Scenergy spotted that a new version of the Burial Graphics Editor has been released. v2.33 is mainly a bugfix, so I'll leave the details. Pop over to Scenergy to grab the file.

Update your bookmarks, the CSS FAQ has moved. I guess it's a result of the old host "buggering around", resulting in some downtime. Mind you, it brought about a few new mirrors, which can't be a bad thing. The new URL of the FAQ is http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/cssfaq/. Stop over if you have a spare few minutes.

Couple things, just to get them out of the way on this quiet day:

• I've finally added DJ Fist to the members list on the left. Hope everyone's there now. Note that changes to this list are only on the main page for now. I'll re-write the rest of the pages when "the change" goes ahead (ahem).
• Demotopia has put up details of the two forthcoming "events", Final Shoque and Spectrumania 2k.
• Scenergy has another update of the CC000 results, this time a clarification of the 4k intros.

Now go upstairs wash your hands for lunch.

I've heard from a number of places some rumours about uber-emulator RealSpectrum. I don't want to give any clues away as to things to expect in the forthcoming beta8 apart from saying that I've been informed it'll be released in a few days time. No, most of the information I have is relating to the not-even-thought-of beta9.
First up, Davide Barlotti is minus a Scorpion right now, as he's lent it to the Ramsoft team to allow them to better emulate this machine. I've never seen any major problems with the Scorpion emulation, but then I've never had a real Scorpion to compare it with. The results of this could see themselves in either of the upcoming betas.
The next rumour is of more interest to me, and perhaps a lot of the European scene. Work on Beta9 will commence right after Beta8 is released, and one of the items supposedly on the agenda is support for MB02. If you don't know this interface then pop over to Sintech for some tech-info. It really is a dream interface, with support for tape-emulation on disk, DMA, IM2-while-loading, ... and now it might be included in an emulator at last. Perhaps we'll see a few new users of it out there now.
I should finally remind you that these are rumours... hopefully they're true, but maybe they're not. If this is the case... hassle Sanchez for the features you want <g>.

In the middle of todays main posts, some gumption:

• Seems that ZXBN-guru Minisoft has had a slight accident. He's suffered from (now where was that translation?) dislocation and a fracture in his right hand. I'm making none of the obvious remarks (you're good at that yourselves), so I'll leave it by sending out a "Get Well Soon".
• Slight update of the CC000 results over at Scenergy. "Surely worth it's own post!!", I hear you cry, but it's just a slight update, clarifying the 14th place in the Alternative Music competition. You want to know who it was? Go find out, you know I usually only cover top-3's <g>
• Scenergy has also had a couple game-updates, which I'm only mentioning as one of them is called Pussy. It's not available for download on the site yet, as it's only an early beta version.
• Looks like, as of tomorrow, Eternity Industry, who wrote the winning demo at CC000 (Dogma for those who forgot), are 3 years old. Happy birthday.
• Ork of LFG has had a nick-change. He's now called Screamer. I would comment that this will just confuse people, but I'm guilty of the same thing a few years back.
• Those last two news-nuggets were courtesy of Scenergy. Never let it be said that I don't give credit where it's due.
• Virtual TR-DOS has had an update, again with a huge list of zine's for download. But there's also an MP3 of the track they released at CC000 (for the non-existant MP3-compo, it seems).
• Raww Arse is now joined by Namco. Actually, he's been a part of RA for a long time, but I'm slack, and have only just added him to the email list. It's done now. If you're wondering why him, Kolbeck and DJ Fist are not listed on the personnel page yet, it's because the site will soon be having a dramatic shift, and I want to wait until that's complete before updating old stuff. Good excuse? I think so.

All of it newsworthy, but crammed into a tiny space to save time.

There's been a bit of a discussion of late over on X-Agon's board about "Old-Skool" demos. For those of you who are already lost, old-skool demos are the ones from "way-back-when", with scrollers, and raster-fx, and sprites, and... you get the idea. The discussion is scarily intelligent (it's not just "Old-Skool roxx" and "Old-Skool suxx"). A large amount of it focuses on the over-use of Chunks (you know, the grey-scale fx that were amazing when they first appeared), and that perhaps, Old-Skool demos had more heart to them.
I'm not certain which side of the fence I'm on. I like Old-Skool demos (just check my entry to ZX-Party 2000, K-22 - Bobs... how much more old-skool do you want?). But I also can appreciate the direction demos are taking using chunk-fx. It's also good to see groups moving away from chunks, especially the Russian groups, who can do these fx nicely on their souped-up Spectrum clones.
I've had ideas for demos using both Chunks and Old-Skool FX. Seems that I'm just going to have to balance precariously on the barbed-wire fence for now. Go have your say.

Finally for this afternoon, a couple little dollops of news:

• MacBuster pointed out to me that the previously-mentioned HRip is an archiver, not a compressor. Confused? It's simple, and archiver packs up a bunch of files, a compressor squashes a lump of memory. I blame it all on the translation-engine.
• Scenergy have full details of the results of CC000, but the only change I can find is the addition of PC and Amiga results. If this is your kinda thing then pop over there and grab them. And while you're there, you can check out the new stats page. No, it's not a place to find out Arty's bra-size, it's just a way to find out who's actually reading the page.
• YaSE has had an update to v0.8a, and I've also added it to my emu-list.

There you go. I'm off to find some Flash work I did about a year ago. Go play.

Well, after the downtime from last week (it didn't actually last very long), ZXBN is back up-n-running, and has had a few additions to the setup. Aside from some new buttons available for linking (you can see one on the left), there are now 3 supported sizes for buttons-and-banners. The standard banner (470x60) is still available, of coz, but now you can create banners of size 100x100, and buttons of 88x31. Looks like I may have to redo my buttons (they're a little "off").
Anyway, the members page has been split up into "size" categories, and each list is continuing to grow rapidly. If your site's not listed, go get designing!

Missed this one in CSS, so thanks to Gasman for pointing it out. These are some selected cuts from a post by FBI:

" Welcome to the new century: Spectrumania 2000 in Germany
25.11.2000, Opening at 10.00 o´clock, Open End
As there hadn't been so much meetings in Germany this year, some worried about the Spectrumania. Keep cool, guys, the Spectrumania will be like in all the last years!!!
This time it is a little bit later the year, but we thought it is a very good date, as there seemed to be no other Spectrum-Shows worldwide in November and this will make it possible to everyone to visit the show.
Again we will have no special Demo-Competition this year, but we plan to organise some other competitions to test your knowledge about Spectrum. But there could be also some spontaneous competitions like when some Game-Players like to compete against others, which is very usual at the Spectrumania. Also we will have a big special surprise, so be patient and come to the Spectrumania. "

Well, although it's not a demoparty, it could be a good chance to meet up with some other Speccy-fans. It's a one-and-a-half-day event (if you include the evening before the meet) held in Sindelfingen, South-West Germany, near Stuttgart. There's a whole load on information about getting there in the full post (a copy of it is here). If I wasn't so busy at work, I'd consider going myself. You can mail FBI for more info.

There's a post over on speccy.scenews from Unbel!ever\X7M regarding the demoscene and inparticular, CC000. You can download two reports on these subjects, in .PDF format, as printed in Russian 'zine, World of Internet (note: I think that's the correct name). The demoscene report serves as an introduction to the scene as a whole, followed by a special on Chaos Constructions. The full magazine is on sale in Russia now, for those who can get it.
I should mention that the reports are probably in Russian too -- I'm about to find out when the downloads complete.

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Just a short note to mention that there's now a voter-stats section to Gas13's webpage. Not related to the demoscene reports, but it fits in here nicely, and yet again I'm too tired to do more work.