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                                    Issue #2
                                  May 14, 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:  551  | Last Issue:  474  | Change: +77 | Size: 45,471
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CONTENTS

 --[Article Name]-------------------------[Author]-------------------

   Hornet News Introduction               Snowman
   Personalities                          GraveDigger
   Book Review: Zen of Code Optimization  Maverick
   Live from NAID                         multiple authors
   What's In a Name?                      Snowman
   Mailroom
     Mazurka Clarification                Mayhem
     ftp.luth.se Defends its Mirror       Peppar
     Multilingual Demo Parties            Mr. Khan
     Old Main Snowman Found               Gore
   Miscellaneous
   Subscribing
   Closing


---[Hornet News Introduction]--[Snowman]---------------------------------------

 Hello and welcome to Hornet News #2.  This is a pretty laid back issue.
 Nothing really ground breaking, just a good wholesome collection of
 articles for your reading pleasure.

 I would just like to take this opportunity to state once again that this
 newsletter is informal.  If you want some hard core articles about the demo
 scene, you are reading the wrong newsletter.  We produce "o1art" which
 fills this role.  This warning is an attempt to dissuade all negative
 feedback saying that we are "off course" or "off topic".

 So start that massive download, pull up this newsletter into a view window,
 relax, and read on.

 -Christopher G. Mann r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com


---[Personalities]--[GraveDigger]----------------------------------------------

 In cyberspace, one thing can be said as true: Nothing will stay true for
 too long a time. And even that statement leaves doubts in one's mind.

 It is with this fact that the entire Internet user base feasts. Anonymity
 is one of the great features of the 'net world, as real people hide behind
 an alias or email address. This can also create problems, such as anonymous
 attacks in the way of mailbox bombs, or other "abusive" actions.

 But a personality can not hide. And in the demo world, personality is
 everything. Personality shines through on music, graphics, and code
 creations. It is hard to not recognize a personality in such a world as the
 demo scene.

 Recently, I have really taken notice to several acts of kindness by people
 in the demo scene. I think it needs to be addressed that such acts are
 important to the survival of such a community.

 First, it is very frequent that demo people on IRC will send you files.
 They require no payment of any sort for these files, they just think the
 files deserve to be spread around. It is very helpful also for someone who
 is trying to find a particular file if someone else on IRC will send it to
 them. I'm not really talking about people who will distribute their own
 files, but people who offer other people's creations for transfer.

 As we all know, software piracy exists, and the Internet is a major source
 of much of this piracy. The people who distribute pirated software on IRC
 will not be so kind. They require payment for their files. A "warez" FTP
 site is what they seek, or a new file they don't have. Selfishness over
 something that doesn't even belong to them. Score a point for honesty and
 sharing.

 Also, during my duties of file maintenance on ftp.cdrom.com, I came across
 nearly 3 megs of archived samples made by one person. He sampled these
 sounds from three keyboards and packaged them for anyone to use. It is an
 act like this that could only come from a generous person. There are a few
 hundred samples in three zip files. New samples that haven't been used
 before often give a musician enough inspiration to create better music than
 was possible with old, overused samples.

 And just a couple days ago, he was on IRC distributing new percussion
 samples. Therefore, a directory has been made on ftp.cdrom.com under
 /pub/demos/music/samples, where we can hopefully store more archived
 samples. If you so choose, upload your sample archives to /incoming/music
 and they will be free for the taking. Please only upload samples that you
 recorded yourself and not others' samples.
 
 I really appreciate seeing actions like the above in the demo world, and
 can only hope that such generosity will continue and allow the demo scene
 to grow and develop for many more years to come. Hopefully, you can
 appreciate such actions too.

 -Brett Neely gd@ftp.cdrom.com


---[Book Review: Zen of Code Optimization]--[Maverick]-------------------------

 Telkom have cut my phone off!!!! I can't bloody believe it!!!! After over a
 year of wrangling about the money they owe me, they then suspend my phone
 service coz of some money I'm supposed to owe them (but don't). I know
 Europe's telco industry is also about as deregulated as the airline
 industry worldwide but you guys in the US must just be thankful for what
 you have! These clowns here can and do everything as bureaucratically,
 inefficiently and sloooooooooowly as possible.

 I'll have my revenge soon. I'm deputy-editor of the weekly computer paper
 here in South Africa so sooner or later I'll find some juicy Telkom story
 and print it ;-). Hey Maelcum, AT&T may be a monopoly but their service is
 better than ours (joke about his comments found in Know The Number). Anyway
 I still have a cell-phone so I'm still available for a chat at around
 $16.95 a minute hehe from anywhere outside this country.

 But no 28.8 Internet from home. Aaagh! I'm already shaking like I do after
 1hr without coffee. The phone service is so basic and so pervasive that you
 take it for granted and only scream when it's gone. Pretty much like the
 80x86 family of processors I suppose. They have become so pervasive that
 even a day without tapping in a bit of code, or trying to recover that song
 that ST3 rewrote for you without asking, is like going through a day
 without coffee. And yet, the real fun isn't even there either.

 No the real fun is "making these ugly beasts called PCs perform miracles" -
 Michael Abrash, Zen II 1994 Coriolis Books ($39 in the States, rip-off 300
 rands price in South Africa). And Abrash must be THE most qualified person
 in the planet to talk about optimization, with no offense to Maxwood, Mr.
 Stone or Walken ;-). And whether mabrash@bix.com knows it or not he must be
 one of the main indirect contributors to the demo scene through his
 writing.

 He-who-published-Mode-X starts his book "......now". That's the way the end
 of the opening para reads. It's great stuff! Without dilly-dallying around,
 MA starts probing the depths of the x86 chips, first with some rehashed
 stuff from ZEN I, but with considerable updates and loads of new stuff on
 the 386, 486 and Pentium BF (meaning Before FDIV). Plenty of the articles
 are taken straight from Dr. Dobbs and his other mags he writes for so you
 would expect clean, fast code.

 Well, yes and no. Yes the code is *very*, *Very*, *VERY* good. Did I say it
 was very good? OK. But equally emphasized in the text is THINKING. (Ed's
 note : Yeah, right that process that tells you its time to refill the
 coffee machine). No, he means thinking out optimizations and design and
 making sure code and data are tightly integrated so as to achieve speed.

 Examples are plentiful and the code taught me quite a bit even just reading
 it on the plane back home (I bought my copy of ZEN II in SF, Calif). The
 chapters on stuff his readers sent him are a real eye-opener. Hell, I
 thought LEA was just some boring instruction that did what the Intel manual
 said. Nuh-uh. But then you coders have all known for a while what LEA can
 do so I won't teach you to suck eggs.

 All code is in C and ASM. As he makes clear, the truly great optimizing
 tricks are only to be found at the assembler level, but fear not if you're
 not a die-hard ASM head. Using C *only*, Abrash takes a piece of code and
 speeds it up several hundred times - not percent, *times*! Those techniques
 alone make this book a worthwhile buy.

 There's a disk to save you typing in all of that source, and an updated
 version of the famous ZEN timer. Readers of DemoNews will remember an
 excellent vector optimization tutorial a couple of issues back where the
 author used the Zen timer version II. The new Zen timer is worth the
 download even if you don't have the book (is it somewhere on hornet?
 Definitely on x2ftp.oulu.fi). The example game of Life is fun, as are the
 word count examples but the most common words used in the book are "speed",
 "fast", "blazing", "lightning", "quick", and "slow" (when used negatively
 only and then it seems to be in italics).

 It's a book that will provide you with practical, fun ways of tweaking
 those cycles so as to get that routine to behave just a little bit faster.
 And isn't that what all coders want?

 Get it and learn. Even if you don't learn anything which I doubt very much,
 you will enjoy the way Mr. A writes. He always brings a fresh, human
 approach to a highly technical and widely misunderstood subject. He just
 has a grasp of the programming world and the way programmers think and work
 that will appeal to every demo coder and not a few artists as well.

 -Maverick/Serenity paulf@is.co.za


---[Live from NAID]------------------------------------------------------------

 (an undirected journal from the night of Saturday April 15th)

 Its Saturday night here in Montreal and about half of the demo freaks here
 at NAID are fast asleep.  What you are about to read is live and edited. In
 fact, I'm writing this introduction long after NAID has ended but for the
 sake of argument, I'll pretend I'm writing it at the party place itself.

 I'm sitting at the "Hornet Table" right now.  To my left is GraveDigger. To
 my right and behind me is some funny guy [who I would later learn was
 PeriSoft].  The music competition has concluded and I am dead tired.
 However, sleep is my enemy and as such I must focus my energies on
 something... anything.

 I have a feeling that many people will be contributing to this log.
 Anything in []'s has been added for clarification.

 Here is the roll call:

                * Snowman
                > GraveDigger
               >> Ior
              >>> Katherine Poire (Jeff's sister)
             >>>> The NAID photographer
            >>>>> Perisoft

 Well folks, if you wanted to read something interesting, THIS IS IT!

 <Start of Log>

     * Hello there, this is Christopher G. Mann, writing live from the NAID
       party place.  With me here is GraveDigger.  Say "hi" GD...

     > "Hi," GD.

     * Very funny.  ;)  Well, the two of us are just sitting here listening
       to some live kewl-rad band called Public Enema.

     > I don't think that DJ up there scratching the records and all, is
       real. But, its a nice touch, as is all of the smoke.

     * GD, I can hardly hear anything!  I'm now looking at the MediaTrix
       representative here in front of me.  He was a judge for the music
       compo. GD, who do you think will win the music compo this year and
       why?

     > That's a really tough call. Especially since I lost interest about
       halfway through. The music really was excellent, but I just got so
       tired. It was a very long compo. I liked the fact that Basehead and
       Necros did some really different styles than we are used to. I guess
       at this point I can't make any judgement because I really would rather
       hear it all again. :)_  Just when I'm more awake and alert.

     * Hmmm.... What if I told you that I was a judge for the music compo and
       could tell you RIGHT NOW who the winner was going to be?

     > I'd rather not know, I think. Even if it was dead obvious, I'd rather
       wait. Ok, then again, we'll just wait until we get away from this
       crowd and you can pass me the list. :)

     * Maybe I should keep the results to myself and just publish them in 01.
       That might boost the ratings!  :)  I'm trying right now to remember
       the distinction between o1art and hnews.  One serious and one
       funny/informal. What kind of article titles ya' think we'll have in
       the next couple of weeks for each?

     > Uhh, which was which again? You confuse me. I'll just leave it up to
       you like I always do. :P  Maybe you *can* enlighten us on how to get a
       prostitute [refer to o1fil.001].  Even still, I'm sure I don't have
       enough money. Hey, didn't you rip me off in a poker game or something?

     * You were drunk!  How do you remember that?  Boy, you look a lot
       younger in person than I thought you would be... but you're still
       older than that guy working on DNDM [Ior].

     > Me? Drunk? You must have seen Necros and Mosaic stumbling in the first
       night. Anyway, I guess it is about time to stop sucking my thumb and
       carrying my blanket. Hey Snowman, where the hell did you go? Oh well,
       I guess it's time for another guest...

    >> Hey. This is Ior... (NOT Eeyore :) Believe it or not, I made it to yet
       another demo party... And I'll admit, although this doesn't live up to
       Asm '94 (it wasn't expected to), it's not a bad start for this
       continent.

     > I can't really say anything about past parties, but I'll take your
       word for it. I heard there are some 700 people here, but the capacity
       was 1100. Though I don't think I could handle any more people here.
       Ah, guess what, Ior? We have _more_ guest speakers! That means more
       arrow-brackets. :)

   >>> Hi! Here's Katherine and I'm Jeff's sister... Christopher just left
       and God knows where he is...

  >>>> Hello! Here I am the photographer for Hornet, I'm R.A.D. from
       Longueuil...

     > Hey, you get to take pictures, that's cool. Did you happen to get any
       pictures of females with exposed, well.. umm..

  >>>> Not yet, but I'll try... There's plenty of them here...

     > Well, that's sure good to hear. There are more than I expected. And it
       seems someone is trying to take the keybosu6 n09s [???]

 >>>>> Muahahaha, this keyboard has been LIBERATED by PeriSoft.. :> today,
       Hornet-- tomorrow, the world!!! AAaAUAuuUAAUUAGH!!  Actually, I'm just
       freaking out cause all these speakers are over-driven and made my
       piano samples sound like dying cats.. Oh.. SV RULEZ!!

     * What the hell!  This is getting out of control.  I leave for a second,
       and now there are like 5 people who have written stuff.  I give up...

    >> Good. Now that he's gone, we can get back on topic. :) There was a
       little bit of controversy over the way the music compo was run, due to
       the fact that the audience had to listen to every single entry... And
       after a while it did get a little dull. :)

       But on the the more serious competition: The Demo Compo (and here is
       CCCatch pounding on the table due to his MUD withdrawal :) ... There
       might be a total of 5 (count that, *5*) demos here (Hey! Stop hitting
       me, Kenny! :) ... all from this continent! (Being America) Here's what
       I can count so far, from rumors, and from actually seeing them with my
       own eyes: 1. KFMF - Flight    2. Craw Prods. - Opticron 3. Night
       Vision - Figment    4. Necros - ??????    5. Pure Resistance - ????? I
       can't wait to see any of them (even though I've already seen some of
       them )

 >>>>> Well, IOR has faced the facts and relinquished control of the keyboard
       to me.. :) actually, I'm not so sure how they should've dealt with the
       overload of music, since they obviously have to judge them all
       anyway... so they might as well play 'em all. I dunno how you pick the
       worst ones without hearing them.. :) unless you just take a dart board
       with the names of the contestants on it and toss darts until only
       those composers in Kosmic or Renaissance are left.. ;>

    >> Hahahaha... it seems that way sometimes... but I think all of the
       people in Ren that entered songs actually deserve to be in the finals.
       Their songs are just that good... BTW, did I mention that CCCatch
       actually TRACKED A SONG?!?!?!?! It's amazing! First one in... Ummm ...
       A long time. Uh oh. The boss is back. :)

 >>>>> Aauugh! Take cover! Grab the women and children! Take cover! Take---
       (sounds of gunfire and shells exploding) aaaAuughhh..g.f,. (raising
       head from the sidewalk, spilling dark blood to the ground) Hmm.. GD
       has returned. damn. (head flops back down in a spray of blood)

     > Well, Christopher and I were fortunate enough to witness a new and yet
       unreleased tune being written by three people: Basehead, Necros, and
       one other we seem to have forgotten. Sorry dude, but the tune is
       killer and should be released in a short time. By the way, you guys
       _really_ screwed this damn thing up :) Touche.

    >> Bah. We stayed closer to the topic than you two ever would have. :)
       And see! Now that you're back, we're straying again. Go away. :)

 >>>>> Yeah... let's boot 'im outa here. Here we were discussing fine
       concepts of music ratings, here we are talking about issues affecting
       the ENTIRE DEMO WORLD (even finland! ;> ) and you just come here and
       say we're off topic. Disgusting. ;) Did I say that SV rules? :)

     > PS, we know that you have a Super Virus, and I think you need to see a
       doctor.  Damn, I know that I probably made this keyboard wire a few
       feet longer. (That part was accidentally typed in all caps, but you
       of course won't see that. :) Nevertheless, all watching are laughing at
       my pathetic typing skills. Ok, though, I would like to ask both of you
       a question regarding this competition. Now, I could ask, "Who is going
       to win?" But, nevermind that. There will be a results report and all
       that good stuff. But, what I want to know is, Who's going to lose? :)

    >> Well... I'm assuming that you're talking about the demo compo... There
       will be too many losers in the music compo. :)

 >>>>> Yeah. We ALL know there are way too many losers in the music compo.
       Just quit talking about me, will ya? ;)

    >> Hahahaha... Okay... I haven't seen all the demos yet... Only the KFMF
       demo, the Night Vision demo, and I've heard some inside comments from
       the makers of Opticron, and also Necros, concerning their demos. The
       KFMF demo was coded completely by GooRoo (wow. :) and has music by
       Maelcum and Floss. It has some nice effects, and could end up high.

       The Night Vision demo is unfortunately being put together in a hurry,
       so it won't be as good as it could be... Which is too bad, since some
       of their effects are nice. I especially like the beginning of it.

       Opticron is supposed to have some good and hard to code effects, but I
       haven't seen it. And Necros' demo is supposed to be so smooth, that it
       almost appears to be animation.

       Not directly related to this, of course, is Dope. We got it in about
       mid-day today. It was amazing. I think it blows away all demos
       currently out there, and I can be fairly certain in saying that none
       of the demos from this compo will be up to par... Good job Jmagic! :)

 >>>>> Yeah... GD and I waltzed in about halfway through that demo, as we'd
       been observing some weird ray traced movie on all the TV monitors
       scattered throughout the hallways around here, and the DEMO was
       better.. :) In fact, it was so good that GD almost dropped his "Pepsi
       Max" :)

       Oh yeah. Question... well.. I haven't seen any of the demos yet, so I
       can't really generalize about who's going to lose. And just for the
       sake of argument, as far as boolean logic goes, asking who's going to
       lose because we're going to have a list of who wins is not good
       logic-- anyone who does not win will, by definition, lose :) and
       therefore, a list of winners will explain losers as well. So there.
       Pttth. :)

    >> Well, about my previous comment, I realize that some people could take
       offense to it, but I didn't mean it that way. I was just stating that
       the coders in Europe have much more experience with demos than the
       coders here in America. I think that answers GD's question, and as
       expected, he's gone again. Uh oh.

       That means that PS and I have free run of this document (But this will
       all probably be edited out by Snowman and GD when we leave NAID :)

       [Though I seriously considered doing so, I felt I should leaving the
       rest of this 'document' in for sake of accuracy.]

       It's about 1:30 AM right now... and as I guessed no one is sleeping.
       Snowman, GD, Floss, and Trixter were all threatening to go to sleep a
       while ago, but they didn't... Which is no surprise. You just DON'T go
       to sleep at a demo party. Not only is it a faux pas, but also nearly
       impossible by the volume of all the activities going on.

       Right now we have Public Enema blasting our eardrums to smithereens,
       and then we will have some sort of rave. We'll see how that turns out
       (I'm not one of those heavy ravers, but PS looks like the type, so
       I'll let him tell you guys all about that =)

 >>>>> Hahaha, I'm afraid I can't tell ya much about raves. Oh, currently
       Ior is attempting to kidnap CCCatch and make him type, but he's just
       too damn quick for us. :) Must be reflexes from all his MUDs. Ooh, now
       he's casting some spell on us.. ;) Well, back on topic, or this WILL
       be deleted.. Hmm..

       There's a guitarist over there who looks like he has a weird tropical
       disease from the way he's weaving and twisting.. ooh.. poor guitar.
       But anyway.. the intro compo's been delayed, I guess in order to give
       some people time to write intros. :)

       It appears nobody did before this time-- but now it looks like we're
       going to have a "pisstro" from FUDD with music by necros--rumor has it
       that all the samples are ST3.DOC, ST3.SET and ########.ST3 files.
       We'll have to see how that turns out. :) In fact, I myself wrote a
       little 7k text mode intro in pascal this afternoon, but owing to the
       fact that more than three entrants are likely to take part, my chances
       of getting some fast cash are reduced, and it isn't worth the damage
       to my reputation to submit it now. :)

    >> Damage to your reputation? What reput- Oh! Sorry. :) It's true. I've
       seen PISSTRO ... It is hilarious. I can't wait to see it on big
       screen. :) Everyone's going to die laughing. :) I couldn't confirm
       anything about the samples, though. I'd have to take the 8 minute walk
       down to the Kosmic/Ren room to ask Necros himself. :)

       I do have one small complaint/suggestion about this party. Right now
       (NIGHTTIME!) they are having the bands play, and the rave happening.
       And they plan on showing the demos/intros in the DAYTIME!!!! What kind
       of reasoning is this? They do have the windows covered up (some of
       them) but a lot of light still gets through.

       Anyone who has been to any other demo party (ahem :) could tell you
       that you want to show the gfx compo, intro compo, and demo compo when
       it is dark! It is just easier to see the screen! I remember that at
       Asm '94, the demo compo was running a little late, and the sun started
       coming up (at 3:30 AM :) and that really made watching the demos hard
       to do. I wonder what the organizers are thinking. :)

 >>>>> Yeah, and also we're all probably going to be half dead by that time
       tomorrow.. :) amazingly enough, though, I'm still not that tired, even
       though it's now now 2:00am and I got up at 6:30 am yesterday..
       Actually, I must agree with Ior that the compos, especially the gfx
       compo, will be somewhat hurt by the bright Montreal sun ;>

    >> Pyro just reminded me! It was snowing when the party started! It was
       the first snow I've seen in 13 years! After all, we don't get much
       snow in "sunny" Southern California. :)

 >>>>> Well, I come from wonderful upstate New York-- "Where seldom is heard,
       an encouraging word, and the sky is not sunny all daaayy" -- and the
       last time *I* saw snow was... last wednesday. :)

    >> Well, we seem to be wandering again, but that's probably because we've
       run out of things to say about NAID so far... We've only had one
       compo, and that wasn't too exciting (except for music from all of the
       big names on this side of the Atlantic - Oh! And Mellow-D :) ...

       Right... We did have a live "coverage" (or as close as you can get) of
       most of the music compo in IRC. I'm sure that someone got a screen
       capture of it, and will release it later. I'll try to do the demo
       compo, but the way that they have the Net terminals set up in relation
       to the screen, it will make it VERY difficult to see the demo and be
       on IRC at the same time. But I'll see what I can do. :) Hmm.

       Well, PeriSoft had to leave for some reason. and I've run out of
       things to say, and Snowman and GD will have a heart attack when they
       get back from flirting with women and see how much we've typed...
       So... Bye for now from NAID!

 >>>>> Well, you know me, I always have to have the last word :) I actually
       had to leave to get another root beer, which I believe (looks at the
       can) oh damn! No caffeine! Oh well.. it's the thought that counts.

       Hmm, maybe we could try here what they did in the 1890s when there
       wasn't any news--yellow journalism. Hell with the facts! =) Ok, here I
       go.. awww. Ior doesn't want me to do this. But that's just 'cause of
       what those space aliens did to him. Hey. Well--guess I gotta go. Elvis
       wants me over in the corner. Uh oh. Anyway--L8a ppl.. adioz---and
       remember-- sv rules. :)

    >> I wish you would tell us what this SV thing is, sometime. But not now.
       :) Bye all!


---[What's In a Name?]--[Snowman]----------------------------------------------

 Hornet, what's that?  Are we a demo group, an ftp site, newsletter repor-
 ters, or a bunch of people from all around the world gathered together for
 _no_ clear-cut purpose?  Many people have asked us to define ourselves so
 we will attempt to do so here.

 We have made the disclaimer at the top of this newsletter that it will have
 articles less-related to the demo scene.  As such, we take no responsibil-
 ity for any boredom incurred through reading the remainder of this article.

 _____Hornet Core

 As a group, Hornet is divided into two very specific branches.  The
 first is "Hornet Core" which is composed of exactly 5 members.  The
 second is Hornet Family which fluctuates its membership total.  This
 distinction is set up for happy lucky reasons explained below.

 [The previous paragraph had periods that were vertically aligned.  We
 think that's cool.]

 Hornet Core is the heart of our group.  Here is a brief description of
 its members and their respective functions:

 Leonard, Jim (Trixter):

   Jim is the latest edition to our group.  With notable productions
   such as Grind and Chromatiks, he is already known to many of you. He
   now takes care of two very important areas: Hornet responses on
   comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos, and the moving and reviewing of all
   /incoming/code uploads.

   Jim has been in the scene for a long time and can provide insight
   into current happenings based on previous experience.  He is
   temperamental, older (mid-twenties), married to his wife, and tall.
   In general, he is one of the more conservative members of the group.

 [At this point, we realize that the last description had one paragraph
 for duties, and one for personality description.  So as not to break
 the trend, we will follow with it for the rest of the descriptions.
 This might mean that the article will be structured to the point of
 anality (adverb form of anal).  We do not care.]

 Neely, Brett (GraveDigger):

   Brett is the music guy.  He handles a team of people who review music
   that is uploaded each week to our site.  In addition, he is our most
   active columnist with contributions each week in all three of our
   newsletters and TraxWeekly (plug).  Brett is definitely the most
   gifted keyboard jockey in our group.

   Brett is a quiet man . . . almost too quiet in fact.  You might even
   think something was wrong with him if you met him in person. However,
   by asking him a lot of direct questions, one can get him pulled into
   a conversation.  Once that happens, stand back!

   He likes to wear clothes that are jean-based (jean jacket, etc.) and
   has a strip beard.  A baseball cap is almost always nailed to his
   head.

   Scholastically, Brett is the only member of the Core division still
   in high school.  The rest of us would make fun of this more if we
   could think of anything related to make fun of.

 [We realize that we are now going astray with this article in several
 regards.  First, a significant amount of humor has started to creep in.
 This is strictly unintentional (a lie).  Second, Brett's description
 just broke the pattern we set up with Jim's.  We make no promises that
 this article will remained structured any further.]

 Mann, Christopher G. (Snowman):

   Christopher is in charge of putting out the newsletters late.  After
   NAID, he is the self-dubbed 'Hornet Public Speaker'. In addition, he
   attempts to manage the Hornet Family projects.  He is the creator of
   the Music Contests, but because he is lazy has passed of all
   coordination of MC3 to Floss.

   He smokes, he drinks, he eats lots of fast food.  Yes, he is a
   college student.  He has a flare for grades with ascii equivalents
   higher than 66d.

   Christopher is in a time of change.  He is coming out of the "Me, me
   me!  Look at all the things I'M doing" stage and entering the "i'm
   hidden, i'm secret, look at what _Hornet_ is doing" stage.  To
   support this change, he often writes about himself in the third
   person just to confuse readers.

 Poire, Jean Francois (White Noise):

   Jeff has three very important functions.  First, he is our Webmaster,
   handling most of the WWide Web activity.  Second, he is the official
   public relations correspondent 4 Hornet.  Third, he will be one of
   the official organizers for NAID in 96'.

   [Vertically aligned periods again, huh huh]

   We affectionately refer Jean as Jeff.  "Jean" is french and therefore
   too difficult to pronounce correctly.

   Jeff is a very hospitable fellow, having made all other members feel
   at home when at NAID this past month.  He is a Windows lover and
   hence must start medical treatment soon.  Other than Dan Wright, he
   is the longest-time member of our group.

 Wright, Dan (Pallbearer):

   Dan handles the most tangible aspect of Hornet: the CDs.  After a
   very successful "Escape" CD, he has gone on to organize efforts to
   produce the sequel entitled "Freedom".  Although the founder of our
   group, he no longer helps to maintain the sight.

   Dan looks like an ex-marine.  There is a quiet, calm determination
   about him.  Having met him at NAID, I can only wonder what he must
   have gone through to get this whole thing started.

 _____Hornet Family

 In addition to the Core members, there are many floating Hornet Family
 members.  These include such notables as:

   Ior - organizer of DNDM diskmag
   Floss - coordinator of Music Contest 3
   Popcorn and Maverick - roving columnists
   Stony - fast, reliable, and excellent artist
   Jason Nunn - coder from "down under"

 In addition, this division of Hornet includes all reviewers GraveDigger
 has helping him, the crew working on DNDM, our listserver maintainer,
 and many others.

 We stated earlier that we would explain why there are two divisions.
 Here we go!

 Hornet Policy:

   Frequently comes the time when Hornet needs to decide something.
   Examples include: changing the spelling from "HORNET" to "Hornet",
   keeping music reviews or stopping them, and deciding which uploads
   are appropriate to our site.

   When a decision needs to be made, one of us initiates the discussion
   by mailing the other members with a Subject Line: COUNCIL [topic]. In
   general, only a single response from the others is required.  However,
   our opinions sometimes differ and we must exchange mail and try to
   persuade the others.

   Jim and Brett seem to initiate the most council mails.  Christopher
   and Jeff seem to disagree the most.  All in all, we're one big happy
   family that can come to a solid agreement... or compromise.

   if (Decision == Reached)
     Make appropriate changes;
   else Use Dan as the tie breaker;

   Since Dan does not actively work on the ftp site any more, he is an
   excellent tie breaker.  Usually Jim, Brett, Jeff, and Christopher
   do not have to resort to this though.

   If Hornet Family members were consulted (or if Hornet Core were
   larger), this system would quickly become ineffective.  Score one for
   small groups!

 Organization:

   [Note: Europeans probably want to spell it "organiSation", but our
   spell checkers are different here.]

   The way we have things set up, the administration is very smooth in
   our group.  We will appoint project leaders like Ior for DNDM, or
   Jason Nunn for the MC3 Intro.  These people can gather the people
   they need to complete the task without Hornet Core having to worry
   about the details.

   In this aspect, we are a group unlike any other.  Imagine Future Crew
   trying to appoint Purple Motion as "music leader" or KFMF having an
   "Ambient/House coordinator".  Just wouldn't work.

 _____Hornet FTP Site

 Our ftp site is where it all comes together, where it all started,
 where our lifeblood is.  Without the site, it would be very difficult
 to do most of our projects.

 Over the years, the official address has changed a few times.  We
 started out as ftp.uwp.edu, moved to the University of Florida at
 ftp.eng.ufl.edu and finally have settled at Walnut Creek's archive at
 ftp.cdrom.com.  We have no plans to move again, but we _are_ expanding.

 Our ftp site has a name.  It is Hornet.  This name is derived from the
 fact that one of the ftp servers at ftp.eng.ufl.edu was called
 "hornet".

 Almost a year ago, the group Hornet did not exist, at least not in
 title.  Then for some odd reason, Christopher started signing his name
 as "Snowman / Hornet".  He did not really belong to a group but he
 worked on the ftp site a lot and wanted to belong to a group very
 badly.  The trend caught on and the group Hornet was formed.

 _____Hornet Demo Group

 In the future, we plan to start producing demos and intros.  However,
 we do not currently have enough skills or time to do so.  We hope to
 have something ready for NAID in 1996.

 _____Summary

 Hornet, what's that?  Are we a demo group, an ftp site, newsletter
 reporters, or a bunch of people from all around the world gathered
 together for _no_ clear-cut purpose?

 Hornet is a demo group, an ftp site, and newsletter reporters.  We are
 a bunch of people from all around the world gathered together. However,
 we _do_ have a clear-cut purpose.  It is our goal to make the demo
 scene a better place.  Pretty simple eh?

 Thank you all for being so supportive.
 We hope to be around for a long time.

 -Christopher G. Mann r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com


---[Mailroom]------------------------------------------------------------------

 _____Clarification about MAZURkA and the light show at NAID

 In the last Hornet News, Snowman wrote about his experiences at NAID.  I
 read it and then came across the following passage:

   ..The group Mazurka had about 7 entries.  No problem there until about
   the 5th entry.  At about song 30 something, one of the Mazurka musicians
   decided that he wanted to have a light show with his tune.  He announced
   over the loud speaker "Hey you guys, you don't mind if we have some
   lights to go along with my song do you?".  The audience was split on
   this.  I was dead opposed.  This was unusual, this was preferential, this
   was _unfair_.

   They played the song and these fancy lights kept zipping around the room
   and into my face.  I was so disgusted that I got up and went to get a
   drink of water.  I came back after the song was over and we continued...

 I replied to Snowman explaining the truth behind the matter and he
 suggested that I write in HNews to clear up the situation.   So here it is.
 It was not bOb (the composer who's song was played during the light show)
 that asked for the light show, and to my knowledge nobody DID ask for a
 light show.  From what bOb told me, it was the NAID organizers (the ones
 who were running the music compo) who volunteered a light show, and
 coincidentally it happened to be on bOb's song.

 The audience WAS split on this offer, but apparently the majority wanted to
 see the lights go on with the music.  Even though (in my opinion) it was a
 funky little light show, I agree that it was inappropriate because there
 were already what... 29 songs played before this one, but I just want to
 make it clear that it was not MAZURkA's fault, but the NAID organizers.

 With this information I am sharing with you, I hope you can see MAZURkA in
 a different light (a good one i hope :) ).  Thank you very much, and if you
 have any comments concerning this issue and would like to msg me about it,
 email me at mayhem1@io.org.  Ciao 4 Now.

 -Max Quagliotto / MAZURkA


 _____ftp.luth.se Defends its Mirror

 [taken from newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos]

 I'm the maintainer of ftp.luth.se. I'd just like to say that we have about
 26GB of disc on ftp.luth.se. The computer today handles all ftp-requests,
 mirroring and NFS-traffic to a slave machine that handles all http-requests
 for the archive.

 We don't have any problems with giving up a 1.1GB disc for demos and we
 mirror cdrom.com every night BUT the mirroring fails sometimes because
 there have been some problems with the connections to the States lately.
 This we can't do much about right now.

 Our site have a 34Mbit connection and a direct 10Mbit connection to the
 archive.

 SO, please stop the debate about if ftp.luth.se should mirror cdrom.com or
 not.

 -Peppar


 _____Multilingual Demo Parties

 [a forwarded mail from Trixter, taken without permission, sorry :)]

 I'm rather happy to report that Naid 2 will be happening, it's now been
 officially confirmed.

 Actually, I've had something which has been wondering in my head for the
 last 2 weeks, regarding a conversation we never finished at Naid... Well,
 it was concerning the need to announce in both languages all the time, I
 figured it needed some sort of explanation... We'll, it's rather simple,
 really.

 Quebec is one of the last places in North America were people use french as
 a main language, and people round here are rather peculiar about that. (For
 a long time Quebecers have been discriminated by the rest of the country
 for that, and not until the late 1950's did that improve. Our small
 province has been battling to keep some sort of identity for a very long
 time, and some people figure they should keep on fighting, although I'm
 personally convinced it's kinda time to relax about the whole issue.)

 It sometimes borders insanity and prejudice, but as a rule when you use
 both languages people will be satisfied. Well, now you know, it's a
 political thing. <Or rather a technique to avoid heated political debates
 :>

 -Etienne "Mr. Khan" Caron


 _____Interesting mail Snowman found the other day...

 January 5, 1994

 >      This is Snowman.  I'll make this letter short and to the point,
 > as I am sure you are very busy.  I have recently concluded my Music
 > Contest here in the United States.  It was a very big success with around
 > 30 entries to the competition.
 >      I am due to announce Music Contest 2 in a month or two and I
 > really want a nice intro for it.  I have a mod which is pretty good
 > already written for it.  All I need is a little intro, not too flashy,
 > announcing the specifics of the contest.
 >      Rather than tell you exactly what I want, I would first like to
 > see if you would consider doing this.  Then, if you decide that you
 > would like to, we can go into specifics.

 I'm sorry, but due to the fact that we have so many projects open right
 now, we will not be able to make an intro without a reasonable price.

 -Samuli "GORE" Syvahuoko / Future Crew


---[Miscellaneous]-------------------------------------------------------------

 For a couple nice articles about Music Contest 3, check out TraxWeekly 9.

 Information about the "Freedom" CD can be found under /demos/hornet/freedom.


---[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.

    As we only have 551 subscribers, we highly encourage all members of
    Epinicion, KFMF, Surprise Productions, Ice, and Acid to subscribe. This
    could effectively triple our reader list.


---[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

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
