Wanted: coders for ZX
	Along with some other people, I got this mail from Yerzmyey today. He's received an letter from someone wanting some help with a new ZX-project. It's basically conversion of MSX and ColecoVision games to the humble ZX. I'm guessing for now that it's conversions for the classic Speccy as opposed to clones. If you're interested you can contact... uhm... well send it to me or Yerz and we can pass on the message. You can grab the full text of the letter here.
	[icabod] - 22/08/2001 @910

	CC01 downloads available
	Okay, I've spotted this from a number of sources but I think the first time I saw it was an email from Phoenix. So his ftp-site gets top billing for the CC1 downloads: Sunbeam FTP : you can grab the releases here, some as .TAPs (woo-hoo!). You can also grab the full entries list here. dotnet/scene : PC, Amiga, and ZX releases. POS : Of Coz. Heh. You can grab it all here, guessing in .TRD and .SCL format mainly. CC01 Unofficial Resource : again it's all in .TRD and .SCL format. Well that's the places I've seen so far that you can download the productions from the party. Any more for any more? Out of interest (if this stuff interests you), I've not been able to get to the official site. Keep getting timeouts. Anyone else have the same problem? Or perhaps it's my shitty connection.
	[icabod] - 22/08/2001 @903

	Couple downloads
	Well, "the party" is over, and things seem a little quiet for now, so I'll just list a couple downloads you may like to check out. On POS you can grab the spec for the "ATM-Turbo +2", a clone of the classic spectrum. I've got it queued, but frankly it's a lower priority than the Red Faction demo, but that's a PC thing, so please accept my apologies. Also you can grab the latest version of "ZX Navigator v1.3", from DJH Downloads. It's a "windows-like shell for ZX". Or could that be a "ZX-supporting shell for windows"? Hmm. Best get it and find out, hmmm?
	[icabod] - 21/08/2001 @928

	CC1 Results... Official?
	Okay, a quick post again tonight, just with something I think is kinda important. It's the CC1 pre-results. Thanks go to DJ Hooligan for sending these on to me. Of coz I'll confirm these when the official results are released. As I write this there's no result-based update on there (or mebbe I'm simply missing it), so we'll go with this for now: 512 byte intro 1 - BoomBoom - Red Alex/CTL 2 - Insult - Asman/Proxium 3 - Nop - Mad Cat graphics compo 1 - ???? - Pheel/PHT 2 - X-zema - Paracels/Placebo 3 - Among Us - GAS-13 demo compo 1 - Stellar Contour - Brainwawe 2 - Lifeforms - Placebo 3 - Love Gun - VolgaSoft 4 - Jaundice - Skreamer 5 - ???? - Eye-Q Yay! Now we just need to wait for the releases, right? Well click on the 3rd-place in the graphics compo and you can get to Gas13's website, where he's posted his entry. Nice work, eh? As I said, these are pre-results, so don't start complaining that you're missing a prize yet, eh!?
	[icabod] - 20/08/2001 @954

	CC1 Begins
	Well as I write this, CC1 should be beginning in a few hours. Or did it start a few hours ago? Hell, I'm crap with timezones. Anyway, if you're at the party, then enjoy it, and good luck with your entries to the compos. Assuming they pass pre-selection, of coz <g>
	[icabod] - 18/08/2001 @549

	AlchNews back online
	Via a round-about route (ie. from Yerz) I got this information from Andy Davis. Actually, I noticed it posted on CSS too, but neglected to mention it :/ "Please tell EVERYONE that AlchNews is back on the net for free! I've bought Adobe Acrobat and converted the issues to PDF format!!! I'm uploading the issues right now." WOW! Someone else who actually buys software. And I thought it was just me. Guessing the download URL for this little lot is/will be the official Alchemist Research page.
	[icabod] - 15/08/2001 @897

	Games downloads at POS
	In case you're interested in games'n'things, there's three of them been posted over at POS. Now to be honest, there's only a couple ZX games I still like to play, namely Rex and perhaps Zolyx. But if you yearn for something more, you can go grab: Humphrey Hobgoblin F16 Fighting Falcon Guessing they're .TRDos.
	[icabod] - 15/08/2001 @885

	AY-Emulator v2.4b4 released. Ish.
	Another exclusive for WOS as they announce the release of the latest version of the fantastic AY-Emulator. As I write, it's not posted on the official page, so get your baaad self over to WOS and grab the download.
	[icabod] - 15/08/2001 @883

	Total Spec-Tech overload!
	I'm sure there're a bunch of you out there who thrive on techie stuff. I do. So I thought I'd pass on a couple links to you. The first one I found on WOS, and it's a link to the Complete DISCiPLE Disassembly by Rudy Biesma. I don't have a DISCiPLE, but it could be of interest to someone. More importantly (no offence Rudy) is the latest update to the CSS FAQ (note the new URL). Can you believe it's the first update for a year (according to the updates page anyway). The FAQ is now maintained by a group of people rather than a single being, Andy Davis, Philip Kendall, and Andrew Owen, all regulars of CSS. So, what's new? Here's a quickie: Removed all sites from the FAQ which contain programs which the copyright holder has requested not be distributed. More new and updated Resources and Where Is...? information. Moved the main site again. Sorry for any inconvience... also, the Norwegian mirror of the FAQ is back up to date again, and there are two new UK mirrors: 1, 2, a new US mirror and a new Brazilian mirror. Finally, one of the Dutch mirrors has moved, but the other has gone away. Added the Amiga port of x128, the BeOS emulator Beccy, the Windows emulators GLECK and SpecEmu, the Dreamcast emulator DreamSpec and the Psion 3 emulator ZXemul - two more platforms with Speccy emulators! Updated the information on ASp, Finspe, Fuse, JASPE, JX-Speccy, RealSpectrum, SEM, Spectrum 48 (C64), TeZXas, UKV Spectrum Debugger, YaSE, XZX-Pro and Z80Stealth. Added RetroSpec to the Essential Sites section. Added the '#speccy' channel to the IRC section. Added some more +3 utilities to Question 20. Added the flash timings to the Technical Information section. Added the +2A/+3 RGB output to the Pinouts section. Isn't cut-n-paste grand. So, go get stuck in.
	[icabod] - 14/08/2001 @854

	CC1 Information
	Okay, checking a couple sites out, and found some information about CC1, and specifically the entries to the competitions. As you'll be aware there's some "discomfort" about the pre-selection of entries into the compos, but this translated text could give some good news: "...jobs for other Competitions you can bring with yourselves and to hand over prior to the beginning appropriate ZX Compo without any limitations." Okay, I think you get the idea (don't you love translations!?). Grabbed this from POS, it's some news from a couple days ago. Basically there's a lot of AY-tunes entered into the competition so far, but it looks like the other compos may go ahead without pre-selection. Did I read that right? As for the entries into the categories, I grabbed this from Scenergy: 32k Game - 1 entry 4k intro - 2 entries 512b intro - 3 entries ZX Gfx - 30 entries AY-Music - 26 entries Well, that's a fair few AY-tunes to sit through. Wonder if they'll all be released after the party?
	[icabod] - 13/08/2001 @974

	Pre-Selection 2
	Okay I got my first response to yesterday's post already. It's from Mac Buster, a guy who's opinion I respect (hey, he's put me straight on a few things). So I'll post it here and make a few comments of my own. "What a strange and weird idea you have about "non .ru" and "anti-euro"! Who told you about this??" Feedback from a few people, both on the X-board and in other discussions. I've not had first-hand experience, but then my ZX output is kinda low these days. It just seems oddly coincidental that some very good work that gets stopped during pre-selection is from Europe. Can we assume the same is true for all entries, wherever they're from? Perhaps I only hear from the .euro's? "Preselection team in music compo usually consist of several well known musicians (some of them are professional ones), and only kicks out really low quality and not original entries (e.g. already shown at a party, and so on)." I kinda expected this was the case, tho' I know that in some competitions the pre-selection committee can consist of just one-or-two people. As for low quality, I've heard/seen some very good work that's been rejected for competitions. I guess this could just be a matter of taste. At least I think we should be told who the pre-selection committee is for each competition (so we can send bribes <g>). "Nobody sits and checks if entry is from another country or from a person you dislike, etc. In fact none of preselection team knows whose entry is played/shown (in case of demo and gfx) at the moment. And surely an entry will be kicked out only if all team says it does not worth to be shown to party visitors." Again I will point out that I've seen some good work kicked out by pre-selection. And it's not just work by RA (tho' we seem to be more vocal at times about things like this). I urge people to read the discussions on the board, specifically ones by Gasman and Slayar. They make some good points, especially about not losing the work. One of my concerns is that if good work doesn't get into a competition, it could annoy people to the point of them not creating more. As we've seen recently, entries to competitions have been dropping (tho' there's quite a good turnout so far for CC1). If any work has lost out to the pre-selectors, then send it out so we can see/hear what we're missing.
	[icabod] - 13/08/2001 @963

	Pictures Pictures Pictures
	We all like to look at stuff. It's why some brainiac invented eyes. So there's a couple pages you may want to check to make use of this feature of your head: Over on the homepage of the Sprinter you can look at the mainboard for this beast stuck neatly into an AY case. There's also a slight FAQ-mod, but I'll leave you to guess what that is. Gas13 has posted 3 new (old!?) images to his website for your visual feasting. This stuff is always of a high quality, so take a peek.
	[icabod] - 13/08/2001 @888

	SpeccyAL Lives?
	Okay, last reported on this emulator back in October (yep, 10 crisp months ago). Got an email from Stephane Schmitz saying that a new version of SpeccyAL is on the cards. Looking at the new website, I appear to have missed a lot of action with this project. I'll leave you to trip over there and get yourself updated on the goings-on. For now though I'll mention that Stephane is looking for some coders to help out with a few aspects. Get yourself to the page and see if you'd like some involvment.
	[icabod] - 12/08/2001 @985

	Downloads News
	Couple bits of news about downloads. Phoenix has posted a note to the X-board to say that Sunbeam FTP will be down for a few days. Should be back online on Friday. Guess someone tripped over the cable. There's also a few new downloads at DJH, with Pops Text Editor 1.61 being the one to note. It's also another place to grab the new RealSpec.
	[icabod] - 12/08/2001 @977

	Pre-Selection Discussions
	Well it's been a couple days since I posted last, so I guess you've all had enough time to try out the newest version of RealSpec. How does it fare on the old P90? Myself, I've not had a chance to play with it yet. Pity really. A bit more notice and I'd have organised some holiday especially. I'm guessing this is one of the reasons there's been little in the way of news the last couple days. Or alternatively you could have been completing your works for CC1. Tho' checking out the current discussions on the X-board, I'm not sure that's really the case. I've mentioned before about my thoughts on pre-selection for the competitions (of any party), and there's been some postings on the board from others, including those who've had their work rejected. And yesterday it was announced on the official party-page that due to the number of entries for the AY-compo, people entering work for CC1 should send quickly to get into the pre-selection (okay, Babel gave me a dodgy translation, but I think this is the gist of it). Now don't get me wrong, I'm not worried so much about cutting down the entries to a competition. Time constraints mean that some work loses out. You can't show a 5-hour film in 15 minutes. The problem I have with it is that it's all a matter of taste. What do people look for when pre-selecting. Take ZX-Party last year, the only party I've actually been to. All work presented was shown/played. But if only the "technically superior" work was shown then the intro competition would have halved in size, and the demo compo probably wouldn't have happened. Which would mean I wouldn't have seen some of the most entertaining work I've seen in a long time. And the fantastic "Popierdolone" would certainly not have won. The general complaint on the board isn't that work gets "selected-out", but that it tends to be non-.ru entries that miss out. There could be a number of reasons for this, and I won't speculate too much about what they may be. I certainly don't think (rather, I hope it's not) an anti-euro thing. If demos are selected purely on the astounding-ness of the FX, then bear in mind that .ru entries have more to play with (Pentagon's and Scorpions having fewer restrictions than, say, a standard +2). But sometimes it's good to see something that's just well-designed, or simply just funny. Hell, I'd have voted for "Beruska" over anything else if I'd seen it at a party (best demo of all time). So, that's my point. Pre-selection is fine in principle, but demo-making is an artform, and the only person who can say if it's great is the viewer. Each to their own. Or something.
	[icabod] - 12/08/2001 @958

	RealSpectrum beta11 released
	Okay, not a huge amount of time right now, so I'll simply get the most important (IMHO) news posted. You've seen "preview" information here on raww.org, and finally after a huge wait the latest version of RealSpectrum has been released by those lovely Ramsoft people. So, what does the new beta-11 bring us? Here's a quick rundown: FastLoading : Load your tapes a light-speed. Or near as dammit. The faster your PC the better (more reasons to upgrade). Action Recorder : As I've mentioned before, it's like the .DEM files in your average shooter. Record and playback and playback and ... new Debugger : Not checked the details of this. Heh. GFX Modes : Some new modes added for various ULA "tweaks". Disks : Various improvements in the disk handling arena, including support for odd disks like CP/M (for the +3). HUD : Okay, they call it an OSD, I prefer HUD. It's status icons. Sound : Better sound apparently. Cleaner and louder. Mmmm. Even with SpecDrum support. Issue 2 K/B : You can select your weapon of choice for typing LOAD "". Greyscale mode : Greyscale Chunky-Vision. Greyscale Chunky-Vision. Greyscale Chunky-Vision. You get the idea. You've seen the movie. Now check it yourself. Eats CPU like Bogie eats pies, but looks sooo gooood (Greyscale, not Bogie). Noise : Heh. Now this is real emulation. White-noise during the gaps in tape-loaders. What next, a "wobble" key to kill the power on the 48K emulation? Bugfixes : Aah the usual stuff. Nice set of features implemented in this release, and I only listed a few. Although there's news of another release coming in a few weeks time to add things they didn't get a chance to include here. Uhm, can we fit a kitchen sink into a tiny download?
	[icabod] - 09/08/2001 @898

	Sinclair Tee's at Laden
	A mate at work sent me a link to a company called Laden. He pointed me to the t-shirts section of the site. On the site, click on "Menswear" (men swear!?), and in the "Shirts and T's" section, scroll down the page right to the bottom. There it is, a Sinclair t-shirt. A little expensive, I expect it's lined in gold-leaf or something. On the same page you can find Atari T-Shirts and things, too. One question tho' -- why do they paint Sinclair users in such a bad light by making that guy wear the tee? [nb. the tee's page takes a while to load - unless you have a fast connection it's prolly not worth the effort]
	[icabod] - 07/08/2001 @961

	FX Compo Cancelled
	Looking at the ESA webpage I see that the FX Compo (a competition just for coders) has been cancelled. The reason? No-one's contributed. I guess us people on the news-sites can be partly to blame (I confess I actually forgot about this event). But there's been a distinct lack of promotion for it. I last mentioned it way back in early May. Okay, so it's not that long ago, but an awful lot has happened since. Perhaps people are just getting more "relaxed" with their coding these days. I have plenty of ideas, but sitting down to create them... that's a different matter. Okay, I walk to work (about 45 minutes each way), and I sometimes code "in-my-head" during this time, but even then after all the tricky stuff like timings, scrolly-texts, etc, have been worked out... well, I'm sure some of you know what I mean. Hmm. Actually, I'm running short on time right now, so I'll post and let you get on with your surfing.
	[icabod] - 07/08/2001 @944

	AY-Emulator source code
	Haha! Not really the source to AY-Emulator, but Sergey has released the source to a couple useful utilities, so the coders amongst us can have a look at what goes on behind the scenes when playing with .AY files. The tools can be used together to fix bad .AY files. First there's a program to split a file into it's component parts. Next there's a version of James McKay's AYMake for rebuilding the files. Worth a check if you play with these files. Personally I prefer to have the tracker-music, but them I'm a traditionalist. Or something.
	[icabod] - 06/08/2001 @844

	Participants in CC1
	Little additional party-note. In my regular webcheck I saw that the "progress" page of CC1 has been updated. There's about 8 more entrants in the ZX Gfx and AY-music sections. Nice to see, that.
	[icabod] - 05/08/2001 @928

	Assembly 2001 is over
	Just looked at the calendar and I see that Assembly'01 has finished. This is probably the most famous demoparty, so I think it's worth mentioning here, despite not being speccy-oriented. There's a couple things worth looking at, tho'. I was checking out Assembly TV, and you can grab an AVI-file of the "Oldskool" compos there. In total (with Demos, Gfx, and Music) it's about 90Mb of movie to download, but if you have the bandwidth to spare there could be some interesting stuff in there. Looking both here and on the official site, I haven't spotted the downloads for the actual oldskool entries yet, but odds are that none of them are for the ZX. If anyone has info on this... mail me. Anyway, I'm still browsing the site a little. I'll let you know of anything more interesting to look at. While I'm here, I'll mention a couple things I spotted over on Scenergy. They have a whole load of information about Asm'01, which you may like to look at. There's also mention of news about two other parties. Firstly we have a download for some photos from CSP'01. Also there's a link to an unofficial website for upcoming party CC1. You may recognise the URL, as there was an unofficial page there last year for CC000000 (how many 0's was it?).
	[icabod] - 05/08/2001 @793

	sunbeam.raww.net
	Ehm. There's little else to say, really. I've been playing with DNS the last couple days, and I've set up a NS entry for Sunbeam FTP. It's still in the same place, it just has an alternative URL. As a side-note, make the most of raww.org while you can. I've been playing with the DNS settings for this site too, and I'm afraid I may have killed it. We'll just have to keep checking over the next couple days to be sure.
	[icabod] - 05/08/2001 @772

	DJH Downloads now working in English
	Okay, after a little tweaking of config files, I managed to sort out the redirection for zxeng to point to the English version of the DJH Download pages. Saves us a "click", eh?
	[icabod] - 04/08/2001 @804

	Izhnews #0C and ASC-II photos
	The guys over at POS have just posted the latest issue of scene-zine Izhnews #0C. I've got it queued up now, as apparently there's a lot of scene news in this one. Not that much of it'll be in English of coz, but you never know. There's also a bunch of photos from the fairly recent ASC-II party, so it could be worth a check.
	[icabod] - 04/08/2001 @803

	DJH Downloads has moved
	Hey, in case you haven't seen, DJ Hooligan has moved his Downloads site to another server. As you may have noticed, the site has been in-accessible from outside ex-USSR. Not entirely sure of the problem, but it's something to do with chat.ru. Anyway, the site has been moved now, and you can find it at... zxfiles.raww.net. Yeah, another site hosted on my server. For the moment, the two URLs (zxfiles and zxeng) both point to the same part of the site. When I get a chance (hopefully this weekend) I'll fix it up so that zxeng points directly to the English-language section of the site. Until then, I think we can put up with the minor inconvenience of clicking on "English Version". So, hooray for another raww.net-site, and hooray that DJH-D is now available to all*. * if there's any problems accessing the site, please mail me
	[icabod] - 04/08/2001 @045

	CSP-01 photos soon on POS
	According to Himik\POS, they've just received from photos from the recent CSP-01 party. They're not posted on the site yet, but they should be within a couple days, I guess. But if Himik's anything like me, it'll take longer than that <g> Incidentally, some very useful news about the site... the POS-downloads page now appears to be viewable in Netscape. Thanks guys :]
	[icabod] - 04/08/2001 @040

	Gas13 Updates
	An update has been made over at the homepage of Gas13. If you go there you can check out an image titled "Doubled Evil", which was entered into the just-completed Paradox 2k+1 party. Gained a 5th position in the results. Also, there's mention of Gas13 himself appearing in the gallery on LDIR. Yep, it's there alright.
	[icabod] - 04/08/2001 @037

	RealSpectrum beta 11 info
	Okay, after teasing us with some greyscale (grayscale?) previews, I've found some news about the upcoming new beta release of RealSpectrum from Ramsoft. It's been (badly) translated from Italian, as the message was posted to a mailing list I happen to be subbed to. So, I'll try to make sense of what Babelfish has given me: New debugger : multiple breakpoints, memory views, editing, all from a new interface FastLoading : think this is like Flashload, but re-written to provide a speed increase of up to 8 times normal Recording : allows you to record what the keyboard/joystick are doing So again, some nice features. If you're at all familiar with various 3D shooters on the PC, you'll recognise the "recording" part. It allows saving of everything you do, so you can replay it. Not overly useful for demos, but for games it certainly has it's uses.
	[icabod] - 02/08/2001 @972

	Chaos Constructions 1 news
	Okay, a little bit of CC01 for this post, I think. To start with, I've had a mail from Unbeliever\xtm with some info he wanted to pass on. So to save me some time, here it is: " Dear sceners! I wanna to remind you about upcoming cc1 demoparty in Russia. It should be greatest event of this year for every ZX Spectrum scener. Already accepted: gfx compo - 6 screens music compo - 5 tracks 512 bytes - 1 work All of them are high quality! A lot of works should arrive very soon. About 5 demos announced for democompo. Also there should be many off-compo releases such as new issues of scene diskzines, new games and demos of upcoming projects. Some special surprises prepared especially for non ex-USSR Speccy fans. We are still waiting for your compo works! Plz send them until 14 august to me (Unbeliever) and enter the battle for the first place! " I think that says it quite well. Basically, you have just under 2 weeks left to get your entries in. Noticed a couple other things on the official CC01 homepage, too. Serzh has been spotted in the "entries" section of the site (titled "Progress report"). But wait, he's in the Amiga/PC 4k section. So, two weeks to code a winning Speccy 4k intro... easy <g> I mentioned a few days ago about a Flash-invitation to the party. Well now there's one (the same?) downloadable from the main site. Not checked it yet (it's about half-way through downloading). So if you have a bit of bandwidth to spare (just pause that pr0n for a second), you may want to check this out.
	[icabod] - 02/08/2001 @966

	Big V-TRD Update
	Just seen a big update at Virtual TR-DOS. The first for nearly 4 weeks, in fact. I'll leave the "read-me" bits, and just list some of the new files: ZX $creen Navigator v1.7 : looks like it's for DOS AY Emulator v2.4 beta 3 : the latest beta, of coz Micro Speccy v1.0 : and I'm guessing this is the latest fixed version, too Burial GFX Editor v3.05 : you surely know this tool AC Edit v0.56 : text editor, right? HRiP v1.05 : neat and compact app some others I can't be arsed to list... Nice collection there, some we've already seen, but still worth checking out.
	[icabod] - 02/08/2001 @946

	Head Over Heels
	Demoscene news is a little thin on the ground, so I thought I'd mention this link I received to Head-Over-Heels, which I think it a remake of the classic isometric game. Why only think? Well, the site seems to be up-n-down like a yoyo (JoJo?), so I can't check it now. Had a very quick look last night, and the title-page looks nice.
	[icabod] - 02/08/2001 @927

	AY-Emulator v2.4b3 released
	Okay, someone's been busy. As well as a new version of AY-Emulator, there's a new fixed version of MicroSpeccy released on the same day. AY-E brings about beta-3, although I don't have any details of changes here. And the new MicroSpeccy fixes a problem resetting the AY. And while you're grabbing those files you can get another new skin called "ColdLine" by Keynol.
	[icabod] - 31/07/2001 @974

	FAQing new update at Sprinter
	Sprinter homepage has been updated with some more information in the FAQ section. Updates are about the CMOS (realtime clock), and information about the Spectrum modes of this machine. Some interesting stuff in there... it'll be running TR-DOS v7.01 (a Sprinter-specific variant), which can be started by simply selecting a .TRD file. There's also a "fast-switch" feature, which will allow quick flipping between the model of Spectrum clone. I'll let you check the rest.
	[icabod] - 31/07/2001 @972

	AY-Tracks at CC01
	Little update which concerns us over at CC01-site. If you're planning on entering any AY-tunes, you should know that the music will be played in ABC-stereo. It's possible that a switch will be put in to allow for ACB-stereo, but who knows. Best re-write those tunes, eh?!
	[icabod] - 31/07/2001 @969

	Paradox Results
	Okay, quick post tonight, as I've been coding all day. Not on Speccy stuff (sorry), but coding for work, and coding just now. Aah, what a life I lead. So, a quickie to cover the final results of Paradox 2k+1, as sent to me by DJH. A quick rundown: ZX GFX compo 1 - Honey - Silent/Delta 2 - Scorp - Klown/Delirium Tremens 3 - dew kur - Haw/Z-Club ZX Ay music compo 1 - ParadoX 2k+1 - Klim/Omega Hackers Group/XXL 2 - Forms - Phantom Lord/Accept Corp. 3 - I help you Die - Cj.Mouse/Coders' Academy ZX Digital music compo for covox/soundrive 1 - Keep dA Smile - Cj.LeO/Coders' Academy 2 - Ultra Sonic - Klim/Omega Hackers Group/XXL 3 - LooSe - Dj.ViGiL/Coders' Academy ZX 4k intro compo 1 - Nonsense - Vortex/Brainwave/X-Project ZX Demo compo 1 - 352919 - Accept Corp. 2 - Codex - Coders' Academy So there you go. Quite a nice turnout I think, tho' obviously not much in the 4k intro side of things. Heh, Serzh must be busy, he's not entered. It'll be interesting to find out which work didn't get past the pre-selection committee. I already know of one AY-tune, but it was kinda a late entry. I'll see if I can post it here tomorrow night. Anyone have a full list of entries to the compos? In this and other parties? It'd be a shame to see all that work go missing. Anyway. If you wanna check the full results, check out this file.
	[icabod] - 30/07/2001 @981

	CC01 news
	'K, a couple sites have put up information on CC1, which will be happening in about, uhm, 3 weeks or so. I think. First up, I was checking out the entries into the Spectrum competitions. Not a bad turnout so far (about the same as the Amiga sections), but I would recommend you get your work in quick, along with a small bribe to get it past the pre-selection committee <g>. Seems there's been a few complaints about the voting system in use on day-2 of the party. I've not really checked it out recently (as I'm not entering any work), but it could affect some of you. A bunch of banners have been posted to the official site. If you feel like advertising the party, you may want to use one of them. A word of warning tho' -- the page kinda kills my PC (well, Netscape slows down to a stop). Finally for now, there's apparently a flash-intro to the party posted on Fishbone. Not checked it, as I'm getting problems with the site (like the news-page isn't found). Aah well.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @703

	DJH Downloads Updated
	Another update has slipped through without me noticing it. Why? Coz there's still some problems with getting to DJH Downloads from outside of Russia (I guess I'm too far to the west, eh?). Anyway, the new goodies are: Paradox 2k full results (and I can't bloody get to them! Can someone please mail them!?) ACEdit 0.56 (text editor - also spotted this on fido7) Roga - funny animated movie Flash Info 20 (paper) - Russian section Competition added - Russian section To get to the Russian specifics, click here.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @690

	Revamped A-World has a new home
	Got an email from Anestis about his homepage. You may remember it (thinks... the home of Sonic? Ehm...). Well, there were a few problems with his ISP, and he was looking for a new home. Well he's found one at WOS. For now we don't need to update our links (there's a re-direct page), but you should check out the new version. Very nice.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @687

	CSP 2001 downloads
	More downloads from CSP 2001 for the are available from a couple sites, namely Scenergy and POS. Not checked them out yet. Also from POS you can find a couple other interesting files to get, including the GFX for the ZX-project, "Heroes of Might and Magic II".
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @679

	speccy.cz updates
	Thanks to JW of speccy.cz for reminding me about another recent update to the site. Some .mp3 "remakes" were added of tunes for various games. But more importantly (to sceners, anyway), a bunch of tracks from Enlight'96 were added (again in .mp3 format), recorded directly from RealSpectrum. One thing tho'... would it not make more sense to provide the actual tracks? Especially with the quality that AY-Emulator provides? Ah well.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @675

	vbSpec Clones released
	Well perhaps they're not quite clones of vbSpec (an emulator I confess I've not looked at), but they're based on the code for it. WOS reports on the two new emulators, DelphiSpec (a Delphi conversion of the VB code), and the amusingly titled (if you're me) DamSpecEm. Both of these hit the streets at v0.3.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @670

	New downloads at Demotopia
	Yeah, a couple new downloads are available from Demotopia if you care to grab them. You can find there the winner of the recent Paradox 2k+1 party ("352919", in .TAP format), and also a Giftro from Papaya Dezign.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @667

	LDIR 'zine updated
	Ooh, ages ago (back in May in fact), Serzh set up a new site titled LDIR. Well, it's been a while but an update has been made. The gallery is still there, but now there's some news about the first issue of this 'zine. Annoyingly, the page doesn't appear to be viewable in Netscape (at least my version), so I've hacked out the text, and here's a cut-n-paste: " The project of LDIR polygraphic magazine for Zx-Spectrum is nearly finished. One question to you: - Did you wanna to publish your name and email? And maybe, you wanna publish more clean and full contact info about you, or something looks like advertising (at special page). If you wanna add some wishes or critics - do not be worry and send it... Some article or question from you have big chances to be published... You have something to say, I know... :))) First 100 examples of LDIR magazine will be presented on CC1 demoparty. 64-80 pages, A4, b/w. Some articles on english, but mostly on russian of course. With best wishes, SerzhSoft. P.S. sorry for lame english ofcourse! :) " Slightly edited, but I kept in some of the "lame english" coz I think it's kinda cool <g>.
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @665

	Summer Summer Summer-tiime.
	So, if you've been wondering "why isn't raww.org being updated so often?", you should check the weather. Here in the UK, it's rather hot'n'sunny. Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan sun, but it doesn't exactly make you want to sit in front of a computer all day, right? Anyway, I'm about to get a few sprigs of news outta the way. So, from the top...
	[icabod] - 29/07/2001 @656

	DJH Downloads Updates
	Well, chat.ru is still playing silly buggers... seems that sites can be seen from within Russia, but not from outside (if anyone knows any different, it'd be useful information). So thanks to DJ Hooligan for sending me a list of recent updates to DJH Downloads. I'm about to get to bed, so I'll just list them here: Burial GFX Editor v3.05 Paradox 2k+1 winning demo ("352919"?) HRip v1.05 Pussy (cracked) PsychoXOR (another game)
	[icabod] - 25/07/2001 @944

	Happy Birthday .CZ
	Just seen that yesterday (OK, so I'm a day late again), speccy.cz celebrated it's first birthday (including the time it spent as 128 Museum). So, how has it celebrated? By creating a one-way ftp server. Hmm. Seems a bit strange, but you can upload, but not download. Well, it's one way of collecting software I suppose.
	[icabod] - 25/07/2001 @923

	New version of BGE
	Headline says nearly everything you need to know. Oh, except that the new version of Burial Gfx Editor is v3.05, and you can grab it from POS.
	[icabod] - 25/07/2001 @881

	AY-Emulator beta2 released
	Another beta version of AY-Emulator has popped out. This new version (titled "v2.4 beta 2") claims to have full .AY and .AYM support. I've not checked it yet, so I guess I'd better start it downloading.
	[icabod] - 25/07/2001 @880

	Paradox Results - almost
	Gah! How could I have missed this? Coz it only happened yesterday I guess. Well, Paradox has finished, and the results have been posted on the official page. You want them? Well, here's the ones that count: demo 1 - 352919 - Accept Corp 2 - ... - Coders Academy 3 - ... - ... Okay, so those results are... interesting to say the least. I've actually grabbed these from Scenergy, as the official page doesn't seem to include any Speccy-related results. I got confused after just this little section, so skipped the rest. When I find out more information I'll post it. Hope it comes soon, eh? The only other thing to note is the massive amount of work listed in the results by Accept Corp. Nice work, there.
	[icabod] - 25/07/2001 @877

	Putting the world to rights
	Thanks to Relict\Phantasy+K3L for letting me know that GFX Zone will indeed have a Speccy section very soon. He's working on it now. This is good news to me. When I first got into the demoscene, ooh, about 8 years ago now, I didn't have a PC, Amiga, or much knowledge of any scene other that the Speccy. Then during my years at University I discovered the PC scene. And the Amiga scene. And Atari. And... the list goes on. It just seemed that few of the sites I was checking out had discovered the Speccy scene. Perhaps I was just checking the wrong sites. I tried to "spread the word", even trying (lamely) to persuade people like Sandman\Valhalla to watch a Speccy demo (we went to the same Uni, but I never actually met the bloke). A few people watched, fewer still were moderately impressed. Most didn't realise just how tricky it is to code decent FX on the little box. So now it's nice to see that the humble 8-bit is getting more notice. Keep it up!
	[icabod] - 23/07/2001 @967