Outline 2012 - A Partly Report!

Outlube 2012 - Now that's what I really call typing in the dark!!!

Friday the 5th October 2012.

21.57hrs, adjusted for the Netherlands, October and accidental CAPSLOCK respectively.

It is I, CiH (What, again?!) at the subterranean keys, reporting from Outline 2012. For what purpose or publication, is unclear at this time. That may well be one of the issues that I will need to resolve over the course of this weekend? I have one or two more ideas for further articles for at least one possible one-off publication connected with another party due near Xmas. After that, we'll have to see.

Anyway, whilst the evening is wet and dark, the atmosphere is cheerful. In the absence of meaningful internet, we've not been able to revert to the usual at-home mouse potato behaviours, so Felice is consoling himself with wine and back issues of Maggie running under the Mac Power Book edition of Hatari. Meanwhile I am starting yet another party report and dismally failing to get to grips with the key-map on this laptop in total darkness. We may have to go and be sociable *gasp!*

Falcon 030 Midi-Maze with Wingleader and Bonus..

At this point, it is traditional to mention something about the journey over, so I won't disappoint this time.

The highlights included a road trip for four, including myself, Felice, Matthew 'Gasman' Westcott and a nervous newbie continental driver named 'Stavs'.

Actually, that went okay. There were four of us in a car the size of Felice's Astra ZIL-mobile. Some premonition of discovering that this car was not a tardis had made me pack sensibly, which turned out to be a good decision as there was only just enough room left in the boot of the car for my bag of assorted stuff including clothing, bedding and much travelled Dell laptop.

I arrived at Felice's place in Cambridge on the stroke of midday to find the rest of the travelling party already there, stretching their legs before resuming with me included. We left at around 12.30ish, making excellent time through the sometimes problematic UK stretch. The sole moment of excitement featured a motor bicyclist who decided to overtake *between* two adjacent cars at warp factor manic down in Kent in the middle of the M20 motorway.

At the Channel tunnel terminal the choice was between waiting around for a couple of hours, or paying an extra 96 pounds to upgrade to an earlier service. Not being business class travellers with budgets to match, we decided to stay where we were for a bit. A Burger King gut-buster special with some French school children sitting across from us, practicing their street slang was the main focus of interest. The French word for 'Bee-aches' being the same as the English one, funnily enough.

Europe was wet and sullen on arrival and getting dark. In the first hour, an unwelcome recall of 'issues' from a previous trip occurred. Felice's current satnav, the Garmin Kid, had a long slumber before deciding to join in with us on the journey. Must be that 'Secam' GPS satellite showing gallic disdain to innocent UK direction finding kit again?

For a first timer on the right hand side of the road, Stavs did rather well. The nervous virgin was well and truly initiated when an attempted turn off to a service station turned out to be a diversion to an outer suburb of the city of Ghent. A small petrol station was located there and Stavs parked the contents of his bladder somewhere behind it, in some kind of misguided gesture for free exchange of liquids? Once fuel stocks had been replenished, he executed a nerve-stripping u-turn across the main road, missed the turning back on to the motorway the first time of asking and repeated the drastic manoeuvre once more. Still, the best time to have these sort of misadventures is after dark, when traffic levels are low and no-one is around to care...

The rest of the journey was incident free and we arrived here at the party sometime before 21.30hrs, whereupon a visibly twitching Stavs pleaded for his first Grolsch of the day at the bar.

And that gets us to this point. It looks like Felice is taking part in some writing activity of his own?

I'll debug this text tomorrow when there is some daylight around. Back laters.

23.21hrs

I encountered Nerve outside on the party hall terrace (where barbecues are forbidden in a Dutch text.) The happy Norwegian has been fine, busy with life and has added another child to his family inventory somewhere along the way. This has kept him away from spending much time on Atari stuff, not surprisingly. He is hoping to do another demo in due course, so I remind him about the unfinished and unreleased stuff that builds up like a vast glacier of guilt and procrastination behind him.

Also met at the party was Okkie, who is getting drunk in memorandum for Giles 'Meaty' Constant, who died suddenly just a few days before the party. Giles was not an Atarian, but was a consummate UK demo scener, best known to me personally for his differently arranged quizzes at the Sundown parties. We have found Topy, who is gradually needing reducing amounts of framework to support his broken leg. He revealed this was the third time that he had broken that particular leg. Next time, if there is one, he mused that he might just be better off with amputation?

Seen also Haomaru, a regular at the nice sort of parties, and of course Havoc. We've encountered a few other Dutch sceners and Facebookers such as Honkey Kaur on the premises.

There are still some people who have yet to appear, such as Grazey and Cal, but it is rumoured they are sailing in on the ferry 'Stena Northern Accent' from Hull tomorrow. It is supposed to dock at Rotterdam, or maybe Amsterdam? If it has a reinforced bow, maybe it could just keep going on to Eersel, cutting a new canal in the process? Some of it possibly straight through people's houses, which might be tricky to explain away?

We now have an internet back, so Felice and Facebook are happy with each other and I am currently enjoying a 'wine dregs conditioned' glass of Jameson's finest single malt to bookend a journey packed first day.

Saturday..

01.19hrs in the morning.

I'm in the happy place with some happy drink and after tasting a preview version of a curry which will be offered tomorrow evening by the new catering team of Honkey Kaur and Nuey San Waldman. This tastes rather spicy, but not brutally hot and it has a lingering aftertaste, oh yes. The words "Hapkar replacement" spring to my spicily entranced lips.

Conversations and some photography in the dark ensued with various people including Okkie, Haomaru, Nerve and Stavs. Possibly a conversation with the big guy himself, Havoc was included as well?

Owing to extreme difficulty in finding my way around this keyboard due to the lack of electrically created photons hitting my vision receptors, I'll call it a night for here, but I will be awake a while longer to give my digestive system a chance to absorb the various exciting but strange substances that is has been introduced to this evening, from Grolsch through Jameson's finest, culminating in a home made lentil curry!

Night all, and see you back again in a more wakeful part of the day!

10.16hrs

We're back and still sitting in semi-darkness. The naturally gloomy ambience of the party hall is not helped by the overcast and rainy clouds brooding over us. The real party will be inside and coding for the most part today. In fact, the real party is still mostly in bed, sleeping uneasily with drunken intent as there are only a few of us up. I retired at age 48 and 03.00hrs respectively. I was reawoken for a time at 07.00 and at regular intervals thereafter by someone's mobile alarm, where they helpfully hadn't decommissioned it for the weekend and when they didn't rouse enough to turn it off. Repeat on a 5 minute snooze mode.... Ah what fun!

I eventually properly awoke around 09.00 and headed for the showers as fast as my unsteady feet could carry me. Now I am refreshed and clean. I have been enjoying the first coffee of the day and almost exclusive access to a decently working and available internet, at least until the mob comes surging back into the hall.

Gasman reports even more excitement from his non-snoring sleeping quarters, which included a couple (male - female before you ask) indulging in what could be termed as loud conversation and rhythmical non-sleeping activities, at least until they realised that they were not alone in that room and had to leave quickly!

Felice has joined us and it looks like we may have the first stirrings of breakfast soon?

We're expecting to see Grazy and Cal today, also Beetle with his humongous CT60-ised Falcon? And it seems we now have some extra light sneaking in, so I can see the outline shapes of the keys on my keyboard for the first time since arriving here, hooray!

(After party note - Didn't see Beetle turn up, no doubt we will find out more in due course. Shame, as I had some new Falcon converted movie material for him to enjoy on an SD Card to USB module thingy, assuming he had his USB transfer up and running,)

10.58hrs

Breakfast! Yay!

And we're at a bit of a mid-morning lull, where we're waiting for something to happen. There are more people around, but the party hall is not massively over populated as yet. Guess we need to do something productive?

Meanwhile, Grazey and Cal have entered the building.

11.48hrs

Grazey and Cal have set themselves up in the last free corner, hopefully not disturbing the party wifi router and its cables too drastically! Grazey has been showing me the latest tricks that the SNDH sound file format can get up to, namely playing back Quartet composer tunes (*.4V format) as an SND file, with hardware detection for enhanced hardware such as the Atari STE and even a 50 kHz playback for the Atari Falcon. This definitely falls into the "Cool or what?" corner with a satisfied grin.

Of other demo rumours, things have been quiet and expectations aren't too high for any major Atari releases this time around. There is another party coming in December which is expected to take the cream of this years crop though.

Apart from one thing that Grazey mentioned, that Defjam has apparently put in a remote entry(!)

I'm off to do something semi-productive for a while. Back laters.

15.09hrs

Time for an update...

The semi-productive time has passed and a couple of articles have been started, or the outline structure has been done in some detail for later finishing, when I am less brain-fcked.

We've also been to the oddly named but useful C1000 Supermarket in Eersel town. Fancy that, a supermarket chain named after a killer robot! Only in this reality! As part of our visit, no shopping trolleys have been stolen, but Cal and Grazey are down there now, so who knows what is going to happen next? I have renewed my acquaintance with the Dutch viniculture which started with a request made by Nicky many parties ago.

Nicky - "Chris, when you're over in Holland, can you get me some Dutch wine?"

Me - "There isn't such a thing as Dutch wine, they import it like we do. The labels on the bottles will be almost identical!"

Nicky - "I'm sure there's something you can find..."

Risking a high profile arrest and show trial by the stereotype police, muttering comments about feminine logic and so on. I've managed to get around the problem with a conveniently labelled bottle, the only Dutch language label, which happens to be their own brand version. And when I got it home, she loved it!

So I've got a couple of them for this year. Predicted end result, a very happy camper!

A round of corporate sponsored cheese and spicy toasties and metaphysical discussions with Stavs and Topy follow to round things off nicely for this part of the day.

The unmistakeable sound of an Atari ST in distress tears across the hall. A massive volume of soundchip-generated repeat key clicking was found to come from the laptop of Grazey, which was running STEEM, As it was password protected, there was not a lot I could do, apart from closing the lid. So sorry guys.

17.46hrs

So it's curry night here at Outline tonight!

We've been offered a different alternative meal option in the absence of the Hapkar this time round. I was witness to the creation of and sampling of a home cooked lentil curry, made by the hands of Honkey Kaur and Nuey San Waldman. Tonight there will be mass catering at around 4 EUR a portion. I've ordered mine!

Apart from that, events are progressing quietly with nothing astounding to report. Wingleader and Bonus of old school Dutch scene days have both turned up for the day, but are not going to stay for the rest of the party. Stavs has been working on an effect for a future Acorn Archimedes demo which can best be described as a lovely solar plasma type thing, but he has also been bemused in reading back on his previously created source code and staggered away. It's also getting too close to beer o'clock as well.

19.00hrs

Music and graphics compos have been delayed by a breakdown in the Partymeister system, but should be starting soon. I spotted Mr Coke in the building and said 'Hi'. I also caught the end of something running on one of the Synergy Falcons from him! Otherwise, it's now beer o'clock. For some people, this has been the case for several hours.

Felice and Mr Coke, who was not drinking coke!

19.41hrs

The music competitions are running, just. I've also taken advantage of the stunning sunset and grabbed a few pictures of this and the local treescape in twilight shadow. There was myself and another guy who had the same idea, standing on the edge of a massive sandpit, next to a flooded field to grab these pictures. The weather did improve after this morning's rain and turned pleasant but chilly. This has had a noticeable effect on the main hall temperature, which is bearable rather than the usual rather warm conditions. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the curry is proceeding nicely and I've helped to stir the chicken pieces in. This seems to have helped the pizza-run people, as the lower volumes of what has been ordered have been delivered early for a change.

The second music entry called 'Mind Virus' has been two parts jazz piano, to three parts of general weirdness, it was great!

20.02hrs

We had a power outage!

Not that this was anything that caused any issues on the CiH laptop. This has been deprived of the rather dead and knackered battery for this trip, rendering it into a cute and compact desktop machine, but all the preceding text had luckily been saved just before everything went phut! I think that we're back to stay, but I'm looking nervously over our shoulder and rushing off save this paragraph just in case!

We're now listening to an executable music file from lsl of Checkpoint.

20.59hrs

The music compo has ended and the curry has arrived!

It was an awesome example of the art, and recalled with a twinge of regret that there was not any more! (But there was! Wait until tomorrow! - Afterparty note.)

21.59hrs

The competitions have finished for the evening. 'Frankies Fabulous 80s Spectatularium' is on stage. to be followed by Gasman. A new sight for the party was seeing the set-up menu for the Simpsons Pinball party machine, as the owner, who had loaned it to the party, decided to tweak it for easier playing. Both the music and graphics competitions were combined, possibly reflecting a reduction in entry numbers and a need to streamline the competitions. Outside is misty and cold and it will need a coat.

Very well then, Sunday..

00.56hrs

To update over the last few hours.

Gasman's live performance was awesome, with a selection of new and old material, Michael Jackson made a return on vocoder with Okkie stepping in obligingly as Vincent Price. Gasman's voice only broke apart once. He revealed he still had his Madonna pink leotard urges right at the end of the set too. We've spent quite a bit of time outside with the fog, some of it huddled near to nicely arranged brazier fires. Never has a demo party tradition been more needed! Games that amused us included laser pointer chase for the guest dog mascot. (There are no cats around Outline currently.)

I've also seen the strangest drinks dispenser in action. It is made from Lego, gears, motors and plastic tubing, and dispenses something that can be described as equal parts of vodka and sherbet powder. So you get a combined attack of diabetes and liver poisoning. Brilliant! Stavs sampled some and chose to down it quickly, at that point his face turned inside out! The author of this piece chose a gentler pace and stopped before it got too unbearable.

The KrawallMeister 2000! - If you need poisoning really quickly!

The KrawallMeister 2000 will be a surefire hit at parties, where people aren't too fussy. And possibly blind as well.

01.25hrs

Certain others have gone to bed as the first night's mayhem is still catching up with them. Stavs did not reappear before 1pm this afternoon!

11.13hrs

I managed to get to bed sometime in an uncertain haze between 01.00 and 02.00hrs, My bladder was firmly in control of events, allowing a small period of sleep before asking to be taken for a walk, repeat cycle around three times until I wearily stagger to life at around 10.00hrs. In spite of moderating my drinking and really pushing the boringly sensible boat out by making sure I was adequately hydrated before going to bed, I still awoke with a headache! I would put that down to two parts classic dehydration to one part caffeine deprivation. On which note, the first strong coffee of the day seems to have fixed that one.

We've had a pleasant chat with Mr Coke outside in the morning sunshine. He is releasing another 4ktro for Outline and will be attending the Sillyventure 2012 party in December,. And I think that the time for breakfast will be soon as well.

11.38hrs

Breakfast v1.1, lovely!

12.36hrs

Notice to scare and offend people with. "Sorry, we have run out of coffee!" - WHAAAAT! How am I going to disperse my headache now?! In other news, Gasman has managed to debug the effect that eluded him at 04.00hrs today, wonder why?!

14.32hrs

A live act has taken the stage. We have been outside for a while enjoying the autumn sunshine with Stavs being occasionally troubled by a wasp with potential romantic intentions. We have also been mushroom hunting around the back of one of the buildings, where there is a fine crop of some fairly scary species, which according to one of the more experienced guides around here, may even be edible. I'm not volunteering though! I do have some pictures and some of them do look like life-forms which are not part of this Earth.

General rules of mushroom hunting are vaguely ill-defined and definitely not reassuring. IE. If it's brightly coloured, it's a poison warning but the plain ones are okay, apart from when they might not be! Or you could ask how did they find out about toxic varieties in the first place. Was it the power of trial and error?! - "Well he's dead, so we don't eat THAT one. MAKE SURE YOU DRAW A VERY CAREFUL PICTURE OF IT BEFORE YOU THROW IT OUT!" (This would be in the days before photography, of course. And the situation wouldn't be helped if your mushroom artist had two left thumbs for painting ability. Then it's back to square one and corpses scattered all around after yet anoother losing game of supper roulette.

16.17hrs

The first round of a sparsely attended set of competitions arrived. These were the realtime/wild and animation/game. The game competition will be won by Grazey and Cal with their 'DefenderTron' mashup, which was also the sole entry there. The crazy lego vodka mixing machine seen in action last night has a name and a short film about it, the KrawallMeister 2000 could well win its category too.

If this was not enough fun, the campaign to get more fresh air into demoscener's lungs continues, with a round of floppy disk throwing (Amiga disks of course.) In other news, we will have a chance for the night bacon that we missed at Sundown as mOd is standing by with a gas-ring and a cheesy grin, Also Cal and Grazey have been noodling around with Gasman's vocoder that he used for last night's live performance. Evidence of this has been camcordered by several people for later use!

We have managed to obtain a replacement vote key for the defunct one that worked for an hour after we registered on the first day. The new one decided to work only after I substituted the letter 'o' (as seen) with 'q'. But that's okay now, so we can vote with confidence.

18.58hrs

Lots of time has been spent outside, where the real party is of course. Nerve had a new toy, which were some plastic solar eclipse proof cardboard glasses with dark lenses. Looking at anything other than the sun showed a world of blackness and the sun as an orange ball. Me in experimental mode took a couple of photo's through these improvised filters. Apparently people do use versions of these filters for proper solar observations and sunspot activity watching. Outside, Cal and Grazy are cooking their soup on a portable gas stove. They have brought all their own camping gear and could be considered to be ready for any possible apocalypse event that might happen at the party. Inside, we're being treated to an MSX demo show.

19.56hrs

A race is on between the pizza delivery and the demo competition starting? So far, no signs of life on either front?

21.20hrs

The main events for the evening have taken place. These are food and competitions.

The competitions started with a promising selection of 128 byte stuff. The best entry being for an Atari XL 64 byte coarse plasma, where 47 bytes were apparently used for the colours.

The combined Atari competitions came next, with an easy to track total of three entries. These ranged from Mr Coke offering a 4ktro, which made a prolonged but well timed series of jokes about the length of time needed to pre-calculate it, namely in the form of a progress bar with comments that picked up on the audience mood all too well. The single effect, when it got there, was an intricate dot vector screen of over 300 points.

BITS had an entry which initially failed to launch, but was shown by the end of the compo's. This featured better than usual music and some textual scrollers. There were some user controlled options with it, which weren't tested.

The kicker came from Checkpoint with a new Morphonic Labs release. This featured a raucous soundtrack a gentler pace than usual, and flashes of Defjam and lsl genius throughout. I remember seeing one of the effects from a previous Outline party work in progress, around five years ago!

At this point, the pizza's had come in second, so the compo's took a break.

The meal contained both lowlights and a highlight. The lowlights were down to the pizza's, where it seemed that not much care had been taken with their preparation. As the bulk catering led to a cheaper price, I really got the impression that they were trying to get by the the bare minimum of ingredients. This backed up the 'cardboard crust' comments made elsewhere from previous nights. The highlight however, was that there was a batch of the curry from yesterday still available. This has been added to and tweaked for a hotter experience. This second half did not disappoint and led to what might be considered as a food based legal high!

We have also had a couple of power outages since the last update to this text, so I'm practically saving each sentence as it is written!

The competitions resumed with a selection of three proper PeeCee demo entries which included the inevitable tribute to the recently deceased Giles 'Meaty' Constant. The standard was pretty good, considering the limited amount of entries.

Lastly, we had an awesome Cat Godzilla movie style production, which was a work in progress and not eligible for voting, but hey, when you've got the effortless superiority of the BITS demo, who needs it!

Anyway, time to vote and then get out for a bit, as I'm struggling to find keys on here again.

MONDAY, comes knocking all too quickly.

02.10hrs

The final formal business of the party has been concluded with a prize giving ceremony that took place at 11.30. Results will be reproduced when I am in a rounding up mood. The night bacon session took place pretty promptly from midnight, and the rest of the time has been used in late night chat and silliness with a laser pointer, with the rest of the party sitting around a blazing fire. Virtually all the stock of loose firewood and dead branches has been used as we had managed to create an effective furnace with an oil drum. At times, this was glowing red and we could almost see through it! Inside the hall there are a couple of lonely organiser people and a couple of other people, one of whom is in a bunny costume, watching pony cartoons as I type this. Still, each to their own and that.

Stavs and Felice have retired, I'm going to follow shortly after I've finished this extract of report.

I'll assume this is going to be the last realtime part, as I'd like to get packed soon after I get up tomorrow and the power will probably be gone too.

After the realtime, a journey home and some summing up thoughts to finish.

Bedtime follows, with thankfully less of the bladder-based nocturnal shenanigans that made the previous night so memorable. I am up sometime around the hour of nine, as a departure time of 12.00 has been mooted. Breakfast, as in the remnants, is already waiting and a few people are up already.

Fairly soon, I am joined by Felice and Gasman and the usual slow re-compressing of personal effects and equipment back into their containers takes place. There is no sign of Stavs.

People reappear then drift off wistfully, consoled with the realisation that the next Outline party is returning to its normal post-Easter 'Queens Day' slot, so it is only seven or so months away. There is no sign of Stavs.

Time passes and it is getting to the point where the return of Stavs is keenly awaited. There is no sign of Stavs.

A search party discovers him about a couple of bunk beds away from my party sleeping location and he is gently awakened.

With all four of us now fully sentient, We finalise our packing, almost to the point where the tables are being collected and repack the car. As Stavs has returned, there is no more waiting around and the return road trip commences, after a short detour to the C1000 supermarket first for essential supplies.

Quick joke for the Eighties kids:- "C1000? That's one hell of a long blank tape!"

The first part of the journey back is uncomplicated, which is how we all like it, arriving back at the Channel tunnel terminal in the later afternoon. Even the damp conditions with the usual zombie shuffle through customs doesn't quell our high spirits. After a final round of shopping and fast food a la francaise, we board our train of subterranean swiftness for a painless jog home.

Only it didn't quite work out like that.

Stavs became aware of a potential issue first as we slowed down at the UK end of the tunnel. He must have very keen motion sensors or something? The train emerges into daylight and shudders to a dead stop.

A lengthy period of nothing at all ensues, then a garbled and barely understood "announcement" from the driver crunches through the speakers. It is a fairly well known fact that train drivers and station train announcers go to a special school which teaches them to distort and garble their normal clear speech patterns out of human recognition. There is a French version of this school too, as we found out that day.

A couple more of these uncommunicative verbal 'events' follow, then a momentary cheer as the train resumes its journey. Which slowly crystallised back down to a calm fatalism when we realised that the pace of journey was identical to that of an asthmatic snail called Alan, who was carrying some heavy shopping.

On all the other occasions we have travelled by this route, the distance between the tunnel entrance and the terminal has never been a factor, or even noticed by us. On this ill-fated trip, it took over an hour from our expected arrival time to finally limp in to the station. We were all feeling a little bit 'Blackadder' by then!

Contact forms for possible compensation claims and bottles of water were handed out by staff members, who looked like they have had some practice here? (There was a happy sequel, as Stavs got the ticket price for the return journey refunded.)

Evening arrived darkly, and the list of ominous 'odd' happenings continued to grow, as an engine warning light appeared as soon as Stav's car had found the damp Kentish motorway. We stopped at the first service station to check it out, which was a good idea for a lot of different reasons for different people. Stavs advised that the warning light was extremely non-specific and generally referred to a software issue. He also revealed that he had self-serviced the car recently. Hmmm, what could possibly go wrong here?

The journey resumes. As there are no outpouring of black smoke or sudden swerving off the motorway, it seems that nothing really bad is happening to his car and calmness returns. The rest of the journey, which has been known to throw up further delays, passed uneventfully, even the problematic M25 behaved itself, as if it was aware we had suffered enough already?

Some time around 20.00hrs, we arrived back in Cambridge, Stavs wafting the fumes from his completely desiccated fuel tank in the direction of the engine, as we crept into Bar Hill garage near the Felicing palace. A final offer of food-enhanced hospitality from Felice was declined, as Stavs resumed the final part of his journey to Exeter, not forgetting to drop off Gasman in the appropriate place first. Meanwhile, I accepted the meal on offer and the restful pause that was included, eventually arriving back in Northampton some time around 22.00hrs.

Some final party thoughts, from party people.

Outline 2012 suffered a misfortune as the original Ascension day/'Queens day' weekend had been double booked. (For 'Queens Day', look up Dutch public holidays!) We had an extra long wait until the new date of the 5th of October. In an eventful year, personally speaking, light relief and pleasurable activities were a long time awaited. Actually, Outline survived its unwanted transition to the autumn rather well. There was also a good rallying around effect and reasonable attendance levels, even with the relatively short almost last minute build-up period.

Moving seasonally changed the atmosphere subtly. A normally 'summery' party outside was enjoyed differently with the onset of autumnal conditions. We were reasonably lucky with the weather after a rainy first night and morning. With cooler daytimes and falling night-time temperatures, expectations for appropriate outdoor clothing had to be adjusted. The demo party bonfire tradition was also greatly enhanced by actually being necessary this time!

Stavs performed admirably as the 'relief' driver. We just about managed a reasonable balance between loading and in-car comfort and there were no actual mishaps on the journey. Well the bits of it that were under our control anyway!

On the issue of 'stuff', there were not too many Atari releases, but then again, not much was expected this time. We did get 4 kilobytes of something from the newly rebooted and enthusiastic Mr Coke. A remote entry from Checkpoint managed to provide a respectable life sign from their end too. So not a bad deal there.

The general run of compo's were generally lower for activity levels, with some nice things appearing, but no really great or memorable entries.

Outline is more of a 'people' party, so a fair bit of the time was spent catching up with old acquaintances, as well as getting more familiar with some people glanced peripherally before and meeting the odd (old)newcomer.

A brief shout-out list which will forget far too many, but includes Topy, Nerve, Cal and Grazey. Haomaru, Okkie, the big man himself, Havoc. We also had the pleasure of Wingleader and Bonus for Saturday in an act of Atari remembrance. We had 'meaningful interaction' with Mr Coke. It was also nice to properly get to meet people who we might term as 'Facebook sceners', but certainly not in any derogatory way. In fact Honkey and Nuey turned out to be our culinary saviours, which brings me nicely to the next topic.

The cuisine was a mixed bag, but mostly good. The new highlight for this year, was the awesome hapkar substitute curry, as made by Honkey Kaur and Nuey San Waldman. This served as a complete pizza replacement on one evening, and a rescue mission after the disappointing pizza's of the final night. This should definitely be repeated at future events! The breakfast, which was breakfast rather than brunch, was up to scratch. Finally I managed to get to enjoy a demo scene culinary ritual, which I had missed out from two previous Sundown parties. This was the art of midnight bacon, as sacrificed on a gas-burner shaped altar, by mOd!

The night bacon Meister - mOd!

So to summarise the summing-up, Outline 2012 has been a long wait in an eventful (mostly shite) year, but definitely all the more keenly enjoyed for all of that.

CiH - for Mag! Oct 2012.

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