Computer culture

Sometimes you think the world is really small - so I met my room-neighbor Julian in Cologne. He was hanging around in a location called "Kletterfabrik" near the Evoke-location, where some cool people did some art installations. I made pictures, but they are quite dark (it was in the night).
I'll upload some more pictures in the next days.

The 64k-Intro Bloom from Styx made the second place and he was quite happy about that.

After coming home I was really tired (you don't get too much sleep on a demoparty) and angry about the "Deutsche Telekom", because our DSL isn't working at the moment.

I'm here at the Evoke 2005 demoparty with Tom, StyX and TS.

I tried to create a 4k-Intro on friday evening, but stopped due to the late time and the deadline, which was at 10 (although it was moved for hours later). StyX has created a 64k-Intro, which has probably good chances to gain a good place, maybe even the first.
The network is always sucking here (and we're asking us why it is so difficult to provide a working network), so if this entry reaches you, I managed to get internet for some minutes ;-)

Pictures I made are here

In about two hours I'll leave to have a trip to the demoparty Evoke. If netcologne manages it to provide internet this year you may see live-reports from me. I have no releases prepared, as I'm mostly a passive scener in recent times.
If you don't know what a demoparty is, it's basically an event where people are creating art with computers, in form of self-running programs, while their only use is that they provide nice graphics and sound.

If you are a loyal reader of my blog, you might know that one of the very first entries in this blog was about my Evoke-Trip last year.

I found this a while ago and thought it's worth mentioning. Secret Maryo Chronicles is a Mario-Clone and seems to be one of the better ones. It's in a quite early stage, but with some talented level designers it could evolve to something really nice.
The gameplay is a bit different from the original games, it doesn't have a speedup-button. It's features are comparable to Super Mario Bros, while it's graphics are more like Super Mario World.
It's free software and it's available for Windows and Linux.

Ok, die Überschrift ist vielleicht ein bißchen arg euphorisch gewählt, aber ich wollte im nachfolgenden auf ein imho sehr interessantes Projekt aufmerksam machen.
Die Aktivisten von Downhill Battle haben die Organisation Participatory Culture Foundation ins Leben gerufen und betreiben in dem Rahmen ein Projekt für die Verbreitung von Videos im Netz.

Bislang gibt's die Web-Software Broadcast Machine, in den nächsten Tagen soll ein Player dafür folgen. Natürlich alles freie Software, der Player basiert auf vlc und soll für Linux, Windows und MacOS zur Verfügung stehen.

Ich hab mal ein bißchen damit rumgespielt, das Ergebnis könnt ihr unter broadcast.hboeck.de bewundern. Den Player (CVS-Version) hab ich leider noch nicht an's laufen gebracht, mal das Release abwarten.
Da ich schon öfters über kostenlos im Netz herunterladbare Filme gebloggt habe, hab ich dazu mal einen Channel gestartet. Die Software wirkt noch etwas buggy und in frühem Stadium, ist aber trotzdem ganz nett.