This years scene.org award nominations have been posted, and it's nice to see that perhaps the most inventive demo of last year, Ate Bit's "Old Skool Invitro Maker - Sundown 06 Invite" has been nominated in the OldSchool section. It sits there as a lone ZX production among 4 (count 'em) C64 demos. So good luck the Ate Bit.
(news via UKScene).

While the release of some source code isn't something I'd usually mention in itself, I thought the release of the v105 source for EasyHDD by LMN of 8bc to be a timely happening. Why? Well there's lots of talk at the moment about modding the DivIDE board to be a tad more MB02 compatible. This means that replacement ROMs like Busy's BS-DOS can be used with the device... but it requires someone to mod the MB02 HDD software. See? It's a little more interesting now, eh?

Tho' it's yet to appear on the Sourceforge project page, it turns out there's a new version of Open Source emulator UnrealSpeccy available from Alone Coder's webpage. The source link gives a 404 at the moment, but the main program is grabbable. According to Emu-Russia the changes include a fix to TurboSound emulation (currently the only emulator that supports this dual-AY/YM mode). There are a few other changes which you may benefit from, so I'd upgrade now. Just to be safe, you unnerstan'.

If like me you were sitting at home thinking "You know, what the world needs is another attempt to produce a ZX-Spectrum-a-like" then you'll be pleased to know that Chris Smith has begun work on the Harlequin (I think that's the name). One aim of this project is to document the process of building a clone - other projects generally say "here's my clone, ain't it great" without showing how it came to be in the current state. Think of it like a hardware version of the Xe03 blog.
If you're very much the hardware monkey then this will be a worthwhile site to keep an eye on. Indeed, it should interest most ZX fanatics. So on it, an eye we shall keep.

Drink Lovers of Triumph did great release for the Turbo Sound device, an additional soundchip for the ZX Spectrum, which allows using of 6 channels instead of 3. As the result, here we have about 40 minutes and 18 tracks. We proudly announce that this is the first release ever made with such a device. Feel free to download it from Ubiktune by next link - http://ubik.untergrund.net.

In a thread on the WOS forums someone was asking about +D support in emulators... and it turns out it's featured in an upcoming release of Spectaculator. Yes, there's a new beta version, tho' as far as I'm aware it's not officially available yet, so I don't know what the changes are. Keep an eye out.

I was just doing a little idle surfing while waiting for my coffee to cool down (hey, I don't have an asbestos mouth!) and I saw that a new release of TommyGun has hit the 'net. For those who don't know, TommyGun is designed to be a "Retro Development Toolkit", aimed primarily at games (it features things like tile and map editors). It's quite nice, and it's good to see that development has continued after author "Kiwi" had previously decided to close the project. Anyway, v0.9.17 is out so why not give it a go.

Just time for a quick mention of a new ZX Demoscene site - ZXAAA. I don't currently have the time to check it out, tho' the site is certainly very colourful - much use of ZX logo's for various demogroups. The site is also primarily in Russian, meaning much use of babel. There certainly looks to be a lot of work gone into cataloging some demos, tho' as far as completeness goes there's still work to be done. Worth checking out and keeping an eye on.

To show up how such a Speccy summer holiday called Shucon looks like, I've chosen some videos from Shucon DVD releases, which are usually available after the party for all the attenders. Watch 'em at YouTube!

Just a quick note to mention that I've added the rest of the 256b Intro's from the recent raww.orgy to Pouet, should you feel the need to comment on how groovy or pants everything is. I may have words with Gasman about Demotopia too - as he's busy with other work (very scene-related, so that's ok) the maintenance of Demotopia has fallen by the wayside. I'll see if he wants to give me some "rights" to be able to update it with new releases... as I'm a bit more active at the moment.