Well, "the party" is over, and things seem a little quiet for now, so I'll just list a couple downloads you may like to check out.
On POS you can grab the spec for the "ATM-Turbo +2", a clone of the classic spectrum. I've got it queued, but frankly it's a lower priority than the Red Faction demo, but that's a PC thing, so please accept my apologies.
Also you can grab the latest version of "ZX Navigator v1.3", from DJH Downloads. It's a "windows-like shell for ZX". Or could that be a "ZX-supporting shell for windows"? Hmm. Best get it and find out, hmmm?

Okay, a quick post again tonight, just with something I think is kinda important. It's the CC1 pre-results. Thanks go to DJ Hooligan for sending these on to me. Of coz I'll confirm these when the official results are released. As I write this there's no result-based update on there (or mebbe I'm simply missing it), so we'll go with this for now:

<font size="-1"> 512 byte intro
1 - BoomBoom - Red Alex/CTL
2 - Insult - Asman/Proxium
3 - Nop - Mad Cat
graphics compo
1 - ???? - Pheel/PHT
2 - X-zema - Paracels/Placebo
3 - Among Us - GAS-13
demo compo
1 - Stellar Contour - Brainwawe
2 - Lifeforms - Placebo
3 - Love Gun - VolgaSoft
4 - Jaundice - Skreamer
5 - ???? - Eye-Q
</font>

Yay! Now we just need to wait for the releases, right? Well click on the 3rd-place in the graphics compo and you can get to Gas13's website, where he's posted his entry. Nice work, eh?
As I said, these are pre-results, so don't start complaining that you're missing a prize yet, eh!?

Well as I write this, CC1 should be beginning in a few hours. Or did it start a few hours ago? Hell, I'm crap with timezones.
Anyway, if you're at the party, then enjoy it, and good luck with your entries to the compos. Assuming they pass pre-selection, of coz <g>

Via a round-about route (ie. from Yerz) I got this information from Andy Davis. Actually, I noticed it posted on CSS too, but neglected to mention it :/

"Please tell EVERYONE that AlchNews is back on the net for free!
I've bought Adobe Acrobat and converted the issues to PDF format!!!
I'm uploading the issues right now."

WOW! Someone else who actually buys software. And I thought it was just me. Guessing the download URL for this little lot is/will be the official Alchemist Research page.

In case you're interested in games'n'things, there's three of them been posted over at POS. Now to be honest, there's only a couple ZX games I still like to play, namely Rex and perhaps Zolyx. But if you yearn for something more, you can go grab:

• Humphrey
• Hobgoblin
• F16 Fighting Falcon

Guessing they're .TRDos.

Another exclusive for WOS as they announce the release of the latest version of the fantastic AY-Emulator. As I write, it's not posted on the official page, so get your baaad self over to WOS and grab the download.

I'm sure there're a bunch of you out there who thrive on techie stuff. I do.
So I thought I'd pass on a couple links to you. The first one I found on WOS, and it's a link to the Complete DISCiPLE Disassembly by Rudy Biesma. I don't have a DISCiPLE, but it could be of interest to someone.
More importantly (no offence Rudy) is the latest update to the CSS FAQ (note the new URL). Can you believe it's the first update for a year (according to the updates page anyway). The FAQ is now maintained by a group of people rather than a single being, Andy Davis, Philip Kendall, and Andrew Owen, all regulars of CSS. So, what's new? Here's a quickie:

• Removed all sites from the FAQ which contain programs which the copyright holder has requested not be distributed.
• More new and updated Resources and Where Is...? information.
• Moved the main site again. Sorry for any inconvience... also, the Norwegian mirror of the FAQ is back up to date again, and there are two new UK mirrors: 1, 2, a new US mirror and a new Brazilian mirror. Finally, one of the Dutch mirrors has moved, but the other has gone away.
• Added the Amiga port of x128, the BeOS emulator Beccy, the Windows emulators GLECK and SpecEmu, the Dreamcast emulator DreamSpec and the Psion 3 emulator ZXemul - two more platforms with Speccy emulators!
• Updated the information on ASp, Finspe, Fuse, JASPE, JX-Speccy, RealSpectrum, SEM, Spectrum 48 (C64), TeZXas, UKV Spectrum Debugger, YaSE, XZX-Pro and Z80Stealth.
• Added RetroSpec to the Essential Sites section.
• Added the '#speccy' channel to the IRC section.
• Added some more +3 utilities to Question 20.
• Added the flash timings to the Technical Information section.
• Added the +2A/+3 RGB output to the Pinouts section.

Isn't cut-n-paste grand.
So, go get stuck in.

Okay I got my first response to yesterday's post already. It's from Mac Buster, a guy who's opinion I respect (hey, he's put me straight on a few things). So I'll post it here and make a few comments of my own.

"What a strange and weird idea you have about "non .ru" and "anti-euro"! Who told you about this??"

Feedback from a few people, both on the X-board and in other discussions. I've not had first-hand experience, but then my ZX output is kinda low these days. It just seems oddly coincidental that some very good work that gets stopped during pre-selection is from Europe. Can we assume the same is true for all entries, wherever they're from? Perhaps I only hear from the .euro's?

"Preselection team in music compo usually consist of several well known musicians (some of them are professional ones), and only kicks out really low quality and not original entries (e.g. already shown at a party, and so on)."

I kinda expected this was the case, tho' I know that in some competitions the pre-selection committee can consist of just one-or-two people. As for low quality, I've heard/seen some very good work that's been rejected for competitions. I guess this could just be a matter of taste. At least I think we should be told who the pre-selection committee is for each competition (so we can send bribes <g>).

"Nobody sits and checks if entry is from another country or from a person you dislike, etc. In fact none of preselection team knows whose entry is played/shown (in case of demo and gfx) at the moment. And surely an entry will be kicked out only if all team says it does not worth to be shown to party visitors."

Again I will point out that I've seen some good work kicked out by pre-selection. And it's not just work by RA (tho' we seem to be more vocal at times about things like this). I urge people to read the discussions on the board, specifically ones by Gasman and Slayar. They make some good points, especially about not losing the work.
One of my concerns is that if good work doesn't get into a competition, it could annoy people to the point of them not creating more. As we've seen recently, entries to competitions have been dropping (tho' there's quite a good turnout so far for CC1). If any work has lost out to the pre-selectors, then send it out so we can see/hear what we're missing.

Okay, checking a couple sites out, and found some information about CC1, and specifically the entries to the competitions.
As you'll be aware there's some "discomfort" about the pre-selection of entries into the compos, but this translated text could give some good news: "...jobs for other Competitions you can bring with yourselves and to hand over prior to the beginning appropriate ZX Compo without any limitations."
Okay, I think you get the idea (don't you love translations!?). Grabbed this from POS, it's some news from a couple days ago. Basically there's a lot of AY-tunes entered into the competition so far, but it looks like the other compos may go ahead without pre-selection. Did I read that right?
As for the entries into the categories, I grabbed this from Scenergy:

• 32k Game - 1 entry
• 4k intro - 2 entries
• 512b intro - 3 entries
• ZX Gfx - 30 entries
• AY-Music - 26 entries

Well, that's a fair few AY-tunes to sit through. Wonder if they'll all be released after the party?

We all like to look at stuff. It's why some brainiac invented eyes. So there's a couple pages you may want to check to make use of this feature of your head:

• Over on the homepage of the Sprinter you can look at the mainboard for this beast stuck neatly into an AY case. There's also a slight FAQ-mod, but I'll leave you to guess what that is.
• Gas13 has posted 3 new (old!?) images to his website for your visual feasting. This stuff is always of a high quality, so take a peek.