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Unconventional
2003 continued...
Saturday 30
August 2003 Midnight just gone, yet the
action was just starting to warm up. I could
not escape the evil jaws of the VCS Decathlon
challenge - if this game doesn't mash your arm
muscles to a pulp and turn you into a gibbering
wreck, I don't know what will. My opponents
were Mad Butscher, R.I.K. and TWH, all experienced
athletes in this game, I didn't stand a chance.
In between rounds I squeezed in some more SuperFly
but still failed to beat my score, it drove
me crazy. R.I.K. showed off his skill by drinking
a beer while playing Decathlon. Incidentally,
if you see people at an Atari convention wearing
"1972" T-shirts, it could mean
one of two things: it's the person's date of
birth, or more likely, the year Atari was born.
![[Photo: TWH and Mad Butscher]](images/uc01441.jpg)
![[Photo: Mad Butscher, Charlie Chaplin and R.I.K.]](images/uc01456.jpg)
![[Photo: R.I.K. drinking while playing]](images/uc01457.jpg)
Having lost the
Decathlon challenge as expected, I played SuperFly
until sunrise, still failing to match my high
score, frustratingly. TWW the Dutchman had woken
up at some very strange time in the morning
like 05:00 and accompanied my pressing of
the fire button on SuperFly with his solder
sucker, removing DRAM chips from another motherboard,
presumably for breakfast. Everyone else was
asleep and the only sound to be heard was, "Click...
Click... Click.. Pop! Pop!" for at least
an hour.
When it was light
outside, we decided to go to the field with
a hard disk and evaluate different throwing
techniques, trying to understand why I didn't
do well last time. I finally tried the
generally preferred discus swing as always demonstrated
by Mad Butscher, it was effective indeed though
difficult to control the release point to achieve
the intended direction with maximum power. Avoiding
the cars parked on the left was part of the
problem, so I modified it into an overarm throw,
which gave the precision and power I needed.
In further testing I tried two more discus swings,
they went far right into the adjacent field
which was previously occupied by a wooden hut
extension to the hall, now demolished. Both
times I swung the disk hard enough to hurt my
hand with the G-forces! By observing each other's
techniques we got some good results and I convinced
TWW to keep his arm straight throughout the
swing.
By 09:00 the
hall was coming to life once more - our first
new visitors of the day were led by Wolfgang
Burger, president of ABBUC, the world-famous
8-bit Atari club. Of course, he was wearing
his wonderful ABBUC tie. He also brought a large
box of merchandise, including a set of professionally
made black and gold ABBUC coffee mugs for competition
prizes. Internet access came courtesy of Wolfgang
as well. It was a pleasure to talk to Wolfgang
and he invited me to the ABBUC JHV in October.
ABBUC members at the convention also received
certificates and the latest issue of the printed
club magazine.
![[Photo: Wolfgang Burger's team]](images/uc01462.jpg)
![[Photo: Wolfgang's tie]](images/uc01472.jpg)
Jan Krupka came
to play SuperFly, grinning ear-to-ear with
intent again, then cheekily smashed my score
not once but
twice! I would have to play that game to destruction
and regain my title, but too bad for both of
us the Mad Butscher came and set an unbeatable
score of over 11,000 while giving a running
commentary! Would I win any of the competitions?
Not unless they introduce a new category: staying
awake the longest.
Over at the Foundation
Two table, TWH was thoroughly enjoying his nagelneue
Jaguar console, playing Rayman and Tempest
2000. TXG was advising him (planting ideas)
of all the cool stuff available and Nick Harlow
must have been very happy as TWH came back for
more goodies, like a Jaguar CD unit. TWW then
spun some of his heavy metal albums on
the VLM.
More new visitors
came at lunchtime, Detlef Thielsch of a4com,
the German Acorn/RISC OS dealer by himself
with a new desktop system (in a very cool graphite
coloured tower which would be great for CT60
Falcons) and notebook, and
Bunsen and Wizard of the Wiesbaden Gaming
Lab with their 8-bits. Only Grisu of the WGL
didn't make it, which was a pity, I was most
pleased to meet the WGL crew and we discussed
ideas for future tests. Detlef passed
around flyers informing people of the one-day-only
RISC OS technology demonstration he had planned.
People were hungry
again, so came the second round of pizza. I
was honestly feeling sick from the last pizza
so didn't order one this time and thought about
other solutions. Floppy Doc noticed and spoke
to Helmut, who kindly offered some home-made
German style soup from his wife Diane. This
was much tastier I think next time he should
bring a big pot and sell it like he sells beer
and soft drinks. Perhaps the locals, especially
younger ones of my generation, don't appreciate
traditional German food but I like it very much.
It may be a very tourist-like thing to do but
then I didn't go all the way to Germany to eat
just pizza!
![[Photo: a4com the Acorn dealer]](images/Uc01500.jpg)
![[Photo: Wizard of the WGL]](images/uc01501.jpg)
I
could never resist having a peek at the MNX
crew's gadgets. They had two of the new Atarimax
1 Mb
flash cartridge modules for the 8-bit, even
cartridges disguised as cigarette packets (or
was that the other way round?). Among the technical
puzzles I witnessed, one
difficult challenge was ascertaining the geometry
of a hard disk so TXG could use it on his 8-bit,
there were no clues on the drive's label, as
one would expect. We fiddled with HD-Driver
for ages to no avail and even managed to lose recognition
of
the internal IDE hard disk, luckily I remembered
how to reset the Falcon NVRAM and all was fine again.
Meanwhile, TXG had found the CHS parameters
of the hard disk and got it working with his
8-bit Black Box SCSI interface.
TXG and Bohdan
performed a Falcon MiNT installation with Ethernet,
connecting to a local FTP server hosted on TXG's
notebook PC. Bohdan also showed me some
articles he has been preparing for MyAtari,
they are good and I look forward to publishing
them soon.
![[Photo: TWH playing his Jaguar]](images/uc01512.jpg)
![[Photo: The Swiss corner]](images/uc01514.jpg)
![[Photo: The Czechs and Bunsen of the WGL]](images/uc01519.jpg)
In
the Swiss corner, Sacha started running slideshows
on his projector of photographs and videos from
previous events. The sight of three people with
notebook PCs there mysteriously tapping away
was a strange sight.
At
mid-afternoon came the Lynx Checkered Flag competition,
I really hate this because I'm rubbish at the
game, it's like accepting an invitation to
be slaughtered. I didn't intend to try too hard,
in fact I accidentally gave away a 15-second
headstart by not paying enough attention to
the starting signal. I don't know any special
technique for playing Checkered Flag so just
drove the way I drive in real life and... I won!
It was by quite a comfortable margin, too. The
same technique brought the same lead and victory
in my second round, then by my third round,
which was the semi-final I think, it was a different
track and I lost my early lead by taking a corner
too fast and crashing. So don't ever get in
a car with me when I'm behind the steering wheel!
Sacha won in the end, putting a cap on Mad Butscher's
reign. There was something in the real-time
article about Swiss drivers after that...
Outside,
the weather was good so we could have a barbecue.
I was instructed to follow Helmut to go shopping
for sausages. We drove to a local supermarket
and ransacked the place of sausages, then went
to the in-store bakery to get some buns. The
ladies behind the counter looked bemused but
I think they understood, emptying two whole
trays of freshly baked buns into a box and then
from there into a large paper bag. I thought
we'd head straight back to the hall but intstead,
Helmut took me on a guided tour around Lengenfeld,
during which we experienced some rain, before
heading back to his house to pick up the barbecue
grill and his wife and son. Although TWH is
normally the master of the barbecue, these were
Helmut's sausages so this time TWH was a guest
- we had a very delicious barbecue (just ask
Nick Harlow), perhaps some chicken wings next
time wouldn't go amiss. It wasn't until later
that evening when I saw some more photos on
Sacha's slideshow that I realized my excursion
around the village took me away from the hard
disk throwing for which I'd trained and studied
so hard! There I was forever wondering when
it would take place.
![[Photo: Lynx Checkered Flag]](images/uc01522.jpg)
![[Photo: Helmut starting the barbecue]](images/uc01530.jpg)
![[Photo: Sausages on the barbecue]](images/uc01541.jpg)
![[Photo: Sausage in a bun]](images/uc01543.jpg)
Nick's
stand had hundreds if not thousands of interesting
Atari things, I would have bought the lot if
I had the money. I noticed in one plastic bag
some home-brewed ROMs of Alien vs Predator for
the Lynx, something I would have to see. Nick
opened up a Lynx for me to play this, it showed
the Lynx's bitmap scaling capability very well,
but when you turn around it happens in 90° steps,
rather than rotating like the proper texture
mapped environment of the Jaguar version. This
increases the risk of being seen and killed
and is slightly disorienting especially when
trying to approach doorways carefully. One has
to step right into full view and then turn around
to see through the doorway, by which time it
may be too late to react.
Last
orders were being taken at 16/32 by early evening,
as Nick had come by car and needed to be back
at work in the UK by Monday morning. Even as
the boxes of games were methodically packed
away, punters still scoured the vast array of
goods in search of that special thing they wanted.
Finally when the decks were cleared, everyone
helped cart the boxes out to Nick's car and
help him load it up again. When this was complete
and Nick was heading back home the party continued.
The Czechs showed me a rare Czech computer they'd
brought with them, a Tesla PMD 85-3 with BASIC
program pack, a huge ROM that was more or less
part of the main case styling. It was very solidly
built and my only criticism was of the good
quality keys, which were simply too small. If
hitting the wrong key on a 520/1040ST keyboard
is annoying, don't even try one of these.
![[Photo: Gaming with the kids from next door]](images/uc01563.jpg)
We
had company for the rest of the night, as there
was a wedding reception in the function room
next door. Our door was open and after the adults
from that side got an idea of what we Atari
people were up to, they and their children were
coming over to join the fun, it was a really
great atmosphere. Several hours' eating, drinking
and gaming ensued. At 23:00 I felt like getting
some food, as even if there was pizza earlier
I would have skipped it. I went with TWH and
Mad Butscher to the local kebab house, but it
was closed! That's useless, a kebab house is
supposed to stay open very late to feed people
like us! If MyAtari ever did a kebab test, this
place would lose stars just for not staying
open late enough.
Back
to the hall we drove, empty stomach for me.
Ultimately, the Unconventional
people were here for the weekend and the wedding
party left by about midnight. Guess what, I
was still wide awake.
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