KOWBOY's TG00 daily diary
Wednesday 19/04/2000
Entry#1 - 07:09: So. I am on the train now. Heading for The Gathering 1900... Or The Gathering 2000, whichever way you wish to call it, ehh. Anyway. What has happened so far? First I had to part from my warm cozy comfortable bed at 03:00 A.M, isch. That was inhuman since I only slept for two hours. Picked up Reaper, my dear friend and travelling partner, and headed for the train station and now I am on the train. Left Stockholm 20 minutes ago and will arrive at Oslo in like 8 hours or so. Of course I doubt my laptop batteries will last that long.
Entry#2 - 09:52: So now I'm in Kil, a small Swedish town. The guy at the trainstation talks like the guy in Hajk, a very famous Swedish hosting kiddie programs. Very funny I think but the others around me don't seem to share my awe. Loosers, hehe. We are stuck here for a while, waiting for a delayed train from Gothenburg. Typical, make this train trip even more boring by sitting on my now flatter by the minute behind, waiting for another train. BAH!
Entry#3 - 19:22: Woooohaaaaaaa! I have arrived. After one day of travelling I have finally arrived at the Vikingship, Hamar. Pfff... Man am I exhausted. The party place is, as you might guess, stuffed with glowing computer monitors, pumping music, happy people, laughter... Yes! This is life, this is what makes it all worth it, this is The Gathering 1900!
Thursday 20/04/2000
Entry#1 - 00:32: Have been sleeping some. Nothing extremely cool has happened so far. My laptop networkcard is having a life of its own, so I'm seriously annoyed by that. The crew are showing some nice looking demos on the big screen. Maybe I should go have a look... Ok can't hear everything from here, except massive frag shooting, going near stage.
Entry#2 - 06:39: Have been sleeping some more (ashamed). :) I tried to sleep under the table where I sit. It worked fine and I slept like a baby for two hours until an evil security guy came to wake me up pretexting it wasn't allowed to sleep under the tables due to fire-safety regulations. There is nowhere else to sleep... gah! I need to sleep more. I have also uploaded all contibutions from us in NEXTEMPIRE. The ZEPO(tm) system works flawlessly - as usual. It ate the intro, the mod and the pic without any trouble. Gonna sleep sitting now... Must... Have... Sleep....
Entry#3 - 10:35: The crew just had an entertaining briefing entitled "How to stay well at TG00" broadcasted through the speaker system. They wanted us to wash our hands and so on. Hey I haven't leeched any prOn yet, does that apply to me? Strange announcement, I think. I am beginning to get a heery feeling.
Entry#4 - 18:37: Hmm. So if I have understood things correctly Mrs. Tess is about to perform live on stage. But then, I dont speak Norvegian and I'm way too tired to think straight. Tess? Who is Tess? A Swedish Eurotechno queen. Selected to represent Sweden's sexiest woman in 1999. Hehe... Shake it baby! Been trying to get my laptop to work also. The network card is still behaving in a very Malaysian way forcing me to reboot periodically every 30 minutes which leads to some never yet seen blue Windows screens. ARGH! The great movie Abyss (the Special Edition that is, wow) will be shown at 19:30. Gotta see it.
Entry#5 - 21:29: Missed the movie. Darn. Ate some food instead. Was worth missing a movie I've already seen. The food is very expensive by the way here. One hamburger, only the burger I mean (no fries on side), costs 45 NOK. In Sweden you can get a whole meal for that kind of money, a big coke, fries and a BIG burger. Oh well I guess the ORG has to make money somehow. Hope I don't starve to death though, wasn't prepared for that. One thing one might see when going to a demoparty is that during daytime, ie when the sun is shining, its dead calm and still inside the party hall, for everyone sleeps, and not much happens. But then, when the sun is setting, the computer screens start to rapidely revive. The sound systems starts pumping louder and louder music as in wake up time, delivering a heavy background beat to give courage to the zombies. Lights, of all different colors, start flashing and people awake. This is when you truly get to appreciate the genuine feeling that takes place at happenings like this. Ohhh yes! Do I love it or what!?!
Entry#6 - 22:50: Tess just finished her show. Hmm. Don't like her music that much. But the idea of an activity such as a concert like this at a demoparty is extremely cool though. This is something we should see more of. Last entry for today. Gonna go sleep somewhere (or play hide and seek).
Friday 21/04/2000
Entry#1 - 11:37: Morning all. Haven't slept that much tonight... I think. Can't remember what I really did so I was probably staring into the void of glowing screens. Hmm... It's cold in here. First time I freeze at a party, one should sweat, not freeze. I understand better now the "How to stay well at TG00" announcement. Anyway, gonna get some breakfast now. Ok let's think very carefully about what I'm going to buy this time.
Entry#2 - 17:32: Met some Swedish dudes from Norrköping. Cyx and his friend. Hiya guys!
Entry#3 - 20:09: The sun is setting outside. Could be a very cool demo effect. :) Did I mention that there is a lasergame dome here? There is. A giant inflatable... Hmm... Hemisphere... Yes, a hemisphere. Haven't tried the lasergame yet, costs too much money. :( There are also some guys selling computer stuff. At one table some guys are selling different cooling systems for computers. Like for example a fan for a graphic card large has a jolt can or maybe a water cooling system for your new P33 40000MHz? Can't they invent some sort of cooling system for my head so that I can think clearer. Really need to sleep now. Less than an hour until the multichannel compo where one of our musicians KENSHI is going to compete with a tune entitled "Fight to the death". A really cool tune. Hope we don't get flamed too much and that people don't over-react without listening to it first. Now I will sleep.
Saturday 22/04/2000
Entry#1 - 01:54: Three compos down. Multichannel, pixel and raytrace. I missed the raytrace so I'm not going to comment that one yet but as for the multichannel there were some contribs which were very high standard. The tune called "Beautiful Dreams" is definately one of the favourites, as well as KENSHI's "Fight to the death" (of course :)). Pixel then. Well. Mostly low quality, except for like 3 of them, and only 9 entries. My favourite was KTHULU's "Fooling myself", not because he is a group member but because it honestly think it was the best looking pic according to me. Of course others can disagree, and I might be biased. (Added hours later: Got 3rd place in GFX 2D.) It was really nice that one could download the multichannel entries real-time and listen to them privately and as I understand the pixel and raytrace should be downloadable soon too. Yihaa. Can't wait to see the raytrace compo.
Entry#2, 07:31: The java demo and intro 64kb compo took place like around 0300-0400. Some cool intros indeed, hope our intro "Scratch" coded by KOZMIK will place somewhere high in rankings. (Added hours later: It didn't.) Wait a minute, if I understood right, one out of the 5 intros (the one getting the most applauds) is Open-GL based (accelerated), is that fair? Is it normal? Maybe they didn't have enough entries in Accelerated and dumped it there. Well ... (no comment). If you don't understand what this means, it means calling routines that are not yours and have been coded by others and on top of that that are not included in the standard 64kb size limit. What's the point of having a size limit then? Javademo: Hmm. Yes. Blashphemy had co-produced a cool demo with two other groups (too tired to remember) which I think was very cool. Stylish and so. Some sleep wouldn't be wrong right now...
Entry#3 - 15:06: There is this guy standing on stage screaming stuff in Norvegian. I don't understand shit. I know I'm certainly not the only foreigner at this party and I don't think it's too much to ask from the crew that they start speaking English on a party of this size (4500 people about). Ok. So I'm from Sweden, I can understand some Norvegian. But please! Why not English? Can't think of any party I've gone to where they didn't speak English when kindly asked to do so by lost visitors.
Sunday 23/04/2000
Entry#1 - 08:26: Oops. Kinda slept for 11 hours. Shit. Missed all cool compies like demo, 3d acc. and WiLD. Damn! Well. At least I get to see the prize ceremony. (Added hours later: OK, no problem missing demo compo actually.) Damn. This is what you get when you don't sleep as you should at parties. Arghhh! Fustration=enormous!! Get some sleep the first days when you go to a party so that you can see the compos the last days. That's what I recommend. Grrr... I should know that.
Entry#2, 17:19: Yes. Now I'm at the Oslo train station where I should have been like two hours earlier. Why? Yes. Because the train from Hamar to Oslo was half an hour late and it had no room for me and Reaper so we had to go by bus. Then the bus was late by ten minutes so we missed our train to Sweden. Breathe in! Breathe out! But now the nice train station officer has booked us on a flight home. YES! We paid for a train ticket where the travel time would have been more than 8 hours, and we got an 1 hour flight ticket instead. Hehe... Victory! Hehe... to be honest this is my first time flying. Kind of nervous I could add :) Big thanks to the Norvegian train organization. Nice people.
Monday 24/04/2000
Final entry, the day after The Gathering
At last, after some adventures in Norway I'm back home. Have slept 12 hours non-stop in my very comfortable bed. Felt really nice.
So how did it go for NEXTEMPIRE at The Gathering. Well. Our intro wasn't that much of a success, unfortunately. But then on the other side let's be happy for KTHULU and KENSHI. Yes. KTHULU finished third with his pic "Fooling myself" in the pixel compo. Congrats to you! KENSHI then. Ok. He didn't place amongst top 3 but was approached by a music producer who wanted to talk with him about his music. That's way cool!
My congratulations to you my friend. You get "breaks" like these at parties, that's one of the reasons you want to be there physically. What about me then?? I didn't compete in any compos this year but maybe something will happen at a party soon... who knows? :)
The Gathering as a demoparty then? Hehe... Yeah. I talked to some guys in the official #tg00 irc channel. Since there was so much... eehh... ip addresses of prOn and illegal warez flowing by there. ;) I asked them if they knew about the phenomenon called "the demoscene" and after a while some guy told me he didn't have THAT mp3. (I swear this is not a joke.) Ehhh.... Ok. Later a guy told me that he never heard of that and I asked him if he knew what a demoparty was. His answer was... No.
Man! What are you doing here. I was totally convinced of the fact that The Gathering was a demoparty of great scale. Obviously I was wrong. It's a game-copy-party with democompos. Not the same as a demoparty. I'm starting to realize what all the complaints about all the now so commercial big demopartys are all about (somehow it took a year). There are too many non-scene activities going on at parties like The Party, Assembly, The Gathering etc... But one thing distinguishes the two former from the latter. In effect at these (tp and asm) the attenders actually watched and enjoyed (hopefully) the compos. At The Gathering I couldn't see much interest on behalf of the attenders for the compos. Maybe because 98% of them were pure gamers and because I slept through the major compos such as demos, 3d acc and WiLD. Maybe I'm totally wrong stating things like this, but this is what I think and I stand by it at the moment. And I want you guys, sceners, who are planning to visit The Gathering in the near future, to think again. There are better parties to attend. Maybe The Party or Assembly or even those so called pure scene parties such as Mekka & Symposium, LTP etc. Though I haven't yet been to those, I think. That's where the pure 100% clean scene spirit lives on nowadays I guess. Though I must also state that I did have great fun visiting The Gathering 1900, it was a great experience, but I will most likely not visit it again.
BTW, the results are yet nowhere to be found, as apparently somebody somehow somewhere thinks holding back results is cool. Macaw decided to do something about it and you can catch for now partial unofficial Gathering results on his website.
PS. For you who wonder how I liked my first flight: It was great! Totally worth not paying for. :)
KOWBOY/NEXTEMPIRE (Pictures by Reaper)