Topic: General news

Yesterday I got an email from Yerzmyey about something which I'm sure I recall reading about. Annoyingly due to my works' firewall I can't see the site linked below, but here's what Yerz has written:

A Norwegian band called "Fitts for Fight" have stolen many micromusic/chiptune songs of many micromusic artists, including my song "Space travel" (from "1998 Demo 2") which they add some crap vocal to, and given a title "crash burn destroy". More about these thieves: http://nl_hq.micromusic.net/stolengoods/

They certainly seem to have pissed off a lot of people, with this news being reported on various chiptune sites around the 'net. Tho' I do wonder if it's giving them more exposure than they deserve - even bad publicity is publicity.
I'll leave it as a task for you to google for them.

Actually released on Christmas Eve, the latest version of Sergey Bulba's Tracker Songs Archive is available for download. This is v4.1, and weighs in at a whopping 12.7Mb. Should be a simple download in this broadband age. It contains over 17,000 modules, that's after the removal of some duplicates. If I get a chance I'll provide a list of the actual changes, tho' don't count on it... doing that takes some time.
Also updated is the AY Composers List, found on the same site. v4.1 contains details of over 1000 ZX tracker musicians. The list isn't quite in English (that's to say... it's not), but it's simple enough to understand. And it's a good companion to the Tr_Songs download that you're surely already grabbing.

You will probably have already noticed that there has been a bit of "downtime" regarding updates over the Christmas period. Apologies for that, I've just been busy with "other things". Among these "other things" I include tasks such as organising the upcoming raww.orgy, which is taking place in <checks calendar>... 38 days time! Eek! I have some calls and things to make, but I hope to have prizes sorted out before the party this year - meaning you have even more reason to take part in the competitions, whether you're visiting or not.
I've also been stupidly busy at work lately. Today is my first day back after some time off (during which I generally visited families and tried to be "sociable"), and I have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks. It's a hard life, eh?
Anyway, I'll try to catch up on some news in the next few days, and try to keep the updates regular. In fact, I've just noticed something rather exciting (if you like AY music) so I'll go post about that now...

I guess this is provided by NickH as something of a Christmas Treat to us all - he's provided a download for the latest episode of his documentary The Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years. It covers the year 1987, and is 76Mb in size. Not bad for the just-over 7 minutes you get to view. Remember to keep your torrents going.

Just a quick note, as I'm rather busy at work. The newly-agreed v1.20 of the TZX format is available online. I don't recall what's changed (blocks and things I should imagine). Also available on that same page is a program called Tapir, a Win32 tool to allow you to manipulate .TZX files, and it compliant with the new specification. As opposed to Tapir, which is entirely different.

For now, I'm giving you JHCon photos taken by me (hoho!). Download them (tar.bzip2'ed) from HERE!
And by the way, I forgot about this. Yep, there was a live webcam at the party!
And one more thing. If you missed this message, it is that Psion AY player thingie that was (its beta) presented at the party. If you're Psion 5mx or S7 user, await it soon!

JHCon is after three long days in Off-state, where it stays till December 2007. How it was? Read on...

Vega, ex-member of Style, coder, musician, and organiser of the ZX Spectrum part of Chaos Constructions, has been found dead near his home. The circumstances around his death are unknown. He was 29 years old. A graduate of the Philological faculty of Saint Petersburg State University, and post-graduate of the Russian Academy of Science, he was widely known in the "computer art" scene, and put great efforts into it's development.
Are thoughts are with his family and friends.

Thanks to Winston over on the WOS forums for pointing out that Stuart Maconie featured the ZX Spectrum Orchestra on his "Freak Zone" show on Radio 6 at the weekend. It's a digital station, available to satellite and those "freeview" people... but that's irrelevant as you've missed it now anyway. But you can use the online listen again feature to, you know, "listen again". Oh, the ZX Spectrum Orchestra are about an hour in. Maybe next week they'll feature AY-Riders?

UbikTune is a new chiptune label, mainly created to release and publish new original and quality ZX Spectrum music. We're glad to release our debut EP. It's 18 minutes of japanese influence, composed by C-jeff. Now, it's available to download from http://ubik.untergrund.net.