SPACE Newsletter

I NEWSLETTER December, 2000 President's Corner

Treasurer's Report

by Michael Current

by Greg Leitner

December, 2000

For November, 2000

It's time for the annual SPACE club Christmas Party!! Plans seem to be coming together nicely as usual. lfyou didn't sign up to bring something (ahem, like me), feel free to surprise us! The sign-up list should be appearing elsewhere in this issue. We had another great meeting last month. In election news, all of the Officers were re-elected (no re-counts), and each of the volunteer positions have been secured with the same people as well. We really ought to pat ourselves on the back for this. Most every other Atari club around the country and world has disappeared because they run out ofvolunteers; SPACE, thanks to those people who continue to contribute their time to our chm, just keeps on going. Which brings us to the important discussion started last month by Lance. Sure, our treasury is incredibly healthy right now, but that's largely due to our auctions held most months the last couple years. The auction material has been the stuff owned by the Club. There's still a fair amount left, but the supply will end. maybe within a year. What happens to our treasury then? Can our membership dues and DOM sales keep up with our expenses? We will need Greg to watch over our finances carefully. Lance brought up the value of our very large DOM software collections--both 8-bit and ST. If these were sorted, cataloged, and published onto CD-ROMs, they would very possibly generate some substantial income for the club. It could be done, and it would be very exciting, but coming up with the people who could realistically put in that kind of time for such a labor oflove may prove difficult Even though I personally doubt we could find the interest among us to pull something like this off: I also hope Lance doesn't let the idea die completely, because I'd love to see it happen somehow. I'd be the first person to buy the finished product! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your annual SPACE Christmas Party, Friday December 8, 2000.

NEWS FLASH!!! The election is over, I repeat , the election is over. All votes are in and they have been recounted and recounted until the all parties have been totally satisfied with the results. Since we don't believe in exit polling and we don't believe in bribing voters to vote one way or the other, we can honestly give you the final results from this years election. Unless this vote is contested in the courts within the next 30 days these results as reported are final President-Mike Current Vice-President-Greg Leitner Secretary-Mike Weist Treasurer-Greg Leitner This just came in: It seems that we might have used an illegal ballot system for voting. Some members did not have their hands fully extended when it came for voting on some or all the candidates. We are now looking at possible video taping of this election to see ifwe can determine the will and intentions of the members. We will use an old law on the books that says that if an arm is extended all the way or three..fourths of the way or one-third of the way, then this should constitute a valid vote of yes for a candidate. But ifthe arm was extended less than one-third of the way then this is not a vote and it will be disallowed. We are already receiving flak from some of the voters who say that they intended to vote yes for a candidate but because they were so tired from such a long day that the just couldn't get it up. (Their arm that is). What will eventually happen is that.this fruitless attempt to circumvent the vote will be thrown out and the election will stand as called. I have passed cigarettes to all the voting members and they have assured me that they all intended to vote yes to elect the same officers that were in place for 2000 and so the stoiy should now just fade away. The morale this stocy is (YOUR VOTE DOES COUNT). Only seven members were present to cast their votes and represented less than 50% of Space' s

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total membership. You must take responsibility for your rights to belong to this group. We need your participation if we want to make this Club survive at least another year in 2001.

Secretary's Report By Mike Weist For November, 2000

Now on to the news of our treasury: Beginning balance as of Nov 1, 2000

1,273.27

Room Rental fee for June thru Sept. '00 Copies of third-party newsletters

260.00 6.90

Total expenses for November 2000 Doom sales

Space meeting opened at 7:40 PM. Space club president, Michael Current, welcomed members to meeting. Michael asked for a secretary report. Mike Weist, club secretary, recapped the minutes printed in the Space November newsletter.

----266.90

Auction sales

18.00 51.00

Total revenue for November 2000

69.00

Balance as of November 30, 2000

1,075.37

We are still sitting pretty good, but their is already talk about what the Club will do after we have exhausted our auction materials. That is another reason for all our members to be involved with om meetings.

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Michael asked for a treasurer report. Greg Leitner, club treasurer, gave a report. Greg stated the club still has a hefty .balance. Last month the club took in $124.

13 DOM sales 2 membership renewals

Auction

$39 $30 $55

TOTAL

$124

Another reason for coming to the December meeting is

Expenses were $10 for BBS expenses. Net income was $114 The treasury now stands at $1273,27.

that we are having our annual Christmas party and it was decided that the Club would buy the main course(subs) and the members would supply the rest. We have already

Greg noted that a bill for room rent for $260 came in and was paid and will show up on the November statement.

had members volunteer the pop, chips, plates, napkins. desserts, potato salad & utensils so ifyou want to bring something you know what we already have. We are going to hold off the auctions for one month so that we can all relax and enjoy the party. I have sent in the changes to the ComputerUser to update our listing and I hope the change is made in time for the December issue. We have other issues to discuss in December so I hope all our members can be there and be able to share a Christmas party and SPACE meeting with everyone. If not, here's wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Michael asked for DOM report. Glenn Kirschenmann, DOM chair, gave a report. Glenn said the DOM has two full sides of German programs. Michael asked for a membership report. Glen Kirschenmann, club membership chair, gave a report. Glen said there is 15 paid up members. Michael asked for a BBS report. There was none.

OLD BUSINESS Greg Leitner reported that the Hamfest show at the River Center was bad. Lance Ringquist noted that E-BAY is taking

all the Hamfest' s business. Voting took place for club officers tonight. It was voted on that the current officers serve another year. Volunteer positions will be filled as follows newsletter editorMike Schmidt BBS SYSOPNolan Friedland WEB Master-Michael Current Disk: of month -Glenn Kirschenmann Membership-Glenn Kirschenmann

http://www.geocities.com/rjespino/atari.html

The Christmas party will be held at the December meeting. Below is a list of stuff members are going to bring. SUBS from CUB will be the main course. Ice cold popGreg Leitner Plates & Napkins-Mike Weist Cookies-Bryan Chips-Lance Ringquist Deserts-Glen Kirschenmann MYSTERY ITEMMichael Current Any member not present at meeting, planning to come to party is asked to bring a potluck item.

NEW BUSINESS George Viita, club member, brought up a issue of the Space ~ club ad in the computer user. George stated that more information is needed in ad. Michael Current, club president asked the membership for suggestions for ad. Lance Ring~ said the club can use his phone no for club contact. ~~ Leitner said he will call computer user to make changes to ad. Lance Ringquist brought up the discussion about the Space club's future. Lance asked what the club was going to do to stay alive as a club . Lance asked how the club was going to have income after -auction sales. There was a lengthy discussion on this. Michael Current said these will continue on.

Currently the Atari viewer can do 320x192 2 levels of gray (GR.8), 160xl92 4 levels of gray (GR.15) and 80xl92 16 levels of gray (GR.9). However the jpeg decoder and the image viewer are 2 separate pieces of code, and the decoder itself can output images at 320 pixels wide and 256 levels of gray (8 bit luminance). This opens the door for people to write their own viewers displaying the images in any format they want. The one drawback is that there is only about 12K of free RAM left (out ofthe 48K of main RAM) for the screen RAM and the viewer after DOS and the decoder have used their share, so doing an embedded HIP viewer on a 48K machine looks to be out of the question. It might be possible on 64K or more machines though. I'll very probably add an option to dump the raw image data out to a file which could then be loaded by a separate image viewer or converted into another format. That would allow people to write separate viewers for these images and use all 48K (or whatever) to display them. rd guess that the best fonnat for displaying these images on the Atari is going to be HIP, so does anyone feel like writing a HIP viewer/converter? =) I'll be posting the Atari version of~ source code soon, once I've had a chance to optimize it, tidy it up a bit, and add a few comments.

Michael talked about making old Space newsletters available to members to take home. These Space newsletter go back to the early '80. Further discussion will take place in future. Meeting adjourned at 8:45 PM.

Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 16:25:43 +oooo (GMT) From: "Raphael J. Espino" <rje@co.umist.ac.uk> I've uploaded the latest version ofthe jpeg viewer to my webpage now: http://www.geocities.com/rjespino/atari.html

Mike Weist Club Secretary

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This version is faster, adds new display modes, and fixes a few bugs. It is a big improvement over the previous version. The source code for both the decoder and the viewer are also available, this makes it possible for others to write their own viewers. BTW Stephen L. Judd's pup.jpg image looks a lot better now =)

E-mail from Club President: Date: Mon, Nov 6, 2000 5:27 PM +oooo From: "Raphael J. Espino" <rje@co.umist.ac.uk.> After a couple of weeks worth of work, here it is! You can now view your favorite jpegs on your Atari 8-bit. This version has been ported over to the Atari from the C=64 Juddpeg source code jpy1223-8, by Stephen Judd, posted here a few weeks back. At the moment it can display images in greyscale (no color yet) in 3 different resolutions. This is just a beta version, but should work with most images on any 48K or more Atari. So watcha waiting for? Go take a look at it and let me know how you get on with it:

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CLUB OFFICIALS President: Vice President: Secretary: DOM: Librarian: BBS Operator Membership Chairman: SPACE Treasurer SPACE Newsletter Editor:

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Michael Current (507)663-9029 Greg Leitner (651)455-6550 Michael Weist (651)777-6794 Glen Kirschenmann (763)786-4790 Nolan Friedllllld (763)691-0626 Glen Kirschenmann (763)786-4790 Greg Leitner (651)455-6550 Michael Schmidt (76:3)757-4192

Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE) meets on the second Friday of each month at 7:30 PM

in the FalcQTl tlP.tgb.ts Com.mJmity Center at 2077 West Larpenteur Ave. Doors op·e n at 7:00 PM.

DISCLAIMER Published by the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization with no business affiliation with ATARI Corporation. Permission is granted to any similar organization with which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material :from this newsletter. We do however ask that credit be given lo the authors and to SPACE.

Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the club officers, club members or ATARI Corporation.

You can find the Club's home page at: http://www.library.carleton.edu/space/ Articles for Publication must be received by the Newsletter Editor two weeks prior to the Club's meeting.

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Gibbs Museum 'ii>

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Falcon Heights Community Center 2077 W. Larpenteur Ave.

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SPACE BBS BBS Phone: (763)-691-0626 Sysop: Nolan Friedland

Larpenteur Avenue

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Supporting: U of M

St. Paul Campus

ATARI 8-Bit Computers ATARI ST Computers

S.P.A.C.E. P.O. Box 120016 New Brighton, MN

55112

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