disc6.font,8 «» «ac»«» «c3»Mekka-Symposium «c2»partyreport«» «» «ac»«» «c4»By Dipswitch/DCS^Dream Theatre«» «» «as»«» «c6»Cologne, 28th April 2000.«» «» «c5»First I gonna expose you my sight on. the «c2»biggest German scene event, «c5»then 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 «c2»Amiga «c5»with 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 «c2»partyplace «c5»at 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 «c2»DCS «c5»Console. 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 ?«c2»In Fallingsborstel, «c5»the 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»«» «c6»Cologne, 16th June 2000«» «» «c5»Sorry 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 «c2»Azzaro «c5»on 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 «c2»MAWI «c5»guys 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 "KÖlsch" beer...The only unpleasant thing was the sniff tobacco...%-0 On this place I send many hugs and virtual beers to «c2»Azzaro, Hakon, «c5»the 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 «c2»democompos «c5»did 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 «c2»Potion 64k ruled «c5»too, 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 ? «c2»The Symposium has forgotten the Amiga scene ?! «c5»How can it be ? Well, at the «c2»Pixel-GFX compo the Amiga community showed another time their superiance design-wise. «c5»Amiga artists too over 6 of the 10 top places, under them the first 4. My favorite pic was the one by «c2»Cyclone, «c5»unfortunately 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 «c6»for trying to teach me GBC trainer coding (sorry I was so stoned the whole time).«» «c4» · Azzaro «c6»for the booze and the nice time.«» «c4» · Poti «c6»for driving and strange criticism =).«» «c4» · Faxe «c6»for the Dance Hall tapes, the tasty green tea and the nice chillout sessions.«» «c4» · Pandur «c6»for 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 «c6»for showing the power of GBC to some surprised PC sceners =).«» · the nice Spanish guys in row 55, especially «c4»Wavemaker «c6»for guiding me to Wayfinder.«» «c4» · Wayfinder/KFMF «c6»for showing my the amazing Beyond Tracker and giving me Pyromaniac's email. Thanx mate ! «» «c4» · Cru «c6»for the funny communication =)«» «» «c5»Have 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»