MicroSpeccy 1.0 rumour
	Okay, there's no update on the official AY-Emulator page, but WOS has reported that the first stable release of MicroSpeccy (the AY-file-player) has been brought out. I remember this happened on the last version (b6), where it was reported in various places on the 'net before it appeared on the site. Anyway, if you want to grab this potential new version, get to WOS now. Oh, before I end this post... it's number 500 you know.
	[icabod] - 19/06/2001 @792

	Eve
	Can we make it 4-in-a-row for Blah's!? I think we can. The site will soon return to normal, with separate posts for each news item. But for now I want to get a few things out of the way... First up, thanks to Phoenix for pointing out that my reporting yesterday that Raver left Phantasy was false. Hey, perhaps I should have checked with the guy himself, eh? A new (old?) ROM has appeared on S4E, this one being v3.5 of the Multiface 128 ROM from Romantic Robot. Aah, the good ole' days. Got a link to the site of demogroup Fishbone. You may recognise one of the members... Breeze (I assume it's the one I'm thinking about). PC and Speccy group. Worth checking if only for that oh-so-chill music. Another AY-track has been posted to the Sprinter-page. I think it's one of yesterday's tracks, now in stereo. Also mentioned on the page of the Sprinter is news of delays in the distribution of boards. The reason, it says, is a screwed-up IDE interface on the mainboard, stopping some drives working correctly. They're on the case, and should have it sorted soon. Got a mail early this morning from Raver, mentioning the Phantasy BBS's. But the information site is down due to an expired domain-name. Hmm... perhaps I'll go register it myself, and cause some trouble <g>.
	[icabod] - 18/06/2001 @878

	!halB
	Yeah yeah yeah. Another "Blah!", but what can I say. It's been another of those weekends. I've been really busy, but nothing seems to have been done. So, a quick round-up: Well, first up there's another update at the home of Sprinter. They have some downloadable AY-tunes. Ehm... as MP3. I've got it queued, why not use up that lovely bandwidth. Kristoph got back to me about my recent comments on the NuoTrauka results. He picked the l337 voters. Of coz I shouldn't complain coz, as he pointed out, I didn't even vote. I guess I should, but hey, I like to remain "impartial". Another note from Kristoph appeared on the POS-page mentioning that the deadline for articles for Scream#2 is August 5th. Articles are welcome in English, too <g> Phantasy's loss is Triumph's gain, as Raver splits one for the other. There's been a batch of updates over at Project-AY, the AY-track archive. A few new games, and some new demos. New demo-tracks in this update include ones from "Branch Of Mind", "Inner Universe", etc. Added a button and a link to Freedom Association. Nice site but, natch, very non-English again :[ DJ Hooligan has posted a bunch of plug-ins for that sweet-as-pie graphics proggy, Burial Graphics Editor. Couple nice new downloads at POS: Insanity #9 (a 'zine), and "24 bit generators of the frequency tables for music player from Pro-Tracker". Ehm, okay then. New version of Hyperion Player is available over at RealSoft. I'm currently sorting out a couple "security issues" with some news-posting code. It'll hopefully be up-n-running soon. I hope that things will be back to normal very quickly.
	[icabod] - 17/06/2001 @820

	More noo's
	Another short gap, but it seems like the scene is relatively quiet right now. I guess it's an "exams and summertime" thing, tho' the summer appears to have finished here in England. Looking out of the window, it's dark and gloomy. Rain. Hmph. But a good thing is, it's like this tomorrow... and I'm not at work <g>. Okay, so I had plans for tomorrow (like setting up my new DTS-Amp, and sorting out the posting-shit for this page), but something's come up. Well, I still get a lie-in. So, on with a couple news-things from the past couple days, then I'll check what today has brought us. Spotted a post on Scenet yesterday saying the Smash Band have no more coders. Looks like Thrash was a little pissed at something Grunge (of RA and SB) wrote in an article in the recent Scream#1 'zine. Got an interesting URL in my mailbox, for a site titled ZX-Link. It's a collection of links to sites dedicated to the Speccy. Worth a check out, although I don't see raww.org in there. Have to rectify that. Thanks to Raver for sending me some details of a Speccy Games Competition. Organised by Fun Forge Inc, you stand to win up to $250. Worth the work, if games are what float your boat. More details are on LCD's homepage (which I've just noticed I don't have a link to here). Another new link I have is to Loaded Spectrum. It's a discussion-board for all things Speccy. Quite a few posts there, but I've not had a chance to check the chatter. Worth a look, certainly. While I was at LSF, I spotted a couple other sites you may have passed-by: "Congratulations Archive" (snapshots of end-games); "Gamestage" (an odd combination of PC and Speccy games). Okay, both games-sites more than anything, but that's retro for ya. Okay, that'll do for the moment. More later perhaps.
	[icabod] - 14/06/2001 @844

	Getting it done
	Okay, another little slack period from me there. You notice it usually happens over a weekend. Heh, sometimes beer holds more importance than other things <g>. Couple new thingies to post: Spotted a new version of the Hrip compressor (archiver, if you prefer), posted on the fido7.zx.spectrum newsgroup. Not sure what new advances v1.04 brings, but I'm guessing it's either more speed or more compression. I also notice it's posted on POS, so you could trip over there and get it. Checked out the news on Virtual TRD, and they have a few new files to check out: Spriter v1.05 (the sprite editing kit, oddly enough); Body 2B (a 'zine); "Marrow in the World of Wisdom" (a game I think).
	[icabod] - 10/06/2001 @974

	Kay-1024 at S4E
	Just spotted an update over at Speccy4Ever. There's been some info posted there about the Speccy clone, the Kay-1024. Well, there's a couple photos posted there anyway. You can find them in the BuiltinSpeccy/Hardware section of the site.
	[icabod] - 07/06/2001 @861

	Updates on Demotopia
	As well as the results from the recent NuoTrauka virtual party, Gasman has posted a few new demos to the archive. There's an old bit of work, Music Demo part 1 by Dark Night / Himik's. And there's, as G puts it, "the totally bizarre Rabbit In Rage series." Not checked this series out yet (well, I only just got back from work, and now have to go out drinking). But I'll check it soon. It's queued up.
	[icabod] - 07/06/2001 @854

	Advanced Spectrum Emulator
	Hey, emu's are flying up left-right-and-centre. A new one has just appeared for the Gameboy Advance. It's titled ZX Advance, and I have to say I've not yet checked it out. However, I was reading some news over on /. the other day about an emulator of the GBA for PC. I even used it as an excuse to plug the Speccy <g>. So another level of emu-stacking comes in... running a Speccy on a GBA on a PC. Any more for any more?
	[icabod] - 05/06/2001 @889

	Sprinter supports Kempston
	While everyone else seems to be raving about the recent DooM screenshots from the Sprinter, I've just spotted some news that they've added support for the Kempston mouse when you run the machine in Spectrum mode. Nice little addition there.
	[icabod] - 05/06/2001 @885

	MicroSpeccy new beta released
	MicroSpeccy. Beta 6. Just released. Not entirely sure of the changes, but according to the page, it has everything that'll be in the final version, except for the frontend. Changes to the actual MSpage state simply: "Sound chip - AY-3-8910/12 and YM2149F, all standard channels combination on output", and "Sound - 16 bit, 44100 Hz, stereo". Of coz that could just be WSW playing up.
	[icabod] - 05/06/2001 @883

	NuoTrauka results
	Well, got home from work and found a textfile waiting for me in my mailbox. The textfile contained the results to the recent Virtual-party, NuoTrauka. So, here's a quick rundown: Music / Popular results 1 - First Trip - Sergant/FBN 2 - It's Timing - Vox/ALC 3 - Imagination - Nik-o/TL Graphics / Popular results 1 - U R Dun - Gas13 2 - Conan - Drawer/Entire 3 - Kin Ship (key la!) - Survivor ASCII / Popular results 1 - Zilog XXI - Falcon/Kingdom Dreams 2 - CTL - Kristoph/CTL 3 - Am I God? - Screamer/JMB Music / l337 results 1 - Opine - Siril/FTD 2 - Dream Girl - Key-Jee/TBK 3 - It's Timing - Vox/ALC Graphics / l337 results 1 - Kin Ship (key la!) - Survivor 2 - U R Dun - Gas13 3 - Kanopee - Kristoph/CTL ASCII / l337 results 1 - CTL - Kristoph/CTL 2 - I Am Gay - Kristoph/CTL 3 - Am I God? - Screamer/JMB Okay. Some interesting results, specifically the l337 results. The idea behind these is that they're the results from only a few hand-picked sceners votes. It'd be interesting to know who picked the l337 sceners (hey, I know I wouldn't be one, but...). And also when they were picked. I mean... the guy who counted the votes suddenly did much better in the l337 section. But mebbe I'm just being sceptical <g>. Good work all those who took part. You can find the full textfile with the results here.
	[icabod] - 04/06/2001 @833

	Issue #1 of ZX-Charts + Scream
	Okay, this could also be called "a message from MacB". Just got an email from the bloke, with a message he's asked me to post. So, I'm just gonna cut-n-paste it: " In issue 1 of ZX-Charts it was said that both TeeRay and Visual left Extreme Entertainment. This is dirty LIE! They are still members of Extereme. In issue 1 of Scream magazine was also said that TeeRay converted "X-Files" picture. This is dirty LIE too! He drew that picture pixel-by-pixel in ArtStudio just WATCHING to the printed original poster, and he had never used any conversions! All his pictures are 100% handdrawn ones. " There. A bit of controversy never hurt, eh? Incidentally, if either of the 'zines feels like responding, I'll be happy to post it here <g>.
	[icabod] - 02/06/2001 @903

	AY-Emulator + MicroSpeccy news
	Okay, after the little mix-up a few days ago, there's now an update on the AY-E page announcing the release of the new version (beta 5) of the AY-file player, MicroSpeccy. Fixes in this update basically allow the playing of some of the more "tricky" files, which stopped working in the last release. More interesting (IMHO), is the announcement that AY-file playing will be incorporated into AY-E in the (near?) future. Well, it does seem a little strange to have two apps to do it (supporting different filetypes). Before this goes ahead, some Sergey wants some feedback regarding the Z80 Emulation in the current MicroSpeccy. And he's even released the source for it. How nice. A couple other things of note on the page are the updated AY file-format, and a corrected version of one of the tracks in the massive tr_songs archive. Well, things get mushed, right?
	[icabod] - 02/06/2001 @807

	RealSpectrum to meet Tux
	Tux, in case you don't know, is the name of the Linux penguin. Now you know that, read the headline again... Done it? Good. So yeah, after an install of the latest Mandrake-distro of Linux, the guys at Ramsoft">Ramsoft were chuffed to discover that the source for RealSpectrum compiles pretty-much out-of-the-box. Of course there's a little platform dependance in there, which they aim to sort out. Now that's good engineering. So, from the next beta of RS, we can hope to see a Linux version. Very nice. All we need now is a Linux version of AY-Emulator, and the system will be complete.
	[icabod] - 02/06/2001 @801

	worldofspectrum.org
	Okay, I've been wondering why it's taken so long for this to happen, but finally WOS has a domain name. The official URL for all your WOS-ups is now worldofspectrum.org. Here's a snippet from the post I saw on CSS: " The website becomes www.worldofspectrum.org and the FTP site becomes ftp.worldofspectrum.org (d'oh! :-) Please update your links accordingly. The 'old' URLs will remain available for the time being, but may disappear some time. " Think that says it all. Tho' I should prolly mention that sites under WOS (like Project-AY and Spectrum H/W Index) will also change.
	[icabod] - 02/06/2001 @794

	Raww Arse news
	Couple bits-n-pieces about the state of your beloved Raww Arse. First up, DJ Fist has become a proud father. Yeah I know. It's hard to believe! Baby Fist was born on Sunday, weighing about two Gasman's. He'll be taking up coding duties as soon as his fingers can hit the keys. And for a bit of light entertainment, you can all go freak yourselves out to a couple pictures of our very own D0k. The pics are of an adult nature, so get yourself clenched in preparation. You can find the pics here and here. Enjoy.
	[icabod] - 30/05/2001 @838

	Another site bites the dust... almost.
	Got a note from Anestis about the Greek Fan Club site (not sure why I'm really putting a link there... read on). Anyway, there's been some trouble with his ISP, basically they came along and deleted the site. Okay, there's a little more to it than that, but you just want the crunch, right? So, the site will be redesigned and should be back up-n-running sometime next month.
	[icabod] - 30/05/2001 @833

	BMP2SCR v1.73 released
	Yeah, the latest version of this required tool has been released. Additions? There's more Multitech options (dithering/diffuse), MLT-to-ColorDraw conversion, and there's even the ability to do some touching up. Oo-er! Of your images, I mean. Grab BMP2SCR v1.73 now.
	[icabod] - 30/05/2001 @826

	Sprinter news and screenshots
	Couple notes about some cool things I spotted on the Sprinter page. First up they've provided a Flash program to upgrade the BIOS if you have one of these boards. Next, and rather more cool, they have screenshots of DooM, a demo of which comes with the package. I must say, it looks rather nice. Okay, it's not a patch on Halo, but then it doesn't require a P4/5GHz to run <g>.
	[icabod] - 30/05/2001 @821

	DOH! My mistake!
	That's the problem with monitoring webpages. You tend to miss simple things. Like the fact that I was only monitoring the English AY-Emulator page, hence missing the (rather nice) re-design, and also some news. Oh, there's been news. The redesign looks sweet, and to go with it is a bunch of information about various trackers, etc. There's also a new skin for AY-E. On the subject of skins, I've requested that the emulator be added to DeviantArt, one of my fave skinning sites. It's not appeared yet, but when it does, get designing! POS have announced a new version, beta5, of MicroSpeccy too. It's not appeared on the homepage yet, tho', so I'm gonna wait a little while. While I'm talking about music, POS have also uploaded Minimal Player to their site. Worth a check.
	[icabod] - 30/05/2001 @815

	Children of the Da
	Oki. Just to clear things up. I give the name "child-of-da" to any URL with .da.ru at the end. Of coz, the POS webteam just use it as a handy redirection tool. They haven't suddenly moved <g>. Sorted.
	[icabod] - 29/05/2001 @978

	Music News
	Okay, a few things today relate to music, so I'll shove it all in here. First up, it seems that the homepage of AY-Emulator has gone. Hopefully not for good. I'm guessing this is a temporary thing. A beta version of Minimal Tracker has been released. I remember this from back in January, where I was told the release was being delayed for a couple days. Or have a missed a post since then? Well, you can go grab the file at either Scenergy or POS. Scenergy also mentions a bugfix for ProTracker 3.x, but there's no link, and with my translation gear playing up, I'm kinda lost. Check it. Finally for music tonight, here's the list of the tunes that Gasman recently uploaded to Nectarine Demoscene Radio: Cybernoid's Revenge - Gasman Back 2 Reality - Jaan Lemon(?) - LaesQ Dreamless - Mic Now you know what to vote for. I should note, as G did, that the tunes are meant for a "wider audience" than just Speccy users, so he went for melodic over technically astounding (tho' I think they all sound kinda okay <g>). It's also been pointed out to me that to vote you need to be registered on O-Juice. But there's no option on the signup form for Speccy as your machine. Hmm. No fair!
	[icabod] - 29/05/2001 @970

	Where's he been?
	Hey folks. You've probably noticed that there's been a lack of updates over the last couple days. The reason? There isn't one. I just didn't do any. Oh, there's been some news. And I'll cover some of that now... Sergey released a new version of his AY-Archive. v2.4 brings the total tunes to over 5000. Nice. POS have a plug-in for BGE v3.01. It's called ScreenPrint, and it, ehm... does something I guess. Gas13 has added the results of the voting on his website. He's also added some comment from himself, so get there and check it out. There's a new release of Quick Commander over at DJH Downloads. You can now grab v2.61. Triumph have released a new demo titled Cpahb. Kinda wierd and sweet animation. Thanks to Gasman at Demotopia for the news. The next version of ZX-Chart will be available around mid-June. New design, and everything in English and Russian. Quick reminder (via POS) that the votes for NuoTrauka must be in by June 1st. There. Not too painful to get through. Don't think I missed anything. Back to the norm now, perhaps.
	[icabod] - 28/05/2001 @841

	Ou est l'Chaosite?
	From my point-of-view at least, Chaosite has been down for a good few days now. Okay, the news-flow had slowed considerably, but it looked like it could be getting back up to speed. And now I'm getting a "system cannot find the file specified" message. Annoying? Yep. If anyone knows the state-of-play with this site, drop me a line. Actually, on the subject of websites, it seems that POS has become a "child-of-da". Well, I had a url sent to me today of http://poswt.da.ru. Currently just redirects to the normal site.
	[icabod] - 23/05/2001 @860

	Radio AY
	Ooh, almost forgot to post this. Got a note from Gasman saying that he's uploaded some Speccy musak to Nectarine Demoscene Radio. Normally this would be a minor thing, right? Unless of course the tracks had been added to the playlist. Well guess what, they have! I'll leave the rest of this post to Gasman: "so, if you hop over there and have a listen, there's a very small chance that you might catch a bit of the old AY". Sweet.
	[icabod] - 22/05/2001 @949

	Sage Group homepage
	Got a URL posted to me today with the new homepage of Sage Group. Looking nice, all flashed-up and that. Not a huge amount of info there right now, but it'll improve, I'm sure. My only problem with the page is... it can be a real bitch to translate pages when Flash is involved. Also just spotted this over on Scenergy, too.
	[icabod] - 22/05/2001 @934

	X128 on the amoeba
	Spotted a note over on WOS that x128 has been ported over to the Amiga. Okay, I don't have an amiga, but I kinda like x128, so it's worth a mention. Found it quite amusing that the post says "ported X128 to the Amiga some 2 years ago and is now confident that it runs properly". Heh. Well, just my sense of humour there, then.
	[icabod] - 22/05/2001 @930

	New Tunes Tool
	Sergey of AY-Emulator-fame has released another little tool that you may find useful. It's called AY-Splitter, and it simply rips apart AY-files into it's various parts. As the site says it could be useful to "repair damaged AY-files". Sources are available.
	[icabod] - 22/05/2001 @879

	No More Proxima Centauri
	Thanks to Demiurge Ash for letting me know that another group has disappeared from the scene. Well, almost. Proxima Centauri (who produced the ZX-Pilot 'zine), split up after only 3 members were left in the group. These 3 members (Sergius Puzzler, KooLL, and Erena Kline) have re-grouped to form Jeez. They've already released one production under this new name (Gift-PXM, which I think (!?) you can find over at POS, if memory serves me well). There's also planned a couple more "bits-o-stuff", including a system-tool. And hey, they're producing a version of ZX-Chart in... uhm... .TRDos format. Hmph.
	[icabod] - 21/05/2001 @825

	New ROMs over at S4E
	DB has been doing some serious tweaking recently (oo-er). The layout over at Speccy4Ever has changed, and to complement it there's now a bunch of new ROMs posted there, too. Get there to find: Quick Commander 2.61, JV Kramis' Pentagon and Kay1024. Hmm. That's it for ROMs. But check out the "Built In Speccy" section. A section for the +3e, GrandRomMax, and what's this? Pentagon 128k V1. Hey, not much in the way of information, but you can check out the pix.
	[icabod] - 21/05/2001 @820

	Polish WOS mirror
	Well, today was announced a Polish mirror of the WOS ftp site. Should be a bonus for all people in, ehm, Poland. And nearby countries too, I guess. Actually I'm curious, who'd be interested in a mirror of the WOS archive here in England? It was mentioned to me a little while back, but I put the thought to the back of my head. I have two main concerns about providing this service -- what's the bandwidth usage like? and what's the risk of the server getting whuppassed? Any thoughts on whether it'd be a good thing to get going? mail me. Anyway, the Polish mirror can be found here.
	[icabod] - 21/05/2001 @810

	News Roundup
	Heh, yeah, getting another burst of news into a single post. Bad for business? Aah, who cares! Well, the Nuotrauka votepage seems to be working now. Takes a little while to load, as you get to see all the pix you're voting for. Another Nuotrauka competition is to guess who produced which entry. Details of this compo are on the POS website. I've been sent an archive of music by the late Ded Smirnoff. I'll go through it and hopefully post it up in the next couple days. I think it's already posted on POS, so you could also check there. More news from POS about a "bad version" of track 10 ("opine") in the Nuotrauka music. You can grab the fixed track here. Not entirely sure what was wrong with it (to be honest, I've not listened to the NT music yet). Spotted mention on WOS of a new emulator titled SpecEmu. Worth a check? Dunno. Why not, eh? Couple interesting articles posted on Scenet. First up an article about originality in demos. Perhaps more interesting (to a couple people I know), an article about party-releases (the fact that these days, people only seem to release demos at parties). Quite a good read.
	[icabod] - 20/05/2001 @051

	Almost...
	Hmm. Look at the time. It's almost tomorrow. I'm tired, so here's a quick "bash-it-all-in" post: Hey, latest version of Micro Speccy is out. Beta 4 of this AY-player adds R-Register emulation, and an auto-switch to 1MHz (not the binary version tho') for playing CPC tunes. Some news on the RealSpectrum front. There are currently two versions of this sweet-as-pie emulator in development. One is Beta-11, which should bring a new debugger, new graphics-modes, etc. I'm guessing the other version is for Windows, right? Another "development" over at Ramsoft is in progression. The only hint we get is that "this time for gamers". Hmm. Sounds interesting. Couple downloads out at V-TRD, with Quick Commander 2.61, GS Mod Player 1.11 (for, of coz, General Sound), and DonNews 14. This last one looks to be Paradox-related. Big update to the Sprinter-FAQ. Among the changes are the details of what's in the package with the mainboard, end-user support, and so on. While I was at the Peters site, I checked the results of the current poll. Of the people who voted (only about 44), about half are planning on getting a Sprinter. If you've not entered the poll, do-do. Feedback is always useful. Even more downloads available at POS in the last couple days. Mainly 'zines is seems. I'm guessing they're not in English, so they're not much use to me. May be good for some of you, tho'. Ta-da!
	[icabod] - 16/05/2001 @991

	New downloads at Demiurge Ash' homepage
	Headline says it all? Well not quite, I should really let you know what the new downloads are. They're all work by Demiurge Ash, just posted to his page. First up you can grab a text-editor titled "Modern Word 2.!" (yes, 2.! -- could be a typo, I'm guessing 2.1). There's a new-year gift (from a little while back), titled "2000 a.d". And also you can get 2 intros from past parties, "Mylene" and "Neverland". Files can be grabbed from the Demiurge Ash homepage.
	[icabod] - 15/05/2001 @901

	New release of AY-Emulator
	Sometime today, Sergey released the newest version, 2.3, of his famous AY-Emulator. New this time around is the ability to play modules in the .FXM format, from Fuxoft. The player for .PSC modules has also been re-written. You can grab the new player, and some sample .FXM modules, from the emulator homepage.
	[icabod] - 14/05/2001 @899

	Nuotrauka votepage + "extra file"
	To ease the pain of bothering with emails, there's now a new votepage just for Nuotrauka. This allows you to fill in your votes online, I understand. At least that's the theory. Personally I just get an error page. Well, perhaps it's just my luck. Try it, you might just love it. Regardless of the votepage, the work in the competition is generally damned fine. One of the entries in the music compo is hidden, tho'. Kinda like the Easter Eggs you get on DVDs, to get to this 18th piece of music you need to run "player", and listen to track 18. Seems it's out-of-view from Quick Commander. Thanks for Yerz for that info. On another NT-note, Gasman has posted a couple new downloads on Demotopia, one of which is his missing entry for the competition. I've seen it. It's nice. Of coz.
	[icabod] - 14/05/2001 @893

	MakeTZX to be updated
	Ever used this neat tool from the makers of RealSpectrum? It's a nice app, for converting all your old tapes into the new(ish) .TZX format. Well, after a long time of lying idle, the Ramsoft team are about to start working on it again. They'll be adding more loading schemes. Just thought I'd let you know.
	[icabod] - 11/05/2001 @750

	Busy POS People
	Well, they've certainly been busy over at POS, with a few updates and a heap of downloads. As well as the entries for the Nuotrauka virtual party, they've added to the photo-section for ASC-II. Add to that another 9 downloads, and it's looking good. The other downloads? Well, I'll cut some of the detail, but you can grab some demos (Alice 128, Deep Demo, a couple Gift demos, etc), a couple 'zines, and also a game. Get there, get it. I'll also mention here an update at V-TRD. I really can't be arsed to go into any translation right now, but it looks like a player for the General Sound, and an MS-DOS - TR-DOS convertor, along with a couple zines.
	[icabod] - 11/05/2001 @746

	Nuotrauka Compo releases
	Yeap, it's been plastered over the 'net. I think most of this info was released last night but we had a damned power-but. Luckily I only lost one file I was in the middle of downloading. But you know, those mpegs can be huge <g>. Anyway, the work for the Nuotrauka competition has been released. Credit where it's due, Yerzmyey was the first person to bring it to my attention. The idea is, you download this package which contains all of the entries for the competition. Then you submit your votes. The party-page isn't up-to-date, but I've been told that the deadline for votes is June 1st, before which you should send your votes to the Nuotrauka team. Gives you about 3 weeks, I think. So get the files and start-a-voting!
	[icabod] - 11/05/2001 @742

	Micro Speccy bugfix release
	Okay, so it's not just a bug-fix release, but it does fix a bug. Yep, beta3 of Micro Speccy has been released, fixing that annoying "zero R6" error. There's also a feature for maskable interrupts added, which "allows you to play music such as chasehq.ay". Apparently this tune uses interrupt and non-interrupt routines. Or something. So while you're grabbing that, you may want to check out a couple more skins for AY-E by Ironfist: Pokemon and uLtImAte. Regarding getting a section on one of the skins sites, I've sent an email but have had no response, so I'll try again. Let's get this app recognised, people.
	[icabod] - 10/05/2001 @842

	Official Millennium 1901 results
	Got a mail from Cooler\Psycho earlier containing the official results of the recent Millennium 1901 demoparty. You can grab the full results here, and I'm sure they'll be posted on the homepage (and every other news page) soon. For now, I'll do my usual trick of covering just the top few in each Speccy category: AY music 1 - Karkusha in death fly - Freeman/Freeart 2 - SoundStorm - SERGant/FBN 3 - Israel is my sweet home - Mast/Freeart graphics 1 - Magic Ball - Monarch 2 - Avenger - Monarch 3 - Dragon-2 - Fantom/Siberian Group 512b intro 1 - Blobs - Imperio/PHG 16k intro 1 - 16K intro - K.C.Soft demo 1 - GC Return - Phantom Digger,ZS 2 - Action of Savers - Savers Alliance game 1 - 3D-Roost - Fenomen^Psycho 2 - Technodrom Millennium Edition - PHG Heh, check the graphics compo. Monarch kinda taking the lead there, I think. As I've already said, it's sad that Guide 512 and Stranger don't appear in the results, but mistakes do happen. And hey, they've had a few mentions on these pages <g>.
	[icabod] - 09/05/2001 @826

	New downloads at Scenergy
	Just passed by Scenergy and spotted a some new downloads that may tickle your fancy. Couple issues of MSF, a 'zine. Not sure of the language they're in, but I'm guessing it isn't English. Still, I may as well queue them up. Also there's a new (?) demo posted to the site by Blade\Triumph, titled "Psychoz 5". Well, it says it's "strongly recommended to all fans", so I guess we'd all better grab it then.
	[icabod] - 09/05/2001 @816

	Biiig update at Demotopia
	Yu-huh. Gasman has done a fairly sizeable update over at Demotopia, with a whopping, uhm... 25 new downloads. Amongst all the usual party releases you can find a couple other additions too, like the recently rediscovered "2 in 1" by Jordan. As well as those files, he's updated his "upcoming parties" section, which I think I'll have to go and leech from, in case I'm missing some details (now wouldn't that be a surprise!?).
	[icabod] - 09/05/2001 @807

	Lost Millennium files
	Thanks fly out to Heaven Aeroplane for sending me this zipfile containing some lost, unpublished work from the recent Millennium 1901 party. In the tiny download you can find two ZX compo entries which, alas, got lost somewhere on a hard-disk, so not getting presented at the party. There's a 512b intro (rather hypnotic) called Guide 512 by Zeg/FENOMEN/Psycho, and a screen$ which I think is by the same author. I guess this shot is called Stranger. Anyway, worth the download to complete your collection... perhaps they'll even get included in a recount of the votes <g>.
	[icabod] - 08/05/2001 @980

	FX Coders Compo at ESA
	Just got a mail sent to me from Factor 6 about a new competition mentioned on the ESA website. It's a competition aimed at coders, titled "FX". Now, I don't want to appear like I run the scene (as if), but I had an idea like this a little while back. Really. But like the slack-ass that I am, I did nothing about it, so it's just as well that these guys have come up with the goods. So why is a competition for coders such a good idea? Well look at the state of things... For a musician to show off, there are tracker competitions. For an artist to show off, there are graphics compos. But what of coders? "Demo Competitions" I hear you cry. But when you vote for a demo, do you vote for the code? Nop. You vote for the design. Astounding FX will mean nothing if placed with crap music and graphics. Okay, there's intro competition, which kinda blows my idea outta the water, but you see my point. So back to those guys at ESA. The competition will occur irregularly, with no real deadline (a deadline is decided when 3 entries are gathered). A task will be set, and you simply have to do your best job. Sounds simple enough. Get yourself to the site to find out all the details. Only problem I can see with this is that prizes are only awarded to those in Czech or Slovakia. Still, the rest of us can enter and get mad props from the rest of the scene for winning.
	[icabod] - 08/05/2001 @824

	Millennium 1901 completed
	Yeah, check the calendar. Another party has passed, this one the oddly-named Millennium 1901. Just checking the site for any results (note, this site manages to kill Netscape, which is a bit silly), but there's nothing to be seen there yet. But wait! What's this? Good ole V-TRD comes up with the goods. Yeah, drag yourself over there to find the "official(?)" releases from the party. Alas, there's not a huge amount in the "demo" section, with only the following releases: 512b intro 1 - Blobs! - Imperio\PHG 16k intro 1 - 16k Intro - K.C.Soft demo ? - Action of Savers - Savers Alliance ? - GC Return - Phantom Digger, ZS Note that the "demo" section at the end isn't results. It's just the order they appear in the main list. There are also no results (that I've seen) for the AY and GFX compos. I've checked through the GFX, though, and it's all nice stuff (especially the pic from "Bad Taste", tho' I'm not convinced it's hand-drawn -- could be wrong). So, worth a quick download, I think. There's even a couple games in there, if that's your thing. I'll keep an eye out for the results, and let you have them as soon as I do.
	[icabod] - 07/05/2001 @839

	Skins and bugs at AY-E
	Oki, a little more than just some skins and bugs posted at the homepage of AY-Emulator. First up a couple days ago (why didn't I spot it yesterday?) there were a couple tools added to the page, one including source-code. There are YM5\YM6 file dumpers, to make use of the new features, and also a convertor for AY-to-SNA. Then today, we see two more skins added, again by Ironfist and Nikokai Aladine. Keep up the good work, fellas. Also there's news of a rather annoying "feature" to the latest release of MicroSpeccy - register R6 is always set to 0. Heh, could make for some interesting tunes.
	[icabod] - 07/05/2001 @770

	Mo' Photoz
	Just had an email from Factor6 to say that he's posted up some more photos from the Mekka&Symposium demoparty. To quote him, there are "snapshots taken by tdm at mekka and here is also a proof that speccy demos were presented". So get yourself there now and you can check out the pics.
	[icabod] - 06/05/2001 @886

	Moving mountains
	Perhaps "Moving Hosts" would have been a better title. Just skimming through the webcheck logs, and I spotted an item on V-TRD mentioning a change of hosts for the site. They've moved over to DotNet, a Latvian(.lv?)-based host. Babel's translation gives the impression that the old .da.ru site will still work for a while, and yep, it redirects to the new server. On the subject of server changes, I'm looking into moving raww.org over to the raww.net server during May. When I do this, raww.org may go down for a while. But don't worry, I'll sort out a backup before I make any changes.
	[icabod] - 05/05/2001 @747

	Party-news at the POS
	Okay, the guys at POS remind us today that Millennium 1901 is taking place today and tomorrow. Hope all goes well with the party. There's also a reminder of the ASC-II section of their site. Get yourself over there to get all info from the party (generally in Russian, natch), including a photo-gallery and a video.
	[icabod] - 05/05/2001 @707