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DHS.NU news article
Here is a breif summary of our Error In Line journey.
It all began in October/November with the competition we had here, where people could vote for the best partyname. We received alot of suggestions, but as far as I know, none of them were "Error In Line". After the name was set, there was an invite from CP/ESC for the ST, and numerous textfiles around. The hype was slowly getting higher and higher. A bit into 1999 everyone was more or less convinced this "was it" for 1999. We released a little EIL intro for the Falcon to keep the interest for EIL at top.
At this time I felt a little sorry for the organisers, there was alot of hype and everyone seemed to expect nothing but a perfect party. Time went by, and the EIL homepage got one sponsor after the other added. We in the Swedish travel team had setup a mailinglist and was talking how the heck to get down there. In the end most of us decided upon going with car to Gothenburg, then ferry from Gothenburg to Kiel, and last drive approx 600km from Kiel to Dresden. All that went pretty smoothly except for a bitchy hangover I somehow got at the ferry ;-).
Next.. find the partyplace. This wasn't the easiest task! We drove around Dresden for about 45min until we found the place. 505/CP sat at the entrance, we recognised eachother directly as we've been trading pornpics of eachother earlier (ehmm..).
Entering the partyplace... yes this was a real experience. Not a single time I have seen a computer party held in such enviornment! It was at a basement of a student house, with small rooms all over the place which were made like "caves" and bars everywhere. After the first "chock" of seeing this *COOL* place, I found Energizer/Lazer who was keeping the Swedish room under control :). Then we went back to get our packing, and it seems like our parking wasn't welcomed by the gardener or something, becuase we had taken a "shortcut" over the grass (whistle...). After a turbo-unloading of the car, we began carrying stuff downstairs, and to my surprice the organisers HELPED carrying the stuff. This was definitly not what usually happens. Megathanks for that help! Next was decrunching the equipent so we could start coding again, it had been nearly 40 hours without coding and most of us seemed a bit shaky. While rushing to get the Falcon running I had already shaked hand with a dozen people I've met on #atariscne IRC channel. It seemed everyone was there! But man that was wrong, not even half was.. they arrived in the next hours! The rooms and corridors quickly filled up, and in the end there was not many seats left. In our swedish room, we had computers enough for a whole platoon, and we sat tight and nicely together ;).
We had brought food, in the belief this would be quite the same as FB3 or Siliconvention (eg, everything closed..). But no, it seems like Dresden isn't so obsessed in closing everything as Bremen is, and the organisers had Pizza and Chineese orders all days! This was totally super. They also sold cold Cola and Beer in the bar (which was located in our room.. hehe, perfect!). Talk about Pizza - they were clearly eatable, not tops and not crap. But they had something fun, namely the "party pizza". Anyone meeting the swede gang know many of us are over the 100kg line in weight, and we want lots of food :) However these party pizzas fulfilled all our dreams! Size of a half bed or something! Nam nam, baggio and Havoc (both big dudes!) got two meals each from one pizza.
The party went on, and people were having a good time, talking and exchanging coding tips. There wasn't anyone behaving badly as far as I know, which again proves the Atarians are friendly chaps all over. After a while I had met about everyone, except the "mysterious" Defjam which left the scene just some weeks before EIL. When I finally talked to him, I didn't recognise the Defjam I've met on IRC at all. This guy was in the best coding-mood one can be. And he decided to go home and complete his "Sure Trip" demo. Damn good to have him back! :-)
The days went by, and the sleeping/shower place was great too, when I were taking a shower on sunday morning I got company! A nice nude (~20 years old) girl came in! Wowness, this doesn't happen all the time :-)). She didn't seem the slightest emabarrased and just tripped into the shower. Maybe they don't care so much in the east, who knows. But it was a nice surprice after seeing Baggio and Deez for three days ;)
Sunday night was compotime. This was sort of interesting. They showed the MSB "Breath demo" first, and it was really good. Then our demo came on, and it seemed they messed up the projector just in time for that, becuase everything was more or less white. Poor Edo didn't get his pictures shown nearly as they should be. Next was Defjams demo, now they turned the brightness down (he he, tactical move perhaps ? ;)). But it really didn't matter they could have had brightness on max for defjams demo as well, it would have won anyway. This is the best thing ever done on the ST. Totally brilliant. And he actually thought about quitting?! Bahh! Suretrip demo rules! After this pleasure they showed another demo, from Stax! I had no idea they planned one. And it was also a GREAT one. Mapped wolf3d worlds, mode7 stuff and so on. Incredible things. Then it went on to Falcon demos. I wasn't expecting much from anyone, except FUN that has been saying they have routs that outclasses their old demo (which was a good one by itself!). I saw some 3d at Earx CT2 Falcon, and it was wonderful fast. However, at the compo, something went wrong and the demo wasn't showed as it should. And later on, it went even worse, they tried to show the DHS preview-crap demo. And it all failed, after 3-4 tries I left the room starting to tidy-up the stuff I had so we could leave rather early next morning. After approx 30 mins I heard the music from our Falcondemo going and I applaused for myself "wow they must be great technicans capable of pressing a number to choose rgb" ;-). To my surprice there were applauses in the comporoom after our demo had been shown. Oh well, it might have been for some other reason I thought. Then I met 505 and he said they were showing the Cobra Falcon demo, and he said I probably should go and see it. I ended up beside Mr.Pink on a weak bench which made some worrying sounds when I stood on it. But that's life when you're in the 100+ club ;). And now I saw some 3d object from Cobra. Nice one! Except that it could just as well had been a 1-fps slideshow from harddisk. From what I could see, it gets the #1 price in "slowest falcondemo" competition. I asked grey if they used 040 Falcons or something when coding, but no.. They used ordinary ones! Maybe they drink much vodka over there and see everything in motionblur? Hehe.. anyway, after this it was up the 9 (or 10) stairs to get some sleep. Early in the morning I woke up, took a shower (no babe this time!) and then went down packing things. Unfortenly they had the prize ceremony just when I had to pack, so I missed the thing. After about half an hour someone (I think it was TAM/Toys) met me and he said "you won a CT2". "Bahh" I thought and went on. Then I met Joe Cool, and he said "Congratualtions". Now I was really worried.. "did that crap thing actually win?!". And yes, it did. Loke had brought the price into our room and there it was, the brand new CT2 card. Yippe-yo! We also took some sort of prize in 128byte compo (2nd or third I would guess). Then we had to leave, and the trip back home went smoothly for about half of us. The other half got stuck in Swedish customs (ha ha ha) ;)
A few days after the party I can't think of much that could have been done better. Sure the videoprojector could have done a better job and the Germans should smoke alot less. But as a whole I liked EIL _very_ much. It will be damn hard to make something equally good again. Probably not possible. So mega thanks to the organisers, and to the helpful ladies at the bar which always wanted to chat :).
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