disc6.font,8

ac
c3Mekka-Symposium c2partyreport

ac
c4By Dipswitch/DCS^Dream Theatre

as
c6Cologne, 28th April 2000.

c5First  I  gonna  expose you my sight on.  the c2biggest German scene event, c5then
you  gonna see the logos i did straight at the party place.  By the way, don't
miss  the  party  reports  of  Crest  (not  the c64 legends) and Scamp/Vacuum.
Especially  the last one exposes some very negative circumstances of the party
which I unfortunately didn't notice...  I got to the party place by car with
some  old  pc  scenefriends  of  mine  -  Poti and Pandur of Black Maiden.
Perhaps  you know the last one as one of the most hardcore PcBoard door coders
of the past.  Anyway, Avenger/Black Maiden^DTR also planned to go with us, but
failed because he noticed too late that he must learn for his exam =).  As you
perhaps  know, DTR Allstars planned to arrive and do party and coops and stuff
but  it  failed.   Zaner wasn't there because of his usual trips to Turkey and
some  additional  probs, Avenger and Lord Chaos had to learn for the exams and
Shaolin  wasn't  seen  either  at  the party place.  So I was the only one DTR
warrior  to  represent  our crew.  Unfortunately I couldn't even take my c2Amiga
c5with  me  because  the  car  was  too  filled  up, so I had to be happy with a
386/SX20 notebook and the Amiga font simulator.  Well, better than nothing...

We  arrived  at  the  c2partyplace c5at around 1600 (we had to go through a damn
Easter traffic jam).  At this time the party place was very filled up already,
and  Pandur  (who  got his PC with him) and me got a quite shitty place in row
54, somewhere in the middle of the hall.
 
The  first  person I met wandering around the hall was Ramses/Remedy, whom I
was  really  glad  to  meet,  on  the  one hand because he's really one of the
friendliest  in  the  scene  and  on  the  other hand because at first sight I
haven't  noticed  anyone  I  know  in  the  hall.   Ramses  helped  me to find
cQBs/Oldskool,  was  going  to  setup his BBS at the party place to get online
with  it  again  after the party (Hey cQBs, I still get no connect!).  The guy
sitting  next to cQBs turned out to be my groupmate Gilligan from c2DCS c5Console.
Now  that was really nice, because I was looking forward to get taught some GB
trainer  coding  techniques by him.  We decided to do this tomorrow, and the I
was off to walk around a bit.
 
I  think,  the nicest thing about this year's Mekka was the weather.  It was
really  warm,  so  we  spent really much time outside, lying on the one grass,
smoking  the  other  and  listening to music from Poti's car radio At the time
(about  1800)  Faxe  (the ex-sysop of one of the nicest german Pc BBS's of the
past,  Kaoz BBS) was around already and brought me some long-awaited dancehall
reggae mixtapes, the absolutely right music for the weather.
 
We didn't spend all the time we spent on fresh air of free will.  Smoking at
the  hall  was  prohibited  for some unclear reasons (btw at Evoke'99 everyone
smoked  inside, and the air was still better than at MS hall).  As the most of
you already know, the organizing team hired some professional security men for
the  party.   Security men CAN be nice, but the organizers managed to get some
real  dumb morons out of Hamburg's most rotten nightlife places, who were used
to  take  care of people who are even more dumb then them.  Fortunately, I had
no  serious  probs  with  them,  but other people seemed to have, read Scamp's
report...;(But I still had the chance to see how dumb they were.  Later in the
evening  I  was  standing infront of the entrance smoking a self-rolled cig, a
security man called out "Hey, you aren't smoking a joint, do you?".  I offered
him  to smell the "joint" and to convince himself that it was an ordinary cig.
Innerly  ashamed,  he  stated  in an ignorant way "I don't care, you can shoot
heroine  out  here  and  I won't care, it's your health." So why he was asking
?Scamp/Vacuum  tells  many other unpleasant facts about the security men who
happened  to  sit not far from him...  So my first appeal to the organizers is
prove  your  security  men  if  you even have to hire them !And go to Evoke to
convince yourselves that smoking at the partyplace musn't be a problem.
 
But  let`s  go on with the chronology...  Friday evening there was the great
movie  "23"  shown  on the bigscreen.  I guess the most of you know this great
movie  about a 80's hacker who believes in secret societies and starts to hack
for  the  Soviets  to balance the powers, but hooks up with coke and starts to
hack just for money...  But the main point, why the movie was worth showing at
the  party,  was the scene where the two main actors smoke a spliff in a train
and  get thrown out - guess where ?c2In Fallingsborstel, c5the small village where
the party was held !  =)
 
After  the  movie  I finally met lots of people.  At the antrance i suddenly
noticed  good  old Crazy/Arcade^TRSi standing surrounded by several TRSi guys,
of  those  I only got introduced to Irata.  Crazy was pretty drunk and mumbled
something about he'll get Gilligan/TRSi this night because he didn't like that
Gilligan was DCS member besides TRSi...  I didn't like this kind of talk much,
so   after  some  chitchat  I  went  back  to  the  hall.   BTW,  I  also  met
Ninja&Legend/TRSi  at  the  first  day,  but  I don't remember anymore how and
when...;)
And,  not  to  forget, I spent many many time on friday to search ONE scener
Azzaro/L124  !He  announced  on  IRC that he will be there, but I first wasn't
able to find him.  I nerved several c64&Amiga sceners asking if they have seen
some  polish  guys  around  and  even  took some swiss guys for polish sceners
taking  swiss-  french  (or  whatever)  for  polish.  ;)But on Friday I had no
success to find the TAC critician No.  1...  =)
 
I  decided  to  sleep  early  on Friday so I didn't miss too much compos due
sleeping  in  the  next  days, so already at 100 I made my way to the sleeping
tent.  It was nice because it was very quite in there, even no snoring =), but
the  disadvantage  was  the  heating.  It WAS cold outside, so the heating was
needed,  no doubt, but the fuckup was that the hot air did hit you straight in
the  face while you layed on the floor...  Due to that circumstance I was only
able to sleep about 6 hours.


ac 
c4- - L O N G  B R E A K - -
as
c6Cologne, 16th June 2000
 
c5Sorry  sorry  sorry !Due of school stress I had to stop writing the report and
can  continue only now, because school is nearly over...;) The problem is that
the  party  is  now  nearly  2 months ago and I can't continue the report as i
started  it  ;(.   I  just  don't  have  all  the things in memory to write as
detailed  as  above.   I  just  can  add some things shortly which happened at
Evoke.
 
-I finally met c2Azzaro c5on Saturday, with a bunch of other Polish Amiga sceners,
who  were  all  very nice.  One of them even borrowed me a spoon for the whole
party to eat my "5-Minuten-Terrine" ;).  With Azzaro and the other c2MAWI c5guys I
was  constant-  ly boozing the whole Sunday, starting with wine in the morning
and  continuing  with Polish and German beer in the afternoon (Azzaro had over
50!  cans of beer in his car).  Hey Azzaro Polish beer is tasty!  Sorry that I
have  forgotten  to  give you the promised "Klsch" beer...The only unpleasant
thing  was  the sniff tobacco...%-0 On this place I send many hugs and virtual
beers  to  c2Azzaro,  Hakon,  c5the  russian-speeking  jura-student, Azzaros bald-
headed pal and all other Polish sceners at Mekka.
 
-Another  person worth mentioning is Raver/DCS who hitchhiked over 1000km from
Liepaja/Latvia to Fallingborstel.  He needed 4 days to get there and 6 days to
get  back.   Respect  !It's  a  pitty we had so few communication at the party
place...   But  I'm  looking forward when you come to Cologne and we'll have a
nice smoke together !


-Now  a  few words about the compos The PC demo compo sucked, nearly all demos
looked  like some lame Cinema3D animations or something - no cute design, just
3D  crap...   The  PC  64k  ruled  -  some  really stylish stuff by Replay and
ofcourse the magnificent "Heaven 7" 64k from the Hungarian guys of Exceed.  PC
4k  was  funny, but nothing really fresh.  All the Amiga c2democompos c5did rule -
the mighty 'miggy community showed the scene what's the combination of stylish
design  and  mindblasting  effects.  My absolute favorite is the Haujobb 64k -
they  even  used  an ascii by Trivial in a bouncing effect !!!  They were also
ones of the few who packaged the intro with a more or less proper file_id.  Of
course the c2Potion 64k ruled c5too, especially effect-wise.  The c64 compos RULED
!   It  absolutely  astonished  me  what freaks can get out of this machine...
Respect  !   The music compos SUCKED DICK !An MP3 compo has nothing to do with
scene !  You can track a ultra- complicated mod and convert it to MP3, you can
also  do  "music"  with some suckey progs a la "Magix Music Maker" or "e-Jay",
convert  it  to MP3.  It is really NOT FAIR to do this sort of compo.  And why
the  hell  there was no 4ch compo ?!  No 4ch mod cane thru the preselection of
the  "Alternative  music"  compo  where  the  most 4ch freaks handled in their
entries.  So what is it ?  c2The Symposium has forgotten the Amiga scene ?!  c5How
can  it  be ?  Well, at the c2Pixel-GFX compo the Amiga community showed another
time  their  superiance  design-wise.   c5Amiga artists too over 6 of the 10 top
places,  under  them  the  first  4.   My favorite pic was the one by c2Cyclone,
c5unfortunately it got 6th.  The Wild compo rocked with Hitmen's magnificent GBC
and  DC  demos.   The DC demo was amazing, just keep in mind the guy wrote the
DC-devtools  him-  self  !The GBC demo was kinda fakey because no proper pixel
gfx  were used and the tunnel was just animated, but just the fact that it was
a  GBC  demo  made me vote for it...;) The other stuff was funny and also very
nice  done (especially Ramses' short film), but for me as a consoles freak the
Hitmen  demos  had  a  preference.   About the PSX demos and the fast intros I
can't say anything, because unfortunately I slept during the compos...;(


-Well,  I  think  that's  all I have kept in mind about this more-or-less good
event.  Special thanks go out to:


c4  Gilligan c6for trying to teach me GBC trainer coding (sorry I was so stoned
   the whole time).
c4  Azzaro c6for the booze and the nice time.
c4  Poti c6for driving and strange criticism =).
c4  Faxe c6for the Dance Hall tapes, the tasty green tea and the nice chillout
   sessions.
c4  Pandur c6for being a nice travel&table partner (Hey Pandur wieviel Geld schuld
   ich dir nun fuer die Rueckfahrt ? Lass ma treffen, weit auseinander wohnen
   wir ja nicht=)). 
c4  Ego_UK c6for showing the power of GBC to some surprised PC sceners =).
  the nice Spanish guys in row 55, especially c4Wavemaker c6for guiding me to
   Wayfinder.
c4  Wayfinder/KFMF c6for showing my the amazing Beyond Tracker and giving me
   Pyromaniac's email. Thanx mate ! 
c4  Cru c6for the funny communication =)

c5Have  I  forgotten someone ?  I hope not.  Many, many greets to everyone I met
on Mekka - I hope we will all meet echothers again some day.


e

