Sergey has been hard at work making improvements and fixes to Vortex Tracker II, the PC-based ZX tracker editing software. As I've mentioned before, I really can't comment much on this application due to my somewhat limited musical talents. Suffice to say, if you use it you'd do well to update to v1.0 beta 6 sometime soon. Of interest to several people will be news that the ZX PT3 player by Alone Coder alledgendly contains a bug relating to the calculation of portamento (it's a music thing).
Details of the changes are...

There's been another major update to the TZX Vault, a site dedicated to providing "exact" TZX images of ZX tapes and disks (and expanding to provide Amstrad, C64, Vic20...). There's loads of updates, certainly too many to list here, so well worth a look for that elusive rare game you're after.
And on the subject of rare games, the team are expecting this to be the last major update for some time - it's getting expensive purchasing the rare tapes from the MIA list, just to fill in the gaps. So if you think the Vault is a good site, why not help out -- at the very least check in your attic to see if you have anything they need.

Was looking at the ZX Rainbow page and I see that there's a new version available for download. As ever it's a little tricky to work out just what's changed, especially as it's still touted as the "June" release, tho' the version state is August 12. I think maybe the database thing has been updated, as there's certainly a new WOS database for inclusion in the package.
There's also a new tool on the page, ZX-Paintbrush - as you may have guessed from the name it's a screen$ editor for Windows. It looks ok, with some nice features including conversion to .scr from other formats. At the moment I don't think it will replace my preferred choice of a combination of Bmp2Scr and SevenuP, tho' it's certainly one to watch.

Sergey has been hard at work bugfixing AY-Emulator and has released beta 5 of the v2.8 branch. The main change is relating to problems with the emulator when there is no CD drive present in the host system. In addition there are fixes with play potitioning, WaveOut synchronisation, improved visualisation, and some additional items for the song-name with STC tracks. All good stuff, so go download it.

Was just looking at the Opensource ZX, searching for a little inspiration, and I noticed that it's had it's latest update a few days ago. You can go grab the source for, among other things, the Antique Toy Voteform (you know, the one that you need TRDOS to run), the Bugsy Gift 23 demo, MDS Player, and more. Worth checking out.
On the subject of source code, I'm reminded of the poll from a while ago relating to the democoding FAQ (thanks to some nudging from Evilpaul). I'm going to look into doing something on this project -- I think it will mainly be source code (complete or incomplete) with explanations on how it works. Kind of a "How the hell did they do that?" approach. Of course, it will need input from the community to be successful, but I have a couple articles almost ready. An explanation of the SoundTracker player for example (with fully-commented source - it's actually one of the pending FAQ questions), and I'm also looking at some compression routines. So if you have a routine that you'd like to explain to "the public", keep raww.org in mind. I'll try to get something up-n-running.

I noticed that C-Jeff has posted the results of the Antique Toy competition over on Scenergy. I can't upload them to the server at the moment, so instead I'll cut-and-paste them here. Just click on "Read More" to see the full results and some "critique"...

Well it seems from an email from Chunin Roman, via Flydream, via Yerzmyey, that the Sprinter is no longer in development. Peters Plus, the developers of the machine have decided to close the project (I've included a link, tho' the site is very out-of-date). There's a small possibility that development will continue with another company if the original developer (Ivan Mak) can be located.
In the meantime, it's reported that NedoPC, developers of the Sprint emulator, are preparing to manufacture the ATM Turbo 2+ version 7.10. Or it may be Maxim Timonin, the creator of it. Either way details of the machine follow...

After a short delay while I actually got some sleep, the Assembly results and releases for the Speccy are now on Demotopia; in particular, you can now grab C-Jeff's entry Flying With "Never Noised" as a TAP file.

This time Speccy scene representation was up slightly from previous Assemblies, with myself, EvilPaul and Moroz1999 (of General Sound interface fame) in attendance. Unfortunately actual Spectrums were thin on the ground, thanks to the incompetence of British Airways who left my Speccy 128 / DivIDE setup (and equally crucially, my sleeping bag) to rot in the dungeons of Heathrow Airport until Sunday. As a result the Speccy entries had to be presented in not-so-glorious emulator-vision. A further, not entirely related, technical hitch came to light when the music entries were played back with a bad case of track-skipping, which might partly explain the rather disappointing Speccy placings in the results. The EvilPaul-and-friends demo (you really need a name for your group, guys!) had better luck on the big screen, but was up against stiff competition from such Assembly veterans as Dekadence and Da Jormas, and couldn't shift the Speccy from the second-from-last place of last year.

Still, it wasn't all bad. EvilPaul and I were invited to fill in between the oldskool compos on AssemblyTV, the party's live broadcast sent out both online and over Finland's cable network. Interviewed by Setok from the Alternative Party team, we managed to diss the SID sound chip and plug AY Riders and raww.org's forthcoming birthday celebrations. You can grab the footage from scene.org (look for the oldskool_*_compostudio.avi files).

Speccy scene veterans were prominent elsewhere in the competitions, with Exploder's Rebirth taking original first place in the 4K intro (before being disqualified for covering a commercial track, unfortunately) and AND's Feet4k taking eventual second place in the same compo. And hopefully it's not too self-centred of me to mention that my Javascript demo Mooncheese won the Browser Demo compo...

A quick mention here that the deadline for the Minigame contest has been extended to Sunday 26^th of September. I guess it's a result of the oddly pleasant weather we've had here in the UK over the last few days. Maybe now I'll work on my idea for a (mini)game, which I may well call "FishBowl". Oh yes, that's got you all thinking, eh?

Here's a funny thing. Despite the fact that I went and downloaded the magazine, and even had a quick skip through the news and articles... I completely forgot to mention that there's a new issue of ZXF available for download. My apologies to young Mr Woodcock, who manages to put together a great scene'zine, worthy of your office's hard-earned laser toner cartridges.
Amongst all the news are some details on this years Minigame contest (more news on that later), a look back at 1985, and our own Matt 'Gasman' Westcott gets to grips with Soundtracker to aid all you budding musicians. There's also a write-up of the CGE-UK, where Juice rather accurately likens Gasman to the ZX-Candyman.
Also while I'm here, I'll mention a new software label started by the ZXF team, to release Interactive Fiction (read that as text adventures, if you like). There's one game... sorry, book available for £1.99 on tape. Or you can just go download it for nowt.