Well, the last poll has ended. The result? Well, for those who actually know what a poll is, it seems new ones every month is the order of the day. So I'll try to put a new one up around the beginning of each month - if I can think of a topic.
The new poll this month is... which feature should next be added to this site. I'm guessing "porn" will win, but consider other stuff too, right?! And if you vote for "something else...", then let us know your idea.
I've kinda fixed the poll display problems (at least in the side of the screen) -- if it's not fixed on your browser (it works lovely in firebird), then let me know.

Here's a quick rundown of some things you may want to go queue up for grabbing from the wonderful internet:

As previously reported, AY-Riders are soon to be playing a concert in sunny Warsaw. In the run-up to this they're going to be played on the Polish station, Radio Jazz - it was supposed to be today but it's delayed until Thursday. If you, like most non-Polish people, live outside Poland you can get the audio stream here apparently, from 11pm Polish time (which is I think 10pm GMT).
Credit for this story goes to a whole load of forums, and also to Vorc.

I've only just had a chance to check my email since the weekend, and I see that LCD has released a new version (v2.10d) of his Bmp2Scr tool. There's a bunch of feature improvements and bugfixes which I'll list below (just click on the Read More bit or something).
The next version (barring any more bugfixes) should be v2.11a, which will see the return of AVI-conversion.
However, I'm still waiting for the version to get to Bmp3Scr! Hehe.

For those who don't read additional information or comments in some of these articles, you may be interested to know that there's an unofficial Sprinter site. There's a little software, hardware info, and docs there - and there's a link to the Shaos forums, where you can ask about the machine (note - i can't get to the forums, but i think that's coz it's lunchtime at work, so everybody is surfing for pr0n and slowing down the our network).
Thanks to flydream for the headsup.

Just up on Scenergy is a post from Alex Xor of Perspective Group stating that last years "Your Game" competition (which I'm sure I mentioned but can't find it here) didn't happen. Unfortunately there were too few entries for the compo to go ahead. However, it has been put back for another time, with the prize fund carrying over - so it's still worth getting your games written, as there's 190usd ready for your wallet.

Just reading over on Vorc, the multi-format chiptune website, about the "ZX Spectrum Orchestra". They are a group of 3 people producing music which... well, I don't know to be honest. I'm not certain if the music is even vaguely ZX-related, but the name is good at least. They've just (ok, the news is about 6 months old) released their first cassette, limited to 48 Kopies (do you see what they did there?!). They played live last summer at Capsule's SuperSonic gig-thing. Incidentally, the Capsule site is worth checking out as they have info on quality bands like "Do Make Say Think", "Berg Sans Nipple", and "Godspeed"... but I digress. There's also a "Supersonic 03" cd available, where you can hear ZX-O. Hmm.
Update: just saw a WOS forum message with a few more links in it... The Register article, and Low Energy Network where you can get the tape, if it's not already sold out.

Yeah, you read the headline right. Hooy-Program have released their latest game, previously available only on the C64, for the ZX Spectrum. "Ucieczka Ze Spejs-Szipu" is an RPG game where... actually I don't know as it's currently only in Polish. Hopefully a translation will appear soon.

If your thirst for tracker-tunes hasn't been quenched following the recent AY-Riders release, then you may be interested to know that Sergey has updated his TR_Songs archive. This update brings it up to v3.4, and a lovely 7.8Mb download covering around 10,800 music modules. Several updates are included (and once I've grabbed the new archive I'll summarise here), along with the "AY Composers List v1.6" by Alone Coder.
You can grab the new archive at the AY-Emulator homepage.

Here's the latest on a variety of up-down websites. Ramsoft is back up after their ISP solved some "technical issues". They even hint that in the next few days there will be some news of RealSpectrum. It looks like sinclairfaq.com, the home of (among others) the CSS FAQ, probably the most comprehensive technical information thingy on the 'net for our beloved machine. There's still no news on Peters Plus, the developers of the Sprinter - and no the .ru site doesn't work either, I just checked. (actually, I just spotted in a forum that there are ISP troubles - hope they're back soon). The ZX-Soft Collection, which formally resided at zxsoft.fatal.ru may soon be moving, possibly to be hosted on the raww.net server. More news on that when it happens.