask and soaking a little cube. A small clipping bug is visible when the lamp jumps on a ball, you can see the ball moving through the foot of the lamp for a second. There are shadows all over the demo, to show of that this is software rendering, although the edges of the shadows are coarser than the edges of the normal polys. The music isn't a single tune, but more a soundtrack for the movements on the screen. It starts like a song to lull children asleep, there are symphonic parts, fast-paced classical music, sudden silences with voices singing a capella, ... Plus it has separate sound-effects like snoring, whistling, bangs etc. The intro, outro and main tune are all MP3s, probably to limit the filesize. Overall: Spot is an almost pure 3D demo, but one of the best animated I've seen, and the music fit like a glove. It doesn't have a real story, but it does suffer a bit from deja vu after having it seen a few times. And the fact that it's software-only is bad news for those with a slow CPUs :( Well, if you can't watch it now, put it on your "demos to check out when I've bought a new PC"-list, cause it's worth seeing at least once. --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Intro Watch "Sink" by Pulse By: Gekko ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- 64k intro at The Party 1997 Authors: Camel, Thor, Falcon, Lazur, Unreal Notes: This intro requires DOS and GUS; both of them are quite hard to find today. It starts under Windows but freezes in the middle. There are hidden options: 'sink.exe /save' will create a big data file on the disk, but later on the intro will load much faster if started as 'sink.exe /load'. I would have liked to review a new intro, but I haven't found any that was good enough. That is why I went back in time so much. 'Sink' is a realtime raytracing intro. It was very famous in its day for its fast code. Since then the speed of an average PC has increased radically and there have been more complex intros of this kind (eg. 'Rubicon', 'Heaven 7'). Despite this 'Sink' have not lost its value. The code has still remained impressing in 2000, even if one notices that the objects are too blocky. Apart from a light spot effect there is nothing else but raytracing. There are several scenes, ranging from abstract ones (flying spheres, waving walls) to ones which resemble reality (underwater scene, meadow with trees). The latter type does not mean photorealistic 3d worlds either, naturally. Instead, all the scenes together guide the watcher to an abstract and very simplified virtual world. The psychedelic waving of the screen also contributes towards the abstract feeling. The mood of the music fits this most well. The music is a 'demo style' song. One can notice that the instruments had to be seriously downsampled to fit in less than 64 kilobytes. This is unfortunately quite annoying most of the time; it is a pity because the tune itself is very good. There is a very fine pixelised 'Sink' logo and a 'Pulse' logo screen (but the quality of the latter is ruined by the lossy compression, again due to the need to fit in 64k). The textures are computer generated. They are fine, though the colors are not the best. The graphics, effects and the music together express a strange mood. This mood makes this intro interesting to be watched many times. --Gekko --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Editorial Time to Move On? By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- A lot of influential people have left the scene while I still cannot fathom myself ever leaving. People "retire" from the scene every day. Many weren't very well recognized while they were here. Some didn't contribute very much. Others are well known and their departure is widely recognized. But it doesn't affect everyone, and it affects everyone differently. When Necros stopped being active in the scene, I'll be honest, I have yet to truly miss him. He released a lot of music, and aside from his music, I didn't have much contact with him. Besides, I still have several songs of his that I have yet to hear (especially at alphaconspiracy.com). But when someone close to you decides to throw in the towel, it strikes you down...breathless. When I came to the scene, I jumped from group to group until I finally found a group that I felt at home. I have called myself a member of Immortal Coil for many years (well, not iC is dead, but nevermind that). At the time I joined, Shaithis and Rhythm Greene were the guys in charge. They were good friends, they were my inspiration, and they were a joy to hang around on #immortal with. Unfortunately, the time came when life piled it on too thick for them, and they no longer had interest in dealing with scene polotics. They pulled me aside one day and told me that the group was mine to lead, because they were both retiring from the scene. Uh...now what? Okay, so I wasn't left out on my own. I did have friends in the scene, and I had plenty of contact with the scene. But I was a bit emotional for the next few days (occasionally, I still am when I think about old skool iC). It is a concept that I don't understand. What is life without the scene? I truly don't know. I'm sure that one day I'll get to that point. After all, no one wants to hang out with a 70 year old tracker anyhow, writing all that antique music, and still useing my DOS version of Impulse Tracker. But to me, the scene is not about that old tracker that I've been useing for X number of years. It's not about the award winning tunes that I may have one. I have memories: of music, of people, of ideas, of competitions. Seriously though, when is the proper time to move on? When should one leave the scene? The truth is, you may leave, but you'll never forget the scene. If you've lost your passion, take a break. It'll come back one day. If not, then you should ask yourself if you had an enjoyable time while you were here. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Scene Sense Where the heck did our values go? By: PsiTron ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- I have tried to figure out exactly what I was going to say for my first 'official' article for Static Line. I went through a lot of drafts of ideas and such and realized I was trying to dig too deep for a topic, when the topic had always been in front of me. So here goes. First I must say that I am an anti-Windows person that really does not care for mp3's in the scene, that is true. I cannot deny it, but because of that my opinions may differ from yours, but hear me out, at the very least. For I would like to explore the reason, at least the original one, why Demoscener's do what they do. Well, they write demos and create modules, duh, obviously. That is not in question here. The real question is WHY do people write demos or mods. What the heck purpose do they have? Well, originally demos seemed to be designed as a challenge to make the most of your hardware. At the time that this idea originally surfaced, C64's were still popular. Granted, if one takes a look at the 'old-skewl' demos on the C64, they look like complete crap, at least in comparison to today's demos. That, however, is circumstantial - the true fantatic still watches the demos, I am sure, just as true Zelda fanatics still play the game (even though they can beat it in under an hour, usually with their eyes closed). Just as a chip-fan still listens to chips, at least for their nostalgic value. One mustn't forget the original .MODs where one was forced to do a very similar thing - make the best with what you have (in that case 4 channels, 1 effects column, no NNAs, no rez and 8-bit samples). That is still true for today's modules, though many people find seem it limiting instead of inspiring. And, of course, whether it be for inspiration of just from shear addiction, people still watch demos like (yes, here I have to mention it) Second Reality. What possess people to listen to the piercing sounds of chiptunes? Because we (talking as a chip-fanatic) appreciate the special style involved in producing such a piece of music. Some people cringe at the bleeps and sinewave basses. Others delight in the artistic beauty of them. MODs are and were the same way. It is a trade of sorts. Demos are part of that trade. But to re-establish my point, what do demos, and tracks alike say today? Some of them, fortunately, are saying the same ideas that the by now ancient demos said: "Look at what we can do with our hardware!" and "I bet you're wondering how I did that mad-phat effect without using a riff and only 4 channels!" It is true that I, myself, being one who tries to stick to the original set values of the scene enjoy the ambience and messages of the more modern demos. Of course I do - it gives the artists behind the demos an incredible power and hightens the emotions expressed within demos, but I think that the fundamental idea of why demos are made, and even why chiptunes and MODs are made have escaped some people. If one wants to present a profound message without giving full regard to the fundamental idea of demos, why not simply make an AVI? That way one does not have to worry about the limits of memory or processing speed, etc. Why not make an MP3 instead of being forced to fine-tune a module? To be more specific, why cut corners by using pre-written libraries that one knows to be less efficient, or use multitudes of easy-to-make riffs when one can have the enjoyment of at least attempting it in a module? Has the scene gotten lazy? Lost it's way? Confused? Truthfully, I do know what caused it, though there are many theories. I could care less what caused it. My job, as a real and true scener is to find a way to fix it. Some of you may think insane to like DOS or chiptunes (yes, I know I keep mentioning that). Well, that is your opinion, but I hope one day you can experience the joy of finally, after countless hours, making a little piece of near-perfection in such an imperfect world... This has been the first time I have delved into writing articles for an e-mag (or for any thing, really), so I welcome suggestions, but take note that I tend to be an opinionated individual, and my opinions may not be the best out there, but the purpose of this article is to inspire thinking, and yes, sometimes argument. Because in doing so more can be learned about the scene, which way it is going, what should be done, etc. Again, I welcome comments (could use help with making a better title =), and thanks for reading! --PsiTron --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Scene Dirt News & Rumors By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Upcoming Alpha Conspiracy CD -=- There is a tidbit of information about an upcoming alpha conspiracy CD at the following link. This will be updated over time. For now, you can get an MP3 preview of a song to be released on this CD. Frequent visitors to the site will find a secret directory of his music. http://www.alphaconspiracy.com/audio_cd.html -=- Oldskool Artist Pages on mp3.com -=- Fans of Siren/Sandman, Teque and Stereoman should check out pages of interest on mp3.com They are as follows: Alexander Brandon (Siren/Sandman) http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/135/ospf.html Teque http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/83/teque.html Stereoman http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/165/george_marinov.html -=- DJ in a Box -=- Some of you out there have been interested in broadcasting your music. Well, DJ in a Box makes this easy over an IceCast or ShoutCast server. For more information, check out this side project of our technical consultant, Ranger Rick. http://www.djiab.org -=- Scene.org moves to Netherlands -=- The Scene.org servers are not dead. In fact, they are moveing the services to the Netherland's server. The move is inconvenient, but the servers should be faster, and have much more diskspace. The entire process should take another week. --Coplan Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that you think should be here, contact coplan (coplan.ic@rcn.com) and offer as much information as possible. --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Link List ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Demo Groups: 3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org Damage...................................http://come.to/damage Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~exceed Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/~rattgrif Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch Music Groups: Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com Azure...................................http://azure-music.com Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp BrothomStates.............http://www.katastro.fi/brothomstates Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/~cnd Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/~boris/fabtrax/home.htm Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge Fusion Music Crew................http://members.home.nl/cyrex/ Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org LackLuster.....................http://www.m3rck.net/lackluster Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/~mon MAZ's Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/~maz Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org Noerror......................http://www.error-404.com/noerror/ One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruff_engine SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com Others: Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde #coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2 Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/~hugi-compo Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm DiskMags / SceneMags: Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/di_mag Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/~hugidownload Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage Planet Chartmag...........http://www.agravedict.art.pl/planet/ Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline http://www.scenespot.org/staticline Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de FTPs: Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl --=--=-- ----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------ Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com Gekko / Gergely Kutenich / mont@tar.hu Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / TigerHawk@stic.net Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz Virt / virt@bellsouth.net Technical Consult: Ranger Rick / Ben Reed / ranger@scenespot.org Static Line on the Web: http://www.scenespot.org/staticline Static Line Subscription Management: http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/static_line 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@scenespot.org). See you next month! -eof---=------=--=------=--=--