Just so you know, Baze's DivIDE page is currently down - well actually it's been hacked. Never a nice thing to happen (it happened on my old server). If you go there you're redirected to a site which tries to run some unsigned Java (according to Firefox). I don't have Baze's email address here to be able to contact him, in case he doesn't know yet, so I thought I'd post it here. Just in case the Java does something nasty (tho' in my opinion Java is something nasty).

Large Capacity Storage systems are all the rage for "old" computers at the moment. On the ZX we have several options (the most popular being the DivIDE). So it was interesting to see an update of a project from around 6 years ago to incorporate an IDE controller (it actually may have always had that). I actually think I've not mentioned the Interface 1-bis before, more through ignorance than anything else. The project, as the name suggests, is to provide a device that's compatible with the Interface 1 with some additional features for using mass storage - including the obligatory tape routine traps so you can load in emulator files. If you've already seen the project then the new design is much sleeker, using a single CPLD and SRAM chip... the IDE controller is a separate device. Go have a look.

If you're in the mood to start work on coding a game rather than a demo (tho' why would you be? Do both!), then you may like to know that the next Minigame competition has been announced. Unlike the most recent compo, the categories are 1k, 2k, and 4k, I guess the 8k competition didn't work out as popular as was hoped? The competition officially starts in February, so check out the site for more information.

Quick thanks go to Equinox for spotting that the raww.org RSS Feed had disappeared. I guess it must have gone missing in a recent upgrade. Ho-hum, it's back now.
As a non-related side-note... I just had a parcel arrive with some stuff for the raww.orgy. It's like Christmas all over again!

Purely as a matter of trivia than anything else (and hardly related to the demoscene), we get given diaries at work at the start of every year. Nothing unusual about that I guess. These diaries have an entry for every day that says "on this day in...", so it was interesting to see that on this day 22 years ago (that's January 10th 1985), Uncle Sir Clive Sinclair launched the Sinclair C5 onto an unsuspecting public. So unsuspecting that the car-o-bike was a failure. It's still nice to see one at shows, tho'. I almost considered buying a couple that popped up on ebay recently, in order to have races around the car park. Maybe next time.

Just a quick round-up of upcoming parties that you need to produce work for. There's actually just the two in the immediate future (that I know of - are there others in the next few months?). raww.orgy is 4 weeks away, with competitions for 256b intro, screen$, and AY-music. I'll start work on a simple player for the graphics and music in the next few days hopefully. Then there's the upcoming 8th installment of Forever, (one of) the largest ZX scene parties. This is taking place in the middle of March, with the usual Demo, 1k Intro, screen$ and AY-music competitions. There was also talk of Turbo-Sound (2x AY) entries being allowed, but I can't check the site from here so you'll have to check it yourself. My work on a demo for the party has slowed down due to excessive workload at... work. I may work on an Intro instead, so I'll at least be producing something. I expect you all to do the same.

The entry process for the 2006 CSS Crap Game Compo is complete. Entries were accepted up to the 8th of January, which is annoying for me as if I'd known earlier I could have finished my game. But I didn't, so rather than just doing a search for "icabod", you'll have to actually play the games to find out who to vote for. There are 37 games in all, so get playing.

If you are JSW ultrafan like me, you shouldn't miss this new game by Twibright Labs (which is rather a free non-speccy hardware developing group). It's definitely not yet another JSW remake with new rooms, but completely new game which is based only on the original Jet Set Willy. New graphics, rooms, etc. A music is a beeper mix of the original JSW tunes Moonlight Sonata and If I Was a Rich Man, performed by Factor6 *grin*. The game has a very smooth movement of the sprite (well, there is only one sprite, the Willy, no baddies yet). The goal is to collect all the flashing items and then go gaming on your ZX Spectrum (no more Maria). The end sequence is quite well animated so go and get it here! Except the game, there is a couple of videos from the game and a list of differences in comparsion with the original game. It's worth of checking for every Jet Set Willy fanatic!

If you registered my post about MDOS 2.1 disk system for D80/Kompakt, I have a news for you. MTs, the author of the project has updated it to version 102 (dunno why this number). As he wrote at Pandora Speccy message board, there are some minor updates and a new manual. Grab it here.

In theory, the deadline for entries to the 2006 CSS Crap Game Compo passed a few days ago, tho' there's nothing on the site to say that's actually the case. Either way, you can go there now to check out the games in preparation for the voting, which I guess will be announced fairly soon.
I know what you're all wondering... where's the entry from icabod? Well, it's not complete. December was very busy for me and I didn't have chance to get the final little bit of code working. I think my mistake was trying to make the game crap but in a "good" way. Maybe I'll get a chance sometime soon to finish it and release it to the masses for fun. Hell, maybe I'll be able to release it at the upcoming raww.orgy? Eh?