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Issue #3
May 28, 1995
HNews is a weekly newsletter for the demo scene.
It is produced by the group Hornet at the site ftp.cdrom.com.
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Subscribers: 610 | Last Issue: 551 | Change: +59 | Size: 22,165
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CONTENTS
--[Article Name]-------------------------[Author]--------------------
Hornet News Introduction Snowman, GD, and White Noise
One Track Minds GraveDigger
Generation Gaps GraveDigger
Mailroom
Can ftp.cdrom.com Get Descriptions? Johan Ronkainen
Dusty Old Mail Dan Wright
Area 51 Records Advertisement Dan Nicholson
Subscribing
Closing
---[Hornet News Introduction]--[Snowman, GraveDigger, and White Noise]---------
SM: Hello all, and welcome to the third issue of Hornet News.
GD: Christopher, it's sure good to see Jeff here with us! Where the heck
have you been, Jeff?
WN: Hmmm... lost myself in real life somewhere...
SM: That seems to happen to a great many in the scene at one time or
another. Anyway, what articles do we have lined up this week GD?
GD: Well, our first article is called "One-Track Minds" and was written
by me. It's about how people can get hostile with their opinions.
After that, another article by me titled "Generation Gaps."
SM: Is that about Star Trek...
WN: ...or the gap between Trixter and I and you guys? :)
GD: No, silly! It's about the parents of kids in the demo scene. Sort of.
Ya know, Jeff, you're not *that* old, or are you?
WN: nah... age-wise no, but scene-wise yes...
GD: Ah well. In that case, pass me my pacifier.
SM: But I don't live with my parents anymore! How does the article
apply to me?
GD: Well, Snowman, maybe you can relate to it from earlier experiences.
And think about your kids! What if they truly master 7800 polys in a
demo?
SM: Speaking of 7800 polys, I just made my own metal shaded dolphin.
Actually it isn't metal shading, its tiny vector balls!
WN: ... pray that comment doesn't bring hate-mail.
GD: Ok, what's the next article? Christopher, what kind of mail do we
have in the mailroom this week?
SM: Well GraveDigger, that's a very good question. I think we have a
letter from the ftp.mpoli.fi dudes about getting descriptions with ftp.
GD: That sounds like an interesting piece of mail.. Jeff, do you ever get
hate-mail?
WN: Not to my knowledge...
GD: Well, that's good to hear. :)
SM: I got flamed more than a few times in my day. :(
GD: Snowman, how do you handle such mail?
WN: ... he passes it on to me... <grin>
SM: ... and if White Noise can't handle it, then I find out where they
live and... well... what's the next article?
GD: Isn't there another piece of mail this week?
WN: <fumbling in the mailbag> ... hmmm can't see any...
GD: Wait! Here's apiece of mail. Boy, it looks old. Christopher, what's
this?
SM: <blowing off dust> Hey! Its a mail from Dan Wright. Its something
he wrote me about a year and 4 months ago.
WN: Hey, didn't Maelcum release something? (or so I heard in my few
stops on the Net)
GD: That's right Jeff, Maelcum and IQ have released a CD called "FTZ"...
I've heard some of it and its pretty cool! This article is an
advertisement for the CD.
WN: This introduction lacks sound... atmosphere... something.
GD: This introduction lacks Trixter! With him, we would have the whole
Hornet Core here.
SM: Trixter told me he'll be in-com-mun-a-ca-do until this Saturday.
GD: Ah, I see. Well, I hope he enjoys his job...
WN: I can relate to THAT. Can you spell B-U-S-Y? :) Speaking of busy, I
gotta run now guys. Take care.
GD: So long, Jeff.
SM: Later dude.
GD: Hey Christopher, how are newsletter subscriptions doing?
SM: Actually, _very_ well. I get up each morning and there at least 5
or 10 new subscribers.
GD: Great! Glad to hear that. Hey, did those party files get taken
care of this week? Some people asked me about that. 6PM r3cgm (+is
SM: Actually, I'm in the process of moving the demos and intros now.
Next week, can you follow the format I use and move the music from
those compos?
GD: Sure thing. I'll be anxious to listen to some of that music again!
I'm sure you don't want to hear another minute's worth of NAID compo
tunes, huh?
SM: Actually, with all of those entries at NAID, you'd think more of
them would have been uploaded...
GD: That's true. With 50+ entries, very few were uploaded. And I only saw
one graphic uploaded! The ripped one, of course.
SM: I wonder why people aren't uploading more party files. I mean, we
have a European site now so there's no reason not to upload.
GD: Maybe next year at NAID, Hornet could take responsibility for
uploading all party ready-to-release entries?
SM: That's a very good idea. Be sure to remind me ok?
GD: Sure thing. Well, I think we can wrap this up, whad'ya say?
SM: Coolio. Well folks, this has been Snowman...
GD: ...and this has been GraveDigger...
SM: And we are OUTTA HERE.
---[One Track Minds]--[GraveDigger]--------------------------------------------
Demo scene musicians are fortunate to have a vast collection of freeware
and shareware programs available to them. But once they find a program they
like, they tend to stick with it to the point of insisting that it's the
best. Only a newer version of the same program will replace it.
They have a reason for hating other tracking programs, too. Logical? Not
always. Take a look at a few things I've heard in my day:
"A mouse isn't practical for a tracker program!" Some might say, indicating
their distaste for FastTracker 2. Yeah, that little white thing with one
ball that sits on your desk, waiting for you to open Windows. But wait, is
the mouse more confusing than those hotkeys in other programs? The buttons
in FT2 are labeled and even explained in-depth in the online documentation.
"Scream Tracker is so buggy." Hey, so was the Intel Pentium chip, and
millions of people didn't care much, except when it came time to return
them for a free replacement. Besides, Psi admits that ST3 has bugs. Just
save your work every so often and you'll surely get along fine.
"MultiTracker is so old!" Now come on, my grandmother is old, but I still
love her! Well, you see, she has a Corvette, and maybe, just maybe, she'll
let me drive it someday.
"Everything else sucks." Right. Everything with a copyright date before
1992 is more outdated than the week-old milk in my refrigerator. Being that
this is an age of binary numbers that don't change, good 'ole ModEdit will
still write the same exact mod file as it would back when you first got it.
But is all this foolish talk really just elitism? One person using a
certain program that they believe to be the best? Or are there real reasons
behind a musician's insistence on their work environment?
How would Future Crew's music sound if written in FastTracker 2? Imagine
Skaven loading in 600k samples and editing their sound right in the
tracker? What if LizardKing picked up MMEdit and wrote his music in that?
What if all demo music on the PC was limited to 4 channels?
Besides the various advances in technology that these programs bring out,
they also segregate musicians into groups that think their program is the
best, everything else is junk, and anyone who disagrees is wrong.
The authors of these programs never envisioned such occurrences. These
simple programs come with little more than documentation, and maybe an
example song. There's no subliminal messages that tell the user to hate
everything else. It's just a learned behavior, most likely copied from
one's influences.
Why do some people take things like this so seriously? So, your favorite
musician just switched tracking programs on you. True, some module formats
are better supported than others, but you can always load a song into the
tracker it was written in and listen to it that way. After all, in most
cases you can't argue that a tracker will play a song incorrectly.
With such emphasis on matters of little importance, I see the music scene
as one that discourages beginners and only caters to the veterans. It is
unfortunate and hard to reverse, but its effects are devastating for those
outside of it. With such a large and still growing music scene, its almost
impossible to be objective.
-Brett Neely gd@ftp.cdrom.com
---[Generation Gaps]--[GraveDigger]--------------------------------------------
One night, I was banging away in Scream Tracker, trying to get a song
written when my dad, as he often does, came into my room without knocking
and peered over my shoulder. Hoping to make a point, I ignored his entry
and continued at my work; headphones on, eyes fixed on the monitor, and
brain somewhere off in left field.
"Can't you move the cursor with the mouse?" He abruptly asked, forcing my
head to snap at the muffled sound; a sound from an object which I had
forgotten the presence of. He was noticing that I had to tap furiously and
repeatedly at the cursor keys to move the cursor across the screen.
"Not in this program, no," was my response. I had chosen my tracker, and I
had to accept the keyboard-driven interface, which I did not mind, really.
But then, a short time after this experience, I realized how many differences
there are between myself and my dad. But it seems to go beyond my own family,
and I think it bears some relevance to why we all do what we do.
Parents are generally working in somewhat stable careers, and have reached
a point in their lives when they know that their childhood dreams will
never become a reality. My father, for example, works in a hospital. His
dreams are of boating and fishing, and being outdoors. But while at work,
occasionally he finds himself behind a computer running Windows. Usually,
everything in Windows relies on a mouse.
Their children, (that's us, guys) are still dreaming those dreams. That's
where the products of the demo scene come from, at some level. Visual
hallucinations, audio delusions. We are also a dos-driven society, for the
most part, where a mouse is frequently little more than an annoyance.
It is a simple difference like this that holds generations apart like two
same-ended magnets.
And these differences can sometimes go beyond a simple matter-of-choice for
computer operating systems. Often, parents are stuck on the idea of "Work
first, play later." Or, "Reality first, dreams later." This is a matter
that I meet with much difficulty. I struggle hard enough to stay out of
reality as much as possible without it being forced upon me. "Dreams first,
everything else later" is my personal motto.
Some are fortunate. They can show demos to their parents. However, this
takes patience on their part for them to accept something that you enjoy.
It also takes courage on your part to face the possible rejection. If you
are able to talk about and show demos to your parents, then consider
yourself very fortunate.
But if you think for a minute, it seems that there are many people who do
not understand the demo community. To them, we look at things backwards. An
illusion to them is reality to us, and vice versa. As if the world we all
live in is upside down from the rest of the world.
If only it were as simple as to grab the earth and flip it over.
-Brett Neely gd@ftp.cdrom.com
---[Mailroom]------------------------------------------------------------------
_____Can ftp.cdrom.com Get Descriptions?
> To whom it may concern,
>
> We are currently in charge of maintaining the demo archive on
> ftp.cdrom.com. Recently, I noticed that your ftp server had the "dir -e"
> option enabled where users could see descriptions of files. I asked our
> local administrator if we could set a similar option up. He was
> unfamiliar with this and said to contact the administration on your end.
>
> How have you enabled the "dir -e" option and can we do this as well?
>
> Thank you for your time. Looking forward to your reply,
>
> Christopher G. Mann
We hacked standard GNU ls command to support extra parameter -e. It reads
descriptions from 00index file. We lost sources few weeks ago when harddisk
crashed.
-Johan Ronkainen jr@mpoli.fi
_____Dusty Old Mail
[Note: This is an old mail I found lying around. Maybe you'll find it
interesting. Probably not. However, its one of my most treasured mail
momentos. -Snowman]
January 21, 1994 <--- 1 year, 4 months ago!
Hey Snowman, your the guy who uploaded all those MODS right? 5+ megs!!!
Yeah, we could still use help. We have a few people but no one "stable".
It gets out of hand if you do not KEEP UP and that is what has happened as
of late. However we have a little more control now...just that the
incoming directory is starting to FLOOD again!!!
Maybe we could start you with the MUSIC, misc directory. Then if you get
yer shit done you will be welcomed aboard...
Many of the maintainers have started off good or with lots of talk and then
dwindled to zilch after learning that it is TOUGHER or maybe not as
exciting as they think. We could do without those people.
What do you say...can you help?
-Dan Wright dmw@inca.gate.net
---[Area 51 Records Advertisement]--[Dan Nicholson]----------------------------
[Following is a very important advertisement. It is not often that a
musician in the scene has enough drive and determination to produce an
album, let alone 2 different cassettes and one CD. I will be doing a
review of the CD "Nothing is True" as soon as I get it.]
Area 51 Records
Spring 1995 Catalog v2.2
--------------------------
Ordering Info:
* Contact before ordering from Finland or Australia! *
send payment and correspondence to:
Area 51 Records
553 Thoreau Terrace
Union, NJ 07083-9044
USA
email: moddan@ritz.mordor.com, rkn@phoenix.oulu.fi
World-Wide Web:
http://kosmic.wit.com/~kosmic/areawww/area51.html
* Shipping and Handling is $1 per item within the US, $2 per item to Canada
and Mexico and $3 per item to anywhere else unless otherwise noted.
* Allow 4 to 6 Weeks for Delivery
* Pre-orders for releases which have not yet shipped are accepted, and
encouraged. Pre-ordering allows us to get albums to the market quicker,
and you to get the music as soon as it's released.
* All music is non-returnable unless there is a defect in the media.
* Cash, Personal Cheques and Bank Cheques in U.S. Funds are accepted. If
you send cash, please realize that it might not be 100% safe, so we
cannot be responsible for it getting here safely. All cheques should be
payable to Dan Nicholson. If sending a U.S. Postal Money Order (or
Canadian Postal Money Order in U.S. funds, etc), make it payable to
Marilyn Nicholson (I don't have photo-ID and so I am harassed every time
I try to cash these).
* We're looking into wire-transfer and international money-orders for our
international customers. contact us via email if you need help.
Cassette Releases
-------------------
FTZ "Astral Paradox" (1994) - Riku Nuottajarvi (IQ of Kosmic) and friends
create a blend of over fifty minutes of their potent rave and trance
techno. Includes "Paradox," "Psychedelic Stat(e)" (written with Maelcum
of Kosmic), and eight other killer tracks.
($7.00, Cassette, order code AR0194)
Transmission 23 "Dish Conspiracy" (1994) - This release has a massive
twenty-tracks of everything from 110bpm ambient dub to 180bpm hard acid.
It was composed over the course of nine months by Dan Nicholson (Maelcum
of Kosmic) and includes the hard acid track "Litmus," the middle-eastern
influenced IDM track "Abduction," the Orbital-esque "Satellite of God"
and many more songs. Over EIGHTY minutes of music!
($7.00, Cassette, order code AR0294)
Compact Disc Releases
-----------------------
FTZ "Nothing Is True" (1995) - The second album from FTZ, this is an
innovative collaboration between Maelcum and IQ of Kosmic. The twelve
tracks are:
1. Questions
2. Nothing Is True
3. Loend (FTZ remix)
4. Masstarvation
5. Sunrise
6. Acid Trek
7. That Noise (Excursion into the bleepin' underworld mix)
8. Null Expression
9. Hitch-hiking Reticulan [this song won 2nd place at NAiD 95 musicompo]
10. Calling Heaven (Heaven is a Resonant Filter mix)
11. Shearing The Pin of the Universe Within
12. Supertron (Compare/Recall mix)
This CD has over an hour of professionally recorded music on it that you
can't get anywhere else! Order today because this is a limited edition.
Want to hear some of the music? Tracks 4 and 11 are available in their
original tracker form:
ftp://kosmic.wit.com/kosmic/songs/94/mass-klf.zip
ftp://kosmic.wit.com/kosmic/songs/94/shea-klf.zip
($14.00, Compact Disc, order code A51CD01)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Area 51 Order Form
--------------------
Date of Order: _________
Ship to: _______________________
_______________________
_______________________
_______________________
| Quantity | Order Code | Cost (quantity X price per copy)
---------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| | |
---------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| | |
---------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| | |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|
Subtotal | $_________
|
Shipping Costs | $_________
|
Total Amount | $_________
Please make all cheques payable to Dan Nicholson.
See information at the beginning of the catalog for shipping
costs and terms.
* Thank you for your order! *
---[Subscribing]---------------------------------------------------------------
There are three public newsletters produced by Hornet:
demuan-list Listing of new files on ftp.cdrom.com /pub/demos.
This is really the home-base list. If you subscribe
to only 1 of newsletters we offer, make it this one.
demuan-article This newsletter has timely articles dealing with many
aspects of the demo scene. This is a serious newsletter
and not to be confused with hornet-news.
hornet-news Hornet News is an informal newsletter. There are
editorials, opinion columns, and humor dealing with
many aspects of the demo scene.
How to Subscribe:
1. Start an e-mail to: listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za
2. Type in "blahblah" as the subject. The listserver does not read
the subject line, but I do not know what will happen if you
leave it blank.
3. On the first line of the body of the mail, write:
subscribe demuan-list YourName OR
subscribe demuan-article YourName OR
subscribe hornet-news YourName
In place of "YourName", use your real name or handle. Your name
can be 1 or 2 words long.
Example:
subscribe demuan-article Christopher Mann
subscribe demuan-article r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu !WRONG!
4. Send it.
The listserver will automatically look at the return address of your
mail. _That_ address is where newsletters will be sent.
---[Closing]-------------------------------------------------------------------
For questions and comments, you can contact us at:
Jeff | jeff@ftp.cdrom.com - general stuff, WWW, NAID96 organizer
CGM | r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com - unusual stuff, o1 + HNews newsletters
GraveDigger | gd@ftp.cdrom.com - music + demo reviews, general music
Trixter | trixter@ftp.cdrom.com - code reviews, general code
Dan Wright | dmw@inca.gate.net - Freedom CD
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