May 2009
NEWSLETTER for May 2009 President’s Corner
Treasurer's Report
by Michael Current May 2009
by Greg Leitner For April 2009
Yesterday morning it was in the 30s, today it hit 85. Welcome to spring! Other than enjoying the fantastic SPACE DOMs I can't say there's a whole lot going on on the Atari front. I've been getting along just fine with my new laptop PC as my main home computer. I haven't even gotten around to picking up a USB or wireless mouse or keyboard yet, it seems that the mini keyboard and the trackpad, while not as usable as a mouse and a full keyboard, are sufficient for most of what I do. As advertised. So yes, progress drags us along. I do still have to resort to the old PC if I want to print, since my old HP LaserJet 4L only has the old parallel port. But, I've hopefully just addressed this, because my new Samsung wireless printer/scanner/copier has arrived. This is a laser-based device that's advertised as sleek, fast, and quiet. And wireless. I should get a chance to play with it very soon. Funny little story about that purchase. Since it isn't really in stores yet I ended up buying it through an Amazon.com retailer. I ordered in on Sunday, it arrived two days later on Tuesday. Then the following day, Wednesday, I got two different emails telling me that the item was shipped and on its way, click here to track the package. Duh, I don't need to track the package now, it's already here! There must be a new FedEx slogan here somewhere. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday May 8, 2009. **********************************************
Wow!! A beautiful April evening and eight SPACE members attended the meeting. What a great tribute to our Club, and not only that but a member from long past also made an unexpected appearance. Steve Bergland from the early eighties and one of SPACE's premier members seemed very interested in becoming a new member. He will have to start from scratch as he turned his old Atari stuff to his kids apparently there isn't much left to salvage. Steve is before my time and I have been a member of SPACE for nearly twenty years now, and it was great to see an old Atari user still interested. I hope we see him again and based on his enthusiasm I am sure we will. It's been a loooong time since we have had a new member. Here is the Treasury report for the month ended April 30, 2009: Beginning balance as of April 1, 2009: Receipts for the April meeting: Doms
777.43 + 9.00
Expenses for the April meeting: Web-site
- 10.00
Ending balance as of April 30, 2009:
776.43
A guess it doesn't take much figuring to see that we lost a dollar in April. We could go a long time if every month was like April, but I am hoping for so much more. Glen brought in a dom for April that had a demo which I think looked every bit as good as an ST version. I know that sounds impossible, but you need to see this demo to believe my comment. Even Glen with all his knowledge of the Atari 8-bit can't figure out how these Europeans can put so many colors on the screen at one time and play music and scroll the screen. Like I said, you really need to get this dom if just to show your friends what an Atari 8-bit is capable of doing. I know we will have an auction in July for our Birthday Party, but I also want you guys to buy those doms. This is our opportunity to get our bank account some cushion for the year end. I will contact Mike Schmidt very soon as it has been almost a year since we paid him for his newsletter expenses. I don't expect a rent bill until after the first of the year so we will be in pretty good shape until then.
******************************************** Let's keep things going! I am very impressed with the turnout and would like to see it continue. I remember being very down the last couple of years around this time because of low membership, but this year I must say it has been very rewarding being a member of this Club. Thanks for all your support, physically and financially. I hope May will be the same, but I know this is close to fishing season and I will understand if we are down a bit, but I expect we will bounce back in June so that we can plan our July Birthday Party. I am already getting feedback about having tacos again to my displeasure but to every else's pleasure. I guess I am out-voted on this one. See as many as can make it next month. **********************************************
Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For April 2009
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 8:25 PM Subject: Resurrected prototype game Resurrected prototype game
April 12th, 2009
Shw of D-Bug writes: Today we bring you something a bit special, an unreleased prototype of a game from the author of Nitro. We were very pleased to be contacted by Jamie and allowed to fix the code a bit so it runs on all TOS versions, and also via the magic of ULS make it HD installable. For more info visit the D-Bug site D-Bug Team » Download Sideways (Zip)
Well, for starters, a lot more people showed up for the meeting last month. Almost everyone that was paid up showed. There was still further talk about the YouTube channel, which was set up at the meeting by the way. Now, we can upload video highlights of SPACE meetings on YouTube and maybe it would be good advertising for SPACE. Special thanks to Nolan for his help in getting it online. Also, I had brought in my Atari 1040ST computer and a hard drive to try and get the drive to work. It took all meeting, but we did it. The hard drive works and at least I am happy. Thanks to Greg and Lance for helping me get that working. It was quite the challenge.
http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/sideways.zip » Download Sideways (MSA) http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/sideways_msa.zip » Visit the D-Bug site http://www.dbug-automation.co.uk/ » Visit the game developers site http://www.jamiewoodhouse.co.uk/
I am planning to bring to the meeting my Jaguar again in May. It's time for more show and tell and I think everyone will like it. I won't tell what it is, but it's going to be good.
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Those were the highlights of the last meeting. That concludes the Secretary's Report.
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 8:28 PM Subject: TeraDesk 4.01 released
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--Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:37:00 +0000 (UTC)
BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For May 2009
Version 4.01 of TeraDesk open-source desktop for the 16-bit and 32-bit lines of Atari computers is available at: http://solair.eunet.rs/~vdjole/teradesk.htm Please note the new location; domain name has been changed because of recent political changes :(
If anyone has any comments, suggestions, ideas, or submissions for the BBS Corner column or the SPACE BBS web site, you may email them to me, Nolan Friedland, at the address shown on the back of this newsletter under the "CLUB OFFICIALS" section.
The old URL should probably still be available for a while as: http://solair.eunet.yu/~vdjole/teradesk.htm
This release fixes some problems that were detected when copying files to network file systems ('access denied' error was encountered when trying to set destination file attributes and user rights). This seems to work correctly in most cases now except with some (not all) nfs when user-id-mapping is set. See the history file for details. Also, an improvement has been made in the shutdown procedure. Probably because of ambiguous documentation, different AESes use different parameters (wiscr vs. wisgr) in shel_write() to activate shutdown! TeraDesk now tries better to account for these differences by setting all of the alternative parameters. Btw. it seems that this issue is very poorly documented and that none of the AESes implements the shutdown procedure completely and as it probably was designed to be (e.g. what about 'shutdown completed' message?)
Have fun. Djordje
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 8:19 PM Subject: Paradize today releases another utility for you April 4th, 2009 Simon Sunnyboy / Paradize writes: The Paradize Rasterbar Generator is an utility for game and demo developers on the Atari ST/STE/TT and Falcon range of computers. It allows to prepare tables with color data. It helps with calculating smooth color gradients for the STE palette for use with nice Timer B raster routines. » Download The Paradize Rasterbar Generator http://files.dhs.nu/files_gfx/rastgen.zip » Visit the Paradize website http://paradize.atari.org/
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