Yeah yeah yeah. Another "Blah!", but what can I say. It's been another of those weekends. I've been really busy, but nothing seems to have been done. So, a quick round-up:

• Well, first up there's another update at the home of Sprinter. They have some downloadable AY-tunes. Ehm... as MP3. I've got it queued, why not use up that lovely bandwidth.
• Kristoph got back to me about my recent comments on the NuoTrauka results. He picked the l337 voters. Of coz I shouldn't complain coz, as he pointed out, I didn't even vote. I guess I should, but hey, I like to remain "impartial".
• Another note from Kristoph appeared on the POS-page mentioning that the deadline for articles for Scream#2 is August 5th. Articles are welcome in English, too <g>
• Phantasy's loss is Triumph's gain, as Raver splits one for the other.
• There's been a batch of updates over at Project-AY, the AY-track archive. A few new games, and some new demos. New demo-tracks in this update include ones from "Branch Of Mind", "Inner Universe", etc.
• Added a button and a link to Freedom Association. Nice site but, natch, very non-English again :[
• DJ Hooligan has posted a bunch of plug-ins for that sweet-as-pie graphics proggy, Burial Graphics Editor.
• Couple nice new downloads at POS: Insanity #9 (a 'zine), and "24 bit generators of the frequency tables for music player from Pro-Tracker". Ehm, okay then.
• New version of Hyperion Player is available over at RealSoft.
• I'm currently sorting out a couple "security issues" with some news-posting code. It'll hopefully be up-n-running soon.

I hope that things will be back to normal very quickly.

Another short gap, but it seems like the scene is relatively quiet right now. I guess it's an "exams and summertime" thing, tho' the summer appears to have finished here in England. Looking out of the window, it's dark and gloomy. Rain. Hmph.
But a good thing is, it's like this tomorrow... and I'm not at work <g>.
Okay, so I had plans for tomorrow (like setting up my new DTS-Amp, and sorting out the posting-shit for this page), but something's come up. Well, I still get a lie-in.
So, on with a couple news-things from the past couple days, then I'll check what today has brought us.

• Spotted a post on Scenet yesterday saying the Smash Band have no more coders. Looks like Thrash was a little pissed at something Grunge (of RA and SB) wrote in an article in the recent Scream#1 'zine.
• Got an interesting URL in my mailbox, for a site titled ZX-Link. It's a collection of links to sites dedicated to the Speccy. Worth a check out, although I don't see raww.org in there. Have to rectify that.
• Thanks to Raver for sending me some details of a Speccy Games Competition. Organised by Fun Forge Inc, you stand to win up to $250. Worth the work, if games are what float your boat. More details are on LCD's homepage (which I've just noticed I don't have a link to here).
• Another new link I have is to Loaded Spectrum. It's a discussion-board for all things Speccy. Quite a few posts there, but I've not had a chance to check the chatter. Worth a look, certainly.
• While I was at LSF, I spotted a couple other sites you may have passed-by: "Congratulations Archive" (snapshots of end-games); "Gamestage" (an odd combination of PC and Speccy games). Okay, both games-sites more than anything, but that's retro for ya.

Okay, that'll do for the moment. More later perhaps.

Okay, another little slack period from me there. You notice it usually happens over a weekend. Heh, sometimes beer holds more importance than other things <g>.
Couple new thingies to post:

• Spotted a new version of the Hrip compressor (archiver, if you prefer), posted on the fido7.zx.spectrum newsgroup. Not sure what new advances v1.04 brings, but I'm guessing it's either more speed or more compression. I also notice it's posted on POS, so you could trip over there and get it.
• Checked out the news on Virtual TRD, and they have a few new files to check out: Spriter v1.05 (the sprite editing kit, oddly enough); Body 2B (a 'zine); "Marrow in the World of Wisdom" (a game I think).

Just spotted an update over at Speccy4Ever. There's been some info posted there about the Speccy clone, the Kay-1024. Well, there's a couple photos posted there anyway. You can find them in the BuiltinSpeccy/Hardware section of the site.

As well as the results from the recent NuoTrauka virtual party, Gasman has posted a few new demos to the archive. There's an old bit of work, Music Demo part 1 by Dark Night / Himik's. And there's, as G puts it, "the totally bizarre Rabbit In Rage series." Not checked this series out yet (well, I only just got back from work, and now have to go out drinking). But I'll check it soon. It's queued up.

Hey, emu's are flying up left-right-and-centre. A new one has just appeared for the Gameboy Advance. It's titled ZX Advance, and I have to say I've not yet checked it out. However, I was reading some news over on /. the other day about an emulator of the GBA for PC. I even used it as an excuse to plug the Speccy <g>.
So another level of emu-stacking comes in... running a Speccy on a GBA on a PC. Any more for any more?

While everyone else seems to be raving about the recent DooM screenshots from the Sprinter, I've just spotted some news that they've added support for the Kempston mouse when you run the machine in Spectrum mode. Nice little addition there.

MicroSpeccy. Beta 6. Just released.
Not entirely sure of the changes, but according to the page, it has everything that'll be in the final version, except for the frontend. Changes to the actual MSpage state simply: "Sound chip - AY-3-8910/12 and YM2149F, all standard channels combination on output", and "Sound - 16 bit, 44100 Hz, stereo". Of coz that could just be WSW playing up.

Well, got home from work and found a textfile waiting for me in my mailbox. The textfile contained the results to the recent Virtual-party, NuoTrauka. So, here's a quick rundown:

<font size="-1"> Music / Popular results
1 - First Trip - Sergant/FBN
2 - It's Timing - Vox/ALC
3 - Imagination - Nik-o/TL
Graphics / Popular results
1 - U R Dun - Gas13
2 - Conan - Drawer/Entire
3 - Kin Ship (key la!) - Survivor
ASCII / Popular results
1 - Zilog XXI - Falcon/Kingdom Dreams
2 - CTL - Kristoph/CTL
3 - Am I God? - Screamer/JMB
Music / l337 results
1 - Opine - Siril/FTD
2 - Dream Girl - Key-Jee/TBK
3 - It's Timing - Vox/ALC
Graphics / l337 results
1 - Kin Ship (key la!) - Survivor
2 - U R Dun - Gas13
3 - Kanopee - Kristoph/CTL
ASCII / l337 results
1 - CTL - Kristoph/CTL
2 - I Am Gay - Kristoph/CTL
3 - Am I God? - Screamer/JMB
</font>

Okay. Some interesting results, specifically the l337 results. The idea behind these is that they're the results from only a few hand-picked sceners votes. It'd be interesting to know who picked the l337 sceners (hey, I know I wouldn't be one, but...). And also when they were picked. I mean... the guy who counted the votes suddenly did much better in the l337 section. But mebbe I'm just being sceptical <g>.
Good work all those who took part. You can find the full textfile with the results here.

Okay, this could also be called "a message from MacB". Just got an email from the bloke, with a message he's asked me to post. So, I'm just gonna cut-n-paste it:

" In issue 1 of ZX-Charts it was said that both TeeRay and Visual left Extreme Entertainment. This is dirty LIE! They are still members of Extereme. In issue 1 of Scream magazine was also said that TeeRay converted "X-Files" picture. This is dirty LIE too! He drew that picture pixel-by-pixel in ArtStudio just WATCHING to the printed original poster, and he had never used any conversions! All his pictures are 100% handdrawn ones. "

There. A bit of controversy never hurt, eh?
Incidentally, if either of the 'zines feels like responding, I'll be happy to post it here <g>.