Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Alternative Party 2003

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-as-long-as-there-are-llamas dept.

mkoskimi writes "The fourth consecutive Alternative Party is arranged this weekend (Friday to Sunday) in Helsinki, Finland. As before, we expect up to 300 people joining this round-the-clock event, bringing along all kinds of weird machines (previous times have seen a Magnavox Odyssey, a M6800 Evaluation Kit II and the Vectrex). It's not yet another retro computer show though; there will be Competitions, artists and our guest of honour, Jeff Minter! There be llamas here..."

3 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Re:hmm... by cap'n+foolsy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    i think having a *sausage party* is just about as alternative as it gets, rendering "the alternative sausage party" redundant.

    --
    It might look like I'm standing motionless, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away
  2. Re:Demo Scene by Goth+Biker+Babe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was attempting to code demos which use the hardware to it's limit (mainly on the BBC Micro) which laid the grounds for my future career in embedded software.

    Demo coding (and game programming) produced a generation of software engineers who know how to keep memory usage to a minimum and eek as much power as they can out of the hardware. To solve solutions or produce effects they had to be inspirational and use hardware in ways the designers had never envisaged. One example being using hardware timers, the screen sync interrupt a nd low level coding to flip pallets during the screen draw and so get more colours than are supported normally.

    I worry that the new generation have had it too easy and that these skills will be lost.

  3. Re:Jeff Minter Rules by cesarcardoso · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Gaming on mobile phones, PDAs and other embedded devices has allowed the 8 and 16 bit kings and queens to come out of retirement and show the world what great games they produced.

    Those gadgets remember much of the 80's computers in two aspects.
    First is the small resolutions: it's difficult to put something with 1024x768 in your pocket :)
    Second (and this is a REAL issue on mobile phones) is tight memory: unless you own a Smartphone, you can't simply put more memory, and even if you own one, the cost of a SD or a CF is higher than your standard el-cheapo DDR for the same amount of memory.

    It's natural that all those greats from the 80's are back on mobile gadgets, and still kicking!

    --
    Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)