The way it works at the moment is, due to other commitments I don't go searching for news, I just post it when I "happen upon it". And I just "happened upon" an update over at the webpage of Sergey Bulba. In the "Engineer" section there's diagrams of the YM-LPT and AY-LPT interfaces, a couple systems for connecting the real chips to you PC. AY-LPT is supported by a number of emulators (not sure how many Windows-based emulators use it tho'), so you can improve your sound quality by building one of these devices. Or you could just use a real ZX like normal folk.

Ok, it's a little late but I've just come back from some "business discussions" - yes, I've finally sorted out prizes for the raww.orgy competitions. They won't be with me for about two weeks, but they're actually coming. Yay! I realise this is very late (especially as I'm also sorting out prizes for the first party, which took place over a year ago), but I'm slack.
Anyway, in order to give out the prizes I'll need some postal addresses for the winners. Sadly I can only provide 1 prize per competition so entries created by groups will have to be shared ("I can't wait for the first 2 weeks of August...", etc). Also, I can only give prizes to the 3 main compos (the first party had other compos). Hey, this is all coming outta my pocket, so take what you're given I say. So, could the following please provide a full postal address for me to send prizes to:

• 2005 Intro winner: Gasman
• 2005 Graphics winner: Lucky
• 2005 Music winner: Factor6
• 2006 Intro winner: Cyberpunks Unity
• 2006 Graphics winner: Equinox
• 2006 Music winner: C-Jeff

See, it may be late, but it'll be worth it. No, honestly. Really. It'll be great. Wooo! etc.

There seems to be a lot of interest in "mass storage" on the ZX Spectrum lately. Well, for the past few years anyway. I guess it's partly a result of online archives such as Demotopia and WOS - "hey, I can download all the spectrum productions that I already have on tape... and so much more besides." Of course there have been various attempts at creating devices, the most recent being generic IDE mods. And now another one has joined the ranks, specific to CF device access. I'm at work so can't really read too much about it right now, but information is over on piter's ZX DIY site.

<late-post>
I've just seen that Sergey Bulba has released a new version of Vortex Tracker II. Among the changes are a few bug-fixes but, perhaps more excitingly, support for Turbo Sound tracks - that's 2 AY chips playing sweet, sweet music. Mmm. Aural sex.
</late-post>

I was thinking the other night about this years upcoming Chaos Constructions party being held over in St. Petersburg, and that I should really add some information about it here. And lo', I just spotted some news about it posted over @ demoparty.net, so now's as good a time as any.
The news is of an Invtro competition. Chances are that a PC Invtro will win, but that shouldn't stop you entering, especially if you're going to the party, and especially as there's a hefty reward for the best one.
There are of course the usual competitions (Demo, 512b Intro, Music, Graphics), along with "realtime" compo's taking place at the party. Which is being held on the weekend of 26^th of August. About 2 weeks before I spend my life savings (not much I grant you) on a trip to Canada. Ho-hum, don't think I'll be able to make it to CC6 this year either.

Ok, just doing a little maintenance stuff on the site (I'll add some news real soon, I promise), and I'm closing down the latest Poll, all about the "Democoding FAQ". As you can probably see from the results, it looks like it will be a popular thing, and you may have seen from my blog that I've already got a new domain name just for it.
A Wiki has been set up, although there's literally nothing there at the moment (hence I'm not linking to it) - I've not had a chance to do any kind of "design", so for the moment I'll stick with the classic Wikipedia style.
If anyone wants to design a logo then feel free - the only requirement is that it should be something representative of the ZX Demoscene. Oh, and the ZX-oriented part of the site will be called "DemoCodeZX". The aim is to eventually create a network of sites for a variety of platforms (DemoCodeCPC, DemoCodeC64, etc).

Aaaanyway. Enough of that for the moment. I'll give out more information when I have some.

Just read a post on the WOS forums from Gasman who says that he's just released v2006-05-17 of his OpenZXRom project. If you don't know already the idea behind it is to create a complete Open Source ROM, compatible with the original ZX Spectrum ROM, but containing only new code - the result being it can be used in new hardware projects. This latest version has reached "an important milestone - it now replicates enough ROM routines to play Egghead 4 and The Fantastic Mister Fruity. Yay!"
Yay! indeed.
And can I just say I like the version numbering system. It will work great providing the developers don't do anything stupid like release two versions in one day.

There is a new TommyGun release - version 0.9.2 available under the utilities section of World of Spectrum.
Update includes lots of bug fixes and 1 bug accidently added in for good measure ;-).
Improvements to SevenuP sprite importing with masking supported.
Improved build environment settings.
Improvements to the Image Editor.

As I'm here for a moment, I'll quickly mention the latest in the series of "TV Programs" about our beloved machine, created by Nick over at YS - Rock'n'Roll Years. 1986 has received some praise on the WOS forums, tho' I can't comment on it as I've not seen it yet. So if you're a torrent-user, go grab it. And please keep your torrents open for others to grab copies. Community spirit and all that.

Another email I received over a week ago was relating to a new Sintech product, and so apologies this time go to FBI. The product is quite an interesting idea - it's a set of Keyboard Stickers. One of the problems I find it remembering the keywords of 48k BASIC when using a 128k machine or an emulator - these stickers will, I guess, fit neatly onto a normal keyboard over the usual keys, providing a handy finger-tip reference. I'm tempted to buy a batch and "re-work" all of the keyboards in the office. That'll confuse 'em, eh? The stickers are 5 euro's per set, or about £3.40 in real money.