Maggie 25th Anniversary issue note:- This one was supposed to appear a lot earlier than it did, as you can probably tell by the constant references to 2008. It even missed the previous attempts to clear out the old article pile with the 2012 and 2013 'Mag' editions.

Right now, the time seems to be right, and space is going to finally get this most eventful trip report out, accidental overnight stay in Estonia and all!

CiH - November 2015..

A semi-live and probably semi-comatose report from the party and surrounding
events...

Either  23.01 or 01.01hrs,  Thursday or Friday,  depending on which timezone
you are favouring.

Here's  a briefly live bit coming up.  I'm at the latest soon to be  vacated
location for Marty 'Q-the-Funk' Racine in the middle of Helsinki, it is very
early Friday morning,  I have not been to sleep since very early on Thursday
morning.  It is the 10th anniversary of the Alt Party,  well 10.5 if you are
splitting  pedant hairs.  I am typing this on the complete antithesis of  my
1998  hopes  and  dreams,  a Korporate peecee laptop supplied  by  the  Dell
Korporation,  but acquired by me with a slow-burning project to turn it into
a  less boring machine which runs fun things.  Fortunately,  it does not run
Windows  98,  or  (shudder) Win Vista,  but makes do with some Win XP  thing
which is rated at fairly harmless.

I'm  going  to  write in a bit more detail when  a  better  writing  surface
permits.   Here's some bullet points,  in a "note to self" style to be going
on with...

Some reflections on the journey down,  parts of it very similar to the first
time over.

The  mystery of two-dimensional bar codes,  looks like someone arsing  about
with a ZX81 graphics mode?

Some  actual  narrative  stuff  to cover the first day.  There  was  even  a
'before-party' - Coo-ee! (Don't forget Sir Garbagetruck ! - Felice)

I've  got  a  cramp  in my right leg,  it is very warm  in  the  Queue-Funks
apartment, and the battery on this is tiring fast. (Not a note to self, just
a real-time observation.)

Ok, that'll do for this first night, seeyall in the morrow!

== Space for first full day to unravel in ==

19.50hrs, Friday, we've finally fixed the time difference uncertainty now!

We're  sitting  semi-comfortably at the party,  very comfortably,  from  the
point  of  view of having space to work in,  and it's time to  refresh  this
account.

Wind back the clock to 04.30 the previous morning. It is dark apart from the
apathetic  outside glow of street lights sneaking in under the gaps  in  the
curtain.

We are at the house of Felice, in a warm and comfortable bed, I'm shortly to
be  no  longer  in  that place,  as we have another epic  party  journey  to
undertake, and need to be really really early to start it. A Nokia-generated
alarm infiltrates the quietness at five minute intervals until Felice  stirs
himself  to a  position of getupfulness. The next hour  passes  with  brutal
efficiency  and  a little conversation as Paula,  the spouse of the  Felice,
drops us both off at Cambridge railway station. Pausing only to take a sharp
breath of astonishment at the ticket prices, we board the 06.12hrs departing
commuter-stuffed early train to Kings Cross.  Well not too bad at first, but
filling up alarmingly with each new stop,  the going to work masses pressing
their  way into our carriage like a Romero zombie army.  Conversation is  in
short supply here too,  but at this sort of time,  I deeply empathise.

Many  of  these  people  look like they are in  what  is  termed  'financial
services',  but at the current rate that things are going arse-shaped there,
maybe  a  lot of them will be having to rethink their career  choices  soon?

Joke of the month: What is the definition of an extreme optimist? - A banker
who prepares FIVE clean shirts for the week ahead!

We  don't  go all the  way  opting to leave the train at Finsbury Park,  and
several  dozen steps later,  each of them felt as Felice's very large travel
case  clonked  down them, we pick up a passing Piccadilly  Line  underground
train  to Heathrow.  Daylight returns by the time we leave this stage of the
journey to contemplate our enhanced leisure opportunities,whilst waiting for
the 12.30 Helsinki flight at Heathrow's terminal one.

This  has  had  a refresh,  as it seems to be less crowded and dank  than  I
remember  it.  Our  mission to find a decent breakfast is successful,  after
finding the well-hidden lift to enable us to storm the castle-like  upstairs
restaurant.  (Felice  and  his  big case needing special  treatment  again!)
Checking  in  is  as smooth and easy as you like,  even  with  the  extended
security check of Felice's rucksack,  which apart from his laptop, contained
a  whole  load of camcorder gear and tapes rescued from obscurity,  many  of
which  contain camcordered precious party moments from those golden days  in
the mid-late nineties period!  The security people's X-Ray machine could not
see all the way through the compacted electronic mass,  hence they very much
wanted  to  look  at what was in the bag.  Even this  presented  no  issues,
everyone  was polite and happy with each other,  and ten interesting minutes
later, we were on our way again.

The flight is variously, British Airways, troubled by occasional turbulence,
but nothing like the fun and games we had on the first trip in 1998,  not at
all  budget priced,  but it was well stocked with complimentary goodies as a
result.  It  was also about the time that my body decided to remember it had
woken up at a stupidly early hour,  so I spent much of the second half of it
power-napping.

Forcing  myself back to some sort of alertness as Vantaa Airport  hove  into
view,  we  exited  smartly  and  searched for the airport  bus.  For  casual
observers of how Vantaa Airport works,  there are *two* varieties of airport
bus.  The  posh non-stopping pullman-coach type service which we were hoping
to catch,  and the normal 'council bus' which is rammed full of people going
home  from their workplace at the airport,  mixed in with random travellers.
Guess  which  one  we found!  At least we got seats,  lots of  other  people
weren't  so lucky.  We spot the pullman coach whizzing past as we are at yet
another bus stop.  Even here, the journey time is good, and we end up at the
central railway station,  expecting to meet Martin of Q-Funk notoriety,  and
as a bonus special guest,  Pahartik of space gypsy fame.  We find the little
fellow  in  a  hat  first  and chat and catch  up  on  our  respective  life
situations,  and wait patiently for Martin to present himself. And he does a
little while later. We make our way back via a cunning combination of space-
age  tram  and a leisurely stroll through what looks like the  Helsinki  red
light district, a long streets worth.

Q-Funk  is  in the middle of yet another life-change,  he is giving  up  his
Finnish base and is relocating permanently to Estonia.  There are background
job  hassles,  and  he has a new companion of the feminine kind  (Anastasia)
since the last time we were there. Apart from that, we sense that he is more
relaxed  than we've seen him on previous Alt Party visits.  The apartment is
being  slowly gutted prior to moving out.  Fortunately we have brought  some
home comforts in our big packs for when they are needed later on.

There  is  little time for rest and reflection,  as having got back,  we are
soon  on our way out again into the rapidly cooling evening air.  There is a
'pre-party'  event at a bar across town,  and so we go off taking   Q-Funk's
girlfriend  with us.  We manage to find a middling to decent restaurant near
the  central  station,  and pause for a welcome meal break,  as the Heathrow
breakfast is now a fond and forlorn memory. We get to the bar where the pre-
party  is  going  on.  There is a sense that the main part of  it  may  have
already  finished  as several of the participants are outside  and  enjoying
refreshing  their lungs with nicotine products.  In this way we spot  Ravel,
Nosfe, and several other people half-remembered from past Alt parties.

Someone  new(ish)  to  us  is Sir GarbageTruck,  or just  plain  Truck,  the
American person with the same real world surname as myself.  He looks like a
rough-sleeping  dissolute version of Michael Moore,  albeit a parallel world
Michael  Moore  who didn't disappear up his own bottom in  an  explosion  of
pomposity, and remembered to keep his sense of humour intact.

Drinks are purchased at ring-stinging prices, Felice mentioned 11 eur(!) for
a  medium  sized glass of wine.  We get into a very long  conversation  with
Truck, people start to drift away, including Q-Funk and girlfriend, who want
to  spend  some time together alone (hem!) We gave them more than  a  decent
interval for them to start and finish doing adult things to each other before
we got back. We could have talked to Truck all night,but it was Pahartik, at
around 11.30pm,  who pointed out we should really start to go home.  This is
accomplished with a handy night-bus, when we realised the trams had all gone
to bed half an hour earlier.

Back at the apartment,  it is very quiet and dark,  so we tiptoe around like
mice living under the cosh of the cat.  Coming to assemble my new airbed,  I
discover  the  new airpump that goes with it is a noisy  whistling  wheezing
beast,  so I have to inflate very gently and quietly so as not to awaken the
sleeping  happy  couple.  As there are no complaints from upstairs,  I guess
that  went ok?  A longish session of interweb prodding later,  and we slowly
turn in, myself on the airbed which was not quite optimally  inflated, as it
turned  out,  but  quite  comfortable enough,  and who gives a damn at  this
point, ZZZzzzZZZ!

(Friday)

We did not come to very quickly,  slowly pulling traces of consciousness and
breakfast  together.  The  late morning and afternoon passed in a  lazy  and
unfocused fashion in Q-Funk's apartment.  There is a plan to help out Martin
after  the party with his move away from Helsinki.  This may even involve  a
day-trip  to  Estonia to pick up something suitable to load his  gear  into.
Just  when we're getting slack and tired again,  we finally agree a plan  to
start moving in the direction of the party. Q-Funk is not coming with us, at
least  not  right now,  as he has to carry on with his packing and  clearing
exodus,  Felice, Pahartik and myself leave. An even more cunning combination
of subway train and tram than before gets us to the Old Nokia Cable Factory,
where the party is being held,  and we find a buzzing scene of activity, but
more of the party impressions a bit later on....

Let  us  return  to the bullet-points for a while,  how did it go?  -  "Some
reflections on the journey down,  parts of it very similar to the first time
over." There's a good place to pick up on next.

This  is the tenth anniversary of Alt Party,  and the weight of history  and
memories hangs pretty heavily upon us.  At the same time, certain aspects of
the  trip seem to be recalling and mirroring many of the situations  of  our
first visit, all those years ago. Well there are the obvious ones. The early
morning  start with a train and flight from Heathrow combination.  The death
of  a  lot  of budget air travel has put us on the back  burner  for  paying
scheduled  flight costs.  The trip was like a smooth and polished re-run  of
the  first one over.  We had a little wiggle of turbulence when taking  off,
but not the storm of a decade ago,  and definitely no Q-Funk sitting next to
us and getting ready to park his breakfast in the little paper bag  provided
for such an eventuality.

As Q-Funk himself pointed out, this was the end of a particular stage in his
life,  witnessed  by the same people who were there at  the start of it,  at
the first Alt Party, which makes you think for a minute.

There were other silly things which  tickled a moment of recollection,  such
as the comedy drunk wandering around in Helsinki centre,  late  at night  on
Thursday. A recreation of the Puistola station visit from the first party.

We also got to remeet  some  of the  participants from  the Atari scene  who
attended the first time around,  most notably the Swedes,  but unfortunately
not any of the original UK people. Maybe post-sauna trauma has tainted their
memories and  stopped them wanting  to come back again?  The party itself is
very very different from all the other ones we've ever been to though,I will
tell why a bit later on.

The other  major difference is that  I'm not writing this  on  a paper-based
realtime, made up of hand-towel paper, having left the realtime journal book
behind, but instead words are coasting into a report made on a Dell laptop a
machine totally  unlike anything I would have hankered after, a decade ago.

The  other bullet point from yesterday?  The mystery of two-dimensional  bar
codes.  These  do indeed look like something that was knocked together on  a
ZX81  by  someone  who  enjoyed mucking around  with  random  putting  stuff
onscreen,  but  not to the point where they were self-disciplined enough  to
spend  any time learning the tedious stuff to make the machine  do  anything
useful.  (Yes,  that  would  probably mean me!) With a 2-D barcode,  you get
something  that  looks  like 'art' done on a Sinclair  thermal  printer,  or
random patterns of blocks.  These minor works of modern retro style machine-
art first appeared on my Alt Party entrance tickets, when I finally bothered
to  print them out.  Then these pseudo-Rubiks patterns also appeared on  our
boarding  passes  for  the  flight over  here.  Hence  the  sudden  interest
expressed here.

So I googled for a bit and found this from http://www.barcodeman.com.

"2D  means  'two  dimensional'.  2D barcodes contain more  information  than
conventional  one  dimensional linear barcodes.  Conventional  barcodes  get
wider  as  more  data  is encoded.  2D barcodes make  use  of  the  vertical
dimension  to  pack in more data.  2D barcodes have become possible as  auto
scanning CCD and laser scanners have replaced the original 'light pen'  type
of scanner."

Ok, that clear now?

21.41.

I think we are up to date now,  apart from the last two or three hours where
it  can be said we are properly 'in-party'.  That is a whole new essay,  and
the  energy  and alertness fairies have buggered off again,  so back  a  bit
later methinks!

Saturday, 01.33, I guess.

Ok, we're back, and it's time to tell you about the party, and generally try
to catch up on the last few hours.

The entrance to the party is deceptively small,  sort of Gloria-sized, or at
a  human scale you can relate to,  if you've been to any of the previous Alt
parties.  Going inside reveals a lobbyful of activity, people doing official
looking  things and taking tickets off them and attaching the fateful  party
paper  wristbands which will be a soggy and mangled parody of  their  former
selves by day three,  if the rain going on outside continues, The true scale
of what Alt has become only hits you when you enter the main hall, through a
'fogscreen',  a  smokey pseudo-curtain with a projector playing images  onto
it.  Having  overcome  the ghostly illusion,  the main hall is revealed as a
vast cathedral space,  with a stage for the live acts at the near end with a
huge floor area where people can watch and agitate their bodies to the beat.
The middle section contains a vast acreage of tables,  for the setting up of
visitors own hardware. Yes, we did get the Royal Society ticket to enable us
to  do this.

Going  back  a bit further are a bunch of other enthusiasts with  their  own
exhibition  space,  hardcore retro enthusiasts of the MSX and vintage  Apple
Mac persuasion, even a radio ham club. It does not stop there, as off to the
side  is an art exhibition  with various audio-visual 'happenings'  running.

The most memorable and thought provoking are the gizmo's which are triggered
by radioactive samples,  including an organ self-playing a tune,  and a pong
game  randomly playing itself with two samples of radioactive  crud  forever
duelling each other,  at least until the half-life goes down enough,  or the
power is turned off.

There are arcade cabinets for people to play with, a bar with food and drink
at the back,  a couple of kiosks selling food next to the stage, and several
official  or semi-official things going on around the organisers info  desk,
including a printer which "prints" solid objects in plastic. I managed to do
a walkaround and collected some mobycam movie clips in the process, so these
might be put together to make something later. Tucked away at the back, away
from all the noise is the sleeping area.  Bearing in mind my noisy air-pump,
I  sorted out the bedding issue  early on  so I didn't have to wake people a
lot  later  on!  Oh  yes,  there was a photography booth with a pretend  old
fashioned  camera,  where  the people who dressed up as steampunk could  get
their pictures taken, and a ladies area where a gaggle of attractive females
in period clothing,  headed by Marycloud could be found.  I don't think I've
missed anything out, well not too much right now anyway?

To try to adequately describe the scaling up of this event from the smallish
and fairly intimate parties of before,  I'd describe the old style Alt as an
average guy with average skills whom you would be happy to go out and have a
drink with.  This new style Alt Party has done lots of working out and has a
Scharzeneggar  'f*ck  you and die physique as a  result.  Additionally,  new
style  Alt is wearing a special armoured battle-suit  with  shoulder-mounted
railguns and pocket nukes, from the future with a nominal in-service date of
2050 AD, but this item of warlike costumery has been brought here and now by
a special time-courier, "because he's worth it!"

I  spot  Setok  in  a Victorian gentleman's  outfit,  in  keeping  with  the
steampunk  theme.  He  appears  to be happy,  various problems aside,  and I
suggest  that this might be the party where what he was reaching for at  the
start, might be finally within his grasp. He does not disagree.

Other  Atarians  arrive  mere minutes after we've started  setting  up,  and
organise themselves to join our table.  A strong Swedish contingent is aided
and abetted by 505 and Earx, and Wiztom comes to our table too. A thought of
food  rapidly translates itself into rapidly moving legs heading out of  the
building,  with 505 and a couple of the Swedes going and us joining them.  A
nearby  restaurant,  best  described as 'unpretentious' is the main port  of
call for food of the pizza variety.  It is very quiet,  and our little party
represents  the  first  earning opportunity of the day,  so  it  seems.  The
pizza's are better than expected,  well up to party standards,  which do not
expect haute cuisine.  The pizza's are liked and consumed in that order, 505
and  company  opt to go to the shopping arcade,  Felice and I return to  Alt
Cathedral to see what happens next.

Amazingly enough,  writing the first main part of this party report consumes
a  fair  bit of time.  There is an opening ceremony,  where Setok kicks  off
proceedings  with  a short speech and promise of cakey delights,  namely  to
celebrate the 10th anniversariness of the occasion. There is a surprise live
act, namely a choir which has its own interpretations of classic tunes. This
culminates in a rendition of 'Happy birthday', after which we are beseeched,
no,  ordered  to  go  upstairs  by Setok to eat the cake.  As he  is  almost
desperately  keen  to  get people to eat the cake,  I suspect some  kind  of
concealed  mind-altering drugs,  mass consumption and indoctrination agenda.
Instead  there  is a delicious taste of cream and cherries  and  other  good
things that go into a black forest gateau.

Afterwards, my mind is exactly where I left it...

At  about the time my motivation for completing the report is flagging,  the
first  of the live acts is warming up and soon ready to go.  These are 'UX',
described from the Alt Party website thus:-

"Originally  formed in 1996 by Kris Kylven and Pete Martin,  UX has explored
the boundaries of psychedelic trance and thrown in also some industrial  and
rock  influences.  This is their comeback gig - the first live appearance in
eleven  years!  Joining  Kris  on  the stage is Jan  Rechberger  (also  from
Amorphis)  on  electric  drums.  Their  newest album  will  be  released  by
Dragonfly Records in a few months time."

Thanks guys, saves me a bit of time!

UX do what is said on the tin,  their  act is a suitable prelude to the main
attraction  of  the  evening,  and the major reason why there was  a  sudden
uptake of tickets to Alt in the first place.

Front 242, what more can we say?

"Belgian masters inventors of EBM that have been in the music business since
the  early '80s should need no introduction.  They have used both Atari  and
Amiga in their music and video work and they are also known from their still
visual art.  At Alternative Party they will throw a full concert with a live
drummer, VJ and special emphasis on the synchronisation of images and sound.
They  will  play  an  intelligent,  danceable set  of  inspiring  pieces  of
soundscapes with a strong physical presence."

Thank you again, Alt Party website!

Between  the  two  live  acts,  Pahartik comes to  me  with  an  interesting
proposal,  namely the creation of home-made 'long drinks' with a combination
of  vodka and some freshly purchased soft drinks.  We trudge outside into  a
rainy forecourt, and find the 'BoozeAltParty' huddling under an archway. The
mixing thing goes successfully,  the vodka rapidly disappears, and the whole
thing  does not touch the sides of my throat when it goes down!  Anger is an
energy,  as  Public Image Ltd once put it,  but so is booze and fruit juice,
especially  when  I would be needing everything for the  keenly  anticipated
next hour or so.

The security guys removed one drunk and insensible person before the concert
started.  Front 242 took quite a while to get going, I got the feeling there
were some stubborn technical issues that refused to wash and go for a while?
Eventually,  through  clouds  of stage smoke, a throbbing beat starts,  this
goes on for some minutes until the smoke and mist clears, and it is apparent
the band are finally ready to go, as their bigscreen blasts into life.

I have very little previous acquaintance with this group,  but the Grotesque
demo turns out to have been a reasonable starter pack to sum up the  mixture
of audio and visual, but scaled up hugely for the stage. About fifty percent
of their material I fell in love with and would very much like to listen  to
again, the rest could be approached on a strictly take or leave it basis. We
get our allotted hour,the dancers at the front trying to get as close to the
stage  as  possible,  many people were taking photo's or camcordering  their
favourite  bits.  The writer of this text ending up with a vast selection to
cull down to the best few later on. Eventually they finish, but are happy to
take the stage for a few final numbers.  As I suspected, the signature track
for  many people,  'Punish your Machine' is the finale.  and that is finally
it.  As  a  complete audio-visual experience,  they are incredible and  well
worth experiencing.  I walk away,  not quite able to hear as well as I could
earlier in the evening!

One  missing person was Cyclone,  who booked to come out on the strength  of
Front 242 coming to the party. He is due to arrive tomorrow, I'm not sure if
he is aware that they were playing last night? I don't think anyone has told
him yet?!

And  apart  from the last hour being spent catching up on this  report,  and
another live act, possibly DJ Proteus, is blasting the stage with some heavy
industrial beats,  all the better to get people to sleep with!  Evil and the
rest of the Atarians have disappeared,  I guess they went to bed.  Felice is
nowhere to be seen, although he is transferring his old video tapes onto his
laptop.  I  get to revisit ten year old images of a young-looking Atariscene
at the first Alt Party,  Evil with plastic-framed spectacles, Q-Funk looking
like he escaped Canada on a child's passport,Lance loading up his overloaded
Saab at Wiztom's parent's house and all.

I  think  we  are coming to another of those  natural  hiatuses,  where  the
inspiration  to write is draining fast and a wanderlust to see how the  rest
of the party is doing,  creeps up on you with a big hammer.  So I'll log off
and see you all later, or tomorrow, it is now 02.45hrs, PeeCee time.

..............Royal Society sleeping interlude.............

11.37hrs,  yes it is teh morningggg!  - Breakfast,  coffee from the bar, and
whatever was lying around and therefore free, to be going on with....

A  little  while  after I finished last nights  textual  feast,  a  niggling
suspicion  led me to check on the Alt Party website to see exactly what  our
tickets  entitled  us  to.  Paying  the extra ten Euro's entitled  us  to  a
separate and quiet sleeping area,  which didn't quite fit the description of
the  sleeping  corner  at  the back of the hall that  we  were  directed  to
earlier.  A  conversation with 505 indicated yes,  there was such a separate
basement-based  sleeping area,  and he kindly offered to show us the way  to
it.  Pausing  only  to scoop up our stuff from the now discredited  sleeping
corner,  we  make  our  way downstairs,  and yes,  there is a quiet basement
location.  In fact there seems to be more than one of these,  where we could
set up for sleeping in peace,  well apart from any noises that we might make
involuntarily overnight!

We got to bed around 04.30hrs, I started a slow recovery around 10.30. There
are toilet facilities handy in the basement,  so I don't have to go upstairs
to  use  the  rather bombed-out facilities in the main  hall.  So  partially
refreshed and still thinking about what to do next, I'm back here again.

I'm guessing that the Swedes used the hotel last night, as apart from one of
the dudes,  there is no sign yet.  Earx is back though, and we had a refresh
of  the best of CT60 Falcon '060,  as in the Mikro Black Lotus demo ports of
Silkcut  and  Ocean  Machine.  I also have some useful tips from  him  about
getting  the  CF-card working on my CT60,  namely to upgrade  the  HD-Driver
version,  and  also  to floppy-boot,  then everything works fine from  there
apparently.

11.54, and the Swedes return, old stereotyped comment about Viking longships
etc in here, blahblah..

13.30..  We've been out for our Suomi supermarket sweep, bumping into Viznut
on the way,  and have stocked up with essential supplies,  some of which are
healthy,  but  the  reassuring  presence of a couple of  tubes  of  Pringles
ensures  that this does not get completely out of hand!  We've breakfasted a
la carte,  or a la table avec le laptop, to be more precise. No stray crumbs
got in the the Dell keyboard,  as far as we know,  but it was bleating about
an IP address clash, as if someone else in the hall had an identical network
address to mine which had caused it to panic attack. As the wireless network
is more 'off' than 'on' today, I don't think that was the case. A swift(ish)
reboot sorted out the problem,  apart from the network dying after a minute,
which is something that is affecting everyone in the hall not wired into one
of the hubs.  At least the interweb distraction has been temporarily lifted,
so I can get on with this report.

15.09..

It looks like the wireless network is staying away for the duration.

Also we're in the quieter afternoon period,  a few events going on,  such as
the Steampunk costume competition. This featured the recently arrived at our
table  DotWaffle,  a  UK  demoscener  who tends to be seen  at  places  like
Breakpoint  or Assembly,  being roped in to translate the Finnish announcer,
without much expertise in the language, or any idea what he was going to say
beforehand!  I  found  myself  having  to  restrain  any  Blackadder  jokes,
especially  anything  Lord  Flasheart related when  the  female  competitors
appeared. ("Phwooar! She can suffer MY jet anytime, woof woof!")

In other news,  Pahartik has returned, with sandwiches. Also there will be a
Dead Hackers demo being entered into the competitions, which was something I
kind of knew beforehand but sworn to the usual non-disclosure agreements ;-)
It  looks  like we are going out for a while for a suppertime  meeting  with
Martin the Q-Funk later as well.

16.45..

I'm back,  after hitting the wall, fatigue-wise for a bit, and taking myself
off  to the sleeping room to get my head back together for a while.  One  of
the things I did was to take a quick look back at some of the mobycam  movie
clips  I took yesterday.  Regretfully it looks like the sound system used by
Front 242 might have been too muchly overpowering,  so the majority of clips
taken from the concert may well have to be ditched.  The wireless connection
is still in a sulk,  I've been reading back over the report for the original
Alt  Party back in 1998 (Maggie 26),  and not a lot is happening right  now.
Something on stage which is being given in Finnish and is not really holding
my  interest for obvious reasons.  (Some sort of retro-computer pop-quiz  by
the look of it.)

18.01..

We  have an interweb back!  Pahartik decided to leave the party for a  while
and he headed back to Q-Funk's place.  This freed up a network cable for me,
so  I'm  plugged in and not missing the wireless lack anymore.  The  service
we're  getting from this new connection is a bit hit n' miss though,  as  it
seems to be ok with some sites, but not too keen on others, or even parts of
what  seem  to be 'good' sites?!  In the meantime,  a few minor competitions
have  passed through without much note,  having been mainly conducted in the
Suomi language. The CSS graphics competition had some interesting stuff even
from that point of view though.

18.43..

A new live act is up, these are called 'Desert Planet'. These are taking the
whole retro-computing, cold-war futurism viewed through sepia tinted lenses,
and space themes that bit further than the rest.  At the moment, we're being
hit  over  the  head with a completely over-boosted remix of  the  Xenon  II
theme, complete with jazzed up and mixed-up visuals. Here's another lazy cut
and paste from the Alt Party website to tell their story.

"The  legendary  bitpunk band from the arctic Lapland.  They are  known  for
their costumes from outer space, but also their enthusiastic approach to the
whole  genre  of retro electronic music.  They have put a lot of  effort  in
creating  their unique sound and the accompanying visuals.  Expect memorable
melodies and danceable beats with a happy twist.  Accompanying Desert Planet
is Kokeellisen elektroniikan seura, producing out-of-this-world sounds."

The  marketing  blurb does not tell you of the endearing wackiness  of  this
band and the tinkly arcade styled music they play,  interspersed with random
space-age soundbites inserted into their soundtracks.

21.46..  We're back, we've been out, we've sampled the chill Helsinki breeze
as  we've  been  on  yet another restaurant  quest!   Q-Funk  was  involved,
naturally. We agreed to meet in the city centre for a meal out. This went to
plan,  eventually,  as the first two places we tried both claimed to be full
to  the rafters with scoffing punters.  Eventually we ended up at a  chinese
place  which  was reasonably priced,  and may have been visited before in  a
past  Alt visitation,  the restaurant seemed familiar.  Felice and I ordered
something  edible,  Pahartik ordered something which nearly overwhelmed him,
and Q-Funk ordered something which took the first three layers of mouth-skin
off.  The new girlfriend turned up, Q-Funk started to recover feeling in his
lips,  and  we  made our own separate ways back.  Handily  we had walked the
distance back to the penultimate subway stop before the partyplace, so we're
here and it is nicely still before any of the big competitions.

I feel a tea and cake interlude coming on, back in a minute.

(Five  mins later..) Royal Society membership has additional  benefits,  the
free tea and coffee is providing a post Chinese interlude. Brad Templeton of
the  Electronic Frontier Foundation is reminiscing on stage right now.  This
is right before the scary stuff that 'THEY',  the government, Microsoft, and
entertainment media companies,  want to take over your computer!  Brad is an
engaging speaker who is informative and interesting, isn't smug with it, and
did  not pretend to have all the answers.  As he is in favour of the 'little
guy',  open source,  and innovation at the base level,  then he's definitely
alright with us!

We've  now  drifted,  almost  without  realising,  to 23.00hrs.  There is  a
Fogscreen  demo  compo,  something called a 'Contraption competition,  and a
presentation  from  Front 242 before the main demo compo.  We are  currently
running  an hour later than the official schedule.  This comes as absolutely
no surprise to this party veteran!

Currently  I'm sitting downrange and in direct line of the  most  irritating
laughter  in  the whole hall..  It is sitting across the table,  and punches
into my ears like a donkey being tortured with a road drill!

Ah, I think he's gone away, good.

23.43..

Some  strange roleplay from a Sarah O'Connor wannabe in male drag trying  to
hype up the Contraption compo,  as if we're going to get a terminator attack
or something.  Apparently 2019 is the year to watch out for! Having made the
effort  to  get  up  to  look and feeling  strangely  cheated.  I  sat  down
again.Apart  from that,  there was a rather neat Gameboy Colour built into a
wooden  case,  including a hand-made controller of wood with brass fittings.
I'm not sure what happened to the Fogscreen demos,  it has gone rather quiet
again.  I expect that the next time I write something,  it may well be after
the  competitions.  And whilst we're on the subject of wildly running out of
control schedules, we're still waiting for Front 242 to appear.

Sunday - 00.09hrs..

A little marker to note that we've entered a new day.  Not a lot else to say
right  now,  party  is  at a hiatus point again,  waiting for  something  to
happen. Ah, the Fogscreen compo has reappeared it seems.

The Fogscreen seems to have turned into the Windows installer on  Fogscreen,
eventually it does get going, sort of..

The  first  couple  of Fogscreen demos get off to a  reasonable  start,  but
things slowly sigh and collapse from there. Various problems, including some
MacOs  related ones were mentioned earlier.  An embarrassed compere shuffles
the  mortal  remains of this ill-fated effort off the stage into  a  waiting
bucket,  as the last couple of entries just plain refuse to play along.  The
heavily delayed Front 242 presentation is next.  Speaking to Setok just now,
it  appeared  that  certain lessons learned from earlier  parties  had  been
unlearned  just  in time for this one,  namely about the timing and  spacing
apart of competitions, and why doing this is a good idea.

Blue Fogscreen of death anyone?!

01.09..

Front 242 presentation starts.

This  starts off in a fairly staid manner when covering their still art  and
album designs, but  this is coming more to life with the animated sequences,
many  of  which  seem to resemble some of  the  more  interesting  demoscene
happenings.  Nice  stuff  but not too exciting,  especially when  microphone
amplification issues seem to lose one of the speakers for a while.

==SPACE FOR CONFUSED FUMBLING HAPPENINGS ON A BIGSCREEN==

03.42.. Competitions over..

It's  late,  we're all tired,  more tired due to the erratic progress of the
competitions  than  perhaps  we deserve to be.  There  were  three  standout
entries including the STe demo "More or Less Zero" shown by the Dead Hackers
Society,  in  spite  of the competition organisers best efforts to ruin  the
showing  of it.  In general,  the demo competitions are the one throwback to
the  less good part of an old style Alt party,  the lacking hapennyworth  of
tar  whose  absence spoiled the ship,  the missing link that forgot to  ring
Charles  Darwin to tell him they would be late coming back home,  the  empty
property  that will never find a buyer.  (Anne Robinson mode off!) I  should
also  mention a wicked VCS2600 demo by Trilobit,  which takes the art of the
possible a couple of notches on from what we've seen from them before.  Also
there was the one memorable dynamic demo entry, which was a heavily oldskool
inspired  tribute  to  the C64 game 'International  Karate',  but  massively
pumped  up for modern times and modern hardware.  We got to miss out on what
may  well have been another killer Vic 20 demo from the Vic 20  ace  Viznut,
due to competition entry running flub-ups.

Several  issues  were  encountered  on the  way,  problems  with  Vista  and
emulators,  which  deprived us of what I guess would have been the climax at
the  end  from  PWP and their elite Vic 20 coding skills.  Also  there  were
issues  with certain videoplayers and the Mac,  and a couple of demos  which
required  a  working  internet  to function  properly,  when  this  was  not
available  at  that moment.   The organisers stated they ran  their  entries
realtime  in the Alt Party tradition,  except when they didn't.  Maybe it is
time  they went down the slick and professional prerecorded route.  Well  if
the rest of the party has had an upgrade, why not?

Ok,  I'm  bored  for  today,  so  logoff  and pick up  on  this  after  some
partysleeping.

=== Morning after, with morning after feelings ===

11.26..  It is,  and we have experienced the usual eclectic mix of Alt Party
sleep  and late night excitement.   The basement 'Royal sleeping area' was a
bit more occupied than for the previous night.  Not a problem in itself, but
there  were  drunken voices echoing down the corridors.   In spite of  this,
sleep  came rapidly,  once I had retired to my inflatable dream  repository.

Sleep  went away a bit later,  as the drunken voices seemed to have  brought
themselves  to  the  passageway  outside  the  sleeping  area.  Additionally
*something* was playing upstairs, whose bassy rumbles reached down as far as
our sanctified and silent basement area.  Pahartik,  who didn't go to bed at
all,  and is subsisting on a constant stream of caffeine tablets,  described
it as "very loud".

At this suddenly sprung back to wakefulness time period,  someone in the far
corner  of the sleeping room was making all the noises as though  they  were
getting  ready to hurl back whatever they had been drinking in the  previous
hours before. The lack of liquid splattering noises and subsequent sickening
stench, creeping around the room like an invisible miasmic  throat-clutching
fog, suggests they managed to stop short of completing that act?

Anyway,  about  ten  minutes later,  the sleep fairy resumed her interrupted
mission,  which  takes us nicely to around 10.30hrs when I started doing the
consciousness thing once more.

A slow awakening process culminated in breakfast, and attempts to get voting
for  the  competitions.  This  was a protracted process,  as word  of  mouth
obtained  the  URL needed to vote,  and a voting key,  which did not work at
first.  It  is  as  if  they did not want you to vote?  I'm not  sharing  my
choices,  this  being  a democracy of sorts,  with secret ballots ruling  of
course,  but  at  least one Swedish crew sitting not so far from us  has  at
least one first place vote ;-)

11.52.  Immediate environment report.  There is no Felice yet,  there are no
other Atarians in sight, Pahartik has had a visit from the comatose maker as
he  is slumped over his desk.  I've been having a chat with Magic on IRC who
was on the rob for Hugi articles.  I politely refused him a first go at this
report, it is an Alive exclusive after all!

12.13, and Earx has returned, along with Dotwaffle alongside me, and Cyclone
has sneaked in.  There is an obscure oldschool 8-bit demo session on the big
screen,  and an intermittent IRC chat session with various people on various
channels.

12.32, Evil has reappeared, I have my own personal boxed DVD copy of the new
DHS demo More or 'Less Zero',  including a movie copy and executables, which
is  cool  and  unexpected.  The stuff onscreen turns out to be some  of  the
highlights  of the Russian ZX Spectrum demo scene,  or the fancy clones they
took to making.

Outside,  it  is  raining, heavily.  We fervently hope it will be less heavy
when  the  time  comes  around to leave the party.  For an  added  layer  of
interest and complication,  Q-Funk does not appear to be ready to receive us
until after 17.00,  which could make the couple of hours between party doors
closing and then problematic,  to say the least. Now if we can at least drop
our  stuff  off  there,  then our 5-day tourist travelcards can take  us  to
anywhere within the city of Helsinki.

13.09. The prizegiving ceremony is nowhere in sight. I'm not too surprised.

13.43..  The AltParty Atari releases have found their way onto the interweb,
these  are  being  downloaded and initial reactions  on  the  atariscne  irc
channel  are  being seen.  I'll take this opportunity to write a quick  note
about  the sponsors.  There have been several of them,  including some quite
high profile people,  and one of the consequences of this is being 'treated'
to infomercials about how great these people are on the big screen from time
to time.  To be fair, this is only done very occasionally, so they have kept
their  participation to the background.  Off to pack up the basement  stuff,
back in a few minutes.

14.27. Prizegiving ceremony to start shortly..

14.51.  505 won 2nd place in the 1 channel tracker compo. I missed this one,
and  I was under the impression he was not going to try to compose  anything
in-party,   due  to  the  high  background  noise  levels  anyway?   Earlier
conversations made in confidence can be so deceptive! Still, another Atarian
getting recognition and prizes at a multi-format event is never a bad thing.

15.03.  Dead Hackers won 2nd place in the Alt demo compo!  This was the only
'normal'  non-dynamic  demo to manage to do so,  as the Dynamic demos had  a
second chance at winning in the main compo. It was a shame that the Trilobit
2600 demo got shut out of things though.  The party is now officially closed
with  an air of people starting to move in the direction of the  exits.

Now 15.11  and time to close down this report from the party shortly. I will
have the  chance  to  pick  up again afterwards.  More soon on the bound  to
be entertaining aftermath and afterparty,Q-Funk's fleeing from Helsinki, and
even more!

SUNDAY AND OTHER DAYS AFTER THE PARTY..
=======================================

As always,  the end came very quickly after the prizegiving ceremony.  It is
around  15.00hrs when the hall is on the verge of packing and leaving.  This
includes  ourselves,  nervously contemplating gunmetal grey skies  endlessly
weeping countless litres of cold water carried on a stiff breeze.

Fortunately,  Q-Funk has managed to live near a major transport hub,  only a
couple of minutes walk from his apartment.  Even more fortunately,  there is
only  one  mode of  public transport  needed to get there,  namely the  no.8
tram,  and  there is one of these magnificent vehicles waiting just a couple
of  hundred metres of hurried rainy staggering with cases and bags  distance
from  the  party place.  It considerately waits until we get  there  without
leaving  us behind,  we leap on it gratefully and slightly damply.  It takes
us,  a  journey  of  around twenty minutes before we get  back  to  Q-Funk's
locale.

Once  back at his place,  very little appears to have changed since  Friday,
although  we are assured that a lot has happened since.  Important plans are
made  for the period of the next 24 hours.  There is an after-party sauna at
the  same  'rentasauna' place that previous afterparties  were  successfully
held at.  This is good. What is slightly less good is that this year we will
have  to draw a line under how long we can stay there,  as Q-Funk is needing
assistance  with his big move to Tallin on Monday.  For that,  a van will be
hired  in Helsinki and driven over to Estonia with a load of  assorted  junk
and furniture, to unload at his new permanent domicile over the water.

A little matter of some food (we've not really properly eaten as yet  today)
at  a very local pizza bar and takeaway place follows.  Then we (Me,  Felice
and  Pahartik)  gather together towels and booze  and  other  sauna-enjoying
ingredients for the evening ahead. A further helping hand comes, courtesy of
a gentleman who is purchasing Q-Funk's STacey and TT, who happens to live in
the Espoo district,  where the sauna is going to be. He takes us over in his
car, sloshing through many deep puddles in Helsinki city centre on the way.

We have very little trouble finding the place, it is still very steep to get
down to it,  with flowing rain and slippery leaves replacing snow and ice as
the hazard of choice.  When we enter the sauna,  most of the people who were
invited  have already turned up,  and a few of those had already been in the
sauna.  Indeed, Front 242, the guests of honour have been and left, with one
of their party even going so far as to enter the lake/sea. This still leaves
quite a lot of other people,  including Brad Templeton and his partner, Earx
and  505,  Baggio, but  not Evil,  and Dotwaffle did not feel well enough to
turn  up.  There  are  some  American people there,  including one  guy  who
acquired an interest in demoscene whilst based in German with US forces.  Of
course,  Sir Garbagetruck is there, complete with the mankiest pair of socks
still  worn.  These were more hole with random threads of fabric rather than
functional  socks,  and  may  have been worn at a crucifixion by  a  certain
famous  religious figure,  looking at their age and condition.  This briefly
gave rise to thoughts of 'The Shroud of Truck'?!

Felice  had pre-purchased a 2 litre box of wine (actually a  joint  purchase
with myself),  namely for consumption and sharing. I'm not sure how much was
shared,  but  he  managed to consume a fair way into it,  as events later on
would reveal.

In  the sauna,  I discover that the towel I brought was one which was a size
below  the one which I should have brought,  so I was sitting very carefully
for a large chunk of the evening. Both electric and wood burning saunas were
enjoyed.  The  latter  having a lower and fairly civilised  general  ambient
temperature,  until  steam was generated,  in which case you could  not feel
your  lips  and  extremities  any  more!  The mixture  of  male  and  female
participants,  a tradition started a few years ago, happily continues with a
selection  of old favourites and some new and different people. (Not that  I
was  looking  too closely!).  There is a rolling demoshow including  several
Amigaaa!!  classics  being  shown  on  their  projector  screen.  The  other
tradition  of  ineffective barbecuing of sausages on an open fire  has  been
revived  by Baggio and others.  At this point in the evening,  Felice starts
telling people about how drunk he is,  often...  I was drinking myself,  but
mainly from a point of view of trying to kill a deep thirst,  so tended more
towards beer and long drink,  and so avoided the wine. I might add that in a
long association,  this is the first time that I've ever seen him like this.
Casual  and  not so casual students of previous exploits might  well  recall
that  Felice was completely tee-total until a few years ago,  so quite a big
change has happened from there.

Thoughts  turn ever so slowly to when we will have to exit,  and I start  to
organise  Pahartik,  who  is found in the woodburning sauna,  as every spare
pair  of  hands  managing  Felice  back home  will  be  needed.  A  suitable
combination  of  buses  and  times to  leave  is  organised,  the  requisite
information  being coaxed from a passing Setok.  Felice is led away from the
strong  drink  and  force-fed some herbal tea  to  kick-start  the  sobriety
process.  The leaving deadline ticks more closely,  other lucky bar-stewards
will be able to carry on until dawn the next day if they choose, but we have
to go.

It is still raining,  our hopeful delusional minds try to imagine that it is
perhaps  raining a bit less harder than earlier.  The bus stop is just  five
minutes away, a bus is waiting, but the driver is not interested and crossly
declines  our  request to board.  This is because he has to turn  it  around
before  restarting  his route back to the city centre.  The mood  management
issues  may  also have had a lot to do with a couple of  other  drunks  (not
Felice!)  who were hassling around at the same time and attempted a  drunken
Suomi  monologue  with us as well.  Felice is still pissed,  as he tells us,
often.  Shortly  after,  the  bus  finally turns around and lets us on.  The
journey is a mercifully brief ten minutes and we part company with the other
two idiots before we get to the city centre.  We get off at the 'Kaampi' bus
terminal, expecting to find something to get us back to Q-Funks abode there,
but have to go our searching into the night and the area around the  central
railway station instead.  In the brief wait for a night bus there,  the cold
air  gives Felice a chance to sober-up some more,  but I don't think he took
it?

Arrive  back  at Q-Funks place to a dark and quiet scene,  somewhere  around
01.00hrs,  go  to  bed,  apart  from Felice who dashes to his laptop,  as he
missed his precious interweb, oh, for a period of hours! Still, that must be
a good sign that he is on the road to unpissedness I suppose?

MONDAY
========

Sleep is rudely interrupted by the Q-Funk at some early-ish hour.  There was
a plan to get a rental van, load it up and take it over to Estonia whilst we
are  still  occupying  the morning half of the  day.  However,  Q-Funk,  the
mission  creep  king,  has  imposed another last minute layer of  tasks  and
complications on top of this,  namely to kick-start his bid for unemployment
benefit as soon as possible. Knowing how well he interacts with officialdom,
this could prove to be interesting,  not to mention time-consuming. Pahartik
has  a separate mission to sort out his funding with his bank.  Fortunately,
we're not required in any way for these,  so Felice and I are left to slowly
get  ourselves  together,  Felice  rubbing sleep from his  countenance  more
slowly than myself due to events of the night before (hem!)

In  fact  is  is getting on for midday by the time  we  have  got  ourselves
together in the direction of procuring a vehicle. Q-Funk's chat with Finnish
jobseekers  allowance  person went better than expected.  After a couple  of
false  starts,  where promising website addresses dead-end in non-connecting
phone numbers.  There is a firm called 'Euro Rental' who are willing to lend
one of their vehicles without realising what they're doing. Felice has cried
off  driving  for today due to his overnight delicacy of  condition,  Q-Funk
does  not have a driving licence,  so muggins ends up behind the wheel of  a
left-hand drive Toyota van.  On the topic of 'who's paying for all of this',
Q-Funk still has his company credit card,  which came in handy.  We have our
transport for 24 hours, which should be more than enough time to finish what
we're doing, right?

We  make our way back to Q-Funks place,  carefully but without any problems,
and very carefully back up the van into the narrow forecourt to get it ready
for loading. Then the mass loading-in of stuff commences, joined by Pahartik
who  has now got back from his bank.  Felice is not excused from the loading
tasks  for his heroic performance from the night before.  A timeless end  of
fetching,  carrying,  squeezing  goods  and  chattels into the  narrow  lift
follows.  The first things to go into the van are the wardrobes and drawers,
after  much  struggling by Q-Funk and Pahartik.  Countless  cardboard  boxes
follow,  some  of  which  were  clearly  used the  first  time  that  Q-Funk
airfreighted his gear from Canada to Finland all those years ago. Loose bags
of  clothes and miscellaneous possessions garnish the top of the  wardrobes,
and the van is judged as adequately loaded for our trip over the  water.

There  are  still a lot of other things which still aren't making  the  trip
with us,  various parts for very old peecees which will be dispersed to some
electronics recycling shop,  and a bundle of stuff which is going to live at
the apartment of the girlfriend Anastasia.

The original intention was to take the 14.00hrs ferry to Tallin,  but due to
the earlier time-slippage,  we are down for the 17.30 ferry instead.  By the
time  we drive downtown for the ferry terminal,  dusk is looming,  and it is
coming  on  to rain,  emphatically so,  by the time we are in the  rush-hour
traffic  queue for the ferry terminal.  Boarding the ferry reminds me of our
Stena  Discovery  voyages,  apart from the fact that we're located behind  a
lorry  in  the  freight  section.  Our ship of  travelling  is  the  Tallink
Superstar,  a  conventional  ferry which is much larger than the  high-speed
ship we had been used to.  There are several decks,  at least eight or nine,
and one tiny lift to service them all from the car deck. We are early enough
to grab it without too many problems.  The ferry leaves on time,  there is a
two-hour voyage, and the restaurant level is mostly open.

A  canteen  style meal of meatballs passes some of the time,  lights in  the
distance reveal Tallin coming into view. Unloading the ferry is quick and to
the  point,  even down the very narrow deck ramp which is inviting a  costly
dent on the side of this otherwise mostly pristine rental vehicle. I decline
the invitation very carefully. The rain has followed us to Tallin as several
lanes of traffic dash back and forth through huge puddles.  I prefer to rely
on  Q-Funk's precise instructions to get to his apartment,  looping past the
old  city,  the medieval centre popular with giggling and shrieking  drunken
hen-nights  at  least  until  the  budget  airliners  stopped  working,  now
hopefully getting a better class of tourist than three slightly dodgy blokes
in a rental van.

Once  past  the twisty rainy track that goes around the old town,  we hit  a
long  straight  section  of road,  probably built in Soviet  times  for  the
parading of tanks down it. About ten minutes of sloshing down this road gets
us  to  the new residence of the Q-Funk.  We pull up into the  forecourt,  a
narrow  stretch of path.  Q-Funk handily has a room-mate who helps with  the
unloading.  I'm  nominated  the person who keeps an eye on the van  in  case
naughty  people decide to take an interest in it,  which gets me out of most
of  the fetching and carrying.  Apart from one or two fanatically determined
dog  walkers,  the  rain  keeps potentially larcenous passers-by to  a  bare
minimum. Occasionally someone in their motorised den of delight wants to get
through,  so I have to go off on a quick circuit tour of the car park to get
out of the way.

Keeping  an  eye  on all of us is an elderly  block  manager  or  caretaker,
looking a bit like an extra from the Planet of the Apes movie, and who could
well have been doing the job on behalf of the KGB back in the day. There are
certainly  no shortages of suspicious glances in our direction.

Whilst on one of my impromptu 'tours of the car-park' and wondering when  Q-
Funk and Felice were going to reappear,  as time was really getting on, they
actually  do,  with expressions of urgency and concern written across  their
rain-spattered  faces.  If  we're not back at the port,  like the day before
yesterday,  then we will miss the ferry.  Thus it is, I get to beta-test the
forthcoming add-on scenario pack for Grand Theft Auto, namely the Tallin wet
night dash!  We manage to make it in the time left before the 21.30 ferry is
due  to  leave,  apart  from the fact that rather  mysteriously,  the  21.30
sailing actually took place at 21.00!  The locked terminal gates mutely mock
our carelessness, the curse of Q-Funk had struck again!

Feeling  a tad deflated,  we shuffle over to the vicinity of the  still-open
terminal  building.  A contingency plan for a midnight ferry turns out to be
something  that  only  exists as a fond recollection  of  Q-Funk's  previous
travelling  hallucinations.  It rather looks like we have an extra night  to
spend here.  At least we had somewhere to stay, and in an attempt to salvage
an acceptable outcome from the fiasco,  we head into the old town to pick up
some  cheery distraction at a suitable venue.  As he does know a few places,
we  end  up  at an old pub,  the naughty hellfire club,  or whatever it  was
called.  They  do  provide  some  rather  nice dip  n'  dunk  Russian  style
dumplings,  a  selection  of soft drinkski's (Felice carefully avoiding  the
hard  stuff!)  and a warm and happy environment to reflect on  a  very  long
weekend.

We head back to the tower block with Q-Funk's apartment in it,  stopping via
the  Estonian branch of his old workplace to pick up a letter left  for  him
there,  which  he  needed  for his Finnish jobseekers  allowance.  The  next
interesting  exercise comes when we try to find a parking space back at  the
apartment.  There  was  a  generous amount of forecourt space,  but  nothing
anticipating  a 21st century post-Soviet level of car-ownership.  In amongst
the  tightly and chaotically positioned mass of automotive metal,  we find a
grass verge space just about big enough to leave the van. We have to be very
careful  to avoid stepping in the massive black puddles surrounding it,  but
ah well, you get where you can. Marty's room-mate appears somewhat surprised
to  see us again,  but we manage to improvise beds from the furniture in the
apartment.  Felice  sleeping with Q-Funk (Oo-eer!) Whilst I take over a sofa
which could have been designed by Yuri Gagarin's metrosexual cousin,  it had
that  cold-war  space-race demeanour,  like a furniture version of 'the  Alt
Party  live  act  'Desert  Planet'.  As  a sofa,  it  is  considerably  less
comfortable than it looks, as a bed, it did just fine!

Sleep...

TUESDAY
=========

We're going home today, please, we're going home!!

05.15hrs...O' fuck, I'm awake..

Ermm, 05.30ish, so are Q-Funk and Felice..

The reason for the fumbling early start is to make absolutely sure we are on
the early (07.00) ferry,  there is no panicked dash,  and no time management
fuck-ups this time around.  This is a potentially serious matter,  as Felice
and I have a whole separate lot of travelling to do later on.  Getting stuck
overnight  in  a  different  country  from where  our  airport  is,  can  be
considered  to  be  a  mild breach of protocol at  best.  We  get  ourselves
together quickly,  and relocate the van on its sodden grassy knoll. A lot of
twitching and reversing out of the very confined locale sees us back on  the
road to the centre.  At this time of morning,  it is damp but not thankfully
raining.  The journey back to the port is completely uneventful in the quiet
traffic.  It  does seem to take quite a while for the ticket seller to  work
out what she is doing with us,  but we make it through the gates with plenty
of time to spare.  The Tallink Star, sister-ship of the one which brought us
over is waiting, its loading bays gaping open in welcome.

The  sailing back is also uneventful,  we get to see something of the Baltic
in  daylight,  catch  up on breakfast,  and we're back at Q-Funk's apartment
before  too  much  later.  The van is due back to its rental  owners  around
midday, but we still have a couple of tasks to carry out with it. Namely the
offloading  of  Q-Funk's  old Peecee parts,  and the   transporting  of  the
remaining items which didn't  go out  with us  to the Anastasia locale.  The
van is loaded again,  not to the same extent as yesterday, and time is madly
marching  on.  The Peecee recycling place is just around the corner from  Q-
Funk's  Helsinki haunt,  and a rainy and exciting five minutes of  unloading
these bits,  old CRT screens etc follows.  Then there is a mad dash down the
highway  to  get  to the outer suburb where Anastasia  lives.  There  is  an
amusing couple of minutes where Q-Funk is actually unsure where to find  her
street. He has never done this from a drivers viewpoint, preferring to sneak
up  on  her on foot from the forest or something.  The lady in  question  is
parading around, and offers help with the  final unloading session,  This is
completed,all four of us,in a van with three seats, head for the Euro Rental
office,  which is not too far away.  We manage to get there,  slightly late,
but  not  so anyone was upset about this.  The van and I got on rather  well
over the preceding 24 hours, so I say goodbye as if to an old friend.

We  get back to Q-Funk's place,  with the last vestiges of our five-day city
tickets, and slowly prepare ourselves for the final leaving of Helsinki.

This takes place around 14.30ish, and starts at a wet bus-stop nearby, where
the airport bus (service 615) which we caught coming in can be picked up. It
is  even more full than for the journey in,  if that is possible.  A hurried
farewell  to  Q-Funk gets us on there though,  at least I can find  a  seat,
Felice has to take shelter in a standing area with his big case. The welcome
sight of Vantaa airport hoves into view before too long.

The boarding formalities are relaxed, more so than at Heathrow, and there is
time  to  eat a substantial meal before we need to get on our  plane.  There
seems to be a time compression effect working here,  as a visit to the duty-
free  shop and resultant purchase of Salmiakki chocolates takes us right  to
the time where our flight is being called.

British  Airways  flight BA-whatever it was,  has a departure gate  full  of
business  types.  Fortunately,  this does not translate to a crowded flight,
and when it get in the air, Felice and I take the opportunity to stretch out
and  take over our row of seats.  The return journey is relaxing,  a largish
chunk  of  this taken up with me as prone as the seating  allowed  for  some
airborne  shut-eye,  the events of the last few days and sleep-lack catching
up quickly. The arrival back in Royaume Uni is unusually smooth for Heathrow
standards, the terminal one revamp seeming to help in lots of ways. There is
a  final mild adventure of uncertainty,  as we had not quite decided how  to
get back to Cambridge,  the price of the tickets down being a shocker to say
the  least.  An  attempt to investigate bus or coach departures to Cambridge
results  in failure due to lack of a suitably timed service.  So we grit our
teeth and purchase another (thankfully cheaper) train ticket.

The tedious underground or subway journey gets us back to Kings Cross, where
we  have timed matters decently for a impending departure to Kings Lynn  via
Cambridge.  A rush of people gets us onto that train, which is busy, but not
horribly  so.  The period where we leave London is taken up with phone calls
to interested parties who might like to know that I've got back without  too
many  bruises,  physical  or mental.  It is immediately after I've finished,
when I look out the window,  as the train is passing a station platform in a
non-stopping fashion, admiring the snow on it.

Snow? Snow!? SNOW!!!

It appears that the weather,  including the temperature, had been worse than
the  stack of cloudbursts that we had experienced at Helsinki.  In fact this
had been the earliest snowfall in the London area since 1922 or thereabouts.
Global  warming?  pah!  I  spit  on  your  presumption!  Setting my  jaw  in
thoughtful  mode,  I wonder if this is going to continue further north and I
then have around fifty miles of slip-sliding the road between Cambridge  and
Northampton. Fortunately this frozen rain soon turns back into wet rain, and
apart  from a ten-minute 'mystery stop',  the explanation for which was lost
in   the  train  driver's  unprofessional  and  poorly  delivered   mumbling
"announcement", we get back to Cambridge in reasonable time.

Paula,  the  spouse and helpmate of the Felicing one is there to meet us  at
Cambridge  station.  We  get  back  to Felice's place  in  Bar  Hill,  Paula
fearlessly  ploughing through stray cyclists,  and a short cup of tea  pause
later,  resume  my  final  part of the journey home.  This  is  accomplished
without  incident  or  issues,  so it is around 23.00hrs that I  stagger  in
through the doors of CiH GHQ, at the very end of another memorable Alt Party
eskapade!

A SUMMING UP
=============

Alt party, what can we say?

Well,  there's  a few things which come up on a list almost straightaway.  I
took five minutes to come up with some not so random topics, which I'll fill
out so we have a conclusion of sorts. Here we go now.

To kick off,  the travelling both there and back was slick and efficient. We
experienced  no journey or transport related hassles whatsoever.  There were
no  delays  or  cock-ups.  This  even applied to  a  traditional  magnet  of
misfortune,  Heathrow  airport,  mention  of which made me inwardly shudder,
when Felice first mentioned he had booked our flight from there.  But it was
okay after all.  There were no lost bags,  the travelling was fine, and that
is all there needs to be said on that subject.

Arriving  back in Finland felt like a homecoming to some extent.  The  place
was  familiar  and  nothing really drastic had changed  there.  It  did  not
actually  feel  like we had been three years away,  apart from the  cost  of
doing  things getting more expensive,  but that is the same everywhere,  hey
ho...

With regards to the Alternative Party itself,  the pause and refresh did the
concept  a  lot of good,  I can't really say anything about last year as  we
were  otherwise  maxed out with the New York escapade,  but Alt in  its  old
format was definitely getting stale towards the end.

Alt  '08 itself was the most ambitious yet.  I guess to some extent that the
massively increased attendance hung off the back of Front 242 performing. At
the  same time all the other areas were massively enhanced in proportion  to
the increased interest,  offering a whole range of good things for people to
see and do,  as well as watch Front 242.  The art exhibition was a very neat
bonus,  and  there  were some great contributions from the special  interest
groups that attended.  The Steampunk theme was stylishly executed,  no doubt
greatly assisted by Marycloud as chief fashion adviser..

In  fact,  it  might be worth asking how the organisers are going to  follow
this one up?  It's going to be like the London Olympic people trying to work
out  what to do after the Beijing ceremony spectaculars.  Unless Alt can get
an act like Jarre booked, but I doubt that one will happen in my lifetime!

The old Cable Factory was possibly the best venue ever, anywhere for a party
of larger size. It was busy, but never overcrowded. In effect, the main hall
was  a vast cathedral of altness.  You didn't just have more room to set  up
your  laptop  table,  there  were better and more generous facilities  as  a
whole,  including for the second time only at an Alt Party, a quiet sleeping
place worth a damn.

Apart from the #famous# act,  there was an enjoyable selection of guests and
live  acts,  My special mentions fly out to Desert Planet and Brad Templeton
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Moving swiftly back to the #famous# act,  well Front 242,  what a rare thing
indeed, an electronic band that manages to break the studio-boundness of the
genre, and produces a live performance that kicks ass, again and again!

At  a level of more immediate interest to readers of Alive  magazine,  there
were  a larger number of Atarian visitors to Alt Party,  then there had been
for many years.  I'd say the most since the first Alt Party back in '98. The
big  draw being the aforementioned #famous# act of course,  but some of them
were  there with some demo activity in hand.  We say hi to Evil and Gizmo of
DHS,  AIO and Peylow of TOYS. Then there are Earx, 505 and CXT, these latter
three  coming out to Alt for the very first time.  We nearly forgot  Baggio,
who has managed to get to most of the Alt parties,  and Wiztom,  who did not
have so far to come.  And we take a moment to send condolences to Havoc, who
would have been there as well, apart from his job keeping him away.

There's  a  quick  greetings section to various other people  who  made  our
weekend all the more enjoyable in their own various ways. So Setok, the main
man in a big hat who kicked this thing into life.  Partycle,  Ravel, and the
undefeatable  Nosfe  of  course.  We  spent a bit of time  with  the  comedy
American tourist stranded in demoscene land,  Mr Truck himself.  It was nice
to meet DotWaffle for the first time,  a fellow uk based demoscener. There's
a  big  glob  of  gratitude to Pahartik,  who was very helpful  in  lots  of
different  ways at the party,  and also navigating around the swirling chaos
of  Q-Funk's domestic upheaving.  Of the ladies,  it was nice to remeet with
Diamondie, Osyn, and the luscious Marycloud of course!

Into every life,  a little badly-organised rain must fall, so we come to the
vexing topic of the competitions,  oh dear! This did not really keep up with
the  increased  performance of all the other areas of the party.  It  seemed
that  everything that could go wrong,  did so,  and the Alt '08 competitions
will  be used as a benchmark for future generations of party organisers  for
how NOT to do things!

But  somehow,  the  sublime  Dead Hackers demo 'More or Less  Zero'  emerged
triumphant  from the wreckage. Even after the incredibly botched attempts to
show the demo in an "idiot-proof" format. In fact there were TWO Atari demos
which made most of the oldschool running.  With More or Less Zero picking up
a  very  respectable  second  prize,  and the  Trilobit  VCS  demo  'Doctor'
retroactively getting a first place denied due to a compo results cock-up!

The  afterparty  was the greatest of sauna fun as always.  From  a  personal
perspective,  it was somewhat condensed by  circumstances, but for this year
we did get the novelty factor of an amusingly drunken Felice!

As is so often the case,  our out of party host,  Q-funk provided some extra
adventures to spice up the writing of this report. He was a nice and helpful
chap as always. The after-party 'Three go mad in Tallin' escapade was one of
the  more  easily  cleared-up after diversions  shall we say!  In fact,  for
future reference, it might be nice to visit Q-Funk without a crisis going on
in his life,  and be able to enjoy his company and the locality in a chilled
out  fashion  like  normal  tourists  for a  change!  Then  again,  if  this
happened,  my  brain  stem might explode with the force of a tin  of  rancid
catfood swelling up like a bulgy nightmarish thing in the hot sunshine!

But did we have fun, yes of course we did!

Alt  Party '08 didn't so much rock,  rather it waltzed in a stately ballroom
fashion, well it was a Victorian Steampunk ambience, dontcha know!

                 CiH, for Alive Mag, Oct/Nov/Dec! Rebooted for Chosneck 2011.

                 (Oh hahahaha! - 2015 note..)

Back to the Travelling.