Is woefully out of date! I’m sorry about that. But, Sundown 2008 happened and it was good! And we’re back again from the 11th-13th September this year, for definite.
Also, we’re off to Breakpoint too, check out the list here. Sign in using your forum credentials (sign up if you haven’t!), and let us know you’re coming along. Oh yes.
Firstly, if any of you saw the item on Pouet.net, demoparty.net or bitfellas.org about Sundown 2008 being announced, please ignore it - the party will happen, and the location is fixed and same as before however I did not want the party to be publicised until details of the party were confirmed and the site was ready. The full site should be online for May 1st.
Anyhow, reflecting on Breakpoint… what a fantastic party! Even the mud and the rain couldn’t hold back the awesomeness. We had over 30 people from the UK travel over by various means, and a number of productions made it through onto the bigscreen notably:
Ate:Bit winning the 64k Competition with Pimp My Spectrum.
The UKScene Allstars getting 4th place in the demo competition with the unfinished Falling Down.
Psonice also released a Wild Demo called 8808 - a musicdisk created on a Mac using Quartz Composer - an interesting demostyle production featuring all sorts of experimental ideas, and acheived 7th place at Breakpoint.
Ne7 getting 5th place in Old School Executable Music with his SID track “Rain”, and syphus getting 7th place in the same competition with his track boostar.
Streaming music had two songs, at 11th place was my track (rc55) entitled freeeeeeee, and syphus‘ track The Stars Alone placed at 13th.
Glittermouse had art entries in the Photo and Freestyle Graphics competitions, a graffiti photo entitled Het Java-eiland (placed 20th) and a freestyle entry called Pleased To Meet You that placed 7th.
Deltafire also made an entry to the photo competition with his entry High Tension which was 23rd.
So, lots of entries, a variety of success with results and a great party had by all! Stay tuned for the Sundown party information coming around the end of April.
Not long now it seems, and we’ve most likely got a record turnout this year. People due to come along are:
71m (and missus!), Alfred, Truck, Blokey (and Sarah), Bonkers, Deltafire, DVS, Dodke, Dotwaffle, EvilPaul, Exobuzz, Forestcreature, Gasman, Glittermouse, Hikey, Justinas, Keito, Sehku, Leblane, Meaty, Navis, Rc55, Smash, Spenot, Syphus, Vampire, Vespa and White Shadow.
That’s 30 in total which is a fantastic turnout.
For those travelling via Stansted, a number of us are arriving exceptionally early and Syphus is planning a pre-party airport mooch around, probably involving queuing at Pret, fretting at overpriced food and the agony of waiting.
Also, it might be worth noting that this year Breakpoint has the nickname “Mudpoint” due to the constant rainfall. Scamp (Breakpoint Organiser) recommends bringing suitable footwear for the event.
Lots of change on the UKScene front - we’ve moved the entirity of the site to ukdemoscene.org and all the associated resources - we’re working on restyling all the components and pulling them together into a nice integrated setup. There are a few kinks to iron out (UTF-8 coding in this blog is one!), but we’re working on it right now.
There are currently 22 UKSceners going to Breakpoint, and you’ll find a pretty much always up to date list on the main site here.
Breakpoint flights have gone up to £60 return from £40 (that’s including taxes) - still worth it of course! 
The page I created to track attendance has been quite succesful. So far we have:
People planning on going (20):
Alfred, DVS, dodke, dotwaffle, forestcreature, gasman, glittermouse, hikey, keito, meaty, navis, raimo, rc55, smash, spenot, truck, vampire, vespa, white shadow and xwize.
Maybe going (4):
Deltafire, Leblane, Navman and Parapete.
So - expect at least 20 people from the UK going to BP so far! This is pretty good for an international party trip and should ensure we have a decent crowd and a lot of booze filled fun.
In other news, I was just starting to poke around the database behind ukdemoscene.org but it appears that the site has now disappeared off of the internet! I’m trying to get hold of Darkblade (Adrian) to find out what’s going on but as I understand it he’s very busy at the moment. The word from Vampy is that the old server has been pulled and Darkblade has a new one to go in it’s place. I’ve no idea about the data however, I hope it’s backed up somewhere.
In any case, I was strongly considering moving the Sundown Forums to here, and using this blog + the forums as the new ukdemoscene.org for the moment. As soon as I get word from Darkblade, I’ll make some decisions.
Although not an official trip per se, the majority of us are planning to go to Breakpoint 2008 which will be held in Bingen am Rhein, Germany as usual. I’ve set up a little site to track everyones plans and detail flight information, so if you have a moment - even if you aren’t coming, please go to the site and register your plans:
http://www.rc55.com/breakpoint/
An important thing to note is flights are only £40 return! So you really must consider coming with us!
The Breakpoint site hasn’t been updated yet:
http://breakpoint.untergrund.net/
If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out last years photos.
Sundown 4 is happening… I literally just confirmed our booking for the hall. Same place as normal… now to get organizing… here we go again!
I have ten copies of BitJam stuck at home, presented in a nice DVD box, with inlay and nicely placed CDR label on top (of the CD that is!). Would you fancy a copy? Paypal UK£5 to rc55@rc55 dot com and mention BitJam and put your address in. If anyone would prefer /not/ to pay, please let me know your reason (if you are an artist on BitJam, you only have to pay delivery and BitJam is free of charge!).
Waffle had said last week that he’d sort it all out on Saturday, but for some reason he didn’t, nor did he let me know that he wasn’t going to either. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him at length about it but he insisted that this evening he’d sort it all out.
That said, Pouet.net has a fairly complete selection of entries online.
I’m really sorry about the situation but I can only say that it’s in Waffle’s hands and not mine as he owns the competition intranet system and I hadn’t had an opportunity to rip the results and releases from there at the party.
As for the bitfellas music releases, I will work with Syphus and NE7 very soon to get a .zip release made of all entries as they are reasonably small.
